_Sandt_.--They who will not let us be rational, make us enthusiastic by force. Do you love your children? I ask you again. If you do, you must love them more than another man's. Only they who are indifferent to all, profess a parity.
_Kotzebue_.--Sir! indeed your conversation very much surprises me.
_Sandt_.--I see it does: you stare, and would look proud. Emperors and kings, and all but maniacs, would lose that faculty with me. I could speedily bring them to a just sense of their nothingness, unless their ears were calked and pitched, although I am no Savonarola. He, too, died sadly!
_Kotzebue_.--Amid so much confidence of power, and such an assumption of authority, your voice is gentle--almost plaintive.
_Sandt_.--It should be plaintive. Oh, could it be but persuasive!
_Kotzebue_.--Why take this deep interest in me? I do not merit nor require it. Surely any one would think we had been acquainted with each other for many years.
_Sandt_.--What! should I have asked you such a question as the last, after long knowing you?
_Kotzebue_, (_aside_.)--This resembles insanity.
_Sandt_.--The insane have quick ears, sir, and sometimes quick apprehensions.
_Sandt_.--I ought not then to have heard you, and beg yours. My madness could release many from a worse; from a madness which hurts them grievously; a madness which has been and will be hereditary: mine, again and again I repeat it, would burst asunder the strong swathes that fasten them to pillar and post. Sir! sir! if I entertained not the remains of respect for you, in your domestic state, I should never have held with you this conversation. Germany is Germany: she ought to have nothing political in common with what is not Germany. Her freedom and security now demand that she celebrate the communion of the faithful. Our country is the only one in all the explored regions on earth that never has been conquered. Arabia and Russia boast it falsely; France falsely; Rome falsely. A fragment off the empire of Darius fell and crushed her: Valentinian was the footstool of Sapor, and Rome was buried in Byzantium. Boys must not learn this, and men will not. Britain, the wealthiest and most powerful of nations, and, after our own, the most literate and humane, received from us colonies and laws. Alas! those laws, which she retains as her fairest heritage, we value not: we surrender them to gangs of robbers, who fortify themselves within walled cities, and enter into leagues against us. When they quarrel, they push us upon one another's sword, and command us to thank God for the victories that enslave us. These are the glories we celebrate; these are the festivals we hold, on the burial-mounds of our ancestors. Blessed are those who lie under them! blessed are also those who remember what they were, and call upon their names in the holiness of love.