Compare him with Heine, who had also a detached taste in the mystical grotesques of Germany, but who saw what was their enemy: and offered to nail up the Prussian eagle like an old crow as a target for the archers of the Rhine.

Its prosaic essence is not proved by the fact that it did not produce poets: it is proved by the more deadly fact that it did.

The actual written poetry of Frederick the Great, for instance, was not even German or barbaric, but simply feeble--and French.

Thus Carlyle became continually gloomier as his fit of the blues deepened into Prussian blues; nor can there be any wonder.

His philosophy had brought out the result that the Prussian was the first of Germans, and, therefore, the first of men.