uires and virtuous
dames of high degree; the Norseland heroes and minnesingers; the monks
and nuns; ancestral tombs thrilling with prophetic powers; colourless
passion, dignified by the high-sounding title of renunciation, and set to
the accompaniment of tolling bells; a ceaseless whining of the
'Miserere'; how distasteful all that has become to me since then!"
And--of Fouque's romances--"But our age turns away from all fairy
pictures, no matter how beautiful. . . . This reactionary tendency, this
continual praise of the nobility, this incessant glorification of the
feudal system, this everlasting knight-errantry balderdash . . . this
everlasting sing-song of armours, battle-steeds, high-born virgins,
honest guild-masters, dwarfs, squires, castles, chapels, minnesingers,
faith, and whatever else that rubbish of the Middle Ages may be called,
wearied us."

It is a part of the irony of things that this satirist of romance should
have been precisely the one to compose the most popular of all romantic
ballads; and that the most current of all his songs should have been the
one in which he sings of the enchantress of the Rhine,

"Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten
Dass ich so traurig bin."

The "Loreley" is translated into many tongues, and is sung everywhere.
In Germany it is a really national song. And yet the tale on which it is
founded is not an ancient folk legend--"ein Maehrchen aus alten
Zeiten"--but a modern invention of Clemens Brentano, who first published
it in 1802 in the form of a ballad inserted in one of his novels:

"Zu Bacharach am Rheine
Wohnt' eine Zauberin:
Sie war so schoen und feine
Und riss viel Herzen hin."

A certain forgotten romanticist, Graf Loeben, made a lyrical tale out of
it in 1821, and Heine composed his ballad in 1824, afterwards set to the
mournful air in which it is now universally familiar.

It has been mentioned that Heine's "Romantische Schule" was a sort of
continuation and correction of Mme. de Stael's "L'Allemagne." That very
celebrated book was the result of the distinguished lady's residence in
Germany, and of her determination to reveal Germany to France. It has
been compared in its purpose to the "Germania" of Tacitus, in which the
historian held up the primitive virtues of the Teutonic race as a lesson
and a warning to corrupt Rome. Mme. de Stael had arranged to publish her
book in 1810, and the first impression of ten thousand copies had already