n less familiar setting, he will still envisage them
in the manner to which he is born, and in language, style, and all the
forms of apperception he will reveal the temperament and the nature of
his stock. As the specifically German novel, taken by and large, is
distinguished by national traits from the Russian, French, or American,
even when it has been modified by influences from many sides, so the
novel of each separate German tribe and nation has kept its peculiarity
within the range of the general membership, one with another. The whole
constitutes an orchestra of manifold instruments, each with its own
_timbre_, and yet all in tune and harmony, and no one superfluous. The
detection of the individual instruments is possible, if we attentively
analyze. The present centrifugal tendency of German literature has
strongly developed such a sense for the detection of differences.
Recently the attempt has been made to group the entire history of
German literature from the most ancient times according to racial
stocks and regions, an experiment that would scarcely have been made if
the literary circumstances of the present had not especially invited
it.

Literature in Low German has had from time immemorial its sharply
defined character, which harmonizes with the North German landscape.
Broad expanses of dead-level heath, great gray-brown moorlands, meadows
intersected by glittering canals, a boundless horizon which gives
the eye a sense of freedom and independence, the blue atmosphere
of the sea which contributes something metaphysical to the humdrum of
existence--on this soil a grave race flourishes, of quick conscience
and serious life. The old saying _Frisia non cantat_ marks the lack of
exuberance and of the spirit of revelry. But shy reticence finds
compensation in good-natured humor. Unenthusiastic but substantial
realism, speculative meditation, and a certain didactic tone make the
Low German country the home of the fable and the great epic. That such
a great dramatist as Hebbel was also a scion of this stock seems almost
exceptional. The stubborn peasant family-stocks, the urban culture of
the Hanseatic cities, and the scattered seats of the nobility, even as
far east as the Russian Baltic provinces, bear witness to the
development of a uniform temperament in spite of all the differences of
social environment. We can, then, on the basis of common Low German
characteristics form a great group of writers: writers fro