of one evil Pope, looking forward to a unspoiled heart. He saw the Frate of worse monster still, for the reign of the San Marco among the other Dominicans, Borgias culmination of all wickedness his remarkable face intent upon the dewas approaching; - who can wonder liberations of the Council; and heard him if visions of gloom crossed the brain of speak with such power and force of utterthe young lecturer in San Marco, how- ance that the whole audience was moved. soever he might try to stupefy and silence Probably something more than this, some them by his daily work and the subtleties personal contact, some kindly gleam from of Aristotle and Aquinas? A sense of those resplendent blue eyes that shone approaching judgment, terror, and pun- from underneath Fra Girolamo's caverishment, the vengeance of God against a nous brow; some touch of that "urbanità world full of iniquity, darkened the very humile, ornato e grazioso" upon which air around him. He tried to restrain the Burlamacchi insists, went to the heart of prophetic vision, but could not. Wher- the young Pico, himself a noble young ever he was allowed to speak, in Brescia, gentleman amid all his frippery of courtier in San Geminiano, the flood poured forth, and virtuoso. He was so seized upon and in spite of himself he thundered from and captured by the personal attractions the pulpit a thousand woes against the of Savonarola, that he gave Lorenzo no wicked with intense and alarming effect. peace until he had caused him to be But when he endeavoured to speak in let- authoritatively recalled from his wantered Florence itself, no one took any derings and brought back permanently trouble to listen to the Lombard monk, to Florence. Young Pico felt that he whose accent was harsh, and his periods could not live without the teacher whom not daintily formed, and who went against he had thus suddenly discovered. Loall the unities, so to speak, as Shake-renzo thus at his friend's request orspeare once, when England was in a similar state of of refinement, was held to do. In San Lorenzo, when Savonarola first preached, there were not twenty-five people, all counted, to hear him; but San Geminiano among the hills, when it heard that same voice amid the glooms of Lent, thought nothing of the Lombard accent, and trembled at the prophetic woe denounced against sin; and in Brescia the hearers grew pale, and paler still years after, when the preacher's words seemed verified. Woe, woe, he preached in those Lent sermons; woe but also restoration and the blessing of God if men would turn from their sins. Between these utterances of his full heart and glowing soul, Fra Girolamo came back to teach his novices in the dead quiet of San Marco not preacher enough to please the Florentines, who loved fine periods and lectured in the cool of the cloister or in some quiet room, as if there had been nothing but syllogisms and the abstractions of metaphysics in the world.

The crisis in his life occurred when, probably on one of his preaching tours, he attended the Dominican chapter at Reggio, and was there seen and heard by a genial, gentle young courtier, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, one of Lorenzo's most affectionate flatterers and friends. This court butterfly was the most learned creature that ever fluttered near a prince, full of amiable sentiments and tenderheartedness, and the kindly insight of an

dered back into Florence the only man who dared stand face to face with himself and tell him he had done wrong. Savonarola came back perhaps not very willingly, and betook himself once more to his novices and his philosophy. But he had by this time learned to leaven his philosophy with lessons more important, and to bring in the teachings of a greater than Aristotle, taking the Bible which he loved, and which, it is said, he had learned by heart, more and more for his text-book; and launching forth into a wider sea of remark and discussion as day followed day, and his mind expanded and his system grew.

We are not told whether Pico, when his beloved friar came back, made Fra Girolamo's teaching fashionable in Florence; but no doubt he had his share in indicating to the curious the new genius which had risen up in their midst. And as the Frate lectured to the boy Dominicans, discoursing of everything in heaven and earth with full heart and inspired countenance, there grew gradually about him a larger audience, gathering behind the young heads of that handful of convent lads, an ever-widening circle of weightier listeners-men of Florence, one bringing another to hear a man who spoke with authority, and had, if not pretty periods to please their ears, something to tell them - greatest of all attractions to the ever-curious soul of man.

It was summer, and Fra Girolamo sat in the cloister, in the open square which

was the monks' garden, under a rose-tree. "Sotto un rosajo di rose damaschine " a rose-tree of damask roses! Never was there a more touching, tender incongruity than that perfumed canopy of bloom over the dark head covered with its cowl. Beneath the blue sky that hung over Florence, within the white square of the cloister with all its arching pillars, with Angelico's Dominic close by kneeling at the cross-foot, and listening too, this crowd of Florentines gathered in the grassy inclosure incircling the scholars and their master. A painter could not desire a more striking scene. The roses waving softly in the summer air above, and the lads in their white convent gowns with earnest faces lifted to the speaker what a tender central light do they give, soft heart of flowers and youth | to the grave scene! For grave as life and death were the speaker and the men that stood around and pressed him on every side. Before long he had to consent, which he did with reluctance, to leave his quiet cloister and return to the pulpit where once his Lombard accent had brought him nothing but contempt and failure. Thus the first chapter of Fritz Reuter was one of the victims; Fra Girolamo's history ends, under the and, after a year of "preventive" impris damask rose-tree in the warm July weath-onment, was condemned to death at the er, within those white cloisters of San Marco. In the full eye of day, in the pulpit and the public places of Florence, as prophet, spiritual ruler, apostle among men, was the next period of his life to be passed. Here his probation ends.

of the Burschenschaft has never been clearly ascertained; and the members of that widely-spread association perhaps knew as little of it themselves as anybody else. The German governments honoured them and disgraced themselves by taking them au sérieux; and shortly after the French Revolution of July and the Frankfort attempt, organized a demagogue hunt on a large scale which will always leave a stain upon their reputation. It was natural enough for the smaller potentates, whose instinct of selfpreservation taught them that nothing could be more dangerous to them than aspirations towards German unity; it was natural enough for Austria, who had a distinct presentiment that a restoration of the German Empire could never be made in behalf of the house of Hapsburg; but that Prussia, which already at this time was the secret hope of the young enthusiasts, and which was perfectly aware that the schoolboys' plans were national — that Prussia should have taken the lead of these odious and ridiculous persecutions is a fact more difficult to understand even than to excuse.

From The Pall Mall Gazette.
FRITZ REUTER.

age of twenty-one. King Frederick William III., however, granted him a reprieve and commuted the capital punishment into thirty years' imprisonment in a fortress. After seven years Reuter was set at liberty upon the accession of Frederick William IV. (1840). He has himself told us in his very amusing book, "Ut mine Festungstid" (My Time at the Fortress), how he and his fellow sufferers spent their days in card-playing, cooking, lovemaking with the commandTHE same telegram which brought us er's and guardians' daughters, above all the news of Prince Bismarck's escape in practical joking. If patriotism and announced the death of him who has beer had prevented the student from embeen called Germany's Dickens - Fritz ploying his time profitably at the univerReuter. Fritz Reuter, who died last sity, natural laziness and the prospect of month at Eisenach, was an obscure teach- a life likely to be lost in prison were not er in a small town of Brandenburg only adapted to make a worker of our prisoner. twelve years ago. He was one of those When, at nearly thirty years of age, he men of whom honest, well-established, came out of prison, he found himself and thriving citizens are apt to say that without a career, without means, and with they have turned out badly, and of whom nothing acquired by which he could earn they have a certain right to say it. Born a livelihood. He repaired to his father's during the Franzosentid (the time of the little property in Mecklenburg, but he French occupation), in a country town of was no more an agriculturist than a lawthe Duchy of Mecklenburg, he studied yer, in spite of his professional studies; law at Rostock and Jena, where towards accordingly he soon found himself in 1830 conspiracies in favour of German debt, and obliged to sell his small estate unity were rife among young men. What in order to satisfy his creditors. He then was the real aim of the juvenile patriots tried to freshen up his college studies,

and began to give lessons at Treptow at the rate of about 6d. a lesson. Of the sixpences thus earned he is said to have sacrificed the greater part on the altar of sociability, and he was well known in the Wirthshaus at Treptow as a most humorous story-teller.

lish under the title "In the Year 13.” Although written in Plattdeutsch, Reuter's tale loses less than one might imagine by translation; the Low-German language having a nearer relationship to English than to literary German, which is derived, as everybody knows, from High He had as yet no idea of turning his or South German. Of course the reader extraordinary talent to account, and went would draw more enjoyment from the over to New Brandenburg in order to original than from the English translaobtain a better price for his lessons. tion; but he would certainly prefer this Here the new friends to whom he read to a High-German version. Nor is Lowthe poems and stories he had written in German a very difficult language; almost Plattdeutsch (North German dialect) for all Germans, even Southerners, read the amusement of his tavern and family Reuter in the dialect he wrote in, and it audience urged him to have them printed. suffices to read ten or twenty pages careReuter thought this sheer folly, still, as fully to be able to read the rest Aluhis friends offered to advance the neces- ently. Reuter's works in High-German sary funds, he reluctantly consented. are of little value. There his humour beThe success was immense. Allowance comes coarse, his sentimentality false, his being made for the difference between a country like England and one without any centre like Germany, between a work written in a language known to everybody and one composed in a provincial dialect, Reuter's success may fairly be compared with that of the "Pickwick Papers." His fortune was made. He was immediately recognized as Germany's greatest humorist, and his books sold by thousands. It was then (1864) that he repaired to Eisenach, in Thuringia, where he built himself a small villa, and where he died a week ago, writing very little (and that little of a not very remarkable character), and still courting the consolatory bottle, for the enjoyment of which he did not even feel any longer the want of the company of delighted listeners.

pathos affected, or at least they appear so, as soon as he gives up his native tongue; while his chef d'œuvre, the novel "Ut mine Stromtid," ranks high in German - nay, in European literature at large — precisely on account of its admirably natural simplicity. In it satire always remains good-humoured, feeling never degenerates into sentimentality, the comic never becomes caricature, and the merest realism never lacks poetry.

The

A good deal of this merit must certainly be placed to the account of the language. Germany has a scientific and a political language; she has no social language, and in this respect bears greater resemblance to Italy than to England, France, or Spain. The consequences are a want of truth, an unbearable affecFritz Reuter is a true painter of country tation, in nearly all German novels and life in North Germany. His poems as well comedies, as well as in German actors. as his novels are all admirably humorous, They speak a conventional language, and vividly describe the customs and spoken nowhere except on the stage and prejudices, interests and ideas, of a vil-in books, just as they describe a life lage or a little town in Mecklenburg. which exists nowhere in Germany. The poet, not unlike some of those great few painters of real life, who, like JereDutch artists whom all the world admires, contrived to depict within a little space the whole extent of human life, with its frailties, its errors and its passions, its sorrows and joys. Of his fourteen volumes, five only will outlive him; but these will last as long as the Low-German language is understood. These are the poems, "Läuschen" and "Hanne Nüte "rior to the best English and French nov(one volume), the novel "Ut mine Stromtid" (three volumes), and the little tale "Ut the Franzosentid," which Mr. Charles Lewes has translated into Eng

This novel was translated for, and published in,

THE LIVING AGE, in 1871. — ED.

mias Gotthelf ("Uhly der Knecht "), Gottfried Keller ("Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe "), Louise von François (" Die letzte Reckenburgerin "), and Fritz Reuter, having condescended to choose for their subjects what they had before their eyes, and to treat of it in the language they use every day, are by no means infe

elists of the age. But there are exceedingly few of them; and the average literature of amusement in Germany remains tiresome, pretentious, and heavy beyond description, because the authors either look for their models out of Germany or imagine themselves able to take the high

walk which Goethe alone has successfully the eternally fresh stream of humour, trod. This is so true that even a vulgar poetry, and life which flows in his admiVorstadt-theatre in Berlin or Vienna, rable novel immediately begins to slackcoarse and tasteless as are their products, en when he dips his pen into literary ink. is a relief after the comedies which the Fortunately he was rarely tempted to do German public endures in its fashionable so; and he began his career as a writer theatres. As for Reuter, he certainly was too late, and finished it too early, to obno longer himself when he undertook to literate the vivid impression his masterspeak the language of "good society; "work produced.

"Mr. Secretary" we would fain believe to was ordered hither on a sudden, or had waited on be Prior's friend and Patron, Charles Mon- you to receive your commands, but indeed I do not tague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, though it to desire your Friendship and interest to the Duke of trouble you only to make my apology for that, but also was hardly his official designation at that time. Ormond in my behalfe: What I would pretend to is a Our next selection exhibits the poet hard at Troop in a Regiment of Dragoons I understand he is work on the details of the Treaty of Ryswick, going to raise to be commanded by His Grace himself: This request is the more reasonable for that it is no adwhich was signed on September 11 following. vancement of my post in the dignity, but the income of it only, since I am already a Captain. If I can be so fortunate as to have any encouragement from you in this matter, I'll hasten to town. In the mean time any commands from you will be receiv'd as a very great Honour to, Sr, Yr most obedient Humble Servant, RICHD. STEELE.

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