the want of heroism in
the Eighteenth Century. Wonder rather at the degree of heroism it had;
wonder how many souls there still are to be met with in it of some
effective capability, though dieting in that way,--nothing else to be
had in the shops about. Carterets, Belleisles, Friedrichs, Voltaires;
Chathams, Franklins, Choiseuls: there is an effective stroke of work,
a fine fire of heroic pride, in this man and the other; not yet
extinguished by spiritual famine or slow-poison; so robust is Nature the
mighty Mother!--

"But in general, that sad Gospel, 'Souls extinct, Stomachs well alive!'
is the credible one, not articulately preached, but practically believed
by the abject generations, and acted on as it never was before. What
immense sensualities there were, is known; and also (as some small
offset, though that has not yet begun in 1740) what immense quantities
of Physical Labor and contrivance were got out of mankind, in that
Epoch and down to this day. As if, having lost its Heaven, it had struck
desperately down into the Earth; as if it were a BEAVER-kind, and not a
mankind any more. We had once a Barbaossa; and a world all grandly true.
But from that to Karl VI., and HIS Holy Romish Reich in such a state of
'Holiness'--!" I here cut short my abstruse Friend.

Readers are impatient to have done with these miscellaneous preludings,
and to be once definitely under way, such a Journey lying ahead. Yes,
readers; a Journey indeed! And, at this point, permit me to warn
you that, where the ground, where Dryasdust and the Destinies, yield
anything humanly illustrative of Friedrich and his Work, one will have
to linger, and carefully gather it, even as here. Large tracts occur,
bestrewn with mere pedantisms, diplomatic cobwebberies, learned
marine-stores, and inhuman matter, over which we shall have to skip
empty-handed: this also was among the sad conditions of our Enterprise,
that it has to go now too slow and again too fast; not in proportion to
natural importance of objects, but to several inferior considerations
withal. So busy has perverse Destiny been on it; perverse Destiny,
edacious Chance;--and the Dryasdusts, too, and Nightmares, in Prussia as
elsewhere, we know how strong they are!

Friedrich's character in old age has doubtless its curious affinities,
its disguised identities, with these prognostic features and indications
of his youth: and to our readers,--if we do ever get them to the goal,
of seeing Fr