presentatives of this tendency are dying
off. The days are over, when every petty German prince must create in
his domains a servile imitation of the stiff parks of Versailles,--the
days of powdered wigs and long cues,--when French ballet-dancers gave
the tone, and French actors strutted on every stage,--when Boileau was
the great canon of criticism, and Racine and Moliere perpetuated in
tragedy and comedy a pseudo-classicism. They are far, those times when
Frederick the Great wrote French at which Voltaire laughed, and could
find no better occupation for his leisure hours at Sans-Souci than the
discussion of the materialistic philosophy of the Encyclopedists, while
he affected to despise his own tongue, rejecting every effort towards
the popularization of a national literature. Well is it for Germany that
other ideas now prevail,--well, that Goethe in his old age overcame the
Gallomania, which for a while possessed him, of translating all his
works, and thenceforth writing only in French. The iron hand of Goetz of
Berlichingen would burst the seams of a Paris kid-glove. The bold lyric
and dramatic poesy of a language whose figures well up in each word
with primitive freshness can ill be contained in an idiom _blase_ by
conventionality and frozen into crystal rigidity by the academy of the
illustrious forty,--in an idiom in which an unfortunate pun or allusion
can destroy the effect of a whole piece. We need but call to mind that
Shakspeare's "Othello" was laughed off the stage of the Odeon, owing to
the ridiculous ideas the word "napkin" or "handkerchief" called up in
the auditory.

Nor is the influence of the university in Germany exerted in matters
of great national interest only. It pervades the social, literary,
and political organization of the people. The least part of what
characterizes an individual nation ever comes into its books. Here it
finds its way from mouth to mouth to the remotest corners of the land.
When Luther, the Professor of Wittenberg, spoke against indulgences, it
was more than priest or monk that was heard. The voice of the monk would
not have echoed beyond his cell, and the influence of the priest would
have been arrested and checked before it could have been exerted beyond
the limits of his parish or town. But the Professor Luther addressed
himself to a more influential audience. His words were carried before
many years into every part of the Empire.

Setting aside the Austrian universities