FRIENDSHIP’S GARLAND

The author had imagined a memorial of Arminius, in which all these would have found their place; but his spirits broke. (The acquaintance of the evertobelamented Arminius was made by the present Editor on the Continent in the year 1865. The early history of the noble family of Von ThundertenTronckh, to which Arminius belonged, their establishment in Westphalia, the sack of their castle in the middle of the last century by the Bulgarians, the fate of their principal dependents (among whom was the famous optimist philosopher, Dr. Pangloss), the adventures of Arminius’s grandfather and his deportation to the Jesuits at Rome, are recorded in a wellknown treatise of Voltaire. Additional information is supplied in several of the following letters. Arminius came to England in 1866, and the correspondence now given in a collected form to the public commenced in the summer of that year, at the outbreak of the war between Prussia and Austria. Many will yet remember the thrill with which they originally received, through the unworthy ministry of the present Editor, the communication of the great doctrine of ‘ Geist.’ What then, must it have been to hear that doctrine in its first newness from the lips of Arminius himself! Yet it will, he hopes, be admitted, that even in this position of exceptional privilege, the present Editor succeeded in preserving his coolness, his independent judgment, and his proper feelings as a Briton.)