rnalist of the nineteenth century. All are descendants of the one
family, and Freytag has a chance to develop some of his theories of
heredity. Not only can bodily aptitudes and mental peculiarities be
transmitted, but also the tendency to act in a given case much as the
ancestor would have done.

It cannot be denied that as Freytag proceeds with _The Ancestors_ the
tendency to instruct and inform becomes too marked. He had begun his
career in the world by lecturing on literature at the University of
Breslau, but had severed his connection with that institution because
he was not allowed to branch out into history. Possibly those who
opposed him were right and the two subjects are incapable of
amalgamation. Freytag in this, his last great work, revels in the
fulness of his knowledge of facts, but shows more of the thoroughness
of the scholar than of the imagination of the poet. The novels become
epitomes of the history of the time. No type of character may be
omitted. So popes and emperors, monks and missionaries, German
warriors and Roman warriors, minstrels and students, knights,
crusaders, colonists, landskechts, and mercenaries are dragged in and
made to do their part with all too evident fidelity to truth.

We owe much of our knowledge of Freytag's life to a charming
autobiography which served as a prefatory volume to his collected
works. Freytag lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1895 at the age of
seventy-nine. Both as a newspaper editor and as a member of parliament
(the former from 1848 to 1860, the latter for the four years from 1867
to 1871) he had shown his patriotism and his interest in public
affairs. Many of his numerous essays, written for the _Grenzboten_,
are little masterpieces and are to be found among his collected works
published in 1888. As a member of parliament, indeed, he showed no
marked ability and his name is associated with no important measure.

Not to conceal his shortcoming it must be said that Freytag, at the
time of the accession to the throne of the present head of the German
Empire, laid himself open to much censure by attacking the memory of
the dead Emperor Frederick who had always been his friend and patron.

In conclusion it may be said that no one claims for Freytag a place in
the front rank of literary geniuses. He is no Goethe, no Schiller, no
Dante, no Milton, no Shakespeare. He is not a pioneer, has not changed
the course of human thought. But yet he is an artist of whom h