The first startling feature, then, in all the characters in these tales is their terrible reality. In all the circumstances of the wild and wonderful, the supernatural working visibly, and interfering in the direction and control for good and evil of the affairs of the world; instead of finding the persons of the same fantastic character, such as we might naturally expect, as harmonising better with the elements in which they work; instead of saints with power of working miracles, or the ideal heroes of the age of chivalry,--we have the very men and women which we ourselves are, and such as we see every day around us. Excepting, perhaps, Goethe, no one knew his own age better than Tieck: he is a modern poet in every sense of the word; and that is why we claim so high a place for him. The true poet of any time is he who can make that time transparent--who can let his readers in behind the curtain of their own souls and that of the society in which they live, and shew them what they are all doing, hoping, fearing--clear up their cloudy perceptions, and say for them what they would say for themselves if they could. This is exactly what Tieck does. His Emilius's, Egberts, Ludwigs,--what are they all, but the very men of whom every day he walked into the street he saw thousands? No matter what the conditions be under which he pictures them working, his men are real men, not fantastic; and that is all we have any right to require. Yet I may say something about these marvellous conditions in which they appear; for perhaps even they are not so unreal as they seem. It is only because we are used to them that this world and the beings that inhabit it do not seem wonderful. There is nothing in the phenomena which surround us abstractedly more reasonable than any other set might be which worked by fixed rules. As a matter of fact we experience one class, but that is all. It is not that one is wonderful and the other simple, as people seem to assume. This world we live in is, indeed, teeming with wonders. The poet has but to hold a magnifying-glass before it, and forthwith a thousand new forms of beauty start out before our eyes; and what before seemed most beautiful has become a monster. There are, indeed, poets who can produce the highest effect without any such magnifying; and the world as mirrored in their minds appears transfigured, its form and proportions continuing all the same. Yet the number of such spirits as have appeared on this planet of ours we may count upon our fingers, and of those who are fit to read and understand them the ratio is the same. Even Shakspere does not at times disdain the aid of the supernatural; and the idea of nature, as Tieck offers it, even its wildest and most fantastic form, is far deeper and nearer the truth than is the dull, common-place, lifeless thing which most men seem to regard it as. The question, however, is one which he will best qualify people to answer for themselves.