Accordingly, German literature is not rich in tales of adventurous activity--indeed, it affords few examples of pure narrative, that is, of stories told chiefly for the sake of chronicling events. When such a master narrator as Heinrich von Kleist tells a tale, he presents the facts objectively--no judicial referee could be more circumstantial; but in the case on which he reports the author sees the impersonation of a problem, and the data which really concern him are the perturbed emotions of a man or woman. The same is true of Kleist's contemporary, Ludwig Tieck, of the amiable Theodor Storm, and of the prolific Paul Heyse. The character, in its peculiar makeup and its peculiar circumstances, presents a problem, and the most significant evidence that its experiences furnish is its reaction upon the outside world. An author who treats this character will, then, dwell fondly upon psychological analysis and upon the atmosphere in which the character lives and moves and has its being. These facts account for certain peculiarities of form in German fiction which to us seem like defects. It generally takes a German novelist a long while to get under way, and he generally appears to move in spirals. He invites us to tarry and survey the scenery--to which his hero is wont to be more sensitive than we are--and he tends to elaborate episodes, which serve indeed to bring out qualities in his persons, but which, an impatient reader would say, delay the action. Evidently, it is not the action about which the author primarily cares. But the German novelist has the merits of his defects: if he does not touch lightly, he does probe deeply, and if his characters cannot manage to get things done and over, their impediment is an excess of those personal endowments which have after all to be reckoned among the positive values of life. It is better to be sentimental or even whimsical than to have neither sentiments nor ideas.