head, but to the senators double that quantity, as they were bound
to have an extra supply of sense. By the time these worthies
discovered that they had been laughed at, Hippocrates was out of
their reach. The story in Wieland is infinitely more amusing than
this short quotation from memory enables me to show. H. G. B.]

Let as many friends of truth as you will, instruct their fellow-citizens
in the pulpit and on the stage, the vulgar will never cease to be
vulgar, though the sun and moon may change their course, and "heaven and
earth wax old as a garment." Perhaps, in order to please tender-hearted
people, I might have been less true to nature; but if a certain beetle,
of whom we have all heard, could extract filth even from pearls, if we
have examples that fire has destroyed and water deluged, shall therefore
pearls, fire, and water be condemned. In consequence of the remarkable
catastrophe which ends my play, I may justly claim for it a place among
books of morality, for crime meets at last with the punishment it
deserves; the lost one enters again within the pale of the law, and
virtue is triumphant. Whoever will but be courteous enough towards me
to read my work through with a desire to understand it, from him I may
expect--not that he will admire the poet, but that he will esteem the
honest man.
SCHILLER.
EASTER FAIR, 1781.




ADVERTISEMENT TO THE ROBBERS.

AS COMMUNICATED BY SCHILLER TO DALBERG IN 1781, AND SUPPOSED TO HAVE