It often happens to the young man who throws himself eagerly into the study of philosophy in search of enlightenment as to God, eternity, the aim of life, and the immortality of the soul, that, as he studies, these words lose the meaning he at first attributed to them; he obtains an answer to his questions, but an answer which teaches him that these questions must be differently put. The same thing happens in life to Wilhelm, with his longing for a preconceived ideal. Many have embraced the cloud instead of Juno; Wilhelm lets the cloud go, and presses Juno to his heart. _Wilhelm Meister_ had almost as much share as _Die Herzensergiessungen eines Klosterbruders_ in the production of Tieck's _Sternbald_, which is throughout an echo of Goethe's great work. Immediately after the appearance of _Wilhelm Meister_, Tieck sketched the plot of a very interesting story, _Der junge Tischlermeister_ ("The Young Carpenter"), which was not published until forty-one years later. The hero, an almost too accomplished and artistic young carpenter, goes through a process of development which exactly resembles Wilhelm Meister's, as far as the influence of aristocratic acquaintances, of dramatic art, and the theatre is concerned. A true Romanticist, he produces Shakespeare's comedies in a private theatre which is an exact imitation of the theatres of Shakespeare's day, and is the lover both on the stage and behind the scenes. This work was set aside in favour of _Sternbald_. The modern tradesman had to give way to the artist of the Romantic period of Albert Dürer. _Sternbald_ is the apotheosis of "soul," of pure soul, without admixture of reason and lucidity. Hence the sum and substance of the book is desire, pining desire; hence we are told of such an event as the Reformation, that, instead of generating a divine fulness of religion, it only generated the emptiness of reason, in which all hearts languish; hence the mild sensuality of Goethe's romance becomes brutal desire of the William Lovell type. The hero, when he looks within himself, sees, like Lovell, "a fathomless whirlpool, a rushing, deafening enigma." In the second edition Tieck thought it advisable to cut out some of the too numerous wanton bathing and drinking scenes amidst which the restless longing of the hero runs riot.