Karl, Grand Duke of Frankfurt, Royal Highness: In a Lecture at the Museum in Frankfurt

therefore, gracious, highly esteemed and honored Gentlemen, for patience, kind indulgence, and equally kind judgment.

It is a great undertaking, I confess, and I feel my own weakness, to portray a PHILANTHROPIC, an INSIGHTFUL, a PRINCE SHINING IN VIRTUE, the ORNAMENT OF GERMANY, a GREAT STATESMAN, an equally GREAT SCHOLAR, a DEEPLY THINKING PHILOSOPHER, and a most GRACIOUS and HUMANE REGENT, educated among MEN. Everything I can say of him is not known to me alone; it is known to thousands, to all of Europe, and perhaps better than to me, by those who have enjoyed the invaluable, the enviable good fortune to have seen him face to face and to have come to know him. This great and undeserved grace was also granted to me in Aschaffenburg in 1788 and in Regensburg in 1803. Oh! How it pains one when one returns from such a HUMANE PRINCE and must spend one’s life again at the side of shallow, mostly meritless heads, who are filled with pride, arrogance, self-love, and vanity, who deal in dreams and are puffed up, some even adorned with medals of merit—butter-