appear to have
studied with much assiduity and advantage, and to have pursued no other
courses than the paths of wisdom.

_Sandt_.--Do you approve of the pursuit?

_Kotzebue_.--Who does not?

_Sandt_.--None, if you will consent that they direct the chase, bag the
game, inebriate some of the sportsmen, and leave the rest behind in the
slough. May I ask you another question?

_Kotzebue_.--Certainly.

_Sandt_.--Where lie the paths of wisdom? I did not expect, my dear sir
to throw you back upon your chair. I hope it was no rudeness to seek
information from you?

_Kotzebue_.--The paths of wisdom, young man, are those which lead us to
truth and happiness.

_Sandt_.--If they lead us away from fortune, from employments, from
civil and political utility; if they cast us where the powerful
persecute, where the rich trample us down, and where the poorer (at
seeing it) despise us, rejecting our counsel and spurning our
consolation, what valuable truth do they enable us to discover, or what
rational happiness to expect? To say that wisdom leads to truth, is only
to say that wisdom leads to wisdom; for such is truth. Nonsense is
better than falsehood; and we come to that.

_Kotzebue_.--How?

_Sandt_.--No falsehood is more palpable than that wisdom leads to
happiness--I mean in this world; in another, we may well indeed believe
that the words are constructed of very different materials. But here we
are, standing on a barren molehill that crumbles and sinks under our
tread; here we are, and show me from hence, Von Kotzebue, a discoverer
who has not suffered for his discovery, whether it be of a world or of a
truth--whether a Columbus or a Galileo. Let us come down lower: Show me
a man who has detected the injustice of a law, the absurdity of a tenet,
the malversation of a minister, or the impiety of a priest, and who has
not been stoned, or hanged, or burnt, or imprisoned, or exiled, or
reduced to poverty. The chain of Prometheus is hanging yet upon his
rock, and weaker limbs writhe daily in its rusty links. Who then, unless
for others, would be a darer of wisdom? And yet, how full of it is even
the inanimate world? We may gather it out of stones and straws. Much
lies within the reach of all: little has been collected by the wisest of
the wise. O slaves to passion! O minions to power! ye carry your own
scourges about you; ye endure their tortures daily; yet ye crouch for
more. Ye believe that God beholds you; ye know that h