fered  him  an  asylum,  does  him  honor  in  a  bronze
statue  which  is  the  finest  ornament  of  the  city ;
and  WolfenMttel,  which  almost  smothered  him
with  its  dreariness,  guards  carefully  every  trace  of
his  sojourn.  But  it  was  in  Berlin,  I  remember,  that
the  pathos  of  his  baffled  career  came  home  to  me
most  powerfully.  The  great  capital  of  United  Ger-
many resembles  very  little  the  inconsiderable  town
of  the  last  century  from  which  it  has  grown,  and
which  Leasing  knew.  Here  he  suffered  some  of
his  bitterest  disappointments ;  here  he  enjoyed
some  of  his  most  precious  friendships ;  here  did
some  of  his  manliest  work.  Changed  though  the
city  is,  its  su^estions  in  some  ways  are  what  they
were  in  Lessing's  time,  and  as  one  goes  through  ita
streets  he  can  make  real  to  himself  what  must
have  been  the  mood  of  the  humaue  cosmopolite.
Id  his  time,  ^e  days  of  Frederick,  there  was
something  martial  at  every  turn.  It  was  the  city
of  men  whose  main  business  had  come  to  be  war-
fare, in  whose  breasts  there  was  no  broader  feeling
than  a  love  for  Prussia.  It  is  scarcely  different  now.
It  was  already  evening  of  one  of  the  long  days
at  the  end  of  May  when  I  saw,  for  the  first  time,
the  great  sand  plains  which  one  must  cross  between
Dresden  and  Berlin.  Nature  has  done  little  to
make  the  region  attractive,  but  the  spirit  of  strife
has  lent  it  tragic  associations.  There  is  scarcely  an
acre  that  has  not  drunk  blood  in  some  historic  con-
test, or  at  least  been  jarred  by  cannon-thunder
from  some  great  battle-field  close  by.  Towards
Diidnight  the  glare  of  the  lights  of  the  capital


294  GERMAN  LITERATURE.
began  to  whiten  the  heavens  to  the  northward.
