box with nothing in it; verbs at the end of the sentence which ought to be at the beginning, and adjectives all set after their nouns. The very German characters had a forbidding aspect, and the case was worse still when these compounded words were printed in the Roman type. A language so constructed seemed only one degree better than Russian or Welsh, better fitted for a state of catarrh than for a healthy use of the vocal organs. Who could expect to keep a good English syntax with this habit of involved and compounded verbiage once acquired? In some quarters, the alarm was serious, and amounted almost to prohibition. It found help in the acknowledged difficulties of the study, so much greater in proportion than those of the French and Italian tongues. Here Latin gave no help, and in the false methods of teaching English did not give the help that it should have given. Only enthusiasm could overcome the difficulties which were in the form and arrangement of these agglutinated syllables, the more puzzling that so many of them were new combinations, and not shown in the standard dictionaries. This linguistic objection hindered some from the study who had no fear of the theological or the philosophical cavil.

We hear no more of this objection. It has gone with the others. A better acquaintance with the German tongue has shown that the charges brought against its literary merit were groundless in the main. It is now confessed to be one of the richest, most copious, most convenient for use, most expressive, of all dialects. Even its musical character has been vindicated, and it now ranks with the highest in the combination of harmonies, and is only behind the Italian for melody. Every kind of music finds its instrument in this flexible language, — the ballad of the streets, the choral of the churches, the "part songs" and madrigals, and even the trills of the opera. There are not a few who prefer the German consonants to the Italian vowels for giving the light and shade of operatic music. No cadences can be more charming than the prose of Heine, or the verse of Goethe and Rückert, read by a skilful reader. While the usual German style is more involved and parenthetic than English or French style,

it is nevertheless, as we have learned, a good style when it is direct and simple. There is no commentary in English where the style is so concise as in the German commentary of De Wette. If the compounding of words lengthens them, it leaves the meaning clear, and soon ceases to trouble the reader. That damage to English style which was predicted from German studies has not been realized. Our best and most enthusiastic German scholars are also the best writers of their own language. Dr. Frothingham's translations, faithful as they are, might well be taken as specimen hymns of the purest original English. Dr. Hedge's mastery in the language of Twesten and Neander has not made him prolix or diffuse, or hindered that graceful flow of ornate and masculine diction which makes his essays such perfect instances of good English style. The style of our writers has lost no beauty in the last thirty years, but has rather been redeemed from its former verbosity and redundance of epithet. Since the study of German literature has become so common, the best capacities of our English tongue have been brought into bolder relief, and the affected and pedantic manner of the last century has given place to a more natural manner. Our English style has gained freedom, has become more flexible, and has gone back to its Saxon origin and elements. The German studies have been aids in linguistic reform, visible in all our ephemeral literature as in the more solid works of science and history, in the leading articles in the newspapers, in the magazine papers, in the criticism of the reviews, in the fugitive poems, and in the anniversary orations. That these are far better than in the last age, even in the matter of literary merit, every one confesses; and we may believe that the improvement is largely due to a familiarity with the language in which thought and reality are of more importance than epithet and sentiment.

And another delusion about German literature is now beginning to be dissipated. We have admitted that for various, wonderful, and exhaustive learning the Germans take the lead of all civilized nations, that their lore is the storehouse of exact wisdom on all themes: we have allowed them to be ex

pert in lighter verse, in songs and lyrics of inimitable sweetness; but we have denied to them skill in novel-writing, and have believed that their efforts in that kind were only tedious, stupid, and commonplace. We have supposed that German novels were generally dull enough to make the romances of James even brilliant in the comparison, and that to read one of them was such a punishment as Lowell assigns to murderers in his "Fable for Critics," "hard labor for life." The lack of humor, the long disquisitions, the minute descriptions, the mixture of fact and philosophy, seemed to warn off all prudent novel-readers from this Sahara of romance, where bright palms and flashing fountains were only scattered at rare intervals on a vast waste of sand. That, too, is found to be a mistake; and now the most popular of all romances, historical, local, of costume and of character, of life in the city and life in the country, are translations from the German. What novels in these last years have been caught so eagerly and circulated so widely as the sensation stories of Louisa Mühlbach, trashy and untrustworthy as these are? (We are glad, by the way, to notice that Professor Evans makes no mention of this writer in his work, not regarding her as a representative or leading literary character: her reputation is far greater in this country than in her own.) Yet her novels are certainly not stupid. Do not publishers now contend over priority in the publication of the novels of Auerbach, with hardly less of feeling than over the novels of Dickens? Are not the names of Tautphoeus, and Freytag, and Dingelstedt now associated with the names of Balzac and Charles Reade and George Eliot? The novels of Germany, of high life and of low life, have now a place in the best class of fictions, not only for solid worth, but as means of amusement. They are not read only by serious students, as sources of culture, but are hawked in the railway trains, to beguile the ennui of transit. No literature finds now a sale so large or so ready as this. "dime novels" are fain to adopt it, and to change a little the style of their sensation. It is quite possible that German humor may find favor before long. Certainly the translations of Jean Paul Richter are as unique as any thing in their kind

Even the

in English; and the wit of Hoffmann is quite as genuine as the wit of Thackeray. We have not yet, however, got over the notion that German humor is "very tragical mirth," and is of the sort that oppresses the soul with a sense of ponderous burden.

The German language has become a necessity to a scholar in any department. No writer on any topic, theological, historical, scientific, artistic, or economic, has full credit for mastery of his theme, unless he can show that he knows this language, and has made use of it. A Biblical critic who has no acquaintance with German, however candid he may be, however keen may be his insight, cannot be more than second rate. Historical criticism has been created in Germany, and most of its finest fruits are in the writing of Germans. Translations may, to some extent, supply the lack; but no real scholar is satisfied to know foreign writers only through translations, or to get their help only through interpreters. No translation can ever give the whole meaning of the original, even when only facts are reported. The only sure knowledge which we get of the opinions and thought of foreign writers we get from their own words. Translations are better than nothing, and in many cases we must be content with them. Comparatively few scholars in our time have leisure or patience to read Plato in the original, and must do as well as they can with the versions of Plato by Cousin and Schleiermacher. But a living language loses much more in translation than a dead language, just as it is easier to copy a portrait than to paint an original picture. They who rely upon translation to give them all that they need to know in such a literature as that of Germany make a great mistake. A few of the masterpieces take on foreign dress. Goethe and Schiller, Neander and Tholuck, and a few of their class, become naturalized in English equivalents. Yet it provokingly happens to those who attempt investigations of any kind without knowledge of the German language, that the works which would serve them best are just those which have not been translated. The time spent in acquiring this language — which in the improved methods of teaching is so easily acquired - is never time

wasted to any who intend to investigate any subject of human knowledge. As mental discipline, too, the study is of the highest value: it trains the mind while it stores the mind. Such discourses as those of Schenkel, such essays as those of Rothe, such critical discussions as those of Baur and Volkmar, are mental gymnastics, calling every faculty of the soul into exercise. And a vigorous hater, like the passionate Ewald, brings the heart of his readers into the contest, and rouses hope and indignation alternately, as he shows how wisdom has been abused by the handling of bigots and sciolists in the history of the People Israel, and how unexpected light appears in the darkness. Where shall we find a commentary on the Scripture more suggestive than that of Olshausen, which drops in a phrase or a sentence the hint for a homily?

There are some who would discourage now the study of the German language, on the ground that there is danger that it may supersede the English in some parts of the country, and that it hinders the fusion of races into one people. The English is our national language; and we must keep this first in honor and influence everywhere, and compel all the races who come here to adopt this language. Other languages should be to Americans as mere accomplishments, and should never be allowed to become necessaries of life. Some very intelligent men dread the multiplication of those German newspapers in the cities, as standing in the way of the process which should Americanize Germans, and holding them to attachments which ought to be broken. Already the strict puritanism of the evangelical sects is distressed and angry at the encroachments which German customs are making upon morality and order, the violation of the sabbath, the introduction of revels and masquerades and buffoonery, of beer-gardens and shooting matches, and riotous musical feasts. In the interest of good morals, it would discourage all favor to a language which represents a type of character and of life so unlike that of the fathers of the country. We do not want, they say, to bring the German life, or manners, or religion, to this land, though we may be glad when emigrants come to till our soil, to open our mines, or bring out our resources. We need rather to