THE THREE KINGDOMS OF NATURE. I SOUGHT, while drinking, to unfold The dolphin, eagle, dog and flea, The plants the second kingdom are, They do not love, but yet they drink, The stony kingdom is the last, THE APE AND THE FOX. NAME to me an animal, though never so skillful, that I cannot imitate! So bragged the Ape to the Fox. But the Fox replied: And do thou name to me an animal so humble as to think of imitating thee! Writers of my country! Need I explain myself more fully! THE EAGLE AND THE FOX. BE not so proud of thy flight! said the Fox to the Eagle. Thou mountest so high into the air for no other purpose but to look farther about thee for carrion. So have I known men who became deep-thinking philosophers, not from love of truth, but for the sake of lucrative offices of instruction. THE SWALLOW. BELIEVE me, friends! the great world is not for the philosopher-is not for the poet. Their real value is not appreciated there; and often, alas! they are weak enough to exchange it for a far inferior one. In the earliest times the Swallow was as tuneful and melodious a bird as the Nightingale. But she soon grew tired of living in the solitary bushes, heard and admired by no one but the industrious countryman and the innocent shepherdess. She forsook her humbler friend and moved into the city. What followed? Because the people of the city had no time to listen to her divine song she gradually forgot it, and learned, instead thereof, to-build! THE PEACOCKS AND THE CROW. A VAIN Crow adorned herself with the feathers of the richly-tinted Peacocks, which they had shed, and when she thought herself sufficiently tricked out, mixed boldly with these splendid birds of Juno. She was recognized, and quickly the Peacocks fell upon her with sharp bills, to pluck from her the lying bravery. Cease now! she cried at length; you have your own again! But the Peacocks, who had observed some of the Crow's own shining wing-feathers, replied: Be still, miserable fool! these, too, cannot be yours! And they continued to peck. THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH. (From his "Theological Writings.") If God should hold all truth inclosed in his right hand, and in his left only the ever-active impulse to the pursuit of truth, although with the condition that I should always and forever err; and should say to me: Choose! I should fall with submission upon his left hand, and say: Father, give me this! Pure Truth is for Thee alone! MOSES MENDELSSOHN. THIS greatest of modern Jews deserves honorable mention in German literature for his own work, as well as for inspiring Lessing with the character of Nathan the Wise. Small and deformed in body, he was large and winning in spirit. Mendelssohn was born at Dessau in When 1729, and was the son of a teacher of a Jewish school. So wretchedly poor was the father that the son's body was enfeebled, while his mind was stored with the Talmud. fourteen years old he went to Berlin to get more learning, and after a time his thirst for knowledge attracted some patrons. His noble heart won the friendship of Lessing, who, having induced him to write his "Philosophical Dialogues,' then put them in print. After years of severe privations Mendelssohn became rich and married. For one of his sons he wrote his "Morning Hours," giving instruction in the rudiments of religion. He wrote also "Phædon" on the immortality of the soul. But when his name became well known as an author, controversy arose, and the zealous Lavater dedicated to him a work on the evidences of Christianity, urging that he should either refute it or openly embrace its doctrines. Mendelssohn, though prostrate with illness, wrote a noble letter in reply. Another controversy, which involved his friend Lessing, gave him further vexation. He died in 1786. His mission was to bring the Jews into harmony with the spirit of the age. His grandson Felix was the famous musical composer. THE NAÏVE. GENERALLY, the naïve in moral character consists in an external simplicity, which unintentionally discovers internal worth; in ignorance of the world's ways; in unconcern about false interpretation; in that confiding manner which is not founded in stupidity and want of ideas, but in magnanimity, innocence, goodness of heart, and an amiable persuasion that others are not worse disposed toward us than we are toward them. If, therefore, we regard the external conduct of men as the sign of their internal character and worth, the naïve, here too, will require simplicity of expression, together with dignity and significance in the thing expressed. It is the same with the naïve in the human countenance, which is so essential to the painter and sculptor. It is always the unstudied, the artless in exterior, undesignedly evincing internal excellence. Since the features, the airs and gestures of men are signs of their propensities and sentiments; since every feature in the countenance expresses a propensity, and every mien an emotion corresponding to it, a naïve character is ascribed to the tout ensemble of all the features and gestures, when, as it were, without design, without pretence, without self-consciousness, they discover a happy and harmonious combination of tendencies and sentiments. Hence the naïve in the character of a child, when, amidst the otherwise monotonous features of a childish face, tender germs of meekness, love, innocence and graciousness appear. Grace, or elevated beauty in movement, is also connected with the naïve, inasmuch as the movements which charm us are natural, have an easy flow, and slide gently one into another, and unintentionally and unconsciously indicate that the motive forces in the soul, from which these voluntary motions flow, sport and unfold themselves in the same unstudied, harmonious and artless manner. Hence, the idea of innocence and of moral simplicity is always associated with a lofty grace. The more this beauty of motion is combined with consciousness and appears to be the work of design, the more it departs from the naïve and acquires a studied character; and, when the accompanying internal emotions do not agree with it, an affected character. Nothing is so disgusting as insipid naïveté, or an outward simplicity which appears to have designs and makes pretensions. IN "Oberon" Christoph Martin Wieland (1733-1813) achieved what Klopstock failed to accomplish in "The Messias"-a genuine epic. Wieland substituted vivid fancy for Klopstock's cold unreality, and he deeply studied fairy lore and chivalrous romance before taking what he styled “his ride into the ancient realm of Romance." He had drunk fine draughts of fancy from the dramas of Shakespeare, translations of which were an inestimable boon to subsequent German literature; and he had sought further inspiration in Ariosto and the old French romances. From all of these he secured the basis for the twin plots of his fairy epic, "Oberon." In mediæval mythology, as early as the thirteenth century, Oberon had become recognized as the king of the fairies. He had first appeared in the old French chanson de geste, "Huon de Bordeaux," as the son of Julius Cæsar and Morgan the Fay, and was thus connected, in a sense, with the Arthurian legend. Shakespeare had introduced him in a quarrel with his fairy queen, Titania, in the "Midsummer Night's Dream." The incidents in the "Oberon" of Wieland are nearly the same with those in the old French romance. Huon of Bordeaux is a peer of Charlemagne's court, but he kills a son of the emperor, and is sent on a whimsical adventure as punishment. He must ransom himself by bringing four grinders from the Sultan's jaw. With the aid of Oberon he succeeds, however, in performing the perilous feat, and wins the love of Rezia, daughter of the Caliph of Bagdad. On his return to France he breaks a vow, and suffers a series |