hardly be said

And if, And if, under world for ages,

ner thrust. They are men who, if it so happens, deserve and receive the highest measure of fame, but who can to win it, because they in no sense strive for it. one set of circumstances, their names may fill the under another set of circumstances their names may never be heard of at all. These are the men who do not stand out above others for the special development of some particular quality, who perhaps do not stand out at all, but who, if they do stand out, are marked by having all the needful qualities in their due proportion. Some other man may be able to do some particular thing better than they; no other man can do so many things so well. They are less brilliant than the geniuses and heroes; but there is a sense in which they are more useful,—for under all circumstances they are of some use, and under no circumstances are they mischievous. These are the men who have the gift of acting well and wisely in any condition of life in which they happen to find themselves. They do their duty, whatever it is. If circumstances give them only small things to do, they do those small things well. If circumstances give them great things to do, they do the great things no less well. If only the small duties fall to them, they may be respected by their own neighbors and unheard of anywhere else; if the great duties fall to them, they may, by common consent, be placed among the famous men of history. Let us take two men of English blood and speech in widely different ages, Alfred the King and Washington the President. Both of them clearly belong to the class of which we are speaking. There is not in the character of either any overwhelming development of one quality; their greatness consists in the harmonious union of many qualities. There is no superhuman brilliancy about them, no sign that they must, under any circumstances, have stood out above other men. They show no vast and wide conceptions which they must in any case have at least tried to carry out; they simply do well whatever their duty calls. on them to do. Had they only small duties to do, as at one time Washington had, they would have done those small duties well; and that would have been all. But opportunities were given to both of them. On Alfred during his whole life, on Washington during part of life, great duties were laid, and they did the great duties well. The birth of Alfred and the death of his brothers made him a king early in life, at a time when kings had hard work to do. He did all that in those days was asked

of a king, and more also. The land needed a captain to fight its battles, and he fought them. It needed a legislator to put its laws in order, and he put them in order. Clergy and people were ignorant and needed teachers; he brought teachers from other lands, and himself wrote books to help them. Alfred always does the right thing at the right time and in the right way; but he does it simply and quietly, as if it were quite impossible to do anything else. There is no brag, no show; he does the greatest things in a way which makes us think that he would not have complained if his fate had set him to do only the smallest things. He would have done the smallest things well, and would have said nothing. Being a king, he was the model king; if he had been set in any smaller post, he would have been the model holder of that smaller post. So it is with the later Englishman beyond Ocean, with this difference that Washington was not always called on to do great things. At different times of his life, he has both great and small duties laid upon him, and he does both well. He is sometimes a private man, sometimes a soldier, sometimes a statesman. He passes to and fro among the different characters, rising to greater places seemingly without ambition, going back to smaller seemingly without regret. Like Alfred, he is both deliverer and ruler. Now, the character of the deliverer is the most striking and dramatic of all characters; but both Alfred and Washington, while playing the part thoroughly well, still do it in a quiet kind of way; there is nothing amazing or supernatural about them, nothing the least like Garibaldi or Joan. of Arc. But then both of them could be rulers as well as deliverers, and nobody would have set Garibaldi to rule, nor, one may suppose, the Maid of Domrémy either.

Here, then, are undoubted great men, but great men who are not in the least like Alexander or Hannibal or Cæsar. They are men who are very useful when the house is on fire, but who can also make themselves useful in a smaller way when the house is not on fire. They are great men, good men, but they are hardly geniuses or heroes; at least if they are geniuses or heroes, they lack that touch of something akin to madness which is thought to be needful for genius or heroism. Now the difference between the two classes of great men falls in well with some of Mr. Lowell's exhortations. It is the duty of a nation to produce great men. That is, we may suppose, if it can. Now the one class of great men no nation can undertake to produce to order. No peo

ple can undertake to have a Pericles, a Hannibal, a Chatham, ready by such a year of such a century. Heros nascitur, non fit. But it does strike one that it is just possible that the other class of men might be made, if any nation knew the way to set about making them. The Hannibals and the Alexanders we must wait for till they come; but it may be that there are more in posse Alfreds and Washingtons among us than we think for; it may be that by some process, like that of choosing and making the queen bee, the imperfect great man might be recognized and somehow shaped into a perfect development. The idea is very vague and would need to be scientifically examined. But Mr. Lowell says that it is the duty of a nation to produce great men. If it is a duty, it must set about trying to do that duty. It is no good consciously trying to make a Hannibal; it is just possible that it may be some good trying to make a Washington.

1888.

GUSTAV FREYTAG

(1816-1895)

REYTAG'S "Pictures of German Life" is a valuable collection of historical and philosophical studies, much more thorough than the public might have expected from one whose habits as a novelist, dramatist, and poet, tended perhaps to foster the inventive faculty at the expense of industry in research. But Freytag

was no less fond of antiquarian investigation than Sir Walter Scott, with whom, remarkably enough, he shared a marked fondness for the Devil as a subject for discussion. Freytag was born at Kreuzburg, Silesia, July 13th, 1816. His first notable work was as a dramatist and poet. His celebrated novel, "Debit and Credit," was published in 1855 in three volumes. Its fortieth edition appeared in 1895. "The Lost Manuscript,” » «Ancestors," and "Kecollections of My Life" are among his later works. He died at Wiesbaden, April 30th, 1895.

THE

THE DEVIL'S DOINGS IN THE MIDDLE AGES

HE phantasies of the human mind have also a history; they form and develop themselves with the character of a people whilst they influence it. In the century of the Reformation, these phantasies had more weight than most earthly realities. It is the dark side of German development which we there see, and to it is due the last place in the characteristic features of the period of the Reformation.

In the most ancient of the Jewish records there is no mention of the devil except in the book of Job; but at the time of Christ, Satan was considered by the Jews as the great tempter of mankind, and as having the power to enter into men and animals, out of which he could be driven by the invocations of pious men. The people estimated the power of their teachers by the authority that they exercised over the devil. When the Christian faith spread over the Western Empire, the Greek and Roman gods were looked upon as allies of the devil, and the superstition of many who yet clung to the later worship of Rome made the devil the centre of their mythology.

But the conceptions which the Fathers of the Church had of the person and power of the devil were still more changed when the German tribe overthrew the government of the Roman Empire and adopted Christianity. In doing so this family of people did not lose the fullness of their own life, the highest manifestation of which was their old mythology. It is true that the names of the old gods gradually died away; what was obviously contrary to the new faith was at last set aside by the zeal of the priests by force and by pious artifices; but innumerable. familiar shapes and figures, customs and ideas were kept alive, nay, they not only were kept alive, but they entwined themselves in a peculiar manner with Christianity. As Christian churches were erected on the very spots where the heathen worship had been held, and as the figure of the crucified Savior, or the name of an apostle was attached to sacred places like Donar's oak; thus the Christian saints and their traditions took the place of the old gods. The people transferred their recollections of their ancient heathen deities to the saints and apostles of the Church, and even to Christ himself, and as there was a realm in their mythology which was ruled by the mysterious powers of darkness, this was assigned to the devil. The name Devil, derived from the Greek (diabolos), was changed into Fol, from the northern god Voland; his ravens and the raging nightly host were transferred to him from Wuotan, his hammer from Donar; but his black color, his wolf's or goat's form, his grandmother, the chains wherewith he was bound, and many other traditions, he inherited from the evil powers of heathendom which had ever been inimical to the benevolent ruling gods. These powerful demons, amongst whom was the dark god of Death, belonged, according to the heathen mythology, to the primeval race of giants, which, as long as the world lasted, were to wage a deadly struggle with the powers of light. They formed a dark realm of shapeless primordial powers, where the deepest science of magic was cultivated. To them belonged the sea serpent, which coiled round the earth in mighty circles, lay at the bottom of the ocean, the giant wolves which lay fettered in the interior of the earth or pursued the sun and moon, by which, at the last day, they were to be destroyed; the ice demons which from the north sent over the land snowstorms and devastating floods; and worse than all, the fiendish Hela, goddess of the Dead. Besides the worship of the Asengotter, there was in heathen Ger