Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/91

 Graves g^ Bavaria, or Switzerland. His declining years were pasesd on the shores of Lake Constance, which he also chose in part as a setting for his novel "Auf und Nieder." The beautiful pictures of the "Traunsee" in the first book of "Sansaia" are the direct result of a summer's outing which, earlier in life, he spent at this lake with his quondam friend, Franz Hedrich. In the following paragraph, influenced perhaps by the kindred sentiment of Goethe's poem| "Der Fischer," Meissner has given a very pretty expression to the attraction that a fine expanse of water has on man: "Eines Morgens sass Hostiwin nahe am See, auf den Rasen hingestreckt. Er hatte das Buch, in welchem er gelesen, neben sich gelegt und sah traumerisch ins Wasser. Der wassererfullte Abgrund mit seiner rathselhaften Tiefe scheint eine eigentiimliche Anziehung f..r jedes Auge zu haben. Diesmal aber war ihm, als er hineinblickte und hintraumte, wie wenn Sirenengesange aus den gr..nen Wellen hervortjnten, dass er auf den Grund hinabsteige und die ewige sturmlose Ruhe mitgeniesse, die dort unten herrscht. " " Sansara, " IV, p. 178. While Meissner received a medical training at the University of Prague and obtained his degree in medicine, and his father was also a physician, images which pertain to this science, are com- paratively rare. 5 Note the following: "Der Seuche gleich, die aus Sibirien und von den Schlachtfeldern Polens daherkam, wandert epidemisch der Freiheitsrausch. Gegen diese Blutver- giftung helfen alle Aderlasse nicht, und was das Aergste ist, diese Corruption der Gesinnung heisst man jetzt ein Einstehen fur die hochsten Giiter." "Zwischen F..rst und Volk," p. 122. "Er ist bei ihr, mit ihr fiir immer vereinigt, und die ewig offene, ewig blutende Wunde, die kein irdischer Arzt zu stillen und zu verbinden vermocht, ist nun gestillt und verbunden von einer Hand, die den Gliicklichen grausam, den Ungliicklichen und Lebensm..den hiilfreich und sanft zu flassen pflegt von der Hand des Todes." "Sansara," II, p. 212. It is not so easy to classify the other sources from which our author derived his figures. Among others, music, 6 the hunt, precious 6 Meissner received his degree in medicine from the University of Prague in 1846. His dissertation was entitled, "Die Helminthiasi. " See " Geschichte meines Lebens," I, pp. 136-138. 8 While Meissner has a predilection for aquatic images, Gutzkow displays considerable fondness for those taken from the realm of music. In particular a great many examples of this kind have been noted in " Die Ritter vom Geiste " and "Der Zauberer von Rom." I venture to give a few of these from the first named of these novels, all culled within a few hundred pages of each other: "Der schmerzliche Accord, der durch unsere Erzahlung Erzahlung tont, lautete;" Band III, p. 230, 6. Aufl., Berlin, 1878; "Man trennte sich mit