My father's permission was asked and obtained, to my great delight; and my kind aunt, who had now won my heart, carried me off to her house in the Frauenplan. She had no children, and her husband, Count von P, was rich. My aunt wore wore a gold watch with a massive chain, and my uncle had a gold snuffbox, which he almost always carried in his hand. After dinner, coffee was brought in on a shining tray, and my aunt told me it was real silver; I had never seen any thing so beautiful before, and touched it with the points of my fingers to see what it felt like.

Seckendorf visited my uncle. He was reckoned a great musician, and I looked up to him with awe. I remember, too, seeing a strange-looking gentleman one day walk down the street with a cup of coffee in his hand. My aunt laughed when I asked who it was, and said: "Oh! that is Musæus, a lover of flowers."

Now came the grand event of my childhood, the drama at Tiefurt. It was a fine summer evening, and the piece was to be performed in the park. I did not close my eyes the night before, so great was my excitement, and the reality surpassed all I had anticipated. The Count von P―, my uncle, took me on the bridge that arches over the river, that I might see better. The crowd of spectators was very great, and they pressed me so much that my uncle took me up on his shoulder. The river Ilm was illumined with countless lamps and flaring torches, and I thought their reflections were real lamps under the water. On the bank, beneath. the trees, were huts, boats, nets, and fishing tackle. There was a fire, too, burning, and my uncle told me it was supposed to be Dortchen's, and that Corona Schröter, a very clever person, acted that character. I did not know what acting meant, and thought it was all real. Presently the fishermen put off in their boats to look for the maiden who had been lost, and the flicker of lights upon the river and the rippling water was very beautiful. I clapped my hands with delight, but oh! more people came crowding to the wooden bridge. I heard a crack; some one called out that the bridge was falling; a rush was made to get away, but in vain. Crash! crash! followed by a loud scream, in which I felt my voice mingle; then the water rippled round me; I put out my

arms to save myself; some one caught hold of me, and I was borne to the bank.

My aunt was dreadfully frightened; I was wet and cold. They took every care, but, in spite of the warm summer air, I caught cold, and was sent home to be nursed by my mother. As may well be imagined, I had a great deal to recount, and this, my first visit from home, was the origin of much amusement. I tried to act "Die Fischerin." Veronica was the lost maiden, and I hid her under one of the green-baize chairs, whilst I went about seeking every where for her. My sister was a bright, happy child, with large, roguish eyes peering out from a mass of glossy curls, which hung all round her neck. Ida loved her, and would even now creep away from me to play with her. I watched them, and sometimes wished I had been born a girl.

Thus the happy years of childhood glided by, and I linger over them with a fond remembrance. How strange that I could have enjoyed such and such things; but so it was, and so it will never be again.

The bright mystic vail that fascinated. the child, making the commonest objects new and curious, disappears. I grew older, different thoughts, different pleasures, a different world opens, and yet it is not the world I live in now; I had to pass through several stages of existence ere I reached my present age. This is very strange and incomprehensible to us, yet it is the common course of that mysterious thing called life!

II.

HOME DISCIPLINE.

"I AM twelve years old," thus I wrote in my journal. "I shall soon be a man and go to college; my father teaches me now, but then I shall do what I like. They tell me I am to be a doctor. Time will show. But I do not like the idea; I would rather be a preacher. If my father says a thing, he means it; so I suppose I had better learn to like the profession." It was my habit to put down my thoughts on every birthday, and I found the above in an old desk amongst my other journals. My father took great interest in scientific matters, and I remember hearing him speak of Semler's imaginary discovery of

nately for him, it showed itself in no particular form. He could grasp every thing, did every thing well up to a certain point, but further he had not the patience to attempt to go. For two years he was a student at Jena, where he had led a wild life and learnt little. After this, he came to Weimar to study music under his uncle, my master, and it was then he took a fancy to me. My vanity was flattered by the friendship of one so much older than myself; and although I do not think I ever cared much for him, I was led, for want of better companions, into a close intimacy with this wild young

man.

My bedroom window was situated immediately above a wall which inclosed a small court at the back of our house. No sooner had my father paid me his last visit than I let myself down upon this, and, running round it, dropped into the narrow, deserted little street below. Here Burkhardt met me, and we directed our steps either to his lodging, where he taught me the use of the sword, and we practiced music together, drank beer and smoked, or (but this was not often) he led me to some night revelry, for which I never had a taste. I was not naturally wild, nor did I exercise this deceit on my parents for love of adventure; I wanted recreation and liberty, and this was my only means of obtaining it. I never looked upon the part I was acting as wrong; and if it did by chance occur to me, I smoothed over my conscience by saying, that the hours of dark were at my own disposal, and if I did not choose to spend them in sleep I was at liberty to go where I liked. Little did my disciplineloving father know where his son was, and if he had, he would never have blamed himself for being the cause of this want of trust in me. Burkhardt was confessedly an Atheist; and though his views and opinions had little weight with me, he was the first to show me disbelief was possible, and the simple, unquestioning faith with which my mother had striven to inspire me from my birth, received a shock whilst I listened to his wild, unreasoning theories, from which it was destined never to recover.

It happened sometimes that Burkhardt was unable to keep his appointment. I would then stroll out of the town to the banks of the little river Ilm; it was my delight to see the water sparkle in the

moonlight, to hear the night breeze murmur in the tall trees, to feel the repose of nature, and to banish Greek and Latin from my head. Often have I stood by the floating bridge concealed in the deep shade of some spreading branch, and there have been the invisible watcher of Goethe's midnight bathing.

This part of the river had the reputation of being haunted by water-sprites, and the peasants would not pass that way after dark. I can not say I had any adventure of this kind, and the eccentric poet is the only living thing I have ever seen disporting itself in the shining water at that hour.

Monotonous years are flitting by without any peculiar circumstance to form a landmark in the passing time. Each day is alike; my studies are advancing, my midnight rambles the same. I am a slim youth of sixteen, rather grave for my age, and having all the ways and manners of a young man. My aunt often laughed at me for my peculiar dress. She called me a book-worm, and, strange to say, by some unusual power of persuasion, she made my father think I wanted change, and needed the society of young men of my own age to make me like the rest of the world. It was settled I should become a member of the university at Jena in the following year, there to pursue my medical studies, and, till then, I was to mix more in society and be my own master during the day. This sudden liberation was hard to understand; but it had one bad effect, and that was, I never opened a book from the moment of my freedom being granted to the day I quitted Weimar to become a student.

"You are a lazy fellow, Hans," said my father sharply; "I thought better of you; my lessons have been entirely thrown away. You will never do any good."

"Pardon me, father," was my rejoinder. "When I am at college I shall be numbered among the hard workers."

He looked incredulous, and was vexed with me, but my mother understood all that was passing in my mind, and smiled approvingly, though she warned me, at the same time, not to let my holiday extend too far.

Now that I was at liberty to choose my own companions, I openly avowed my acquaintance with Burkhardt. For some weeks my father took no notice of our

intimacy, but one morning I was about to leave the breakfast-table, pleading, as my excuse, an appointment I had made with him.

"I tell you what, young man," said my father, in his sharpest tone, "if you make such friendships your ruin is not far off." I felt very angry, but perceiving a look of deep distress on my mother's face, I forebore to open my lips, and left the room, telling myself that I was unjustly treated, and had always been so. There is nothing that galls a youth's pride more than to be told, when he is just verging into manhood, that he does not know how to take care of himself. Burkhardt encouraged me in these rebellious feelings against my father. He laughed at the idea of my being led about in leading-strings all my life, and jeered me for having endured it so long. At first, I thought him in the right; but he carried his joke too far, and it became an insult to myself which I resented hotly; he turned upon me again, and each grew warm. My eyes opened to his real character, and from that time the friendship which had existed for so many years was dissolved. I no longer sought his society as a privilege, but, on the contrary, avoided him as much as possible, and if by chance we met, it was but to exchange a few words and pass on.

In the month of August of this year, Count von P- treated me to a redoute. It was the first I had ever seen, and my astonishment was great. The Duchess Amalia was dressed en reine grecque, and displayed jewels of what to me appeared fabulous value; she danced with any mask who had courage sufficient to ask her, and staked dollars and half-louis at the faro-table. The ball was very successful; every one seemed happy; but as I had never learned to dance, and felt very uncomfortable in my Savoyard dress and mask, I did not altogether enjoy myself. Some students from Jena were there; they seemed much at their ease, and wholly independent in their manners. The costumes were dazzling: masks as Fire, Love, and Zephyr passed me, and men dressed as women with their hair curled. We staid till the last, although I was tired out long before Count von P proposed returning home. The cool air was refreshing after the close, heated atmosphere of the ball-room. I felt like a bird escaped from its cage, and rejoiced in my accustomed clothes. I never

thought my blue coat half so comfortable as I did the day after my first dissipation.

Ida now lived at home, her education was completed, she had grown up even more fascinating in outward appearance than she promised to be as a child. All the force of my childish affection returned when I met her again, not as a child now, but as a woman full of grace and beauty. Whenever I could invent an excuse sufficient to pay the Hannemanns a visit, I was sure to be found with Ida. She treated me with the cordiality of an old friend, but preserved her maidenly dig nity, which I then misconstrued into coldness, so little do men know of the shades of feeling within a woman's heart. Every thing is open with us; we are not bound to conceal our passion, whilst a woman must guard her every look and movement lest inadvertently she should betray what is passing in her breast.

İda lovell me, and this I learned to my inexpressible joy on the morning of the 10th of November, 1792. I was to quit Weimar on the following day, and went to bid her good-by; she was seated by the window arranging some wild autumnal flowers in a little vase; there was no one else in the room, and I stole unperceived to her side.

"Like their mistress," said I, alluding to the flowers, "they are modest and beautiful.”

Ida started up. "O Hans! how you frightened me!"

Did I?" I said, stooping to pick up the blossoms she had let fall in her alarm. "Yes, you should have knocked at the door."

"I will go and do it now. They say it is never too late to mend."

Ida put out her hand to take the flowers, laughed, and called me a foolish fellow. "Let me keep these flowers," I said. "I am going to Jena to-morrow."

66

Going! Are you really?" asked she; and a shade of melancholy passed over her face.

"Yes, I want a keepsake from you. I may keep them, may I not?"

"Certainly, but they will fade;" and she blushed as soon as she had given her permission. Gaining assurance from her manner, I approached nearer, and said with a beating heart:

"There is one keepsake I aspire to which would never fade."