It is easy to understand how inevitable it was that these new theories should make a strong impression on Oehlenschläger. The Romanticists exalted imagination above everything in the world--it was the peculiarly divine gift. Whom could this impress more than the man through whom inventive power had in Danish literature supplanted the clever manipulation of language which had distinguished Baggesen and the eighteenth century? The Romanticists looked upon the world of myth as the highest, as the real world; there he was, with a whole new mythology, the Scandinavian, ready to his hand, waiting to be used. Fr. Schlegel and Novalis had cried in chorus: "We must find a mythology which can be to us what the mythology of the Greeks and Romans was to them!" But they sought in vain, or found only the old Catholic legends. Oehlenschläger alone had no need to seek; "the orange fell into his turban." The Romanticists believed in a greater past from which the race had fallen; and he dwelt among a people whose past far outshone its present, a people that desired to forget the darkness of to-day and to see itself glorified in the glorification of the dreams of its childhood and the achievements of its youth. Thus it was that it only needed a word from Steffens to break (to the surprise of Steffens and every one else) the spell by which his tongue was tied. It was one of the unmistakable deserts of the Romantic School that it endeavoured to widen the narrow circle of subjects provided by classical literature, and to teach men to appreciate what was admirable and characteristic in modern foreign nations as well as in their own country. This made the school a patriotic school, and patriotic in every country. It is to be observed that there already existed in Germany that inclination to make excursions into foreign regions which characterised French Romanticism in the days of Victor Hugo. We notice it first in Herder, with his admirable appreciation of the characteristically national intellectual productions of different countries. Then came A. W. Schlegel, with his criticism and translations. Schlegels famous lectures on dramatic literature, published just before the entry of the Powers into Paris, expound the Greek, English, and Spanish drama sympathetically, but contain the most violent, bitter attacks upon French taste and the French drama. Not content with attacking the tragedians, he treats even Molière with foolish contempt. It is instructive to compare this book with Mme. de Staël's _De l'Allemagne_. Schlegel's misunderstanding and dislike of France are as great as Mme. de Staël's understanding and appreciation of Germany. He makes amends by expounding both Shakespeare and his own discovery, Calderon, with profound and subtle sympathy. His criticism of these two poets has, however, along with one great merit, one great defect.