passant cultivated with the most masterly and unrivaled success, by
its subordination to a climax; whereas the Short Story, in reality, is
usually a condensed novel, that is to say, the history of a
development concentrated in a few incidents. Our literature also
possesses such short "sketches," but the love of psychological detail
in the development of the plot nearly always results in the greater
diffuseness of the novel. The real "Novelle" is, however, at least as
typical of the Germans as the Short Story is of the Americans, and in
no other form of literary composition has Germany produced so many
masters as in this--and in the lyric. For the latter is closely
related to the German "Novelle" because it loves to invest the way to
and from the culminating point with the charm produced by a certain
mood, as the half-German Bret Harte loves to do in similar artistic
studies, but the Russian Tschechow never indulges himself in, and the
Frenchman Maupassant but seldom. On this account our best writers of
"Novellen" have also been, almost without exception, eminent lyric
poets; such were Goethe, Tieck, Eichendorff, Moerike, Keller, Heyse,
Theodor Storm and C.F. Meyer; whereas, in the case of Marie von
Ebner-Eschenbach, who otherwise would form an exception, even what
appears to be a "Novelle" is in reality a "small novel."

The novel, on the contrary, still enjoys in Germany the dangerous
privilege of formlessness. In its language it varies from the vague
lyric of romantic composition to the bureaucratic sobriety of
mechanically-compiled studies of real life. In its outline, in the
rhythm of its construction, in the division of its parts and the way
in which they are brought into relief, it has, in spite of masterly
individual performances, never attained a specific literary form, such
as has long been possessed by the English and the French novels.
Likewise the inclination, sanctioned by Goethe and the Romantic
school, to interpolate specimens of the least formed half-literary
_genres_--namely, letters and diaries--worked against the adoption of
a fixed form, notwithstanding that this expedient augmented the
great--often indeed too great--inner richness of the German novel.
Thus the German novel, as well as the so justly favorite form of
letters and diaries, is of infinitely more importance as a human or
contemporary "document" than as a direct work of art. We have,
however, already drawn attention to the fact that the ne