Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of my dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave; I return to the Earth; and in thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great Midnight, it struck half past two; about this hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and the Moon rose in the east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of Spring: "Ah, retire, bloody War, like red Mars; and thou, still Peace, come forth like the mild divided Moon!"-- ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S JOURNEY TO FLÄTZ; WITH A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES. TRANSLATED BY THOMAS CARLYLE. PREFACE This, I conceive, may be managed in two words. The _first_ word must relate to the Circular Letter of Army-Chaplain Schmelzle, wherein he describes to his friends his Journey to the metropolitan city of Flätz; after having, in an Introduction, premised some proofs and assurances of his valor. Properly speaking, the _Journey_ itself has been written purely with a view that his courageousness, impugned by rumor, may be fully evinced and demonstrated by the plain facts which he therein records. Whether, in the mean time, there shall not be found certain quick-scented readers, who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his breast is not everywhere bomb-proof, especially in the left side,--on this point I keep my judgment suspended. For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this _Journey_, for whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, solely in the light of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch of Character. It is a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I have laughed so often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of Character myself. And, for the present, when could such a little comic toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the world than in these very days, when the sound both of heavy money and of light laughter has died away from among us,--when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely with sealed _purses_, and the coin within them has vanished?