ts to speak German, the clever portraits of the
dignified father and the cheerful mother, and the unhistorical sketch of
little Wolfgang, with his pleased and precocious anticipation of his
future laurels, are woven by means of witty dialogue into an amusing,
though not very coherent or logical whole. In Gutzkow's _Sword and
Queue_ an entertaining situation at the court of Frederick William I. of
Prussia is developed by a very free use of the facts of history, after
the manner of the comedy of Scribe. With rare skill the different
characters of the play are sketched and shown upon a background, which
corresponds closely enough to historic fact to produce the illusion of
reality. The comedy pilots the Crown Prince's friend, the Prince of
Baireuth, through a maze of intrigue, including Prussian ambition to
secure an alliance with England by the marriage of the Princess
Wilhelmine to the Prince of Wales; a diplomatic blocking of this plan,
with the help of the English Ambassador Hotham; the changed front of the
old King, who prefers a union of his daughter with an Austrian Archduke
to the hard terms of the proposed English treaty; Hotham's proposal to
the King to bring him a promising recruit for the corps of Royal
Grenadiers; the evening of the Tobacco Parliament, in which the Prince
of Baireuth feigns tipsiness and in a mocking funeral oration, in honor
of the old King, tells the pseudo-deceased some bitter truths,--to a
final scene, in which, as Hotham's proposed grenadier recruit with Queue
and Sword, he wins not only the cordial approval of the King but also
the heart and hand of Wilhelmine.

Karl Gutzkow's life-work was a struggle for freedom and truth. We
recognize in the web of his serious argument familiarity with the best
thought of the poets, theologians, and philosophers of his own day and
of the eighteenth century. In religion a pantheist, he believed in the
immortality of the soul, had unshaken confidence in the tendency of the
world that "makes for righteousness," and recommends the ideal of "truth
and justice" as the best central thought to guide each man's whole life.
He shares in an eminent degree, with other members of the group known as
Young Germany, a significance for the subsequent development of German
literature, far transcending the artistic value of his works. People are
just beginning to perceive his genetic importance for the student of
Ibsen, Nietzsche, and the recent naturalistic movement in E