Thus even very serious personal disagreements and ruptures could not divide those whom fellowship of ideas and a common endeavour to promote them, united. The Romanticists considered personal liberty an inalienable right, and respected it in others while demanding it for themselves. But we learn something else besides the fact that the Romanticists were very changeable in their loves, and perfectly regardless of social ties; and that something is, that their women were superior to them in everything but talent, and that what the men did was to drag them down to their own level. We see the strong-minded, energetic Dorothea, who is so keenly sensible of the pettiness of the purely literary endeavours of the Romanticists, slowly change, see her reluctantly admire _Lucinde_, then write novels herself in the prescribed style, and finally follow Friedrich to Vienna and become a Catholic along with him. Or look at the high-spirited, enthusiastic, resolute Caroline, who, as a young widow not much over twenty, attempts to revolutionise the Rhineland. So unflinching is she then, that she compromises herself recklessly, and risks the life and well-being of those dearest to her with absolute regardlessness. Friedrich writes to August Wilhelm: "I shall never forgive her heartlessness in being ready to beguile you, her friend, into that vortex of ignoble dangers and worthless characters." Only a few years later we see this same woman writing anonymous reviews, favourable or unfavourable, of her husband's wretched dramas, and entirely absorbed in literary intrigues. Ever and anon her spirit is momentarily stirred by a breath wafted from the old times. Then we feel how changed she is. Writing to her daughter in October 1799, after giving her a quantity of family news, the last item of which is: "Hofrath Hufeland has returned, with wife and children," she exclaims: "But what sorry trash is all this! _Buonaparte is in Paris!_ Think of that, child! All will go well again. The Russians have been driven out of Switzerland; they and the English will be obliged to capitulate with disgrace in Holland; the French are making way in Swabia; and now comes Buonaparte. Rejoice with me, or I shall think that you are entirely taken up with frivolities and have no serious thoughts at all." Then, almost in the same breath, literary gossip: "Tieck is here and we are much together. You would never believe all that these men take it into their heads to do. I will send you a sonnet on Merkel. He has been running about Berlin, telling that the Schlegels have received a reprimand from the Duke on account of the _Athenæum_, &c. So Wilhelm and Tieck set to work the other evening and wrote a wicked sonnet in his honour. It was splendid to see the two pairs of brown eyes flashing at each other, and the wild merriment with which the perfectly justifiable squib was concocted. Dorothea and I almost rolled on the floor with laughter. She knows how to laugh, which will recommend her to you.