We return at last to our book. The most important of the emendations made upon it are, perhaps, the historical; for, since the first edition appeared, I have had the good fortune--partly because I have had an opportunity of visiting and seeing Kuhschnappel itself, the scene of the story (as was some time since stated in Jean Paul's letters), partly from my correspondence with the hero of it himself--of becoming acquainted with family circumstances and occurrences which, probably, I could not have got at in any other way, unless I had sat down and coolly invented them. I have even made prize of some fresh Leibgeberiana, which I am happy to be able now to communicate to the public. The new edition is also improved by the banishment of all those foreigners of words which occupied places more appropriately to be filled by natives of the country; also by a critical cleansing away of all the genitive final s's of compound words. But really the labour of sweeping and striking out letters and words all through four long volumes can be estimated so highly by nobody, not even by Posterity, as by the sweeper and striker-out himself. Another of the improvements made in the Second Edition is, that I have placed both the "Flower-pieces" at the end of the second volume[3] (for in the former edition they came both at the beginning of the first), and that it is no longer the first volume, but, much more appropriately, the second, which closes with the first Fruit-piece. And lastly, it may, perhaps, be reckoned as one of the minor improvements, that in the two Flower-pieces--particularly in that of the Dead Christ--I have not _made_ any improvements, but left everything as it was, and not attempted to scrape away any of the golden writing-sand with which I had made the letters a little rough and illegible.