What, if we will think of it, could he know of his first mother-tongue! German, to this day, is a frightful dialect for the stupid, the pedant and dullard sort! Only in the hands of the gifted does it become supremely good.

It had not yet been the language of any Goethe, any Lessing; though it stood on the eve of becoming such.

It had already been the language of Luther, of Ulrich Hutten, Friedrich Barbarossa, Charlemagne and others.

And several extremely important things had been said in it, and some pleasant ones even sung in it, from an old date, in a very appropriate manner,--had Crown-Prince Friedrich known all that.

But he could not reasonably be expected to know:--and the wiser Germans now forgive him for not knowing, and are even thankful that he did not..