In the discussion of the genesis of the characters in Lessing's ‘Nathan’ there are four elements to be considered, of which we must form a correct estimate before we can obtain a clear conception of the way in which these characters received their present form. First in importance is the plot, or action, of the drama. When Lessing first conceived the idea of making the story of the three rings in Boccaccio the central scene of a drama, he must have outlined in connection with the main features of its plot the leading characters in the play; and he must have given his conceptions of these characters such personal characteristics that the action would logically proceed from them. To this factor, then, we may ascribe the creation of most of the characters, and the salient and important personal traits of all. The first rough draught of the play, (the date of which is unknown but which must have been jotted down some years before it was worked up into the drama as it now is),∗ shows in the main what is to be attributed to the influence of this element. So much for the present, as this point will be taken up again later at greater length.

Civilization in the United States has been diffused from two centres—New England and Virginia. In the former the starting-point was the town-meeting; in the latter, the planter's mansion. As has been well said, the germ of the whole difference between them lay in their different notions concerning the value of vicinity among the units of society. From the town-meetings of New England have come schools, manufactures and a literature; from the planters’ mansions of the Old Dominion generals, statesmen and liberty. One of the most philosophic political judgments of recent times, says Nichol—the anti-Southern historian of American literature, admits that “the honour of maintaining self-government, and making it possible for the Federation to dominate over the continent cannot be wrested from the Southern States.” The spirit of liberty, Bancroft tells us, had planted itself deep among the Virginians and elsewhere he adds, “an instinctive aversion to too much government has always been a trait of Southern character.”