Had it found treatment duly intelligent;--which, however, how
could it, lucky beyond its neighbors, hope to do! Commonplace
Dryasdust, and voluminous Stupidity, not worse here than
elsewhere, play their Part.

It is the history of a State, or Social Vitality, growing from
small to great; steadily growing henceforth under guidance:
and the contrast between guidance and no-guidance, or mis-
guidance, in such matters, is again impressively illustrated
there. This we see well to be the fact; and the details of this
would be of moment, were they given us: but they are not;--how
could voluminous Dryasdust give them? Then, on the other hand, the
Phenomenon is, for a long while, on so small a scale, wholly
without importance in European politics and affairs, the
commonplace Historian, writing of it on a large scale, becomes
unreadable and intolerable. Witness grandiloquent Pauli our fatal
friend, with his Eight watery Quartos; which gods and men, unless
driven by necessity, have learned to avoid! [Dr. Carl Friedrich
Pauli, Allgemeine Preussische Staats-Geschichte, often
enough cited here.] The Phenomenon of Brandenburg is small,
remote; and the essential particulars, too delicate for the eye of
Dryasdust, are mostly wanting, drowned deep in details of the
unessential. So that we are well content, my readers and I, to
keep remote from it on this occasion.

On one other point I must give the reader warning. A rock of
offence on which if he heedlessly strike, I reckon he will split;
at least no help of mine can benefit him till he be got off again.
Alas, offences must come; and must stand, like rocks of offence,
to the shipwreck of many! Modern Dryasdust, interpreting the