In this, however, he goes a little too far. All I can say is that the work is written quite as if I had done it myself. There is no greater amount of dynamic ornamentation in it than is usual in books, and, happy as the author would have been to have thundered, stormed, and poured in it, there was of course no room in a parish advocate's lodgings for Rhine cataracts, thunderstorms, tropical hurricanes (of tropes) or waterspouts, and he has had to reserve his more terrific tornadoes for a future work. I have his permission to mention the name of this future work; it is the 'Titan.' In this work he means to be an absolute Hecla, and shatter the ice of his country (and himself into the bargain) to pieces; like the volcanoes in Iceland, he will spout up a column of boiling water four feet in diameter to a height of eighty-nine or ninety feet in the air, and that at such a temperature that when this wet fire pillar falls down again and flows into the book shops, it will still be warm enough to boil eggs hard or their mother soft. "Then" (he always says--very sadly however--because he sees what a hard matter it is to distinguish between full half of our battling and harrying here below and a Jack Pudding farce and piece of utter buffoonery and nonsense,--also, that the cradle of this life _rocks_ us, and _stills_ us indeed, but carries us not a step on our way)--"then may the _Arbor Toxicaria Macassariensis_[36] of the Ideal, beneath which I have lost a little hair already, go on poisoning me, and dispatch me to the Land of the Ideal. At all events, I have knelt down and prayed under the solemnising soul-elevating sighing roar of its death-dealing branches. And why should there be a hut made ready for the traveller beside the eternal well of truth, marked with the title 'Travellers' REST,' if no one ever enters it?" He wants, by way of broad "flies" for his life stage on earth, merely a regular, downright, _rainy year_ or two (two will suffice); for a broad, bright, open sky overpowers us, and weakens the hand's pen power by making the eyes over full. And here the book-maker differs markedly from his provision-contractor, the papermaker, who shuts _his_ mill up precisely when the weather is _wet_. I should also be glad if readers would have the goodness to go once more through the few chapters composing the first book--that they may see what they really lack; and indeed a book which is not worth reading twice is not worth reading once. In conclusion, I (albeit the most inconsiderable clubbist and vote-possessor of all the public) would fain incite the author to the production of other seedlings, suckers, and infantas of the same stamp, trusting that the reading world may form its opinion on his work with the same careful favour and indulgent approval as I have formed mine. JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER. Hof in Voigtland, _June 5th_, 1796. * * * * *