Thus does the psychology of the romance of chivalry culminate--psychology of the patrician, or psychology of the horse, call it which you will. In its portraiture of knights hailing from all the ends of the earth, _The Magic Ring_, as Gottschall aptly remarks, confines itself to primary types of humanity and the colouring produced by the sun--we are able to distinguish a Moor from a Finn. This book was followed by many others of the same description, amongst which _Die Fahrten Thiodolfs des Isländers_ ("The Expeditions of Thiodolf the Icelander") is the best known. Thiodolf had been forecast by an earlier work of Fouqué's, the great trilogy, _Der Held des Nordens_ ("The Hero of the North"), which consists of _Sigurd the Serpent Slayer_, _Sigurd's Revenge_, and _Aslauga_. _Der Held des Nordens_ is dedicated to Fichte, and is evidently inspired by the enthusiasm which he had aroused for the olden days of Germany, and for everything characteristically national. The three lyrical-rhetorical "reading-dramas" of which it consists are written in iambics; and where the language becomes particularly impressive or impassioned, short lines are employed, the rhythm and alliteration of which are intended to recall the old Northern metre. The general impression is much the same as that produced by the texts of such of Richard Wagner's operas as deal with the legends of the North. The verse, though sometimes laboured, generally rings well, the sentiments are noble and chivalrous, the greatness portrayed is superhuman, yet puerile, the light is not the light of day. The hero's bodily strength and endurance are prodigious. He splits an anvil with one blow; he climbs the outer wall of a high tower, and, when he has looked in at the topmost casement and seen all that he wishes to see, jumps lightly down again. Intellectually he is less remarkable. Of this dramatised version of the Volsung Saga Heine writes: "_Sigurd the Serpent Slayer_ is a spirited work, in which the old Scandinavian Saga, with its giants and its witchcraft, is reflected. The hero, Sigurd, is a mighty figure. He is as strong as the Norwegian cliffs, and as wild as the sea that breaks upon them. He has the courage of a hundred lions and the wit of two asses." We may take this last remark as applying to all Fouqué's knightly figures. They are all national portraits, like those we read of in Brentano's story, _Die Mehreren Wehmüller_, those thirty-nine Hungarian types, painted by the artist before he went to Hungary, from amongst which every one afterwards selected his own portrait. In Arnim's and Brentano's writings everything is specialised and characteristic, the situations as well as the personalities; here everything is generalised. A king is always a hero or a stage-king; a queen is either dark and haughty or gentle and fair, &c., &c. The general type is there once for all; the individual features of the "national portraits" are added later.