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nations of a powerful imagination, as that of resemblance. In the case of German fiction, in particular, the splendid is frequently introduced in order to heighten and support the effect of the gloomy; and thus the two most striking, and apparently inconsistent characteristics of Teutonic imagination, appear to be only different manifestations of the same essential principles of genius. As illustrations of that genius in its early developement, the Traditional Tales of Germany possess an interest sufficient to justify the high degree of attention which they have excited of late among the antiquarians and reading population of that country; and, for similar reasons, it seems not inappropriate to introduce into the present collection some specimens of these relics of an ancient and a simple race. The reader, it is hoped, if he cannot feel that sympathy in their perusal, on which the interest of modern fiction depends, will at least find in them some of those peculiarities, which, without the aid of sympathetic interest, have attracted so much regard, even from refined and cultivated tastes, to “all that world of wonder which illuminated ancient Bagdad, or grew up like a garden of enchantment on the banks of the Tigris.”