language its first development, and laid a basis for the
evolution of knowledge and art where hitherto ecclesiastical
fanaticism and feudal brutality had alone contended for power, a
monarch who gathered at his court the poets and sages of eastern
lands, and surrounded himself with the living products of Arabian
and Persian grace and spirit--this man I beheld betrayed by the
Roman clergy to the infidel foe, yet ending his crusade, to their
bitter disappointment, by a pact of peace with the Sultan, from
whom he obtained a grant of privileges to Christians in Palestine
such as the bloodiest victory could scarcely have secured.

In this wonderful Emperor, who finally, under the ban of that
same Church, struggled hopelessly and in vain against the savage
bigotry of his age, I beheld the German ideal in its highest
embodiment. My poem was concerned with the fate of his favourite
son Manfred. On the death of an elder brother, Frederick's empire
had entirely fallen to pieces, and the young Manfred was left,
under papal suzerainty, in nominal possession of the throne of
Apulia. We find him at Capua, in surroundings, and attended by a
court, in which the spirit of his great father survives, in a
state of almost effeminate degeneration. In despair of ever
restoring the imperial power of the Hohenstaufen, he seeks to
forget his sadness in romance and song. There now appears upon
the scene a young Saracen lady, just arrived from the East, who,
by appealing to the alliance between East and West concluded by
Manfred's noble father, conjures the desponding son to maintain
his imperial heritage. She acts the part of an inspired
prophetess, and though the prince is quickly filled with love for
her, she succeeds in keeping him at a respectful distance. By a
skilfully contrived flight she snatches him, not only from the