these _Pictures from the German Past_, as in the six volumes of the
series of historical romances entitled _The Ancestors_, a patriotic
purpose was not wanting. Freytag wished to show his Germans that they
had a history to be proud of, a history whose continuity was unbroken;
the nation had been through great vicissitudes, but everything had
tended to prove that the German has an inexhaustible fund of reserve
force. Certain national traits, certain legal institutions, could be
followed back almost to the dawn of history, and it would be found
that the Germans of the first centuries of our era were not nearly so
barbarous as had been supposed.

And so with a wonderful talent for selecting typical and essential
facts and not overburdening his narrative with detail he leads us down
the ages. The hero of his introductory romance in _The Ancestors_ is a
Vandal chieftain who settles among the Thuringians at the time of the
great wandering of the nations--the hero of the last of the series is
a journalist of the nineteenth century. All are descendants of the one
family, and Freytag has a chance to develop some of his theories of
heredity. Not only can bodily aptitudes and mental peculiarities be
transmitted, but also the tendency to act in a given case much as the
ancestor would have done.

It cannot be denied that as Freytag proceeds with _The Ancestors_ the
tendency to instruct and inform becomes too marked. He had begun his
career in the world by lecturing on literature at the University of
Breslau, but had severed his connection with that institution because
he was not allowed to branch out into history. Possibly those who
opposed him were right and the two subjects are incapable of
amalgamation. Freytag in this, his last great work, revels in the
fulness of his knowledge of facts, but shows more of the thoroughness