Excerpt from Kaspar Hauser, the Foundling of Nuremberg

If, in times like the present, when events of extreme importance succeed each other with unexampled rapidity, and years seem to com prise the history of centuries, we can turn our minds from the contemplation of public affairs to those of a private or personal nature, there is, perhaps, no subject which more de serves our attention, and none which can be more interesting, both to the philosopher and to the philanthropist, than the Narrative which is here translated. Our sympathy must be ex cited by the case of a Youth, who appears to have been confined from his early childhood for a period of many years, and to have been secluded from all human society, and even from the light of heaven. The, curiosity which these A 2circumstances must inspire, is heightened by the mystery in which the causes and the cir cumstances are still enveloped. The real name of the youth, his family, the place in which he was confined, the criminal by whose orders he was condemned to languish in solitude and darkness, he who was employed as the instru ment of the crime, and he who afterwards attempted the assassination, remain undisco vered, or, at least, unknown to the public.

In this, as in every other case which is ex traordinary, or mysterious, a doubt may arise whether there did not exist deception on the one side, and delusion on the other; and whether the statement is deserving of full credit. It appears by the following Narrative, that the evidence does not, in this instance, rest upon the testimony of witnesses, how ever numerous or respectable, nor upon docu ments, however authentic, but that it is written with plain and legible characters by the hand of nature in the mind, and in the physical organization of the individual himself and that it is established by the qua lities in which he was deficient, as well asby those with which he was pre-eminently endowed.

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