me at Heidelberg; the others contributed from a
distance. Arnim edited the _Einsiedler_; Goerres was teaching in the
university. There were, of course, many other adherents of the school,
working individually at different times and places, scattered indeed all
over Germany, and of various degrees of importance or unimportance, of
whom I need mention only Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, the popular
novelist and author of "Undine."

The history of German romanticism has been repeatedly told. There are
exhaustive treatments of the subject by Julian Schmidt, Koberstein,
Hettner ("Die Romantische Schule," Braunschweig, 1850); Haym ("Die
Romantische Schule," Berlin, 1870); by the Danish critic, Georg Brandes
("Den Romantiske Skole i Tydskland"). But the most famous review of this
passage of literary history is the poet Heine's brilliant little book,
"Die Romantische Schule," [9] published at Paris in 1833. This was
written as a kind of supplement to Mme. de Stael's "L'Allemagne" (1813),
and was intended to instruct the French public as to some
misunderstandings in Mme. de Stael's book, and to explain what German
romanticism really was. Professor Boyesen cautions us to be on our guard
against the injustice and untrustworthiness of Heine's report. The
warning is perhaps not needed, for the animus of his book is sufficiently
obvious. Heine had begun as a romantic poet, but he had parted company
with the romanticists because of the reactionary direction which the
movement took. He had felt the spell, and he renders it with wonderful
vividness in his history of the school. But, at the same time, the
impatience of the political radical and the religious sceptic--the
"valiant soldier in the war for liberty"--and the bitterness of the exile
for opinion's sake, make themselves felt. His sparkling and malicious
wit turns the whole literature of romanticism into sport; and his abuse
of his former teacher, A. W. Schlegel, is personal and coarse beyond
description. Twenty years ago, he said, when he was a lad, what
overflowing enthusiasm he would have lavished upon Uhland! He used to
sit on the ruins of the old castle at Duesseldorf declaiming Uhland's poem

"A wandering shepherd young and fair
Beneath the royal castle strayed."

"But so much has happened since then! What then seemed to me so grand;
all that chivalry and Catholicism; those cavaliers that hack and hew at
each other in knightly tournaments; those gentle sq