We must renounce ideals.

We must sadly take up with the mournfulest barren realities;--dismal continents of Brandenburg sand, as in this instance; mere tumbled mountains of marine-stores, without so much as an Index to them! Has the reader heard of Sauerteig's last batch of _ Springwurzeln, _ a rather curious valedictory Piece?
"All History is an imprisoned Epic, nay an imprisoned Psalm and Prophecy," says Sauerteig there.

I wish, from my soul, he had DISimprisoned it in this instance! But he only says, in magniloquent language, how grand it would be if disimprisoned;--and hurls out, accidentally striking on this subject, the following rough sentences, suggestive though unpractical, with which I shall conclude:-- "Schiller, it appears, at one time thought of writing an _ Epic Poem upon Friedrich the Great, _ 'upon some action of Friedrich's,' Schiller says.

Happily Schiller did not do it.

By oversetting fact, disregarding reality, and tumbling time and space topsy-turvy, Schiller with his fine gifts might no doubt have written a temporary 'epic poem,' of the kind read an admired by many simple persons.