sts
have long been cleared, serpents and foxes ye have destroyed, only the
Frenchman I still see slinking!" This is a folk song; the vast, the
great, is associated with the simplest and most familiar objects, and
the figures chosen are not only beautiful, but at the same time
inevitable.

I will pass on to consider the achievements of Koerner and Heinrich von
Kleist in the field of the drama. In this both have been very active,
but in order to avoid boredom for a time at least, I shall begin with
the analysis of a piece by Kleist, choosing first a tragedy, his _Prince
of Homburg_ which, to be sure, is entitled simply "a drama" by its
author. I do not know whether he did this because of the circumstances
that the Prince, as the hero of the piece, happily escapes with his
life, or, what is more likely, in order to humor the public, who think
the tragic can only exist where there are rivers of blood; neither will
I censure it, but only call attention to the fact that in my opinion
that which makes a tragedy lies only in the _struggle_ of the
individual, never in the outcome of this struggle. The outcome is in the
hands of the gods, says an old proverb, well then, acts of the gods--as
events may very well be called which are the effects of fate--can never
be anything else for the dramatic poet than what curtain and wings are
for the stage; they limit without completing. I defined drama, above, as
a representation of the thought which seeks to become a deed through
action or suffering. What this thought may be like--upon that very
little depends; but that it really should be there, that it should fill
the entire man, so much, of a surety, is necessary. What is, then, the
thought that, in the play under discussion, fills the soul of the Prince
oL Homburg, the chief hero? We find it expressed in scene two of the
second act, in the place where the Prince says to Kottwitz, who reminds
him, the man thirsting for deeds, of the Elector's orders:

"Orders? Eh, Kottwitz, do you ride so slow?
Have you not heard the orders of your heart?"

The thought is this: strength stands above the law, and courage
recognizes no other barrier but itself. Kleist, in the fifth scene of
the first act, with which the fifth scene of the fifth act corresponds,
_appears_ to have taken pains to set up as the lever of the piece, not
so much this thought as rather a mere accident, namely the inattention
of the Prince when the plan of battle was being