Out of the darkness that envelops all else of the primeval ages, the words of the Jewish writers shine upon the minds of every successive generation as brightly and fixedly as do the stars from the mysterious heavens upon the shifting appearances of our shallow earth; and the books of the Old Testament stand, the sole human relics of eldest time, as lofty objects of admiration to the literary as they are of wonder to the religious. Of the architectural and sculptural creations of the gifted Greeks, embodied in perishable marble, but a few fragments have been saved from the consuming breath of time; but in the poet's lines, fresh and perfect, lives the spirit which produced them. As audible and musical as is to-day the murmur upon the Chian shore of the same waves to which Homer listened, is still the sound of Grecian song, imparting through our ears as deep and new a pleasure as it did to those who fought at Salamis. The conquests Cæsar made with his sword, a few centuries wiped from the face of the earth, but time has not touched and cannot touch those of his pen; and, though the language wherein the imperial chiefs of Rome gave orders to the prostrate world, has passed from the mouths of men, so long as they shall value beauty and wisdom, will the cherished lines of Tacitus and of Virgil be reproduced for their enjoyment. Of the many nations of antiquity, these three are the only ones that possessed enough of mind to have each a distinct literature. Within a much shorter space of time than elapsed between the birth of Moses and the birth of Seneca, have grown up to the maturity needed for the cultivation of letters, double the number of modern nations, separately formed out of the deposites of northern hordes, who, overrunning central and southern Europe, settled upon the mouldering strata of the Roman Empire, infusing apparently by their mixture with the conquered people, a new vigor into the inhabitants of these regions. As the states of modern Europe date their origin from the confused period of this conquest, so does the literature of each trace its birth to the same, presenting in its history a bright and elaborate picture, standing forth on a rude and dark back ground. Notable among them, for the depth and nature of its foundations, for the character of the influences which affected its progress, for the richness and fullness of its late development, and for its present power upon the general mind of the human race, is the literature of Germany. Little more than a sketch of its history is all that I can on this occasion undertake.