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none but yourself can be permitted to call a " Plain 

 Address." Since then everything has assumed a more 

 terrible, but at the same time a more hopeful form. 

 But to this danger people can oppose only brute ma- 

 terial force, and they do not know how to pluck the 

 fruit which is offered :* they rather wish to let it 

 go to others. "Bomuald's Vocation"! certainly 

 deserves to be chastised ; what an abuse of distin- 

 guished talent ! Nous en causerons as soon as I have 

 got over the Chapter of the Eoyal Order, and the bustle 

 of the academical elections for my Order ; la petite piece 

 by the side of the great World-Drama. Your old and 

 attached friend, 



A. v. HT. 



The King has never been praised in a more noble 

 way than in the " Plain Address." 



The Pamphlet, "Plain Address to the Germans on the Question of 

 the Day, Berlin, 1848,"]; was written by Yarnhagen. But he him- 

 self, only a few months after, made the following entry, with reference 

 to it, in his Diary, on the 10th May, 1849 : "I am reading over 

 again what I printed, as late as August last year, about Friedrich 

 "Wilhelm the Fourth, and what I had written after the day of 

 homage in the autumn of 1840 ; and how do I feel now ? Whatever 

 my occupation, waking or sleeping, I am constantly haunted, like a 

 nightmare, by these questions of the day ; although I know well 

 that they are only of the day, that retaliation is sure to come, and 

 that the future will bear rich fruit. Arise then, my country, 

 arise ! Thou must pass through the throes of civil war. Go valiantly 



* The Imperial Crown of Germany, offered to the King of Prussia by the 

 Frankfort Parliament. TR. 



t Eomuald, ou la Vocation. Par M. de Custine. Paris. 1848. 4 Vols. 

 Schlichter Vortrag an die Deutschen iiber die Aufgabe des Tages." 



