'Twas from no Augustan age, No Lorenzo's patronage, That the German singers rose; By no outward glories crowned, By no prince's praise renowned, German art's first blossom blows. From her country's greatest son, From the mighty Frederick's throne, Scorned, the Muse must turn away. "_We_ have given thy worth to thee;" "Let our heart-beats prouder be;" Can each German boldly say. So to loftier heights arose, So in waves more swelling flows German poet's minstrelsy. He in ripeness all his own, From his heart's deep centre grown, Scorns the rule of pedantry. So sang Schiller; and, while in Germany the Muse was ascending to the heights in which Schiller gloried to see her, the opposite process had been producing opposite results under the rule of another German sovereign. Frederick II. of Prussia preferred bad French to the best utterances of his own country; and so the German Muse was free to develope in her own way. Joseph II. of Austria felt his heart warmed with the greatness of German traditions; he looked round on dominions inhabited by men of different races and languages, and, perceiving that these differences led to continual misunderstandings, and hindered any great work of common reform, resolved to extend the blessings of German language and literature to all the races of his dominions. To them, he thought, a change would prove a bond of union; while neither Bohemian, Hungarian, nor Croat could claim for their native tongues, however dear to them, such glorious associations and traditions as were already connected with the language which was to take their place. The consequence of this nobly intended effort has been that German is, to this day, a badge of tyranny to the majority of the people of the western half of the Austrian Empire; and if it has almost ceased to be so in the eastern half, that is simply because its supremacy has been replaced by the no less crushing tyranny of another language which was offered to the various populations of the Hungarian kingdom by its rulers, as a symbol of national freedom and unity.