most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances"
(_Foreign Quarterly Review_, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms
has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from
which the following particulars and tales are extracted: "There have
been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from
one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally
gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils
of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their
circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and
then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered
affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity,
and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as
to prove 'plain fools at last.' No way inferior is the end of this
strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the
Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and
receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and
signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn
themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the
Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by
which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on
which some of their descendants, who may be known by their
characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."

Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows.
When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, "saw
they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a
state of things; and having in vain gone outside and examined the
building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to hold a
council upon the subject on the following day. At the time appointed
they assembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating