_Kotzebue_.--I would rather turn back with you to the ancient glories of
our country than fix my attention on the sorrowful scenes more near to
us. We may be justly proud of our literary men, who unite the suffrages
of every capital, to the exclusion of almost all their own.

_Sandt_.--Many Germans well deserve this honour, others are manger-fed
and hirelings.

_Kotzebue_.--The English and the Greeks are the only nations that rival
us in poetry, or in any works of imagination.

_Sandt_.--While on this high ground we pretend to a rivalship with
England and Greece, can we reflect, without a sinking of the heart, on
our inferiority in political and civil dignity? Why are we lower than
they? Our mothers are like their mothers; our children are like their
children; our limbs are as strong, our capacities are as enlarged, our
desire of improvement in the arts and sciences is neither less vivid and
generous, nor less temperate and well-directed. The Greeks were under
disadvantages which never bore in any degree on us; yet they rose
through them vigorously and erectly. They were Asiatic in what ought to
be the finer part of the affections; their women were veiled and
secluded, never visited the captive, never released the slave, never sat
by the sick in the hospital, never heard the child's lesson repeated in
the school. Ours are more tender, compassionate, and charitable, than
poets have feigned of the past, or prophets have announced of the
future; and, nursed at their breasts and educated at their feet, blush
we not at our degeneracy? The most indifferent stranger feels a pleasure
at finding, in the worst-written history of Spain, her various kingdoms
ultimately mingled, although the character of the governors, and perhaps
of the governed, is congenial to few. What delight, then, must overflow