In the King's German Legion - Memoirs of Baron Ompteda, Colonel in the King's German Legion During the Napoleonic Wars #266789

The English reader of the later nineteenth century, habitually shy of ceremony and suspicious of sentiment, may not unnaturally think Christian Ompteda's language affected or over-sensitive, unless reminded that such copious and unreserved expression of feeling belonged to the place and time in which he grew up, a period when the cultivated world of Germany and elsewhere was as wildly Wertherist as it subsequently became gloomily Byronic.<br><br>Christian Ompteda is really quite genuine and natural when he repeatedly assures his brothers of his lasting affection, and his friends of his profound esteem - feelings modern brothers and friends would perhaps take for granted. The man's natural simplicity and nobility of character are to be discerned behind the veil of the style, now almost archaic, of only "a hundred years ago."