ish models. Fontane's lyrics were too much like
Herwegh's to win applause, but his ballads were enthusiastically
received. One, in celebration of Derfflinger, established his standing
in the Club, and one in honor of Zieten brought him permanently into
favor with a wider public; these poems were composed in 1846. Two
years later he read two books that for a long time determined his
literary trend--Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ and
Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. He began to write ballads
on English subjects and one of them, _Archibald Douglas_, created a
great sensation at the "Tunnel" meeting and has ever since maintained
its place among the best German poems. Its popularity is partly due to
the fact that it was so appropriately set to music by Carl Loewe. When
Fontane returned to Berlin in 1852, after a summer's absence in
England, he felt estranged from the "Tunnel" and ceased attending the
meetings. Two noblemen members, von Lepel and von Merckel, who had
become his friends, introduced him to the country nobility of the Mark
of Brandenburg, which enabled him to make valuable additions to his
portfolio of studies later drawn upon for his novels, among others,
_Effi Briest_.

In 1847 Fontane passed the apothecary's examination by a "hair's
breadth" and soon found employment in Berlin. In the March Revolution
(1848) he played a comical role, but was subsequently elected a
delegate to the first convention to choose a representative. For a
year and a quarter he taught two deaconesses pharmacy at an
institution called "Bethany." When that employment came to an end he
decided that the hoped-for time had finally arrived to give up the
dispensing of medicines and earn his living by his pen. Some of his
new ballads were accepted by the _Morgenblatt_, and a volume of
verses, dedicated to his fiancee, found a publisher. When news arrived
of the victory of Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein at Idstedt (1850) he
set out for Kiel to enlist in the army. In Altona he received a letter
offering him a position in the press department of the Prussian
Ministry of the Interior. He accepted immediately and at the same time
wrote to Emilie Kummer, to whom he had been engaged for five years,
proposing that they should be married in October. She hastened to
secure an apartment in Berlin and furnish it, and the wedding was
celebrated on the sixteenth of October. Fontane thought he had entered
the harbor of success, b