High Altar at Salzburg. By Adolph von Menzel Bathing Boys. By Adolph von Menzel Frau von Schleinitz "At Home." By Adolph von Menzel Supper at a Court Ball. By Adolph von Menzel EDITOR'S NOTE This volume, containing representative works by two of the foremost realists of midcentury German literature, Freytag and Fontane, brings, as an artistic parallel, selections from the work of the greatest realist of midcentury German painting: Adolph von Menzel. KUNO FRANCKE. THE LIFE OF GUSTAV FREYTAG By ERNEST F. HENDERSON, PH.D., L.H.D. Author of _A History of Germany in the Middle Ages; A Short History of Germany, etc._ It is difficult to assign to Gustav Freytag his exact niche in the hall of fame, because of his many-sidedness. He wrote one novel of which the statement has been made by an eminent French critic that no book in the German language, with the exception of the Bible, has enjoyed in its day so wide a circulation; he wrote one comedy which for years was more frequently played than any other on the German stage; he wrote a series of historical sketches--_Pictures of the German Past_ he calls them--which hold a unique place in German literature, being as charming in style as they are sound in scholarship. Add to these a work on the principles of dramatic criticism that is referred to with respect by the very latest writers on the subject, an important biography, a second very successful novel, and a series of six historical romances that vary in interest, indeed, but that are a noble monument to his own nation and that, alone, would have made him famous. As a novelist Freytag is often compared with Charles Dickens, largely on account of the humor that so frequently breaks forth from his pages. It is a different kind of humor, not so obstreperous, not so exaggerated, but it helps to lighten the whole in much the same way. One moment it is an incongruous simile, at another a bit of sly satire; now infinitely small things are spoken of as though they were great, and again we have the reverse.