fresh young girlish figures adorned in their Sunday best. These are all pictures which in lithograph and copperplate engraving once flooded all Germany and enraptured the public at exhibitions. [Illustration: MEYERHEIM. THE KING OF THE SHOOTING MATCH.] But the German _genre_ picture of peasant life only became universally popular after the village novel came into vogue at the end of the thirties. Walter Scott was not only a Romanticist, but the founder of the peasant novel: he was the first to study the life and the human character of the peasantry of his native land, their rough and healthy merriment, their humorous peculiarities, and their hot-headed love of quarrelling; and he led the Romanticists from their idyllic or sombre world of dreams nearer to the reality and its poetry. A generation later Immermann created this department of literature in Germany by the Oberhof-Episode of his _Münchhausen_. "The Village Magistrate" was soon one of those typical figures which in literature became the model of a hundred others. In 1837 Jeremias Gotthelf began in his _Bauernspiegel_ those descriptions of Bernese rustic life which found general favour through their downright common sense. Berthold Auerbach, Otto Ludwig, and Gottfried Keller were then active, and Fritz Reuter lit upon a more clear-cut form for his tales in dialect. [Illustration: MEYERHEIM. THE MORNING HOUR.] The influence which these writers had upon painting was enormous. It now turned everywhere to the life of the people, and took its joy and pleasure in devoting itself to reality. And the rustic was soon a popular figure much sought after in the picture market. Yet this reliance on poetry and fiction had its disadvantage. For in Germany, also, a vogue was given to that "_genre_ painting" which, instead of starting with a simple, straightforward representation of what the artist had seen, offered an artistically correct composition of what he had invented, and indulged in a rambling display of humorous narrative and pathetic pieces.