blic opinion. But the drastic official measures against early
agitators proved to be a challenge to further activity in the direction
of progress.

[Illustration: KARL FERDINAND GUTZKOW]

The July revolution of 1830 in Paris added fuel to the flame of this
agitation in Germany and intensified the interest of still wider masses
in the question of large nationality and popular control. Then came, on
the twenty-seventh of May, 1832, the German revolutionary speeches of
the Hambach celebration, and, on April third, 1833, the Frankfurt riot,
with its attempt to take the Confederate Council by surprise and to
proclaim the unification of Germany. The resulting persecution of Fritz
Reuter, the tragedy of Friedrich Ludwig Weidig, the simultaneous
withdrawal or curtailment of the freedom of the press and the right of
holding public meetings were most eloquent advocates with the public
mind for a sturdy opposition to the conservatism of princes and
officials.

No wonder, then, that thinking men, like Heine and Gutzkow, were fairly
forced by circumstances into playing the game. No wonder that their
tales, novels, and dramas became in many cases editorials to stimulate
and guide public thought and feeling in one direction or another. This
swirl of agitation put a premium upon a sort of rapid-fire work and
journalistic tone, quite incompatible with the highest type of artistic
performance. While the Young Germans were all politically liberal and
opposed to the Confederate Council and to the Metternich program, they
were in many ways more cosmopolitan than national in temper.

The foregoing may serve to show the only substantial ground for the
charge of didacticism, frequently lodged by their critics against the
writers of the school. For it is beside the mark to speak of their
opposition to romanticism as a ground for the charge in question. They
were all, to be sure, anti-Romanticists. They declined to view life
through roseate-hued spectacles or to escape the world of everyday
reality by fairy-tale flights into the world of the imagination. They
called upon men to discover by clear-eyed vision not only the beauties
but also the defects of contemporary social existence. They would employ
literature, not as an opiate to make us forget such defects, but as a
stimulant to make us remedy them. Hence their repeated exhortations to
use the senses and to trust them as furnishing the best kind of raw
material for legitimate art. Hence a