as judged
so excellent, that they have preserved it in print. Us it by no means
strikes by its Demosthenic or other qualities: meanwhile we listen to
it with the closest attention; hoping, in our great ignorance, to gather
from it some glimmerings of instruction as to the affairs, humors,
disposition and general outlook and condition of Landshut, and Silesia
in that juncture;--and though a good deal disappointed, have made an
Abstract of it in the English language, which perhaps the reader too, in
his great ignorance, will accept, in defect of better. Scene is Landshut
among the Giant Mountains on the Bohemian Border of Silesia: an old
stone Town, where there is from of old a busy trade in thread and linen;
Town consisting, as is common there, of various narrow winding
streets comparable to spider-legs, and of a roomy central Market-place
comparable to the body of the spider; wide irregular Market-place with
the wooden spouts (dry for the moment) all projecting round it. Time,
4th December, 1741 (doubtless in the forenoon); unusual crowd of
population simmering about the Market-place, and full audience of
the better sort gravely attentive in the interior of the Rathhaus;
Burgermeister Spener LOQUITUR [_Helden-Geschichte,_ ii. 416.] (liable to
abridgment here and there, on warning given):--

"I enter, then, in the name of the Most Holy Trinity, upon an Office, to
which Divine Providence has appointed, and the gracious and potent hand
of a great King has raised me. Great as is the dignity [giddy height of
Mayoralty in Landshut], though undeserved, which the Ever-Merciful has
thus conferred upon me, equally great and much greater is the burden
connected therewith. I confess"--He confesses, in high-stalking earnest
wooden language very foreign to us in every way: (1.) That his shoulders
are too weak; but that he trusts in God. For (2.) it is God's doing; and
He that has called Spener, will give Spener strength, the essential work
being to do God's will, to promote His honor, and the common weal. (3.)
That he comes out of a smaller Office (Office not farther specified,
probably exterior to the RATHS-COLLEGE, and subaltern to the late
tyrannous Mayor and it), and has taken upon him the Mayoralty of this
Town (an evident fact!); but that the labor and responsibility are
dreadfully increased; and that the point is not increase of honor, of
respectability or income, but of heavy duties. (A sonorous, pious-minded
Spener; much mor