Keep true to the dreams of thy youth. - Friedrich Schiller

Fortune, which had never forsaken him in his lifetime, favored the King of Sweden even in his death, with the rare privilege of falling in the fullness of his glory and an untarnished fame. By a timely death, his protecting genius rescued him from the inevitable fate of man - that of forgetting moderation in the intoxication of success, and justice in the plenitude of power.

Yet out of this fearful war Europe came forth free and independent. In it she first learned to recognize herself as a community of nations; and this intercommunion of states, which originated in the thirty years’ war, may alone be sufficient to reconcile the philosopher to its horrors.

One people will we be, — a band of brothers; No danger, no distress shall sunder us. We will be freemen as our fathers were, And sooner welcome death than live as slaves. We will rely on God's almighty arm, And never quail before the power of man.