ived. It is true that the Germans continued after the great war to
take an interest in politics: newspapers of all kinds increased
gradually, and bore the news to every house; confidential reports from
the seats of government and great commercial cities were circulated;
the half-yearly reports of fairs comprised an abstract of the
occurrences of many months; and numberless flying sheets, representing
party interests, appeared upon every weighty event, both internal and
external. The execution of the king, in England, was generally
condemned by German readers as a frightful crime, and the sympathies of
the whole nation were long with the Stuarts; but shortly before William
of Orange put to sea against James II. it was read and believed that
James had ventured to substitute a false child as heir to the throne.
No one, however, excited public opinion so strongly against himself as
Louis XIV. If ever a man was hated by the whole of Germany, he was. It
is remarkable, that whilst the manners of his court and the fashions of
his capital were everywhere imitated by the upper classes, and even the
people could not escape from their influence, his politics were from
the first rightly estimated by them. Countless were the flying sheets
which were scattered about from all sides against him. He was the
disturber of the peace, the great enemy, and in the lampoons also the
proud fool. After the Palatinate was laid in ashes, the people called
their dogs Melac and Teras; after the taking of Strasburg, a deeper cry
of woe passed through the land. Finally, when in the great War of
Succession the German armies long kept the upper hand, a feeling of
self-respect was excited, which appeared in the small literature of the
day. Had there been a German prince who could have awakened an
energetic patriotism in the weak people, this hatred would have helped
him. But a powerful outburst of patriotic feeling was hindered by the
political condition of the country; in Cologne and Bavaria, French
printing-presses were at work, and German pens wrote against their own
countrymen.

One cannot, therefore, say that the Germans were deficient altogether
in political feeling in the century from 1640 to 1740, for it burst
forth everywhere; even in works of imagination, in novels, and also in
the drama, political conversation found a place, as did aesthetic talk
in Goethe's time. But it was unfortunate that this feeling vented
itself on the political quarrels