History then spoke of a great statesman who on a certain day in a certain year, passed a certain most important measure, affecting the interest of a great nation, and consequently of the whole world. It spoke of his wisdom and foresight, the result of great intellect, energy and labor, giving a biographic sketch of his career from cradle to coffin; dismissing him with a long eulogium on his talents, integrity, and activity, and lamenting the loss such great men were to their country. Then came the name of the great diplomatist whose services had been equally important, and who was dismissed with a similar memoir and eulogium. Then the great admiral, who lived through a whole chapter all to himself, and had his name brought in throughout the whole history of the great monarch whose reign had been rendered so brilliant by the great deeds of so many great men. Of the great feast given by the great nobleman, and the conquests of the great beauty, there remains to this day a record, of the former in the adulatory poems of his flatterers, though the giver was gone--no matter where; of the latter many fair portraits and many fond sonnets, though the object had gone--no matter where. But no scribe told the history, no poet made a sonnet, no artist drew the portrait of poor Johan Schmit, the mason, who made the rude carving on the rough stone in the little town of ----, on the Rhine. This task remains for an historian as obscure as himself, who now begins a rude carving on the rough stone of a human life.