which reflected contemporary culture to a unique degree, it is very
marked; the more so since it appeared when Germany lay crushed by the
Thirty Years' War.

When the hero as a boy was driven from his village home and fled into
the forest, he came upon a hermit who took care of him, and waking at
midnight, he heard the old man sing:

Come, nightingale, comfort of the night,
Let your voice rise in a song of joy, come praise the Creator,
While other birds are sound asleep and cannot sing!...
The stars are shining in the sky in honour of God....
My dearest little bird, we will not be the laziest of all
And lie asleep; we will beguile the time with praise
Till dawn refreshes the desolate woods.

_Simplicissimus_ goes on: 'During this song, methinks, it was as if
nightingale, owl, and echo had combined in song, and if ever I had
been able to hear the morning star, or to try to imitate the melody
on my bagpipe, I should have slipt away out of the hut to join in the
melody, so beautiful it seemed; but I was asleep.'

What was the general feeling for Nature in other countries during the
latter half of the seventeenth century? In Italy and Spain it had
assumed a form partly bucolic and idyllic, partly theosophically
mystical; Shakespeare's plays had brought sympathy to maturity in
England; the Netherlands had given birth to landscape painting, and
France had the splendid poetic landscapes of Claude Lorraine. But the
idealism thus reached soon degenerated into mannerism and
artificiality, the hatching of empty effect.