Germans, found interpreters of genius in the persons
of Arndt and Koerner, the latter of whom laid down his life for the
people whom he loved so well. During the Napoleonic period all their
compositions, many of which will live so long as the German language
lasts, strike the same note--the determination of Germans to be free:

Lasst klingen, was nur klingen kann,
Die Trommeln und die Floeten!
Wir wollen heute Mann fuer Mann
Mit Blut das Eisen roeten.
Mit Henkerblut, Franzoesenblut--
O suesser Tag der Rache!
Das klinget allen Deutschen gut,
Das ist die grosse Sache.

Some six decades later, when Arndt's famous question "Was ist das
deutsche Vaterland?" was about to receive a practical answer, the German
soldier marched to the frontier to the inspiriting strains of "Die Wacht
am Rhein."

No more characteristic national poetry was ever written than that evoked
by the civil war which raged in America some fifty years ago. Those who,
like the present writer, were witnesses on the spot of some portion of
that great struggle, are never likely to forget the different
impressions left on their minds by the poetry respectively of the North
and of the South. The pathetic song of the Southerners, "Maryland, my
Maryland," which was composed by Mr. T.R. Randall, appeared, even
whilst the contest was still undecided, to embody the plaintive wail of
a doomed cause, and stood in strong contrast to the aggressive and
almost rollicking vigour of "John Brown's Body" and "The Union for ever,
Hurrah, boys, Hurrah!"

Even a nation so little distinguished in literature as the Ottoman Turks
is able, under the stress of genuine patriotism, to embody its hopes and
aspirations in stirring verse. The following, which was written during
the last Russo-Turkish war, suffers in translation. Its rhythm and
heroic, albeit savage, vigour may perhaps even be appreciated by those
who are not familiar with the language in which it is written:

Achalum sanjaklari!
Ghechelim Balkanlari!
Allah! Allah! deyerek,
Dushman kanin' ichelim!
Padishahmiz chok yasha!
Ghazi Osman chok yasha![109]

Let us now turn to Italy and Greece, the nations from which modern
Europe inherits most of its ideas, and which have furnished the greater
part of the models in which those ideas are expressed, whether in prose
or in verse.

Although lines from Virgil, who may almost be said to have created Roman