Last essays. First series, Essays on language, folklore, and other subjects / by the Right Hon. Professor F. Max Müller.

  • Friedrich Max Müller
Date:
1901
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Last essays. First series, Essays on language, folklore, and other subjects / by the Right Hon. Professor F. Max Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    question in the clearest light before any English jury at the vei'y time when the greatest English statesmen and the greatest English newspapers went on de- claring day after day that it was a question fai beyond the reach of any ordinary understanding. No lawyer would be forgiven for declaring his incompetence to form an opinion on the facts placed before him, and on the rights and grievances of the different claimants of the throne of Schleswig- Holstein after the death of Frederick the Seventh of Denmark. It is this purely personal question which is evidently very near to the hearts of the two authors of the book, Schleswig-Holsteins Befreiung, and it is for that very reason that this publication will always retain its historical value. Though it is free from the spirit of mere partisanship, its authors do not wish to conceal their strong feelings of sympathy and admiration for the chief sufferer in the liberation of Schleswig- Holstein, namely the Duke Frederick, whose beautiful portrait adorns their volume. There are historians who look upon the great events which we have witnessed in our time as the inevitable result of forces beyond the control of individuals. To them all political convulsions such as the violent collision between Prussia and Austria, and the sub- sequent intervening struggle between Germany and France, are like earthquakes long foreseen by seismo- logical politicians, and impossible to be retarded, ac- celerated, or warded off by any personal efforts. They would scout the idea that if Lord Palmerston’s heart had been less of a coeur leger, or if he had not felt himself hampered by the Don Pacifico affair, or if