It has been customary to consider the intellectual sway of Italy and France, from Opiz to Lessing, as a great calamity. It is true, it has given neither beauty nor strength to the German; but we are no longer in the position of the great man who for a century struggled against French taste. It was with him a duty to hate whatever caused a hindrance to the wakening popular vigour. But we should at the same time remember that this same foreign element protected the German from the extreme of barbarism. Our imitation was very clumsy, and there was little worth in the original; but it was to the countless bonds of international intercourse that the Germans then clung, that they might not be utterly lost. The moral restraints upon the wilfulness of individuals had been broken, and the meagre externals gathered from abroad, of fashion, respect, gallantry, and a taste for foreign refinements were the first remedy. It was a new kind of discipline. Whoever wore a large wig, and later, even powder in the hair, was obliged to hold his head elegantly still, wild movements and violent running were impossible; if men were not prevented by their own delicacy of feeling from boldly approaching too near to women, a hoop and corset were a rampart for them; if the courtesy of the heart was less, the duty of being gallant in conversation was a benefit. In a circle where a coarse soldiers' song had been preferred, a polished song from Damon to Daphne was a great improvement, and even the fade cavalier, who cut his finger-nails in society with a gilded knife, and threw himself down with a French flourish, was by far more estimable in society than an unbridled drunkard, who in his intoxication did the most unseemly things, and could not open his mouth without an oath.