The Courier-Review.
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special lines, or set one to thinking so much as a good interesting lecture upon some subject that the speaker has thoroughly investigated. A knowledge of which we could or would not gain in any other way. The management of the lecture course this year has been given to Fred Bowersock who assumes all responsibility It is a strong series and deserves patronage.
WE ARE glad to note the interest taken by the students in seminary work this year. There are seven seminaries or similar societies organized at present that meet regularly, and it is probable more will be formed in the future. The work of these societies is most valuable to the student. It enables him to become thoroughly acquainted with some subject. The thorough investigation of a subtopic deduces certain facts and principles applicable to the general subject. At these meetings the student may elaborate in the expression of his own views and profit by the criticisms and discussions.
LITERARY.
Patriotism and German Fiction.
In his great novel, A Struggle for Rome, Dahn makes Procopius say of the Goths. "These barbarians have the good fortune to be a people, and it is exceedingly hard to conquer a people." What Procopius said of the Goths did not become true of the Germans until the year 1871 when a complete unification of the German Empire was first accomplished. True the three centuries from 980-1250 had seen the building up of a state but it was as Pocopius would say, "a state without a people," the outward form without the inner harmony.
Germany was but a multitude of petty provinces ruled by their petty princes all with conflicting interests and jealousies, each seeking his own advancement to the exclusion of any national feeling, no unity or organization, everywhere dissension and rivalry. In the hearts of some to be sure still lingered a desire for greater unity, a desire felt even among the peasants in their belief in the great Frederic Barbarossa who, legend said, had not died but was sleeping a long sleep under Kifflianser mountains waiting the hour when the ravens should cease to fly about the mountain, when he should come forth to renew the ancient glories of his Empire and his people.
With the existing condition of disunion in the nation, there was urgent necessity for strengthening such sentiments, for arousing in this people the dormant national spirit, for inspiring in them a realization of the importance of making one great nation out of what was then such only in name. Some bond of common unity must be found to lift them above these petty rivalries and this bond was found in their literature which, as a German historian says, was "not merely a pride, a delight and an education for each citizen but for the time, the nation itself, the only symbol of its union and center of its patriots." This was the one thing which lifted men above the boundaries of their petty states and brought them into some sort of union.
With, then, this strong need for arousing patriotic feeling and with this universal love and admiration of all the states for their literature it is but a natural step to a union of the two, that is that national pride should be aroused by introducing into the literature such subjects as would have this result and what would more fittingly do so than subjects from the history of a people.
There always lingers about the past a touch of romance, so to a people like the Germans, romantic and emotional, subjects taken from the past must appeal with especial power. The novel that must characteristic form of literature of the nineteenth century easily became the medium for expressing such thoughts and thus we see the birth of the historical novel brought about very naturally, for the novelist profiting