old-fashioned melodrama, to straighten out the tangled skein), is apt to involve other difficulties than the mere embarrassment of having to distrust the author's assertion, or censure his indiscretions. The illusion is utterly spoiled by that haunting _arriere pensee_ that this or that writer, whom you know perhaps at first or second-hand, or whose features, at all events, are familiar to you from pictures, never could or would have played the more or less heroic _role_ with which he here delights to impose upon you. Altogether the best book which Bergsoee has written is the autobiographical romance "From the Old Factory," the scene of which is laid in Denmark. This book evidently contains a great deal of genuine reminiscence, and is therefore devoid of that air of laborious contrivance and artificial intrigue which brings the foregoing novels into such unpleasant relationship with Wilkie Collins and his _genre_. The incidents of the hero's boyhood in the old porcelain factory, and his uncle's agitating experiments for the rediscovery of a lost process of glazing are saner and soberer and lie closer to the soil of common experience than the exploits of monks and pirates and revolutionists. Among the notable men of the expiring Danish romanticism Meyer Aaron Goldschmidt (1819-1886) holds a leading position. A comic paper, _Corsaren_, which he edited (1840-1846) made a tremendous stir in its day; and its scathing wit and satire were not without influence upon current events. His two novels, _En Joede_ (1845), _Hjemloes_ (1857), and a large number of clever novelettes (_Ravnen_, _Arvingen Flyveposten_, etc.), are full of psychological subtleties, and often charmingly told. _Flyveposten_ ("The Flying Mail") was translated into English (Boston and Cambridge, 1870) but attracted no particular attention. For all that, Goldschmidt, in spite of occasional prolixity, stands the test of time remarkably well. His Jewish stories, notably _Maser, Aron og Esther_, and _En Joede_, contain a higher order of work, though less dramatically effective, than that of Sacher-Masoch, and Emil Franzos, and the later Ghetto romancers. Goldschmidt's double nationality, as a Danish-born Jew, indicates his position and the source from which he drew his weakness and his strength. As a Jew he saw and judged the Danish character, and as a Dane he saw and judged the Jewish character with a liberality and insight of which no autochthon would have been capable. For all that his tales aroused anything but friendly feelings among his own people. They felt it to be a profanation thus to expose the secluded domestic and religious life of the children of Israel. It is to this sentiment that Dr. Brandes has given utterance in his protest against "perpetually serving up one's grandmother with sauce piquante."