The father of Frederick the Great, the founder of the more modern
Hohenzollerns, was mad. His madness consisted of stealing giants; like an
unscrupulous travelling showman. Any man much over six foot high, whether
he were called the Russian Giant or the Irish Giant or the Chinese Giant or
the Hottentot Giant, was in danger of being kidnapped and imprisoned in a
Prussian uniform. It is the same mean sort of madness that is working in
Prussian professors such as the one I have quoted. They can get no further
than the notion of stealing giants. I will not bore you now with all the
other giants they have tried to steal; it is enough to say that St. Paul,
Leonardo da Vinci, and Shakespeare himself are among the monstrosities
exhibited at Frederick-William fair--on grounds as good as those quoted
above. But I have put this particular case before you, as an artist rather
than an Italian, to show what I mean when I object to a "German future for
Europe." I object to something which believes very much in itself, and in
which I do not in the least believe. I object to something which is
conceited and small-minded; but which also has that kind of pertinacity
which always belongs to lunatics. It wants to be able to congratulate
itself on Michael Angelo; never to congratulate the world. It is the spirit
that can be seen in those who go bald trying to trace a genealogy; or go
bankrupt trying to make out a claim to some remote estate. The Prussian has
the inconsistency of the _parvenu_; he will labour to prove that he is
related to some gentleman of the Renaissance, even while he boasts of being
able to "buy him up." If the Italians were really great, why--they were
really Germans; and if they weren't really Germans, well then, they weren't
really great. It is an occupation for an old maid.

Three or four hundred years ago, in the sad silence that had followed the
comparative failure of the noble effort of the Middle Ages, there came upon
all Europe a storm out of the south. Its tumult is of many tongues; one can
hear in it the laughter of Rabelais, or, for that matter, the lyrics of