he takes it for granted in all naivete that he is yet the one-eyed among the blind. It is this attitude which gives Fontane's irony its peculiar flavor.... The gentle melancholy of two people coming together in a way which can never lead to full satisfaction, the quiet tragedy of a separation not forced by external powers but by the constant pressure of circumstances--this is what sounds through this splendid story. "Trials and Tribulations" is built entirely on this motive. An honest sturdy young officer and a decent pretty girl get to know each other on an excursion. Unconsciously they drift into a relation where heart meets heart, the breaking of which causes the deepest pain. But both see clearly from the beginning that there is no other end. For they know that the world is stronger than the individual, and the many small moments than the one supreme. They know it, for they are, like their creator, resigned realists. They shut their eyes only in order not to see the end too near. Then comes the parting, still and quiet: "She leaned on him and said quietly and warmly, 'And so this is the last time that I shall hold your hand in mine?'"--From "Die deutsche Litteratur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts" (1910). II By S. C. De Soissons In 1898, Germany suffered a great loss in the person of Theodor Fontane, who represented a superior kind of realism, and to whom the modern German novel was very much indebted. As he was of French origin, his writings naturally possessed more equilibrium and measure than one usually finds in German writers; he also had a fine and keen esprit, never importuning, never displaying his wit, never running into pathos. For that reason his novels seemed cold to sentimental readers and frivolous to moralists. But the cultivated and unprejudiced reader admired his quiet experience and his deep knowledge of external life as well as of the depths of the human soul, qualities which were mingled with a love of his native country, Brandenburg. But although dead, Fontane has not ceased to be the father of modern realism. All that is good, true, beautiful, and important in the German realistic novel comes from Theodor Fontane. Naturalism and symbolism stand far apart from him; but even the most passionate and the most intelligent adversaries of symbolism point to him as a representative of true art.--From "The Modern German Novel," in "The Contemporary Review" (1904). TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS A BERLIN NOVEL CHAPTER I