Small use in a talent of writing, if there be not first of all the talent of discerning, of loyally recognizing; of discriminating what is to be written! Books born mostly of Chaos--which want all things, even an INDEX--are a painful object.

In sorrow and disgust, you wander over those multitudinous Books: you dwell in endless regions of the superficial, of the nugatory: to your bewildered sense it is as if no insight into the real heart of Friedrich and his affairs were anywhere to be had.

Truth is, the Prussian Dryasdust, otherwise an honest fellow, and not afraid of labor, excels all other Dryasdusts yet known; I have often sorrowfully felt as if there were not in Nature, for darkness, dreariness, immethodic platitude, anything comparable to him.

He writes big Books wanting in almost every quality; and does not even give an INDEX to them.

He has made of Friedrich's History a wide-spread, inorganic, trackless matter; dismal to your mind, and barren as a continent of Brandenburg sand!--Enough, he could do no other: I have striven to forgive him.
Let the reader now forgive me; and think sometimes what probably my raw-material was!-- Curious enough, Friedrich lived in the Writing Era,--morning of that strange Era which has grown to such a noon for us;--and his favorite society, all his reign, was with the literary or writing sort.