... Detestation of the aristocracy is prominent in all Spielhagen's romances. The aristocracy in general--though there are several most favorable exceptions--is shown in them to be rotten and out of date. In some of his romances, a very pandemonium of "Junker" arrogance, frivolity, and debauchery--particularly of the military "Junker"--is painted, perhaps in colors somewhat too dark. In the people, including the _Bürger_ class, healthy virtues and high intelligence are shown to dwell almost as prerogatives. Still, as regards the citizen classes, he has guarded himself against the reproach of one-sidedness, for several of his low-born characters are innately weak and vicious, and amongst his political democrats he has sketched popularity-hunting demagogues, actuated likewise by motives entirely base and selfish. Amongst the distinguished and good personages our author introduces, young physicians, and other students of science and nature occupy the foremost places. They are some of them evidently painted after life; and in his great appreciation of physical sciences, and the men who devote to them their energies, he does but give expression to sentiments now-a-days prevailing in Germany. And in his low estimate of the nobility, he forms no exception to modern writers of fiction in Germany. Indeed, Immermann, in his village tales, and even Goethe, in "Wilhelm Meister" and the "Wanderjahre," display anti-aristocratic sympathies. To these great writers of fiction the names of Gutzkow, Auerbach, Freitag, Schloenbach, and many others may be added. One chief cause of the antipathy of the citizen classes in Germany to the nobility we have already mentioned in speaking of "Problematical Natures." Another cause may be found in the circumstance that the nobility, since 1848, has in general used whatever political influence it possesses in a reactionary, ultraconservative spirit. As a consequence, however, of the strict line of demarcation, based on pedigree, between nobles and the citizen classes in Germany, the vulgar conceit and mean struggles for social position, so well known in this country, and so fertile a theme with our satirical novelists, are but seldom experienced in that country. The characters in Spielhagen's romances most resembling our snobs are worldly-minded, sycophantic clergymen and the low-born _nouveaux riches_.... Although in some respects this popular German romance-writer displays subjective biases; yet, on the whole, he is objective, and most decidedly reflects opinions now prevalent in his country. In fact, one of his critics avers, that "a psychological historian of the future may turn to his works for valuable data on many aspects of social life in the present times." As a delineator of individual characters--many of them types of different classes of society; as a painter of various situations, scenic and social, he appears to us unequalled by any other modern German writer of fiction.