In every library of any importance one is sure to find a small, beautifully printed and bound book, published in 1797, entitled _Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders_ ("Heart Outpourings of an Art-Loving Friar"). The author's name is not given. As vignette there is a head of Raphael, who, with the great eyes, full lips, and slender neck given him in this portrait, looks like some highly intellectual Christian devotee of Venus, far advanced in consumption. The inscription below the picture is not simply Raphael, but "the divine Raphael," i.e. the Raphael of the Romanticists. This dainty little book is, as it were, the primary cell of the whole Romantic structure; round it the later productions group themselves. Though not the offspring of a vigorous creative power, its germinative force proved wonderfully great. It is a book which contains nothing but ivy-like, twining ideas, nothing but passive impressions; but the wax upon which these impressions are stamped is so pure that the impressions are firm and clear. The title does not mislead; the author pours out his heart in a stream of fervent and religious enthusiasm for art, giving expression to a few simple ideas in a simple, untheoretical manner. The book is not the product of a great or epoch-making mind; but it has one great virtue, it is original. To the Friar the only allowable attitude towards art is that of devotion; great artists are in his eyes blessed, holy saints. His admiration for them is that of an adoring child. More than once in the course of the book Tieck has collaborated with Wackenroder; but the simple autobiography of the young musician, Joseph Berglinger, is entirely Wackenroder's work. The delicate refinement of Berglinger's character reminds us of Joseph Delorme, the fictitious personage in whom the young, Romantic, Sainte-Beuve described himself. Berglinger is Wackenroder. Like Wackenroder he opposes the determination of his father that he is not to become an artist, and simultaneously carries on an even harder struggle with himself in the matter of his position towards art. What troubles him is a fear, which curiously enough meets young Romanticism here on the very threshold, like the shadow of its fate, the fear of being incapacitated for real life by too entire absorption in art. Rückert has given masterly expression to the idea in the following lines:-- "Die Kinder, lieber Sohn, der Gaukelschwertverschlucker In Madras üben sich nicht an Confekt und Zucker, Von Bambus lernen sie die Spitzen zu verschlingen, Um wachsend in der Kunst es his zum Schwert zu bringen. Willst Du als Mann das Schwert der Wissenschaft verdaun, Musst Du als Jüngling nicht Kunstzuckerbrödchen kaun."[2]