Page:Stories Translated from the German.djvu/202

 or incomprehensible to the professor of music, to the master builder, who also presumes to be an architect. As no person could even guess the question contained in this part of the letter, I have quoted it, in its own simple, harmless, natural words. It runs thus:

This celebrated and clever man never scruples to deliver his opinion with the utmost decision upon the most important affairs of literature, art, and science, and yet can ask such a question as this. And they have allowed such a passage to remain after correction of the letters, after superintending the editing of the work!

I will not decide, whether it be an excusable or inexcusable fault for any person, who has only made some little progress at school—to say nothing of college education—not to have learnt what Byzantium is. But, for an old man, who pretends to be superlatively well-informed, who converses upon every subject, who must have heard the expression a thousand times in company, and must have read it as often in books, and who besides is