The age in which they were written was, as we have seen, the great age of German national feeling. The intense sincerity and manliness of a Körner or an Arndt filled the whole nation with generous sentiments, contrasting with the delicate refinement of the French culture on the one hand, and the morbid introspection of the German romanticists on the other. Patriotic and military songs abounded. It was also the age of the formation of the male singing-societies which have since become such a typical feature of German life, and composers wrote freely for the four-part male chorus, or for the male solo voice. It was also the age of the awakening interest in folk-literature, and German history or legend furnished many a tale for men to sing around the festive board, or for nurses to sing to the children at night. Finally, it was the age of republican sentiment in Germany, the age when an idealistic and naïve nation was still expecting the reigning house to give constitutional government once the people had freed themselves from French rule. It was a Germany very different from the Germany we have seen since the Franco-Prussian war--a Germany that was less practical, less commercial, less ambitious, but infinitely more simple and lyric. Hence the output of fine songs was enormous. Never was the German genius more spontaneous; never was it more truly German. The songs of the time, which repose by the thousands in old _Kommersbücher_, and have sifted by scores into modern song collections, are the very breath of fresh air and generous spirits. At the period of Schubert’s early activity Weber was the great national composer of the Germans. We have seen elsewhere[22] how German national sentiment centred around his music when the German kings turned traitor and sought to force the people back into an age of eighteenth-century reactionism. His opera, _Der Freischütz_, was a sort of Marseillaise in time of exile for the lovers of German liberty and union. But earlier than this Weber had made himself the chief national musical figure in Germany. His settings of Körner’s fiery _Leyer und Schwert_ songs had raised him from a hardworking kapellmeister into a household name. The newly formed singing societies took up the songs, and at least one, the ‘Sword Song,’ has lived to this day. But in addition to these purely national and military songs, Weber wrote a great number of others, all in simple form and in the direct folk-spirit which he mastered as no other composer mastered it before or since. Many of them are sung still. But the great majority have by this time become quite outdated. We need only refer to one--the charming lullaby _Schlaf, Herzenssöhnchen, mein Liebling bist du_.