or schmelzen to melt—­ver, zer, ent, schmelzen—­and in like manner through all the verbs neuter and active.  If you consider only how much we should feel the loss of the prefix be, as in bedropt, besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical language, and then think that this same mode of composition is carried through all their simple and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and that with most of these the Germans have the same privilege as we have of dividing them from the verb and placing them at the end of the sentence; you will have no difficulty in comprehending the reality and the cause of this superior power in the German of condensing meaning, in which its great poet exulted.  It is impossible to read half a dozen pages of Wieland without perceiving that in this respect the German has no rival but the Greek.  And yet I feel, that concentration or condensation is not the happiest mode of expressing this excellence, which seems to consist not so much in the less time required for conveying an impression, as in the unity and simultaneousness with which the impression is conveyed.  It tends to make their language more picturesque:  it depictures images better.  We have obtained this power in part by our compound verbs derived from the Latin:  and the sense of its great effect no doubt induced our Milton both to the use and the abuse of Latin derivatives.  But still these prefixed particles, conveying no separate or separable meaning to the mere English reader, cannot possibly act on the mind with the force or liveliness of an original and homogeneous language such as the German is, and besides are confined to certain words.

We now took our leave.  At the beginning of the French Revolution Klopstock wrote odes of congratulation.  He received some honorary presents from the French Republic, (a golden crown I believe,) and, like our Priestley, was invited to a seat in the legislature, which he declined.  But when French liberty metamorphosed herself into a fury, he sent back these presents with a palinodia, declaring his abhorrence of their proceedings:  and since then he has been perhaps more than enough an Anti-Gallican.  I mean, that in his just contempt and detestation of the crimes and follies of the Revolutionists, he suffers himself to forget that the revolution itself is a process of the Divine Providence; and that as the folly of men is the wisdom of God, so are their iniquities instruments of his goodness.  From Klopstock’s house we walked to the ramparts, discoursing together on the poet and his conversation, till our attention was diverted to the beauty and singularity of the sunset and its effects on the objects around us.  There were woods in the distance.  A rich sandy light, (nay, of a much deeper colour than sandy,) lay over these woods that blackened in the blaze.  Over that part of the woods which lay immediately under the intenser light, a brassy mist floated.