be
fully felt and understood within itself. It should not only be
completely independent of any formal introduction or addition, but
should even be able to dispense with the aid of those digressions and
reflexions and elaborate descriptions, which are in fact only prefaces
out of their place, or notes taken up into the text, and which
sometimes disfigure even the best of our modern novels, and dispel the
illusion created by the poet's genius, by taking us behind his magic
lantern and shewing us the machinery of his art. This will apply in
most cases to translations of such works. It may however sometimes
happen, that a tale perfectly intelligible and luminous in the circle
of readers for which it was designed may to a different public seem
obscure, or give occasion for misapprehension. Such is most frequently
the case with those which belong most exclusively to the age and
country of the writer, when he does not merely aim at exhibiting human
nature clothed in the existing forms of society, but takes for his
immediate theme the spirit and tendency of the times in which he lives,
the principles and opinions, the tastes and the pursuits of his
generation. In works of this nature many things will be taken for
granted, many slightly alluded to, with which a foreigner is
imperfectly, if at all, acquainted; the whole representation may wear a
partial aspect, which, though in the society where it originated it may
be sure of finding sufficient correctives, may elsewhere perplex and
mislead.

The two little works here presented to the public fall within this
exception to the general remark, and the Translator felt that he should
not be doing them full justice, if he were not to preface them with a
few words of introduction. Their beauty it is true can hardly fail to
strike even those who are least conversant with the state of things out
of which they arose, and of which they exhibit several interesting
sides, but still without some additional explanations every part might
not be sufficiently clear to the English reader, and the whole might
appear to him in a false light, and perhaps lose its highest interest
and meaning.

Little more than half a century has passed, since Germany began to
rouse herself from the state of lethargy which followed the convulsive
struggles produced by the Reformation. She awoke, and found herself
shorn of her strength, greatness and glory. The empire, reduced to the
shadow of an august name, was h