He also gained reputation as an author by skillfully arranged and carefully elaborated dramatic compositions--the weak point in the modern German school.
The enthusiastic reception of his novel can not, however, be attributed to these earlier labors, nor to the personal influence of its author.
The favor of the public has certainly been obtained in great measure by the rare intrinsic merit of the composition, in which we find aptly chosen and melodious language, thoroughly artistic conception, life-like portraiture, and highly cultivated literary taste.

We see before us a national and classic writer, not one of those mere journalists who count nowadays in Germany for men of letters.
The story, very unpretending in its opening, soon expands and becomes more exciting, always increasing in significance as it proceeds.

The pattern of the web is soon disclosed after the various threads have been arranged upon the loom; and yet the reader is occasionally surprised, now by the appearance on the stage of a clever Americanized German, now by the unexpected introduction of threatening complications, and even of important political events.

Though confined within a seemingly narrow circle, every incident, and especially the Polish struggle, is depicted grandly and to the life.

In all this the author proves himself to be a perfect artist and a true poet, not only in the treatment of separate events, but in the far more rare and higher art of leading his conception to a satisfactory development and _denouement_.