57 und seine Fehler gesehen hatte und von einem Feste unterrichtet war, welches die Barbaren feiern sollten, eilte er zu dem Grafen von Devon, der Milizen bereit hatte. Er kehrt mit einer kleinen, aber entschlossenen Schar zurück; er überrascht sie und trägt einen vollständigen Sieg davon. Uneinigkeit entzweite damals die Dänen. Alfred verstand zu unterhandeln wie zu kämpfen; und, was befremdend ist, die Dänen und die Engländer erkannten ihn einstimmig als König an. Es blieb nur London zu bezwingen übrig; er nahm es ein, befestigte es, verschönerte es, rüstete Flotten aus, hielt die Dänen Englands im Schach, widersetzte sich der Landung der andern und bemühte sich 12 Jahre eines ruhigen Besitzes hindurch, sein Vaterland zu civilisieren. Seine Gesetze waren milde, aber sie wurden strenge gehandhabt. (Wilcke, Materialien zum Übersetzen aus dem Deutschen ins Französische, Nr. 18.) 4. Übersetzung aus der englischen Sprache in die deutsche. Aus der Rede: On English Literature. (Th. B. Macaulay.) It is evident then that those who are afraid of superficial knowledge do not mean by superficial know¬ ledge, knowledge which is superficial when compared with the whole quantity of truth capable of being known. For, in that sense, all human knowledge is, and always has been, and always must be, superficial. What then is the standard? Is it the same two years together in any country? Is it the same, at the same moment, in any two countries? Is it not notorious that the profundity of one age is the shal¬ lowness of the next; that the profundity of one nation is the shallowness of a neighbouring nation? Ramohu Roy passed, among Hindoos, for a man of profound western learning; but he would have been but a very superficial member of this institute. Strabo was justly entitled to be called a profound geographer eighteen hundred years ago. But a teacher of geography, who had never heard of America, would now be laughed at by the girls of a boarding-school. What would now be thought of the greatest chemist of 1749, or of the greatest geologist of 1746? The truth is that, in all experimental science, mankind is, of necessity, constantly ad¬ vancing. Every generation, of course, has its front rank and its rear rank; but the rear rank of a later generation occupies the ground which was occupied by the front rank of a former generation. You remember Gullivers adventures. First he is shipwrecked in a country of little men; and he is a Colossus among them. He strides over the walls of their capital: he stands higher than the cupola of their great temple; he tug after him a royal fleet: he stretches his legs; and a royal army, with drums beating and colours flying, marches through the gigantic arch: he devours a whole granary for breakfast, eats a herd of cattle for dinner, and washes down his meal with all the hogsheads of a cellar. In his next voyage he is among men sity feet high. He who, in Lilliput, used to take people up in his hand in order that he might be able to hear them, is himself taken up in the hands and held to the ears of his masters. It is all that he can do to defend himself with his hanger against the rats and mice. The court ladies amuse themselves with seeing him fight wasps and frogs: the monkey runs off with him to the chimney top: the darf drops him into the cream jug and leaves him to swim for his life. Now, was Gulliver a tall or a short man? Why, in his own house at Rotherhithe, he was thought a man of the ordinary stature. Take him to Lilliput; and he is Quibus Flestrin, the man Mountain. Take him to Brobdingnag, and he is Grildrig, the little Manikin. It is the same in science. The pygmies of one society would have passed for giants in another.
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