If we hold fast to the clue, we shall comprehend how the childlike in diction and sphere of conception, the true-hearted manner with which the most improbable things are announced, is just what invests the nursery story with its poetic worth. For what renders a literary production significant, what gives it circulation in space and lasting value in time, is the force with which it is able to present that which is propagated through space and which endures through time. It preserves itself by means of the vigor with which, in a clear and polished way, it renders perceptible the constant. Those writings which support tendencies or emotions whose horizon is limited in time or space, those which revolve about purely local circumstances or are the result of a prevailing taste, whose nourishment and whose image are found in these circumstances, will vanish with the fashion that has called them forth. A street song, a news-paper article, a festival oration, reflect a prevailing mood which for perhaps a week has superficially occupied the population of the city, and therefore have themselves a duration of about equal length. Or, to mount to a higher level, suppose there suddenly arises in a country some subordinate proclivity, as, for instance, the fancy for playing private comedies, which became an epidemic in Germany in the time of "Wilhelm Meister," or in Denmark between 1820 and 1830. Such a tendency in itself is not wholly devoid of significance, but psychologically considered it is thoroughly superficial and does not affect the deeper life of the soul. If it be made an object of satire, as it was in Denmark, by Rosenkilde's "The Dramatic Tailor," or in "Sir Burchardt and his Family," by Henrik Hertz, those works which, without representing the epidemic from a higher point of view, merely imitate and render it laughable, will be just as short-lived as it was. Let us now take a step higher, let us turn to the works which mirror the psychological condition of an entire race, an entire period. The good-natured drinking-song poetry of the past century, and the poetry written for political occasions, are such literary productions. They are historic documents, but their life and their poetic value are in direct ratio to the depth at which they approach universal humanity, the constant in the current of history. With greater and more marked significance in this gradual ascent stand forth these works, in which a people has seen itself portrayed for a half or for a whole century, or during an entire historic period, and has recognized the likeness. Such works must of necessity depict a spiritual condition of considerable duration, which, just because it is so enduring, must have its geologic seat in the deeper strata of the soul, as otherwise it would much sooner be washed away by the waves of time. These works incorporate the ideal personality of an epoch; that is to say, the personality which floats before the people of that time as its reflection and