being called by eminence their poet. This is Uhland, Nearly all the romanticist brethren poetized; but Uhland, by merit or by fortune, or, it may be, rather by that happy choice of his genius which made him, in a time of national exigency, a voice in verse of the national spirit, became the most popular and most powerful German poet, not only of his own school, but of his generation. Of the romantic school in literature we thus assume that Uhland must be reckoned. It is true, however, that a saving influence from without, exerted probably by Goethe-to which a felicity of his own temperament responded-kept Uhland from going extravagant lengths in the romantic direction.

Johann Ludwig Uhland (1787-1862), born at Tübingen, lived a life in which there was little outward event of general interest to commemorate. An ardent patriot, he chanted with youthful enthusiasm the high strains of freedom for his country. But the soul of the poet, as poet, was after all more in meditative and imaginative themes. He was a deep student in the manuscript lore of the middle ages, and he drew thence matter and inspiration for poetry. But he was not a mere mystic dreamer. The cloudy vagueness that the German romanticists before him had loved, Uhland dispelled from his verse with the bright shining of a cheerful intellect in him, which lived in the present though it visited the past. The dimness of twilight became in him the clearness of day; and with the clearness of day Romanticism blinked like an owl, and disappeared. Uhland may be considered the last of the German romanticists.

The period of Uhland's chief poetic productiveness was comparatively short. Like Béranger in France, Uhland in Germany sang his songs early, as birds sing their matins, and ceased. The singer ceased; but Uhland's songs, caught up in the mouths of the people, filled Europe about the silent singer, still living, with the echoes of his melody.

We must, of course, in showing Uhland, begin with that little poem of his, doubtless to English and American fame the dearest of all his songs, The Passage. The Edinburgh

Review, of old date, thus translates it; the translation (Mrs. Sarah Austin's, we believe) is every thing that could be desired for congenial pensive spirit and delicate melody of rhythm:

Many a year is in its grave

Since I crossed this restless wave;
And the evening, fair as ever,
Shines on ruin, rock, and river.

Then in this same boat beside
Sat two comrades old and tried-
One with all a father's truth,
One with all the fire of youth.

One on earth in silence wrought,
And his grave in silence sought;
But the younger, brighter form.
Passed in battle and in storm.

So, whene'er I turn my eye
Back upon the days gone by,

Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me,
Friends that closed their course before me.

But what binds us, friend to friend,
But that soul with soul can blend?
Soul-like were those days of yore;
Let us walk in seul once more.

Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee

Take, I give it willingly;

For, invisible to thee,

Spirits twain have crossed with me.

We know of nothing to surpass the foregoing in sweetness of sentiment and perfect fit felicity of form. What a happy bit of drama the closing stanza! How luckily it finishes the poem, with that touchingly simple suggestion of softened feeling, from remembrance, converted into generosity! It would be pathetically interesting to know, if one could know, that the two-"one with all a father's truth" and one with all the fire of youth "—were to be identified as the elder and the younger Körner. The allusion seems to fit, for Körner, the father, did his work quietly in civic action,

and Theodor Körner, as has been noted, having but just written his famous Sword-Song, died on the field of battle fighting for the freedom of Germany.

Our next specimen from Uhland is a translation by Long fellow. It is entitled The Castle by the Sea:

"Hast thou seen that lordly castle,

That castle by the sea?

Golden and red above it,

The clouds float gorgeously.

"And fain it would stoop downward,
To the mirrored wave below;
And fain it would soar upward,
In the evening's crimson glow."

"Well have I seen that castle,
That castle by the sea,
And the moon above it standing,
And the mist rise solemnly."

"The winds and the waves of the ocean,
Had they a merry chime?

Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers,
The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?"

"The winds and the waves of the ocean,
They rested quietly;

But I heard on the gale a sound of wail,
And tears came to mine eye."

"And sawest thou on the turrets
The king and his royal bride,

And the wave of their crimson mantles,
And the golden crown of pride?"

"Led they not forth, in rapture,
A beauteous maiden there,
Resplendent as the morning sun,
Beaming with golden hair?"

"Well saw I the ancient parents,
Without the crown of pride;

They were moving slow, in weeds of woe;
No maiden was by their side!"

Longfellow's is, on the whole, a successful version of Uhland's poem. It by no means, however, perfectly reproduces the effect of the original. The German stanzas are fully equipped with rhymes. The English translation, by omitting a rhyme for the first line of each stanza, loses not a little in melodious impression on the ear. One is surprised, too, that the translator should, in the second stanza, have said "mirrored" to express the "mirror-clear" of the original.

A poem of more energy, love no longer making gentle the poet, but indignation making him fierce, is The Minstrel's Curse. For our translation of this we go to Blackwood's Magazine of forty years ago. The poem is a ballad, not very long, but too long to be here given entire. The story of the 66 curse" we tell in plain prose of our own, to give the Curse itself in Uhland's ringing rhyme. An aged minstrel with a fair youth visits a kingly court to make music and song. The ruthless monarch, vexed at the purport and effect of their singing, strikes the youth dead, and the aged minstrel strikes back with his "curse of poesy" on the king:

"Woe! woe! proud towers-dire House of blood! thy guilty courts among
Ne'er may the chords of harmony be waked-the voice of song;
The tread of silent slaves alone shall echo 'mid the gloom;
Till ruin waits, and hovering fiends of vengeance shriek thy doom!

"Woe! woe! ye blooming gardens fair-decked in the pride of May,
Behold this flower untimely cropped-look-and no more be gay!
The sight should wither every leaf-make all your fountains dry,
And bid the bright enchantment round in wasteful horror lie!

"And thou, fell Tyrant, curst for aye, of all the tuneful train-
May blighted bays and bitter scorn mock thy inglorious reign!
Perish thy hated name with thee-from songs and annals fade
Thy race, thy power, thy very crimes-lost in oblivion's shade! "

The aged Bard has spoken, and Heaven has heard the prayer;
The haughty towers are crumbling low-no regal dome is there!
A single columu soars on high, to tell of splendors past-
And, see! 'tis cracked, it nods the head-this hour may be its last!

Where once the fairy garden smiled, a mournful desert lies-
No rills refresh the barren sand, no graceful stems arise-
From storied page and legend strain, this King has vanished long;
His race is dead-his power forgot-such is the might of Song !

The gentle genius of Uhland must not take his farewell of us in such a strain of prophetic doom denounced as the foregoing. Let our last specimen of him rather be that soft, sweet melody of his entitled The Serenade. A child, dying, speaks with the watching mother:

German Romanticism may be said to have come in, halfunconsciously, with Bürger, a poet. It was fit that with a poet, Uhland, it should vanish away.

XII.

HEIN E.
1799-1856.

GENIUS, with wit amounting to genius, joined to unhappy fortune in life, makes of Heinrich Heine quite the most interesting and most striking literary figure that has risen among Germans since Goethe and Schiller. Among Germans, we say; but this phrase seems almost to class Heine amiss, for Heine was the least German of Germans. By