of the conquered, which twenty years later was brought to King William of England in his royal palace at Winchester. FERDINAND FREILIGRATH (1810-1876) [Illustration: FERDINAND FREILIGRATH] In times of political degradation the poets of Germany, turning from their own surroundings, have sought poetical material either in the glories of a dim past or in the exotic splendors of remote lands. Goethe, disquieted by the French Revolution, took up Chinese and Persian studies; the romantic poets revivified the picturesqueness of the Middle Ages; and during the second quarter of this century the Orient began to exercise a potent charm. Platen wrote his beautiful 'Gaselen,' Rueckert sang in Persian measure and translated the Indian 'Sakuntala,' and Bodenstedt fashioned the dainty songs of "Mirza-Schaffy." Freiligrath too, a child of his time, entered upon his literary career with poems which took their themes from distant climes. Among his earliest verses after 'Moosthee' (Iceland-Moss Tea), written at the age of sixteen, were 'Africa,' 'Der Scheik am Sinai' (The Sheik on Sinai), and 'Der Loewenritt' (The Lion's Ride). Even in these early poems, we find all that brilliancy of Oriental imagery to which he tells us he had been inspired by much poring over an illustrated Bible in his childhood. But Freiligrath, like Uhland and Herwegh, was a man of action and a patriot. The revolution of 1848 had brought fresh breezes into the stagnation of political life; and though they soon were stilled again, the men who had breathed that air ceased to be the dreamers of dreams that the romantic poets had been. They were conscious of a mission, and became the robust heralds of a larger and a freer time.