Richardson's first novel was Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. Clarissa Harlowe and Sir Charles Grandison soon followed. Each of these books, translated into German, passed through many editions. French renderings of Richardson's novels also flooded German book stores. This author's books struck both new and old chords in the heart of German womanhood. They dealt with heroines who moved in the humbler walks of life. Before Richardson and Rousseau wrote, the memoirs of highborn dames may be searched in vain for a single expression of sisterly feeling toward women in a lower rank of society than their own. Compassion and almsgiving were not lacking, but the "put yourself in her place" feeling seems never previously to have been awakened. Richardson emphasized chastity a virtue which the early eighteenth century world most sadly lacked. He made the hearthstone once more an altar. Out of the sentimentalism of the Locke-Richardson-Rousseau school was evolved a type of womanhood which, during the second half of the eighteenth century, made the world purer and better. CHAPTER X THROUGH STORM AND STRESS TO CLASSICISM AND HUMANISM About the middle of the eighteenth century, after long and weary years of unfruitful struggle, disappointment and desolation, there begins faintly to glimmer, and then rapidly to shine in broad illumination, a stupendous cultural movement the impelling force of which was the humanizing thought which sprang from the fertile brains of great literary and philosophical thinkers; preeminent among whom were Lessing, the greatest critical genius of the German nation, and Kant, Germany's greatest philosopher. Enlightenment mental liberation from the shackles of tradition and orthodoxy became the watch-word of the time. Through the dominating personality of Frederick the Great (1740-1786), even despotism was made to feel this influence, the scope of which was still further extended, though less successfully, by the reforms of Joseph II. (1765-1790), Maria Theresa's son. The message sounded from beyond the seas in the American Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution spread through the hearts of the nations of Europe, proclaiming the gospel of human rights and equality before God and the law. The French Revolution was its most direct fruit. In Germany, the liberation of thought, of science and art, the emancipation of man and woman alike, had to precede political freedom which, in its full development, could be evolved only by blood and iron.