That is the one ASBESTOS which survives all fire, and comes out purified; that is still ours, blessed be Heaven, and only that.

By the law of Nature nothing more than that; and also, by the same law, nothing less than that.

Let Art, struggle how it may, for or against,--as foolish Art is seen extensively doing in our time,--there is where the limits of it will be.

In which point of view, may not Friedrich, if he was a true man and King, justly excite some curiosity again; nay some quite peculiar curiosity, as the lost Crowned Reality there was antecedent to that general outbreak and abolition?
To many it appears certain there are to be no Kings of any sort, no Government more; less and less need of them henceforth, New Era having come.
Which is a very wonderful notion; important if true; perhaps still more important, just at present, if untrue! My hopes of presenting, in this Last of the Kings, an exemplar to my contemporaries, I confess, are not high.
On the whole, it is evident the difficulties to a History of Friedrich are great and many: and the sad certainty is at last forced upon me that no good Book can, at this time, especially in this country, be written on the subject.

Wherefore let the reader put up with an indifferent or bad one; he little knows how much worse it could easily have been!--Alas, the Ideal of history, as my friend Sauerteig knows, is very high; and it is not one serious man, but many successions of such, and whole serious generations of such, that can ever again build up History towards its old dignity.