The whole of my auditors rendered my labour extremely agreeable by their
indulgence, their attentive participation, and their readiness to
distinguish, in a feeling manner, every passage which seemed worthy of
their applause.

It was a flattering moment, which I shall never forget, when, in the last
hour, after I had called up recollections of the old German renown sacred
to every one possessed of true patriotic sentiment, and when the minds of
my auditors were thus more solemnly attuned, I was at last obliged to take
my leave powerfully agitated by the reflection that our recent relation,
founded on a common love for a nobler mental cultivation, would be so soon
dissolved, and that I should never again see those together who were then
assembled around me. A general emotion was perceptible, excited by so much
that I could not say, but respecting which our hearts understood each
other. In the mental dominion of thought and poetry, inaccessible to
worldly power, the Germans, who are separated in so many ways from each
other, still feel their unity: and in this feeling, whose interpreter the
writer and orator must be, amidst our clouded prospects we may still
cherish the elevating presage of the great and immortal calling of our
people, who from time immemorial have remained unmixed in their present
habitations.

GENEVA, _February_, 1809.


OBSERVATION PREFIXED TO PART OF THE WORK PRINTED IN 1811.

The declaration in the Preface that these Lectures were, with some
additions, printed as they were delivered, is in so far to be corrected,
that the additions in the second part are much more considerable than in