year before had written "Clarissa."

But what was then read in the houses of the citizens was of quite
another quality. As yet there were no circulating libraries; only the
small second-hand booksellers sometimes lent books to trustworthy
acquaintance. But there sprang up a voluminous literature of novels,
which were eagerly bought by unassuming readers. They were narratives,
slight and carelessly put together, in which strange events were
related.

These adventures were represented in the seventeenth century in various
ways: either in dull imitations of the old chivalrous and pastoral
novels, with a phantastic background, and without the advantage of
detailed description; or a coarse copy of real life, without beauty,
often common and vulgar. There was then a concurrence of a decaying
style and of the beginning of a new one. After 1700, the realistic
tendency became the ruling one. From the Amadis novels, arose loose
court and tourist adventures. "Simplicissimus" was followed by a great
number of war romances, Robinsonades, and stories of adventurers; the
greater part of them are very carelessly composed, and German gossip or
newspaper information of extraordinary occurrences abroad, partly
diaries, are worked in. "Fassmann's Dialogues from the Kingdom of
the Dead," are collected in a similar way from flying-sheets and
story-books, which that disorderly character, who then resided in
Franconia, had gathered together from the pastor of the place. Those
who wrote thus were thoroughly despised by literary men, but they
exercised a very great influence--one difficult to estimate--on the
mind of the people. They were two separate spheres that revolved
together. And this contrast between the reading of the people and that
of the educated class, exists but too much, even in the present day.

Among the gentry of the town, however, there were in 1750 still other
literati. No town of any importance failed to possess a patriotic man,
who examined old chronicles, church documents, and records from the
council archives, and could give valuable contributions towards a
history of the place and district. As yet little was known of the
monuments of antiquity; but they, as well as old inscriptions and the
false idols of our primeval ancestors, were copied as curiosities.

Still greater was the interest excited by physical science. It
continues the most popular branch of knowledge in the smaller cities.
Not inconsiderable is the numb