was brought by Wagner against Mendelssohn; and we have met with men who va lued music for its own sake, and yet talked of Mendelssohn as a drawing-room artist, composing in white kid gloves. The Meran Stories are the best answer to any such charge against Heyse. In the sccond of them there is enough sensation for the admirers of Miss Braddon, with enough truth and passion for a much higher class of readers. We will endeavour to give some idea of it, though it is told with such art, and the web is so intricate, that the task we have undertaken is almost impossible. The story opens in a deep ravine that plunges from the slope of the Ifinger into the valley of the Adige. In summer, the stream, of which this ravine is the bed, is almost dry, but in spring, with the melting of the snow, or later in the year, when the hail comes down, or hurricanes break loose, the whole fury of the elements is concentrated in the narrow gully; the tenacious clay which clothes the sides of the mountain dissolves into a dark-brown liquid slime, and pours along, carrying away fragments of earth and rock and trunks of trees in its fury. The earth shakes for miles round as the stream thunders into the valley; the peasants near rush out, crying "The Naif is coming," and the farmers drive off their cattle, or load waggons with their most valuable goods, before the stream overflows. For as soon as a large rock or tree chokes the ravine, the mass of liquid mud rises in a wall and pours over the surrounding country, sweeping off vineyards and orchards, farms and houses. Not far from this ravine stands a castle, half in ruins, and tenanted by a strange family. An old Italian grandmother, a father, who is away on shooting excursions, and a daughter, are in charge of the ruin, and live there in entire seclusion. Some mystery attaches to them. There is something strange about the daughter. There is something strange in the way the father leaves her alone, and the watch he keeps on her when they are together. A young Count, who has been jilted, and is for a time sick of the world, is a little taken by the girl, thinks of retiring to a castle as a hermitage, and wants to buy the ruin. The father tries to dissuade him from the purchase, and will not let him speak to the daughter. And the Count's companion, a misanthropic colonel, sneers at the raw cynicism of the jilted young man, and at the fancies in which he looks for consolation. We are introduced to these two men as they walk up the bed of the Naif. The colonel points with a chuckle to a horseleech preying on a snail, as a proof that "nature is one with rapine;" but he is horrified at the sight of some ants on his companion's coat. We have to read some way before we find the meaning of this horror, and the cause of this misanthropy. It comes out at length strangely. The Count has found all his attempts at interesting himself in the girl of the ruined castle frustrated. Weber, her father, resents them all, guards his daughter carefully, keeps a close watch on the Count. One night the Count and his companion are in a wine-house, when some young men at another table begin talking loudly, as young men will talk. The hero of the party is a handsome lion of Meran, who has succeeded to the Count's place in the affections of his faithless charmer. But the young man is now boasting of another conquest, and talks mysteriously of the ruined castle. The Count springs up and calls him to account. The young man promises him a meeting which is destined not to be kept. While the Count is wondering at the mystery of the Weber family, a man in the corner of the wine-house, who has overheard the quarrel, volunteers to speak. At his first word the colonel turns pale and leaves the room, but the Count remains to listen. His informant is landrichter in Meran, and knows the whole history of the Webers. Thiey were allowed to change their name on account of a calamity that had happened to one of the family. Weber was forester in the Val Sugana. His elder daughter Anna was attached to a young man much below her station, an underling of her father's. At the conscription this young man was taken. He had promised to return that night to the block-hut, where he had held secret interviews with Anna; but no sooner were the recruits enrolled than an order was issued forbidding them to leave the barracks that night on pain of death. In spite of the order, the youth slipped out and got to the rendezvous, but in coming back he fell down a precipice, and was found there with his leg broken by the patrols who went out to look for him. Had he confessed the cause of his expedition, he might have been pardoned; but he was silent, for he had promised secrecy and he was shot. An hour after, a tall, handsome girl came to the room of the young officer who had command of the corps of recruits, and who had just presided at the execution of the sentence. She came to beg her lover's pardon, not knowing that it was already too late. The young officer's servant grew curious when the girl remained a long time closeted with bis master. He listened through the keyhole and heard nothing. At last he made some excuse to open the door. The girl was on her knees before the officer. He had a strange expression on his face, had taken off | followed up the young man who boasted of his neckcloth as if he were choking, and was his conquest. And as this thought occurs to walking with great strides up and down the the Count, he thinks he hears a shriek for room. He thrust his servant rudely out, and help. Neither his thoughts nor his ears have locked the door upon him. In another half deceived him. Weber had listened to the hour the girl came out, imagining she had boast, and had clung to the track of the young her lover's pardon. The servant, to whom she man. But again we must let Heyse himself spoke about it, told her at once that her speak:lover had been shot more than an hour ago. For a moment her eyes seemed to shoot living fire, but the next moment she burst out in a loud peal of laughter. But a day after the young officer was not to be found. He was tracked to the block-hut, where Anna and her lover used to meet, and there his uniform was found rolled in a corner. We will leave Paul Heyse to tell the upshot of the search: "I will be brief. There is a chasm in the mountain a little higher. I do not know what led me to the thought that he must have fallen down it. But the reality was still worse. Just at this moment the moon came out, and we could distinguish every tree a rifle-shot around us. What's that white thing hanging there?' cried the boy suddenly, and stood as if he was turned to s one, for he was afraid of ghosts. I cast a sharp glance through the tree-stems, and could not utter a word, so terrible was the sight. A fir-tree, stripped of all its bark at the foot, rose by the chasm, and flung out two solitary boughs at about a man's height from the ground. From one of these hung the wretched youth, in his shirt and trousers; his arms tied tightly behind his back, his feet also tied tightly together, and suspended by a treble noose to the branch, while his head just touched the ground, not far from the verge of the abyss, with its floating hair. But there, between the roots of the fir, some ants had built their heap, and though this was half destroyed by footsteps, we saw with a shudder the creatures swarming about the dead man's head." But here the description breaks off abruptly, and no one could wish it pursued. What with her lover's death, and the cruelty practised on herself, Anna had gone mad. She was found at home laughing and singing hysterically, muttering every now and then, in low and haunting tones, "The ants! the ants! don't scare them off, they are only doing their duty!" The young officer's father, a colonel-; but here the Count interrupts the narrative. He has now learnt the secret of his companion, of the misantropy which makes him avoid all other men, the horror which he felt at the sight of ants, the pallor which overcame him when the judge began his story. The Count, however, is quite overcome. Just after the quarrel he had gone outside, and had heard that Weber had been sitting on the bench before the door during the whole scene. No doubt the father had "Aloys racked his brains, but his ideas were still confused. To the effect of his story was added the roar of the Naif which he was approaching, the ghostly paleness of the moonlight, and high in front of him the motionless peak of the Ifinger, over which the clouds were racing as if the high rock nodded and threatened and shook itself, and meditated a fall which would bury alike the wicked and the guiltless. Strangely enough, when he reached the wooden bridge, the youth could not make up his mind to put his foot on the long beams. They were trembling indeed with the might of the swollen torrent. But he knew that a high piled harvestwaggon could cross in safety; what had a single passenger to fear? And could he not see, fifty paces off, enticing and quite in the moonlight, the château where he was so ardently expected? And had he not many and many a night shaken off all the trepidations of memory and conscience, as soon as he had passed the secret door opening on the south terrace, and entered the lofty ante-chamber of his lovely fair, which, with its scent of flowers, was far more attractive than the turret-cellar up yonder in those uninhabitable ruins? Yet, in spite of these thoughts, he stood still on the extreme end of the bridge, and looked down into the yeasty stream. thick slime which poured furiously through the rocky bed, broke into a thousand fanciful forms, and, faintly lighted by the moon, whirled like a mass of melted earth at once heavily and impetuously into the depths. Here, too, the noise was so loud that the solitary wanderer, in spite of having his ears sharpened by fear, never once heard the footsteps of another who had followed hin. And now the dark sturdy figure in the coarse jacket stood close behind him; a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder, the youth started, and half suppressed a cry of terror, as his hasty glance met two immovable eyes, that seemed to look through and through him." The The result of this interview may easily be imagined. After a few words the infuriated father flings the youth from the bridge into the thick slimy torrent. The cry which the Count fancied he heard was the despairing shriek for merey as the wretch was tossed over. But another cry comes to the ears of Weber. Had any one seen him? He looks round, and the coast seems clear. Yet a girl living by the Naif, who had been sent out by her master to see if the torrent was rising, had witnessed the whole scuffle; and, when Weber looked round, had seen his face distinctly in the clear moonlight. The story finds its way to the ears of the younger daughter, and she too begins to laugh loudly and hysterically. The same fate has come on her as on her sister. The minds of both have failed under woes too great for human endurance. judge Freytag by his first success; but we cannot judge Auerbach by Debit and Credit. If Paul Heyse chooses to confine himself to a narrow sphere, and almost to reach perfection where perfection is less worth having, he earns our praise for what he has done, but we may not blame him for what he has not attempted. One of the wisest of the Germans tells us : "Erkenne, Freund, was er geleistet hat, Und dann erkenne was er leisten wollte." Or, as the English Poet says"In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend." An observance of these two maxims would prevent much of the shallow criticism which exists, and which does equal harm to authors and to readers. We have told this story at some length, and given these extracts, in order to show what is to be found in Heyse, and what may be expected of him. We do not wish him to abandon the field in which he has earned such laurels, and essay himself in a full novel. But we think that by degrees he may enlarge his canvas, as he has been doing of late, and may steal imperceptibly into something more important than the tale or story. And we think that, on the whole, the conclusion forced on our minds by the other works we have considered, is equally hopeful. We have three authors viewing their art as something serious, yet recognising the subordination of their art to nature. If we could believe that they would train others to follow in their steps, we should augur a fair future for German fiction. But at present we cannot speak on the point with much confidence. The followers of all three are apt to exaggerate the faults of their originals, and to neglect their beauties. Bald and naked realism, interminable descriptions of things not worth a line, philosophical discussions on matters that need not be dreamt of even by THIS book is one sign among many of the deeper philosophers than Horatio, are more reviving interest of this country in philosoeasily caught from Freytag than his choice phy. "All false philosophy," says Professor of subjects, his wit, and his profound view in- Ferrier, "is Plato misinterpreted; all true to character. The imitators of Auerbach philosophy is Plato rightly understood." If sicken us with impossible stories of peasant any part of this be true, we have to conlife, bands of brigands headed by the wife of gratulate ourselves that the words of the first a small farmer, characters which are neither great philosopher are now being discussed new nor in keeping, and incidents which sin and illustrated so fully. Not to mention the equally against nature and invention. The excellent editions of some of the Dialogues followers of Heyse aim at his artistic arrange- which have issued from the Oxford press ment, and become artificial; he subdues pas- within the last few years, we have two elabosion overmuch, and they leave it out of the rate books by distinguished authors, Dr. question. Yet, as imitation is the natural Whewell and Mr. Grote, each attempting in tendency of all beginners, and as Thackeray his own way to set the substance of the Plahimself admitted that he began by imitating tonic writings before the English reader. Fielding, the Germans may shake themselves We regret that it is not possible to speak clear of these faults, and learn instead of copy-more favourably of Dr. Whewell's English ing. From the authors themselves we have a right to expect more than they have given us. But it would be ungrateful to dwell on what we expect when we have so much to acknowledge. We trust indeed that we have done them justice, that we have not tried them by an exclusively English standard, that we have not pointed out their faults except as a means of leading them to amendment. If we seem to have treated Freytag more hardly than Auerbach, and both more hardly than Heyse, it is because the higher a man attains the more rigorous becomes the standard. We must necessarily ART. III.-Plato and the other Companions of Socrates. By GEORGE GROTE, F.R.S., etc. London: John Murray, 1865. Plato. If strong English sense, with its barism that allows him thus to dismember | tions for which he has yet found no rational and re-arrange a work which has the unity of a poem, as well as of a philosophic trea tise. Mr. Grote's book is an attempt of a different kind, not to translate or reproduce Plato as a whole, but simply to give an account of the discussions contained in each Dialogue, and to criticise the philosophical results attained thereby. He seeks to give us Plato without his artistic dress-Plato unveiled. The variety, the humour, the poetry of the Dialogues, the fresh play of changing situation and character, disappear, and are intended to disappear, in a dry analysis, which brings into clear light the different points of the argument, but leaves all else in shadow. "How does the matter of Plato look without the form, and what, so taken, is its absolute value?" is the question Mr. Grote tries to answer. A more sympathetic mind might have shrunk from such a severance of soul and body, and might, perhaps, question its possibility, in the case of a writer in whom poet and philosopher are so closely bound together. There is a point where metaphysics and poetry meet, or, to express it more accurately, the highest truth of philosophy is a rational and self-conscious poetry, as the highest poetry may be described as an irrational and unconscious philosophy. This, at least, is the Platonic conception of their relation; and a mind that severs matter and form, theory and expression, so decidedly as Mr. Grote, can scarce represent the thought of Plato fairly. Besides this, philosophy was in Plato's time still struggling into birth, out of the symbolic and unreflected forms of mythology. It had not yet, as with Aristotle, a definite language and sphere of its own; it did not move apart in an atmosphere of abstraction. Hence an apparent self-contradiction that often occurs in the language of Plato. He is ever warring against the looseness and indefiniteness of popular thought, as also against the poets and rhetoricians, who in his view only give an artificial completeness and symmetry to this indefiniteness, without really delivering us from it. Yet, on the other hand, he is obliged himself to have recourse to symbol and poetry in order to body forth conceptions for which he has as yet no more accurate language. Plato walks as far as he can, then flies when he cannot walk. In many of the Dialogues, as in the Phado, we have an entire metaphysical discussion, which at the end passes off into a dream. There is in him a realm of clear logical distinction and accurate thinking, but around it on every side is a kind of cloudland, in which float the images of "worlds not realized," or, in other words, of concep and abstract expression. And even between these two, as we see especially from the Timæus, there lies a debatable region in which myths and abstractions mingle together and struggle for the mastery. This varied tone and colour of the Platonic thought, this endless shading and doubtful suggestion, this infinity, which forms the background of all that is determinate and fixed, increases wonderfully his interest and instructiveness, but renders it impossible to do justice to him by an analysis, or indeed in any way but by translation. In some respects, every one must allow that the historian of Greece is well fitted for his task. His knowledge of the Dialogues, as well as of their "setting" in Greek life, is all that could be wished. And, what is as important, he has a real sympathy with that joy of the intellect in his own energy, in the mere play of thought for its own sake, which fills the Platonic Dialogues. He does not, like Dr. Whewell, weary of the negative dialectic, or desire to cut it short, even when he can see no objective point to which it tends. This fresh self-surrender to the guidance of reason, this fearlessness, and even, to a certain extent, carelessness of results, if so be that the fallow-field of thought is thoroughly upturned and made ready for receiving the seed, is one of the most distinguished characteristics of the Platonic writings; and if any one wearies of this endless seeking and questioning, he is not thoroughly in sympathy with Plato, who seeks to awaken the minds of his readers, not to give them rest, and who holds that there is no truth for any one, except that which he wins for himself by the working of his own mind. "Plato," says Mr. Grote, "feels a strong interest in the inquiry, in the debate per se, and he presumes a like interest in his readers. He has no wish to shorten the process, nor to reach the end and dismiss the question as settled. On the contrary, he claims it as a privilege of philosophical research that persons in it are noways tied to time; they are not like judicial pleaders, who, with a clepsydra or water-clock to measure the length of each speech, are under slavish dependence on the feelings of the dikasts, and are therefore obliged to keep strictly to the point. Plato regards the process of inquiry as being in itself both a stimulus and a discipline, in which the minds both of questioner and rebeing indispensable to the other; he al o represpondent are implicated and improved, each sents it as a process, carried on under the immediate inspiration of the moment, without reflection or knowledge of the result.”—Vol. i. p. 274. The merits and defects of Mr. Grote as an interpreter of Plato might almost be guessed from this passage alone. He is not imagina- | and a mind at the opposite intellectual pole tive; he is not even subtle or speculative; from him. We do not of course expect a delicate distinctions and shades of meaning critic to give up his own judgment to the auare either obliterated or exaggerated by his thor he is criticising, but we do expect him to strong but heavy pen; but he has unques- show some power of forgetting himself for tionable vigour and manliness of thought, the moment, and looking at the world through and for a dialectical combat, an intellectual his author's eyes. Now, Mr. Grote seems to wrestle between two opinions, no one could us always to judge Plato ab extra; he scarcely wish a better spectator or judge. The bold- ever attempts to identify himself with him. ness, too, with which he casts aside all former The unworldiness of the Platonic spirit, if we commentary, and questions Plato anew, often may so express it, and that characteristic gives great interest and freshness to his words. transfusion of emotion and thought, which He has seen for himself, and therefore his has drawn into his school all the poets from opinion always has the value of originality. Dante to Tennyson, is all but a dead letter to Let any one who wishes to appreciate his Mr. Grote. We may, by anticipation, take power read his commentary on the Theaete- one example. When in the Republic, Plato, tus, or, still better, on the Protagoras, upon like half the great moral teachers, down even which his speculative sympathies have led to our own Carlyle, turns the question, him to spend his best efforts. Whether we "What is my right ?" into the other quesagree with his conclusions or no, we must tion, "What is my duty?" (rà oixsĩa πpάSTEN), have our minds braced by the atmosphere and maintains, in deliberate opposition to the of intellectual energy in which we find our- theory of Glaucon, that duties, not rights, selves, and we cannot come away without are to be considered in the foundation of the a stronger sense that "the process of in-state, Mr. Grote only exclaims against the quiry is at once a stimulus and a disci- strange meaning given to the word justice, pline." and finds in it a proof that Plato had not yet advanced to the Aristotelian notion, that justice is virtue viewed as involving relations to other men. Would he not find a similar difficulty when Christ answers the question, "Who is my neighbour?" by the counter question, "Which then was neighbour to him that fell among thieves?" How much of a higher logic is in these inconsequences, aud what a loss to mankind if they had not been committed! It is not that Mr. Grote disapproves-that he may have a right to do, when he has shown first that he appreciates; it is that he has scarcely ever entered one great region of thought in which Plato often moves. But while the spirit of a Platonic discussion is thus vividly brought before us, we cannot say so much for Mr. Grote's treatment of those Dialogues in which the speculative or constructive element predominates. We can scarce believe that any one who has thoroughly studied the Republic will be satisfied with his analysis and criticism of it. And the Laws fare still worse. Partly it is, as we shall see, that he has a theory which prevents him doing full justice to these Dialogues, and partly that a certain dogmatic hardness and inflexibility of mind becomes more obvious when brought into contact with the highest expressions of the delicate and subtle spirit of Plato. And this mental inflexibility shows itself also in another way. It may seem bold to accuse a great historian of a want of historic sympathy-an incapacity of forgetting the associations of his own day, and assuming the spiritual vesture of the past. Yet, we think that even the History of Greece is not quite free from this defect. We are never allowed altogether to forget the new in the old world; and the image of ancient democracy is considerably obscured in our eyes by the associations of modern Radicalism. And Plato, as we might expect, suffers even more than Athens from the modernisms forced upon him, as, for instance, in the commentary on the Theaetetus, where the sophist is made to argue as if he were familiar with Hume and Berkeley. And to the distance between the modern and ancient world, we have here to add the distance between Plato The most important and most distinctive peculiarity of Mr. Grote's book is his division of the Dialogues. He draws a broad line of distinction between those which, after Thrasyllus, he names respectively "Dialogues of Search," and "Dialogues of Exposition." The former are entirely negative and critical, and have no end beyond the discussion itself. The latter are affirmative and dogmatic, full of magisterial decisions on all points of philosophic doctrine. And these two classes stand side by side, the offspring of different tendencies, and without any connecting link. "Some," he says, represent all the doubts and difficulties in the negative Dialogues as exercises to call forth the intellectual efforts of the tions which Plato has given in the dogmatic reader, preparatory to full and satisfactory soluDialogues at the end. The first half of this hypothesis I accept, the last half I believe to |