[19] Some letters which contain only personal anecdotes are here suppressed. I remark this only to account to my fair readers,—who must have been delighted at the punctuality with which the departed author devoted the close of every day to his absent friend,—for a silence of twenty days.—Editor.
[20] I must remark, that ever since Prussia was promised a Charter, (Charte,) my departed friend, to be more accurate, made an orthographical distinction, spelling charts, Carte, and playing cards, Karte.—He hopes this caution will not be thrown away.—Editor.
[21] Rechnung.—Account, reckoning, bill. The reader, if he happen to know the fact, may apply the right word.—Transl.
[22] The author’s feelings towards Englishmen are evidently so bitter, that his testimony must be received with great allowance. On the other hand, it will be confessed by all who are not blinded by intense self-complacency and insular conceit, that it is extremely rare to find a foreigner of any country, who has encountered English people either abroad or at home, without having his most honest allowable self-love wounded in a hundred ways.—Transl.
[23] Let me here remark, that those who judge of England only by their visit to it in 1814, form extremely erroneous notions. That was a moment of enthusiasm, a boundless joy of the whole nation at its deliverance from its most dreaded enemy, which rendered it peculiarly kind and amiable towards those who had contributed to its destruction.
[24] English-German readers will probably find the original of these lines without difficulty.—Transl.
[25] The traditional personage whom we call the Wandering Jew, the Germans call der ewige Jude, the eternal or everlasting Jew.—Transl.
[26] It is true that our charming Sontag, the queen of song, has lately done nearly the same thing, having contracted a left-handed marriage with Count R——. Editor.
[27] As the biography of Punch seems becoming rather diffuse, and is tolerably well known here (though not so well as might be imagined), this is omitted.—Transl.
[28] My deceased friend executed a singular idea, and left a relic which his survivors preserve with melancholy pleasure. He had filled several large folio volumes with drawings, prints, autographs, and even small pamphlets; not as is commonly the case with ‘scrap-books,’ all sorts of things ‘pèle mèle;’—he inserted only those things which he had himself seen and witnessed, in the same order in which he had seen them. Every sketch or engraving was accompanied by a note, the sum of which notes gives a consecutive sketch of his whole career in this world; a perfect atlas of his life, as he often called it.—Edit.