ette, but new ideas and new
feelings came into circulation. Beautiful tender hearts, and the
dignity of man were spoken of. Soon, also, distinguished personages
among the nobility caught the infection, even Sovereigns; the Duchess
of Weimar went with a certain Wieland in a carrier's cart; two
_Reichsgrafen_ von Stolborg were not disinclined to bend the knee to
one Klopstock, and embraced by moonlight the citizen students.

Among the _bel-esprits_ of the citizens who now gained an influence,
none was more adapted to reconcile the nobles to the new times than
Gellert. He was not genial: he knew well what was due to every one, and
he gave every one his proper place; he had a refined, modest
disposition, but was rather a pessimist; he was very respectable, and
had a mild and benevolent demeanour towards both ladies and gentlemen.
Great was the influence that he exercised over the country nobles of
Upper Saxony, Thuringia, and Lower Germany. The culture of the new time
soon got a footing in these families. The ladies especially opened
their hearts to the new feeling for literature, and many of them became
proud of being patronesses of the beautiful art of poetry, whilst the
gentlemen still looked distrustfully on the new state of things. As in
Germany, poetry had the wonderful effect of bringing the nobility into
unprecedented union with the citizen class, so at the same time in
Austria, music had for a time a similar effect.

But there were greater results than the mere poetical emotions with
which Kalb, Stein, and the loveable Lengfelds received the German
poets. Science now began to speak more earnestly and more powerfully.
What she commended or condemned became, as if by magic, among hundreds
of thousands, the law of life or the object of aversion. Not many years
after 1750, in a wide circle of highly cultivated minds, which included
the most vigorous of the burgher class, together with the noblest
spirits among the nobility, the privileges which gave the nobles a
position among the people, were considered as obsolete; and the State
ordinances which preserved them were regarded with coldness and
contempt.

Again there came a stern period; the noble generals of the Prussian
army could not maintain the State edifice of the old Hohenzollerns;
they were the first to give up the State of Frederick the Great, and
pusillanimously to surrender the Prussian fortresses to a foreign
enemy. One of the necessary conditions for the