erence to further surprises--they may tell him if they
will that some one has left a hundred millions for the purpose of
painting all negroes white, or of making Africa four-cornered; but he,
Bolz, has reached a state of mind where he will accept as truth
anything and everything.

Freytag's greatest novel, entitled _Soll und Haben_ (the technical
commercial terms for "debit" and "credit"), appeared in 1856. _Dombey
and Son_ by Dickens had been published a few years before and is worth
our attention for a moment because of a similarity of theme in the two
works. In both, the hero is born of the people, but comes in contact
with the aristocracy not altogether to his own advantage; in both,
looming in the background of the story, is the great mercantile house
with its vast and mysterious transactions. The writer of this short
article does not hesitate to place _Debit and Credit_ far ahead of
_Dombey and Son_. That does not mean that there are not single
episodes, and occasionally a character, in _Dombey and Son_ that the
German author could never have achieved. But, considered as an
artistic whole, the English novel is so disjointed and uneven that the
interest often flags and almost dies, while many of the characters are
as grotesque and wooden as so many jumping-jacks. In Freytag's work,
on the other hand, the different parts are firmly knitted together; an
ethical purpose runs through the whole, and there is a careful
subordination of the individual characters to the general plan of the
whole structure. It is much the same contrast as that between an
old-fashioned Italian opera and a modern German tone-drama. In the one
case the effects are made through senseless repetition and through
_tours de force_ of the voice; in the other there is a steady
progression in dramatic intensity, link joining link without a gap.

But to say that _Debit and Credit_ is a finer book than _Dombey and
Son_ is not to claim that Freytag, all in all, is a greater novelist
than Dickens. The man of a single fine book would have to be
superlatively great to equal one who could show such fertility in
creation of characters or produce such masterpieces of description.
Dickens reaches heights of passion to which Freytag could never
aspire; in fact the latter's temperament strikes one as rather a cool
one. Even Spielhagen, far inferior to him in many regards, could
thrill where Freytag merely interests.

Freytag's _forte_ lay in fidelity of depict