Often from the heart's deep places stealing 

 Upward, upward, to the world above, 

 Come to me, like far bells faintly pealing, 

 Voices of the days of vanished love. 



Yes ! a faery world is sunk thereunder, 

 From whose hoary ruins still, meseems, 

 Visions, full of heaven's own light and wonder, 

 Rise, and paint the mirror of my dreams. 



And whene'er I hear those faint bells ringing, 

 Through the magic waves I sink, ah me ! 

 Sink, and seem to hear the angels singing, 

 In that old-world town beneath the sea. 



I cannot impress too strongly upon those who hear me that a 

 knowledge of the way in which the law of Fine Art operates will 

 not enable us to produce works of Fine Art. That can be accomplished 

 by Genius alone. But, on the other hand, Genius can achieve nothing 

 of permanent value without obedience to Law; and the knowledge of 

 the operation of Law is of service to Genius because it strengthens 

 the judgment; it shows the artist how he must obey nature in order 

 to command it; it teaches him to judge himself; to recognize the 

 limits within which he can enjoy artistic and individual freedom; to 

 test the quality of his own art by comparing it with what is perma- 

 nent in the characteristic art of his country. 



Hence all that I have attempted to do in this lecture is to estimate 

 the law or character of German Poetry historically. I do not for a 

 moment presume to assert that German Poetry in the future will in- 

 evitably move in the same grooves and channels as in the past. Char- 

 acter is modified by circumstances to an almost unlimited extent, and 

 during the present generation the history of Germany has undergone 

 something like a revolution. The idea of German Unity, which floated 

 with incorporeal ghostliness before the men of the eighteenth century, 

 has in our times taken a positive external shape; the German State, 

 the German Empire exists; what we want to know, before we can 

 foresee how far this change in history will modify the character of 

 German art. is just what no foreigner can at present know, namely, 

 whether the structure of German Unity has been imposed upon the 

 nation, by the genius of great rulers, statesmen, and soldiers, or 

 whether it is the natural product of the mind and character of the 

 people. In the former case it may be destroyed, as it has been created, 

 from without; in the latter the ideas of action it excites will be re- 

 flected in the sphere of spiritual imagination. We can see that, in the 

 material aspect of things, Germany, as a state, has freed herself from 

 the reproach which, from the days of Tacitus, has clung to her, of 

 being wanting in practical aim. It can no longer be said of her 

 rulers: " Ipsi hebent: inertiam amant. quietem oderunt." The full 



