One may, I think, divide the friends and admirers of Wilhelm Müller into two classes: those who rejoice and delight in his fresh and joyous songs, and those who admire the nobleness and force of his character as shown in the poems celebrating the war of Greek independence, and in his epigrams. All poetry is not for every one, nor for every one at all times. There are critics and historians of literature who cannot tolerate songs of youth, of love, and of wine; they always ask “why?” and “wherefore?” and they demand in all poetry, before anything else, high or deep thoughts. No doubt there can be no poetry without thought, but there are thoughts which are poetical without being drawn from the deepest depths of the heart and brain, nay, which are poetical just because they are as simple and true and natural as the flowers of the field or the stars of heaven. There is a poetry for the old, but there is also a poetry for the young. The young demand in poetry an interpretation of their own youthful feelings, and first learn truly to understand themselves through those poets who speak for them as they would speak for themselves, had nature endowed them with melody of thought and harmony of diction. Youth is and will remain the majority of the world, and will let no gloomy brow rob it of its poetic enthusiasm for young love and old wine. True, youth is not over-critical; true, it does not know how to speak or write in learned phrases of the merits of its favorite poets. But for all that, where is the poet who would not rather live in the warm recollection of the never-dying youth of his nation than in voluminous encyclopædias, or even in the marble Walhallas of Germany? The story and the songs of a miller’s man who loves his master’s daughter, and of a miller’s daughter who loves a huntsman better, may seem very trivial, commonplace, and unpoetical to many a man of forty or fifty. But there are men of forty and fifty who have never lost sight of the bright but now far-off days of their own youth, who can still rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep, and love with those that love,—aye, who can still fill their glasses with old and young, and in whose eyes every-day life has not destroyed the poetic bloom that rests everywhere on life so long as it is lived with warm and natural feelings. Songs which, like the “Beautiful Miller’s Daughter” and the “Winter Journey,” could so penetrate and again spring forth from the soul of Franz Schubert, may well stir the very depths of our own hearts, without the need of fearing the wise looks of those who possess the art of saying nothing in many words. Why should poetry be less free than painting to seek for what is beautiful wherever a human eye can discover, wherever human art can imitate it? No one blames the painter if, instead of giddy peaks or towering waves, he delineates on his canvas a quiet narrow valley, filled with a green mist, and enlivened only by a gray mill and a