Yet more clearly, although similarly transposed into a sentimental key, is the mood of the time just previous to 1848, reflected in the works of _Carl Hübner_ of Düsseldorf. Ernest Wilkomm in the beginning of the forties had represented in his sensational _genre_ pictures, particularly in the "White Slaves," the contrast between afflicted serfs and cruel landlords, between rich manufacturers and famishing artisans; Robert Prutz had written his _Engelchen_, in which he had announced the ruin of independent handicraft by the modern industrial system. Soon afterwards the famine among the Silesian weavers, the intelligence of which in 1844 flew through all Germany, set numbers of people reflecting on the social question. Freiligrath made it the subject of his verses, _Aus dem Schlesischen Gebirge_, the song of the poor weaver's child who calls on Rübezahl--one of his most popular poems. And yet more decisively does the social and revolutionary temper of the age find an echo in Heine's _Webern_, composed in 1844. Even Geibel was impelled to his poem _Mene Tekel_ by the spread of the news, though it stands in curious opposition to his manner of writing elsewhere. Carl Hübner therefore was acting very seasonably when he likewise treated the distress of the Silesian weavers in his first picture of 1845. Hübner knew the life of the poor and the heavy-laden; his feelings were with them, and he expressed what he felt. This gives him a position above and apart from the rest in the insipidly smiling school of Düsseldorf, and sets his name at the beginning of a new chapter in the history of German _genre_ painting. His next picture, "The Game Laws," sprang from an occasion which was quite as historical: a gamekeeper had shot a poacher. In 1846 followed "The Emigrants," "The Execution for Rent" in 1847, and in 1848 "Benevolence in the Cottage of the Poor." These were works in which he continued to complain of the misery of the working classes, and the contrast between ostentatious wealth and helpless wretchedness, and to preach the crusade for liberty and human rights. In opposition to the usual idyllic representations, he spoke openly for the first time of the material weight oppressing large classes of men. Undoubtedly, however, the artistic powers of the painter corresponded but little to the good intentions of the philanthropist. [Illustration: TASSAERT. THE SUICIDE.] In 1853 even the historical painter Piloty entered this path in one of his earliest pictures, "The Nurse": the picture represents a peasant girl in service as a nurse in the town, with her charge on her arm, entering the dirty house of an old woman with whom she is boarding her own child. The rich child, already dressed out like a little lady, is exuberant in health, whilst her own is languishing in a dark and cold room without food or warm clothing.