text:  Or if Ernst Willkomm shall guarantee to us that the reminiscences of his people have furnished him with the materials of this tale; if he is as we must needs hope who have freely dealt with you to believe that he is--honest: honest both as to the general character and the particular facts of his representations--if in short the Lusatian Highlanders do sitting by the bench and the stove aver and protest that the said Swanhilda did overturn both council-board and councillors--then we say upon this occasion that which we must all hundreds of times declare--namely that _The Genius of Tradition_ is the foremost of artists; and further that in this instance _an unwilled fiction_ determined by a necessity of the human bosom has risen up _to mantle seriousness with grace_ as a free woodbine enclasps with her slender-gadding twines and bedecks with her sweet bright blossoms a towering giant of the grove