Neither was it deficiency in judgment. If the numberless political discourses of that time are clumsy and diffuse in composition, without any sufficient knowledge of facts and persons, yet they deserve credit for much sound sense and frequently a surprising comprehension of the condition of Germany. The Germans, even before 1700, were not deficient in political discernment; nay, before the Thirty Years' War, much progress was apparent. But it was their peculiar characteristic that, with this comprehension of their dangerous situation, of the helplessness of the Empire, and of its miserable, dislocated state, the people calmly and quietly recognised it with a shake of the head; even their literary teachers were rarely roused to manly indignation, still less to determined will, nor even to form fruitless projects. Thus, the nation in the seventeenth century might be compared to a hopeless invalid, who, free from the excitement of fever, soberly, calmly, and sensibly contemplates his own condition. We know, indeed, that it is our own century which has cured this morbid state of the German people; but we also perceive the cause of the singular, cold, and gloomy objectiveness which became so peculiar to our nation, and of which traces are yet to be discovered in many individuals. It is the disease of a rightly-gifted, genial nature, whose volition has been crushed by the horrors of war and the struggles of fate, and whose warm heart has been benumbed. A clear, circumspect, just spirit remains to the German; noble political enthusiasm is lost to him. He no longer finds pleasure and honour in being the citizen of a great State; he has no nation that he loves, no State that he honours; he is an individual among individuals; he has well-wishers and detractors, good friends and bad enemies, scarcely any fellow-citizens as yet, scarcely yet any countrymen.