glance, and to hold it fast in all its palpitating movement, was reserved for men of later date. [Illustration: _Braun, Munich._ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME. HANS MAKART.] [Illustration: _Hanfstaengl._ ADOLF OBERLÄNDER.] Two of the greatest humorists of the world in illustrative art, _Wilhelm Busch_ and _Adolf Oberländer_, stand at the head of those who ushered in the flourishing period of German caricature. They are masters, and take in with their glance the entire social world of our time, and in their brilliant prints they have made a history of civilisation for the epoch which will be more vivid and instructive for posterity than the most voluminous works of the greatest historians. Their heads are known by Lenbach's pictures. One has an exceptionally clever, expressive countenance--a thorough painter's head. The humorist may be recognised by the curious narrowing of one eye, the well-known eye of the humorist that sees everything, proves everything, and holds fast every absurdity in the gestures, every eccentricity in the bearing of his neighbour. That is Wilhelm Busch. [Illustration: _Braun, Munich._ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME. GENELLI.] [Illustration: _Braun, Munich._ OBERLÄNDER. VARIATIONS ON THE KISSING THEME. ALMA TADEMA.] In the large orbs of the other--orbs which seem to grow strangely wide by long gazing as at some fixed object--there is no smile of deliberate mischief, and it is not easy to associate the name of Oberländer with this Saturnian round face, with its curiously timid glance. One is reminded of the definition of humour as "smiling amid tears." Even in those days when he came every year to Munich and painted in Lenbach's studio, Busch was a shy and moody man, who thawed only in the narrowest circle of his friends: now he has buried himself in a market-town in the province of Hanover, in Wiedensahl, which, according to Ritter's _Gazetteer_, numbers eight hundred and twenty-eight inhabitants. He lives in the house of his brother-in-law, the clergyman of the parish, and gives himself up to the culture of bees. His laughter has fallen silent, and it is only a journal on bees that now receives contributions from his hand. But what works this hermit of Wiedensahl produced in the days when he migrated from Düsseldorf and Antwerp to Munich, and began in 1859 his series of sketches for _Fliegende Blätter_! The first were stiff and clumsy, the text in prose and not particularly witty. But the earliest work with a versified text, _Der Bauer und der Windmüller_, contains in the germ all the qualities which later found such brilliant expression in _Max und Moritz_, in _Der Heilige Antonius_, _Die Fromme Helene_, and _Die Erlebnisse Knopps,_ _des Junggesellen_, and made Busch's works an inexhaustible fountain of mirth and enjoyment.