f afflicted mankind at
present; and sure enough it will be long to settle.

On one point we can answer: Only what of the Past was TRUE will come
back to us. That is the one ASBESTOS which survives all fire, and comes
out purified; that is still ours, blessed be Heaven, and only that. By
the law of Nature nothing more than that; and also, by the same
law, nothing less than that. Let Art, struggle how it may, for or
against,--as foolish Art is seen extensively doing in our time,--there
is where the limits of it will be. In which point of view, may not
Friedrich, if he was a true man and King, justly excite some curiosity
again; nay some quite peculiar curiosity, as the lost Crowned Reality
there was antecedent to that general outbreak and abolition? To many
it appears certain there are to be no Kings of any sort, no Government
more; less and less need of them henceforth, New Era having come.
Which is a very wonderful notion; important if true; perhaps still more
important, just at present, if untrue! My hopes of presenting, in this
Last of the Kings, an exemplar to my contemporaries, I confess, are not
high.

On the whole, it is evident the difficulties to a History of Friedrich
are great and many: and the sad certainty is at last forced upon me that
no good Book can, at this time, especially in this country, be written
on the subject. Wherefore let the reader put up with an indifferent
or bad one; he little knows how much worse it could easily have
been!--Alas, the Ideal of history, as my friend Sauerteig knows, is very
high; and it is not one serious man, but many successions of such, and
whole serious generations of such, that can ever again build up History
towards its old dignity. We must renounce ideals. We must sadly take up
with the mournfulest barren realities;--dismal continents of Brandenburg
sand, as in this instance; mere tumbled mountains of marine-stores,
without so much as an Index to them!

Has the reader heard of Sauerteig's last batch of _ Springwurzeln, _ a
rather curious valedictory Piece? "All History is an imprisoned Epic,
nay an imprisoned Psalm and Prophecy," says Sauerteig there. I wish,
from my soul, he had DISimprisoned it in this instance! But he
only says, in magniloquent language, how grand it would be if
disimprisoned;--and hurls out, accidentally striking on this subject,
the following rough sentences, suggestive though unpractical, with which
I shall conclude:--

"Schiller, it appear