"Why still more aggravate your pain? I thought, and hesitated to write
to you on this business. Truly, if you received the intelligence of
what has occurred at once, might the bitter sorrow the easier and
quicker pass over; but the truth of affection would in that case be
wounded, and this great affliction can only be wholly conquered by our
emptying the whole cup of wo at once, and thus keeping faithful to our
friend the true, the eternal Father in heaven. So from the shut-up
bosom, forth thou long, great pang of the last speech; plain dealing
can alone soften the agony of parting. This sheet brings to you the
last greeting of the son and the brother! Much and continually have I
talked and wished, it is now time that I left dreaming, and the trouble
of my Fatherland impels me to action. This is unquestionably the
highest misery in this earth-life, if the affairs of God, through
guilt, come to a dead pause in their lively developement; this is for
us the most overwhelming disgrace, if all that beauty and good which
would have been boldly pursued by thousands and on whose account
thousands have joyfully offered themselves up, as dream-shapes, without
abiding consequence, now sinks away into dark discontent; if the
reformation of the old life, now in its half-way advance, stand
petrified. Our grandchildren would have to bewail this neglect. The
commencement of the restoration of German life was made with spirits
animated by God, within the last twenty years, and especially in
that hallowed season 1813. The paternal house is shaken to the
foundations--forwards! let us raise it again, fresh and beautiful, a
true temple of God, as our hearts long after it. They are but a few who
oppose themselves as a dam against the stream of the evolutions of the
higher humanity in the German people; why then do whole hosts bow
themselves again under the yoke of these knaves? shall our once awaked
salvation perish again? Many of the most abandoned traitors play their
game without obstruction, with us, to the complete corruption of our
people. Among these, Kotzebue is the subtlest and most malicious; the
actual tool and mouthpiece of every thing base in our time, and his
voice is exactly fitted to beguile us Germans of all bitterness and
opposition to the most unrighteous usurpations, and to lull us into the
old indolent slumber. He practises daily arch-treason against the
Fatherland, and then stands there, protected by his hypocritical
speeches, and artful flatteries, and wrapped in the mantle of a great
political reputation, spite of his wickedness, as an idol for the half
of Germany, which blinded by him, willingly imbibes the poison which,
for Russian pay, he prepares for them in his daily publications. Will
not the greatest disaster befall us? Will not the history of our day be
blackened with everlasting shame? He must perish! I say continually if
any saving influence is to arise, we must not shrink from strife and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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