aced before the visitors, and on high holidays chocolate makes its
appearance. Everything is managed by government officials, and much is
required of the country gentleman, who has to pay taxes without being
consulted: he is a person of more consideration than the citizen, but
is now far removed from the prince. The great noble looks with
contempt on him, and it is well for him if he does not feel the
weight of his stick: the officials of the capital interfere with his
farming; they order him to dig a drain, to build a mill, even to plant
mulberry-trees, and send him the eggs of silkworms, insisting upon his
rearing them. It is a weary time; the third, or Seven years', war is
raging between the king and emperor; the squire is walking about his
room, wringing his hands and weeping. How is it that this hard man has
so completely lost his composure? The letter on the table has informed
him that his son, an officer in the king's army, has come unscathed out
of the fight at Cunnersdorf; why then does he weep and wring his hands?
His King is in distress; the state to which he belongs is in danger of
destruction, and it is for this that he grieves. He is greater, richer,
and better than any of his ancestors, for he has a fatherland; the
training of his generation is rough, manners coarse, and government
despotic; his knowledge of the world is not greater than that of a
subordinate official of the present day, but this feeling within him,
either in life or death, makes him a man.

Life in every period of the German past was much rougher than now; but
it is not the hardships of individuals which make the old time appear
so strange to us, it is that the whole mode of life, in every thought
and feeling, is so essentially different. The reason of this difference
is, that at all periods of the past the mind of the individual was less
free and more subordinate to the spirit of the nation; we may see this
especially in the middle ages, but it may still be observed in the last
century.

There was no such thing as public opinion. The individual submitted his
conscience to the approbation of those with whom he lived; he committed
to them his honour, interests, and safety, and only felt that he
existed as a member of the society, thus rendering the necessity of
union more urgent. How strikingly this tendency of the old times was
exemplified in the clubs of Hanseatic stations! The constraint within
their closed walls was almost monkish. E