t with money
mysteriously given him builds a cloth-mill on the site of his
ancestral palace and becomes the mayor of the city. How different a
picture from the hazy cities of Novalis' _Heinrich von Ofterdingen_!
It is a part of the new spirit in Romanticism to point the way for the
people of Germany to go forward--to leave mysticism and dreams, and to
grapple with the life around them.

A similar impulse toward popularization actuated Arnim and Brentano
in their joint work, _The Boy's Magic Horn_ (1806-8). This is the
achievement upon which their greatest fame will always rest. It is
one of the best collections of folk-songs and popular ballads in any
language, and has been of the greatest influence upon Germany. There
was no desire on the part of the editors to write a learned treatise;
they simply wished to gather together and record the folk-songs of the
Fatherland before they were lost forever. In Arnim's own words: "The
richness of this our national song cannot fail to attract universal
attention; it will surprise many; it will supplement many an effort of
our own times, or will render such effort needless. We expect a great
deal from the joyous happy life in these songs--a manifold, full tone
in poetry, an echo of very definite ideas, or an impulse to arouse
many a half-forgotten youthful memory. These poems will not only be
read, they will be remembered and sung. They embrace in their content,
perhaps the greatest portion of German poetry. They will thus set free
many an indefinite longing--a something which is not satisfied by much
re-reading."

Goethe greeted the new undertaking with enthusiasm and urged the
editors to "keep their poetic archives clean, strict, and in good
order." He, too, urged that "this book should be in every house where
joyful humans dwell, by the window, under the mirror, or where song
book and cook book lie. There it should remain, ready to be opened,
and there something should be found for every varying mood." While
this fate has not been granted the work, it has grown deservedly
popular. Philological criticism has caviled at the free hand which
Arnim, especially, used in remolding the songs, but the editors are
freed of any possible charge of intellectual dishonesty toward reader
and source in that their object was to present artistic unities and
not material for further study and dissection.

A folk-song is a song which has become a part of the lyric
consciousness of the people; o