text:  Why did Frederick Schlegel make so much talk of the middle ages? Why were the times so dark to others instinct to him with a steady solar effluence in comparison of which the boasted enlightenment of these latter days was but as the busy exhibition of squibs by impertinent boys the uncertain trembling of fire-flies in a dusky twilight? The middle ages were historically the glory of Germany; and those who had lived to see and to feel the Confederation of the Rhine and the Protectorate of Napoleon did not require the particular predilections of a Schlegel to carry them back with eager reaction to the days of the Henries the Othos and the Fredericks when to be the German emperor was to be the greatest man in Europe after the Pope