s, the 'Luise' holds
a station corresponding to that of our 'Rape of the Lock,' or of
Gresset's 'Vert-vert'--corresponding, that is, in its _degree_ of
relative value. As to its _kind_ of value, some notion may be formed of
it even in that respect also from the 'Rape of the Lock,' but with this
difference, that the scenes and situations and descriptions are there
derived from the daily life and habits of a fashionable belle and the
fine gentlemen who surround her, whereas in the 'Luise' they are derived
exclusively from the homelier and more patriarchal economy of a rural
clergyman's household; and in this respect the 'Luise' comes nearest by
much, in comparison of any other work that I know of, to our own 'Vicar
of Wakefield.' Like that delightful portrait of rural life in a
particular aspect, or idyll as it might be called, the 'Luise' aims at
throwing open for our amusement the interior of a village parsonage
(_Scotice_, 'manse'); like that in its earlier half (for the latter half
of the 'Vicar' is a sad collapse from the truth and nature of the
original conception into the marvellous of a commonplace novel), the
'Luise' exhibits the several members of a rustic clergyman's family
according to their differences of sex, age, and standing, in their
natural, undisguised features, all unconsciously marked by
characteristic foibles, all engaged in the exercise of their daily
habits, neither finer nor coarser than circumstances naturally allow,
and all indulging in such natural hopes or fictions of romance as grow
out of their situation in life. The 'Luise,' in short, and the 'Vicar of
Wakefield' are both alike a succession of circumstantial delineations
selected from mere rustic life, but rustic life in its most pure and
intellectual form; for as to the noble countess in the 'Luise,' or the
squire and his uncle, Sir William, in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' they do
not interfere sufficiently to disturb the essential level of the
movement as regards the incidents, or to colour the manners and the
scenery. Agreeing, however, in this general purpose, the two works
differ in two considerable features; one, that the 'Vicar of Wakefield'
describes the rural clergyman of England, 'Luise' the rural clergyman of
North Germany; the other, that the English idyll is written in prose,
the German in verse--both of which differences, and the separate
peculiarities growing out of them, will, it may perhaps be thought,
require a few words of cr