hoenfeld, a Saxon nobleman of high character, rank, and affluence, many
years ambassador both at the court of Versailles, before the revolution,
and till within a few years at Vienna, is so interesting, that I am
confident I shall need no excuse for introducing it entire. His
extensive and flourishing estates south-east of Leipzig have been the
bloody cradle of regenerated freedom. The short space of a few days has
converted them into a frightful desert, reduced opulent villages into
smoking ruins; and plunged his Miserable tenants as well as himself into
a state of extreme Want, until means can be found again to cultivate the
soil and to rebuild the dwellings. He writes as follows:--

"It is with a sensation truly peculiar and extraordinary that I
take up my pen to address you, to whom I had, some years since,
the pleasure of writing several times on subjects of a very
different kind: but it is that very difference between those times
and the present, and the most wonderful series of events which
have followed each other during that period in rapid succession,
the ever-memorable occurrences of the last years and months, the
astonishing success which rejoices all Europe, and has
nevertheless plunged many thousands into inexpressible misery; it
is all this that has long engaged my attention, and presses itself
upon me at the moment I am writing. In events like these, every
individual, however distant, must take some kind of interest,
either as a merchant or a man of letters, a soldier or an artist;
or, if none of these, at least as a man. How strongly the late
events must interest every benevolent and humane mind I have no
need to tell you, who must more feelingly sympathize in them from
the circumstance that it is your native country, where the
important question, whether the Continent of Europe should
continue to wear an ignominious yoke, and whether it deserved the
fetters of slavery, because it was not capable of bursting them,
has been decisively answered by the greatest and the most
sanguinary contest that has occurred for many ages. That same
Saxony, which three centuries ago released part of the world from
the no less galling yoke of religious bondage; which, according to
history, has been the theatre of fifteen great battles; that same
Saxony is now become the cradle of the political liberty of the
Continent. But a power so firmly rooted could not be overthro