Walter Scott is a great genius; he has not his equal; and we need not wonder at the extraordinary effect he produces on the whole reading world. He gives me much to think of; and I discover in him a wholly new art, with laws of its own. * * * * * We read far too many poor things, thus losing time, and gaining nothing. We should only read what we admire, as I did in my youth, and as I now experience with Sir Walter Scott. I have just begun _Rob Roy_, and will read his best novels in succession. All is great--material, import, characters, execution; and then what infinite diligence in the preparatory studies! what truth of detail in the execution! We see, too, what English history is; and what a thing it is when such an inheritance falls to the lot of a clever poet. Our German history, in five volumes, is, on the other hand, sheer poverty. * * * * * It is a peculiarity of Walter Scott’s that his great talent in representing details often leads him into faults. Thus, in _Ivanhoe_, there is a scene where they are seated at a table in a castle-hall at night, and a stranger enters. Now, he is quite right in describing the stranger’s appearance and dress, but it is a fault that he goes to the length of describing his feet, shoes, and stockings. When we sit down in the evening, and some one comes in, we see only the upper part of his body. If I describe the feet, daylight enters at once, and the scene loses its nocturnal character. FOOTNOTES: [13] Goethe had been reproached “for not taking up arms in the German War of Liberation, or at least coöperating as a poet.” [14] “Architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen music.”--Schelling’s _Philosophie der Kunst_. APPENDIX I. On the Selection and Translation of the Essays in this Volume. II. On the Chronology of Goethe’s Critical Studies. APPENDIX I. _On the Selection and Translation of the Essays in this Volume_