Men are strange beings! We grumble in our Fatherland; every stupid thing, every contrary trifle, vexes us there; like boys, we are always longing to rush forth into the wide world, and, when we finally find ourselves there, we find it too wide, and often yearn in secret for the narrow stupidities and contrarieties of home. Yes, we would fain be again in the old chamber, sitting behind the familiar stove, making for ourselves, as it were, a "cubby-house" near it, and, nestling there, read the _German General Advertiser_. So it was with me in my journey to England. Scarcely had I lost sight of the German shore ere there awoke in me a curious after-love for the German nightcaps and forest-like wigs which I had just left in discontent; and when the Fatherland faded from my eyes I found it again in my heart. And, therefore, it may be that my voice quivered in a somewhat lower key as I replied to the sallow man--"Dear sir, do not scold the Germans! If they are dreamers, still many of them have conceived such beautiful dreams that I would hardly incline to change them for the waking realities of our neighbors. Since we all sleep and dream, we can perhaps dispense with freedom; for our tyrants also sleep, and only dream their tyranny. We awoke only once--when the Catholic Romans robbed us of our dream-freedom; then we acted and conquered, and laid us down again and dreamed. O sir! do not mock our dreamers, for now and then they speak, like somnambulists, wondrous things in sleep, and their words become the seeds of freedom. No one can foresee the turn which things may take. The splenetic Briton, weary of his wife, may put a halter round her neck and sell her in Smithfield. The flattering Frenchman may perhaps be untrue to his beloved bride and abandon her, and, singing, dance after the Court dames (_courtisanes_) of his royal palace (_palais royal_). But the German will never turn his old grandmother quite out of doors; he will always find a place for her by his fireside, where she can tell his listening children her legends. Should Freedom ever vanish from the entire world--which God forbid!--a German dreamer would discover her again in his dreams."