Fielding, Scott
and Thackeray, Balzac, Hugo and Sand. In fact, there is scarcely an
instance of a male writer in Germany who has devoted himself exclusively
to this branch of literature, and has won high distinction in it. It has
been cultivated with success chiefly by a few writers of the other sex,
whose delineations have gained a popularity in America only less than
that which they enjoy at home--in part because the life which they
depict has closer internal analogies to our own than to that of England
or of France, still more perhaps because the pictures themselves,
whatever their intrinsic fidelity, are suffused with a romantic glow
which has long since faded from those of the thoroughly realistic art
now dominant in the two latter countries.

In none of them is this characteristic more apparent than in the works
of Wilhelmine von Hillern, which bear also in a marked degree the stamp
of a mind at once vigorous and sympathetic, and are thus calculated to
awaken the interest of readers in regard to the author's personal
history.

Her father, Doctor Christian Birch, a Dane by birth and originally a
diplomatist by profession, held for many years the post of secretary of
legation at London and Paris. He withdrew from this career on the
occasion of his marriage with a German lady connected with the stage in
the triple capacity of author, manager and actress. Madame
Birch-Pfeiffer, as she is commonly called, was one of the celebrities of
her time, and her dramatic productions still keep possession of the
stage. Soon after the birth of her daughter, which took place at Munich,
she was invited to assume the direction of the theatre of Zurich. Here
Wilhelmine passed several years of her childhood, separated from her
father, whose engagements as a political writer retained him in Germany,
and scarcely less divided from her mother, whose duties at this period
did not permit her to give much attention to domestic cares. Without
companions of her own age, and left almost wholly to the charge of an
invalid aunt, she led a monotonous existence, which left an impression
on her mind all the more deep from its contrast with the life which
opened upon her in her eighth year, when Madame Birch-Pfeiffer was
summoned to Berlin to hold an appointment at the court theatre.

In the Prussian capital the family was again united, and became the
centre of a social circle embracing many persons connected with dramatic
art and literature. Dev