The Knight heard such talk with pleasure, though he neither laughed at nor imitated it; to him all colors in the prism of genius were agreeable. Only to the Architect it was not enough in Greek taste, and not courtly enough for the Lector. The latter turned round to the departing Dian, with a somewhat flattering air, while Schoppe was recovering breath for renewed detraction of us Germans, and said: "Formerly Rome took away from other lands only works of art, but now artists themselves." Schoppe continued: "So also our statues are no idle, dawdling citizens, but they all drive a trade;--such as are caryates hold up houses; such as are angels bear baptismal vessels; and heathen water-gods labor at the public fountains, and pour out water into the pitchers of the maidens." The Count spoke warmly for us, the Lector brilliantly: the Knight remarked, that the German taste and the German talent for poetic beauties made good and explained their want of both for other beauties (on the ground of climate, form of government, poverty, &c.). The Knight resembled a celestial telescope, through which the planets appear larger and the suns smaller; like that instrument, he took away from suns their borrowed lustre, without restoring to them their true and greater glory; he cut in twain, indeed, the noose of a Judas, but he extinguished the halo on a Christ's head, and in general he sought to make out ingeniously a parity and equality between darkness and light. Schoppe was never silenced (I am sorry that in his toleration-mandate for Europe the German Circles should have been left out). He began again: "The little which I just brought forward in praise of the serviceable Germans has, it seems, provoked contradiction. But the slight laurel-crown which I place upon the holy body of the Empire shall never blind my eyes to the bald spots. I have often thought it commendable in Socrates and Christ, that they did not teach in Hamburg, in Vienna, or in any Brandenburg city, and go through the streets with their disciples; they would have been questioned, in the name of the magistrates, whether they could not work; and had both been with families in Wetzlar, they would have extorted from the latter the _negligence-money_.[15] Touching the poetic art, Sir Knight, I have known many a citizen of the Empire who could make but little out of an ode unless it were upon himself: he fancied he could tell when poetic liberties infringed upon the liberty of the Empire: such a man, who certainly always marched to his work regularly, composedly, and considerately in Saxon term-times, was exceedingly pained and perplexed by poetic flights. And is it, then, so unaccountable and bad? The worthy inhabitant of an imperial city binds on in front a napkin when he wishes to weep, in order that he may not stain his satin vest, and the tears which fall from his eyes upon a letter of condolence he marks as he would any darker punctuation: what wonder, if, like the ranger, he