It was the age of rule, discipline, military despotism, the age in which mathematics was the most esteemed of all the sciences, and energy, accompanied by a capacity for unqualified submission, the most esteemed of all the virtues. By no single fibre of his being does Obermann belong to this period; he abhors both discipline and mathematics as heartily as could any future Romanticist. He despises the Philistines who take the same walk every day, turning daily at the same place. He does not wish to know beforehand how his feelings will be affected. "Let the mind," he says, "strive to give a certain symmetry to its productions; the heart does not work, and can only produce when we exempt it from the labour of fashioning." We feel that this unreasonable principle is applied in his letters, which form a heavy, diffuse, serious, badly written book; they produce the effect of improvisations, to which the author, regarding them as the children of his heart, has not chosen or else not been able to impart an attractive form. It is true that nuggets of gold are hidden in the ponderous ore, but they must be laboriously sought for; a man with real literary talent would have gilded the whole mass with them. [Illustration: DE SÉNANCOUR] The hero of the book is one of those unhappy souls who seem created for the shady side of life and never succeed in getting out into its sunshine. There is, as Hamlet says, along with many excellent qualities some "one defect" in their nature which prevents the harmonious interplay of its parts. In the delicately balanced works of a watch some little spring, some little wheel breaks, and the whole mechanism comes to a standstill. Obermann has no settled occupation, no sphere of activity, no profession; it is only in the last pages of the book that he makes up his mind that he will be an author; the reader feels no assurance, however, that success awaits him upon this path. The author who has been successful with ever so small a work sees, on looking back, what an almost incredible variety of circumstances have favoured him, what an extraordinary number of obstacles, great and small, have had to be overcome; he remembers how carefully he had to watch his time, how eagerly to seize the opportune moment, how often he was on the point of giving it all up, how many paroxysms of despair he lived through, all to attain this paltry end. The most insignificant book which is born alive speaks of ten thousand triumphs. And what a combination of favourable circumstances is demanded to prevent its dying immediately after birth! As many as in the case of a living organism. The book must find some unoccupied space into which it fits, the interest awakened by it must not be interfered with by other, stronger, interests, or the talent displayed in it outshone by greater talent. It must not recall any previous work, must not even accidentally resemble anything else, and yet must, in one way or other,