nd I abide by this decision, your majesty," zealously cried Herzberg.
"The German language is euphonious, and prolific in ideas, and it
is well capable of rivalling in brevity and clearness those of the
ancients."

"That you have already asserted, and I have contested it, and again I
contest it to-day. Do not trouble me with your German language. It
will only deserve notice when great poets, distinguished orators, and
admirable historians, have given it their attention and corrected it,
freeing it from such disgusting and effeminate phrases as now disfigure
it, and cause one to use a mass of words to express a few ideas. At
present it is only an accumulation of different dialects, which every
division of the German empire thinks to speak the best, and of which
twenty thousand can scarcely understand what the other twenty thousand
are saying!" [Footnote: The king's own words.--See "Posthumous Works,"
vol. xv.]

"Sire," cried Herzberg, with vehemence, "should a German king thus
speak of his native tongue, at the same time that he takes the field
to vindicate the honor of Germany, and submits to all the miseries and
hardships of war? Your majesty cannot be in earnest, to despise our
beautiful language."

"I do not despise it; I only say that it must be reformed, and shorn of
its excrescences. Until then we must use the French, which is to-day the
language of the world, and in which one can render all the master-works
of the Greeks and the Latins, with the same versatility, delicacy, and
subtlety, as the original. You pretend that one can well read Tacitus
in a German translation, but I do not think the language capable of
rendering the Latin authors with the same brevity as the French."

"Sire, to my joy, I can give you proof to the contrary. A Berlin savant,
Conrector Moritz, at my request, has translated a few chapters of
the fourteenth book of the 'Annals of Tacitus,' word for word,
most faithfully into German. He has written it in two columns, the
translation at the side of the original. I have taken the liberty to
bring this work with me and you will see how exactly, and with what
brevity, Latin authors can be rendered into German, and that there are
young learned men who have seized the spirit of our language and know
how to use it with grace and skill."

"Indeed, give it to me," cried the king, zealously. "I am truly curious
to admire the German linguist's work who has so boldly undertaken to
translate Tacitus