Towards morning I descried thy late lights, little city of my dwelling, which I belong to on this side the grave; I return to the Earth; and in thy steeples, behind the by-advanced great Midnight, it struck half past two; about this hour, in 1794, Mars went down in the west, and the Moon rose in the east; and my soul desired, in grief for the noble warlike blood which is still streaming on the blossoms of Spring: "Ah, retire, bloody War, like red Mars; and thou, still Peace, come forth like the mild divided Moon!"--
[ARMY-CHAPLAIN SCHMELZLE'S]
Journey to Flätz;
WITH
A RUNNING COMMENTARY OF NOTES.
TRANSLATED BY THOMAS CARLYLE.
[PREFACE]
This, I conceive, may be managed in two words. The first word must relate to the Circular Letter of Army-Chaplain Schmelzle, wherein he describes to his friends his Journey to the metropolitan city of Flätz; after having, in an Introduction, premised some proofs and assurances of his valor. Properly speaking, the Journey itself has been written purely with a view that his courageousness, impugned by rumor, may be fully evinced and demonstrated by the plain facts which he therein records. Whether, in the mean time, there shall not be found certain quick-scented readers, who may infer, directly contrariwise, that his breast is not everywhere bomb-proof, especially in the left side,--on this point I keep my judgment suspended.
For the rest, I beg the judges of literature, as well as their satellites, the critics of literature, to regard this Journey, for whose literary contents I, as Editor, am answerable, solely in the light of a Portrait (in the French sense), a little Sketch of Character. It is a voluntary or involuntary comedy-piece, at which I have laughed so often, that I purpose in time coming to paint some similar Pictures of Character myself. And, for the present, when could such a little comic toy be more fitly imparted and set forth to the world than in these very days, when the sound both of heavy money and of light laughter has died away from among us,--when, like the Turks, we count and pay merely with sealed purses, and the coin within them has vanished?
Despicable would it seem to me, if any clownish squire of the goose-quill should publicly and censoriously demand of me in what way this self-cabinet-piece of Schmelzle's has come into my hands. I know it well, and do not disclose it. This comedy-piece, for which I, at all events, as my Bookseller will testify, draw the profit myself, I got hold of so unblamably, that I await, with unspeakable composure, what the Army-Chaplain shall please to say against the publication of it, in case he say anything at all. My conscience bears me witness, that I acquired this article at least by more honorable methods than are those of the learned persons who steal with their ears, who, in the character of spiritual auditory-thieves, and class-room cut-purses and pirates, are in the habit of disloading their plundered Lectures, and vending them up and down the country as productions of their own. Hitherto, in my whole life, I have stolen little, except now and then in youth some--glances.