its modern, North German rationalism awoke longings for the primeval forests and an inclination towards primitive poetry. To prove the truth of this assertion, one has only to read such a passage in the biography of Tieck as the following account of his stay in Halle in 1792: "How entirely different was the nature which met his eyes here in the green valley of the Saale, how much richer and more friendly than the flat heaths surrounding Berlin! The feeling of infinite longing seized him with redoubled force, and filled his heart with almost painful excitement as he wandered through the woods in the springtime. Once more he became intoxicated with nature; a mysterious power seemed to drive him onwards. His favourite resting-place was the Hölty bench near Giebichenstein, from which he overlooked the river and the valley. How often did he watch the sun sink beneath the clouds and the moon mirror herself with a thousand golden beams in the rippling water, or gleam dreamily through the branches! Here he lay many a summer night, drinking in nature in ample draughts." Is not this the longing for nature of the man who is an exile from it, the view of nature which has the city pavement as its background? In the description given of the evening after a tiring walk taken by Tieck and Wackenroder in the Fichtelgebirge, Tieck's conception of nature is still more distinctly associated with his personal impressions: "Wackenroder, unaccustomed to such fatigue, flung himself at once upon the bed, but Tieck was too excited. He could not sleep after all the experiences of that day. The spirits of nature awoke. He opened the window. It was the mildest, most magnificent summer night. The moon shed her soft, clear beams upon him. There it was before his eyes, the moonlit, witching night, nature with her ancient, yet ever new marvels and magic! His heart once again swelled high. To what far, unknown goal was he being drawn with irresistible force? Softly and soothingly the clear tones of a horn came floating through the night. A feeling of sadness stole over him, and yet he was intensely happy."[6] Observe that not even the horn is wanting. What is wanting, what Tieck is destitute of, is any definite aim. We have the same thing in _Sternbald_, where the wandering artist, led only by his longings and his prophetic enthusiasm, is always, as he himself confesses, forgetting his real aim. "It is not possible," says one of the characters in the book, "to forget one's aim, for this reason, that the sensible man arranges matters so that he has no aim." No one can fail to see the close connection between this particular species of feeling for nature and Romantic arbitrariness, nor how they mutually develop each other. Let us see the kind of landscapes which Franz Sternbald understands and paints, and how he understands and paints them.