memory, not far from the female portion, as busily employed in cooking.

'Holidays occur in every occupation; thus I too had my airing holidays, analogous to watering holidays, so that I could travel out in the snow of the court-yard, and to the barn with its threshing. Nay, was there a delicate embassy to be transacted in the village,— for example, to the schoolmaster, to the tailor,-I was sure to be despatched thither in the middle of my lessons; and thus I still got forth into the open air and the cold, and measured myself with the new snow. At noon, before our own dinner, we children might also, in the kitchen, have the hungry satisfaction to see the threshers fall to and consume their victuals.

The afternoon, again, was still more important, and richer in joys. Winter shortened and sweetened our lessons. In the long dusk, our Father walked to and fro; and the children, according to ability, trotted under his night-gown, holding by his hands. At sound of the Vesper bell, we placed ourselves in a circle, and in concert devotionally chaunted the hymn, Die finstre Nacht bricht stark herein (The gloomy Night is gathering round). Only in villages, not in towns, where properly there is more night than day labour,―have the evening chimes a meaning and beauty, and are the swan-song of the day the evening-bell is as it were the muffle of the over loud heart, and, like a rance des vaches of the plains, calls men from their running and toiling, into the land of silence and dreams. After a pleasant watching about the kitchen door, for the moonrise of candlelight, we saw our wide room at once illuminated and barricaded; to wit, the window shutters were closed and holted; and behind these window bastions and breast works, the child felt himself snugly nestled, and well secured against Knecht Ruprecht, who on the outside could not get in, but only in vain keep growling and humming. 'About this period too it was that we children might undress, and in long train-shirts skip up and down. Idyllic joys of various sorts alternated our Father either had his quarto Bible, interleaved with blank folio sheets, before him, and was marking, at each verse, the book wherein he had read anything concerning it;-or more commonly he had his ruled music-paper; and, undisturbed by this racketting of children, was composing whole concerts of church-music, with all their divisions; constructing his internal melody without any help of external tones (as Reichard too advises), or rather in spite of all external mistones. In both cases, in the last with the more pleasure, I looked on as he wrote; and rejoiced specially, when, by pauses of various instruments, whole pages were at once, filled up. The children all sat sporting on that long writing and eating table, or even under it ***

*

Then, at length, how did the winter evening, once a week, mount in worth, when the old errand-woman, coated in snow, with her fruit, flesh, and general ware basket, entered the kitchen from Hof;

* The Rawhead (with bloody bones) of Germany.

and

and we all, in this case, had the distant town in miniature before our eyes, nay before our noses, for there were pastry cakes in it!'

Thus in dull winter imprisonment, among all manner of bovine, swinish, and feathered cattle, with their noises, may Idyllic joys be found, if there is an eye to see them, and a heart to taste them. Truly happiness is cheap, did we apply to the right merchant for it. Paul warns us elsewhere not to believe, for these Idyls, that there were no sour days, no chidings, and the like, at Jodiz: yet, on the whole, he had good reason to rejoice in his parents. They loved him well; his Father, he says, would 'shed tears over any mark of quickness or talent in little Fritz: they were virtuous also, and devout, which after all is better than being rich. Ever and anon,' says he, 'I was hearing some narrative from my Father, how he and other clergymen had taken parts of their dress and given them to the poor; he related these things with joy, not as an admonition, but merely as a necessary occurrence: O God! I thank Thee for my Father!'

6

Richter's education was not of a more sumptuous sort, than his board and lodging. Some disagreement with the Schoolmaster at Jodiz had induced the Parson to take his sons from school, and determine to teach them himself. This determination he executed faithfully indeed, yet in the most limited style; his method being no Pestalozzian one, but simply the old scheme of task-work and force-work, operating on a Latin grammar and a Latin vocabulary: and the two boys sat all day, and all year, at home, without other preceptorial nourishment than getting by heart long lists of words. Fritz learned honestly nevertheless, and in spite of his brother Adam's bad example. For the rest, he was totally destitute of books, except such of his Father's theological ones as he could come at by stealth: these, for want of better, he eagerly devoured; understanding, as he says, nothing whatever of their contents. With no less impetuosity, and no less profit, he perused the antiquated sets of Newspapers, which a kind patroness, the Lady von Plotho, already mentioned, was in the habit of furnishing to his Father, not in separate sheets, but in sheaves monthly. This was the extent of his reading. Jodiz too was the most sequestered of all hamlets; had neither natural nor artificial beauty; no memorable thing could be seen there, in a lifetime. Nevertheless, under an immeasurable Sky, and in a quite wondrous World it did stand; and glimpses into the infinite spaces of the Universe, and even into the infinite spaces of Man's Soul, could be had there as well as elsewhere. Fritz had his own thoughts, in spite of schoolmasters: a little heavenly seed of Knowledge, nay of Wisdom, had been laid in him, and with no gardener, but Nature herself, it was silently growing. To some

of

of our readers, the following circumstance may seem unparalleled, if not unintelligible; to others nowise so:

'In the future Literary History of our hero, it will become doubtful whether he was not born more for Philosophy than for Poetry. In earliest times, the word Weltweisheit (Philosophy, World-wisdom),— yet also another word, Morgenland (East, Morning-land),—was to me an open Heaven's-gate, through which I looked in over long, long gardens of joy.-Never shall I forget that inward occurrence, till now narrated to no mortal, wherein I witnessed the birth of my Self-consciousness, of which I can still give the place and time. One forenoon, I was standing, a very young child, in the outer door, and looking leftward at the stack of fuel wood,-when, all at once, the internal vision,-I am a ME (ich bin ein Ich), came like a flash from heaven before me, and in gleaming light ever afterwards continued: then had my ME, for the first time, seen itself, and for ever. Deceptions of memory are scarcely conceivable here; for, in regard to an event occurring altogether in the veiled Holy-of-Holies of man, and whose novelty alone has given permanence to such everyday recollections accompanying it, no posterior description from another party would have mingled itself with accompanying circumstances at all.'

It was in his thirteenth year that the family removed to that better church-living at Schwarzenbach; with which change, so far as school education was concerned, prospects considerably brightened for him. The public Teacher there was no deep scholar or thinker, yet a lively, genial man, and warmly interested in his pupils; among whom he soon learned to distinguish Fritz, as a boy of altogether superior gifts. What was of still more importance, Fritz now got access to books; entered into a course of highly miscellaneous, self-selected reading; and what with Romances, what with Belles-Lettres works, and Hutchesonian Philosophy, and controversial Divinity, saw an astonishing scene opening round him on all hands. His Latin and Greek were now better taught; he even began learning Hebrew. Two clergymen of the neighbourhood took pleasure in his company, young as he was; and were of great service now and afterwards: it was under their auspices tha, he commenced composition, and also speculating on Theologyt wherein he inclined strongly to the heterodox side.'

In the family room,' however, things were not nearly so flourishing. The Professor's three Lectures terminate before this date; but we gather from his Notes that surly clouds hung over Schwarzenbach, that his evil days began there.' The Father was engaged in more complex duties than formerly, went often from home, was encumbered with debt, and lost his former cheerfulness of humour. For his sons he saw no outlet

except the hereditary craft of School-keeping; and let the matter rest there, taking little farther charge of them. In some three years, the poor man, worn down with manifold anxieties, departed this life; leaving his pecuniary affairs, which he had long calculated on rectifying by the better income of Schwarzenbach, sadly deranged.

Meanwhile, Friederich had been sent to the Hof Gymnasium (Town-school), where, notwithstanding this event, he continued some time, two years in all, apparently the most profitable period of his whole tuition; indeed, the only period when, properly speaking, he had any tutor but himself. The good old clothmaking grandfather and grandmother took charge of him, under their roof; and he had a body of teachers, all notable in their way. Herr Otto represents him as a fine, trustful, kindly, yet resolute youth, who went through his persecutions, preferments, studies, friendships, and other school-destinies in a highly creditable manner; and demonstrates this, at great length, by various details of facts, far too minute for insertion here. As a trait of Paul's intellectual habitudes, it may be mentioned that, at this time, he scarcely made any progress in History or Geography, much as he profited in all other branches; nor was the dull teacher entirely to blame, but also the indisposed pupil: indeed, it was not till long afterwards, that he overcame or suppressed his contempt for those studies, and with an effort of his own acquired some skill in them.* The like we have heard of other Poets and Philosophers, especially when their teachers chanced to be prosaists and unphilosophical. Richter boasts that he was never punished at school; yet between him and the Historico-geographical Conrector (Second Master) no good understanding could subsist. On one tragi-comical occasion, of another sort, they came into still more decided collision. The zealous Conrector, a most solid, painstaking man, desirous to render his Gymnasium as like a University as possible, had imagined that a series of Disputations,' some foreshadow of those held at College, might be a useful, as certainly enough it would be an ornamental thing. By ill luck, the worthy President had selected some church-article for the theme of such a Disputation: one boy was to defend, and it fell to Paul's lot to impugn the dogma, a task which, as hinted above, he was very

6

*All History,' thus he writes in his thirty-second year, 'in so far as it is an affair of memory, can only be reckoned a sapless, heartless thistle for pedantic chaffinches;— but, on the other hand, like Nature, it has highest value, in as far as we, by means of it, as by means of Nature, can divine and read the Infinite Spirit, who, with Nature and History, as with letters, legibly writes to us. He who finds a God in the physical world, will also find one in the moral, which is History. Nature forces on our heart a Creator; History a Providence.'

specially

specially qualified to undertake. Now, honest Paul knew nothing of the limits of this game; never dreamt but he might argue with his whole strength, to whatever results it might lead. In a very few rounds, accordingly, his antagonist was borne out of the ring, as good as lifeless; and the Conrector himself, seeing the danger, had, as it were, to descend from his presiding chair, and clap the gauntlets on his own more experienced hands. But Paul, nothing daunted, gave him also a Rowland for an Oliver; nay, as it became more and more manifest to all eyes, was fast reducing him also to the frightfullest extremity. The Conrector's tongue threatened cleaving to the roof of his mouth; for his brain was at a stand, or whirling in eddies, only his gall was in active play. Nothing remained for him but to close the debate abruptly by a Silence, Sirrah!'-and leave the room, with a face (like that of the much more famous Subrector Hans von Füchslein*) of a mingled colour, like red bole, green chalk, tinsel-yellow, and vomissement de la reine.'

With his studies in the Leipzig University, whither he proceeded in 1781, begins a far more important era for Paul; properly, the era of his manhood, and first entire dependance on himself. In regard to literary or scientific culture, it is not clear that he derived much furtherance from Leipzig; much more, at least, than the mere neighbourhood of libraries and fellow-learners might anywhere else have afforded him. Certain professorial courses he did attend, and with diligence; but too much in the character of critic, as well as of pupil: he was in the habit of measuring minds' with men so much older and more honourable than he; and ere long, his respect for many of them had not a little abated. What his original plan of studies was, or whether he had any fixed plan, we do not learn; at Hof, without election or rejection on his own part, he had been trained with some view to Theology; but this and every other professional view soon faded away in Leipzig, owing to a variety of causes; and Richter, now still more decidedly a self-teacher, broke loose from all corporate gilds whatsoever, and in intellectual culture, as in other respects, endeavoured to seek out a basis of his own. He read multitudes of books, and wrote down whole volumes of excerpts, and private speculations; labouring in all directions with insatiable eagerness; but from the University, he derived little guidance, and soon came to expect little. Ernesti, the only truly eminent man of the place, had died shortly after Paul's arrival there.