But he was unpatriotic; he occupied himself with poetry, and did not cry out while his country was in the death-throes--so it seemed--of the struggle with France! But what should he have done? What _could_ he have done? What would his single arm or declamation have availed? No man more than Goethe longed for the rehabilitation of Germany. In his own way he wrought for that end; he could work effectually in no other. That enigmatical composition,--the "Märchen,"--according to the latest interpretation, indicates how, in Goethe's view, that end was to be accomplished. To one who considers the relation of ideas to events, it will not seem extravagant when I say that to Goethe, more than to any one individual, Germany is indebted for her emancipation, independence, and present political regeneration.[6] [Footnote 6: (The following interpretation of the "Märchen" is condensed from a later portion of this essay, and used here as a foot-note for the light it throws upon Goethe's political career.) In the summer of 1795 Goethe composed for Schiller's new magazine, "Die Horen," a prose poem known in German literature as _Das Märchen,_--" _The_ Tale;" as if it were the only one, or the one which more than another deserves that appellation.... Goethe gave this essay to the public as a riddle which would probably be unintelligible at the time, but which might perhaps find an interpreter after many days, when the hints contained in it should be verified. Since its first appearance commentators have exercised their ingenuity upon it, perceiving it to be allegorical, but until recently without success.... I follow Dr. Herman's Baumgart's lead in the exposition which I now offer.