es in a period of life rich in
instruction and amusement, as well as the stage so lavishly endowed by
Nature on which they were performed. Jean Paul has termed melancholy the
blending of joy and pain, and it was doubtless a kindred feeling which
filled my heart in the days before my departure, and induced me to be
particularly good and obliging to every body in the house. My mother took
us once more to my father's grave in the Dreifaltigkeits cemetery, where
I made many good resolutions. Only the best reports should reach home
from Keilhau, and I had already obtained excellent ones in Berlin.

On the evening of our departure there were numerous kisses and farewell
glances at all that was left behind; but when we were seated in the car
with my mother, rushing through the landscape adorned with the most
luxuriant spring foliage, my heart suddenly expanded, and the pleasure of
travel and delight in the many new scenes before me destroyed every other
feeling.

The first vineyard I saw at Naumburg--I had long forgotten those on the
Rhine--interested me deeply; the Rudelsburg at Kosen, the ruins of a real
ancient castle, pleased me no less because I had never heard Franz
Kugler's song:

"Beside the Saale's verdant strand
Once stood full many a castle grand,
But roofless ruins are they all;
The wind sweeps through from hall to hall;
Slow drift the clouds above,"

which refers to this charming part of the Thuringian hill country. We
were soon to learn to sing it at Keilhau. Weimar was the first goal of
this journey. We had heard much of our classic poets; nay, I knew
Schiller's Bell and some of Goethe's poems by heart, and we had heard
them mentioned with deep reverence. Now we were to see their home, and a
strange emotion took possession of me when we entered it.

Every detail of this first journey has remained stamped on my memory. I
even know what we ordered for supper at the hotel where we spent the
night. But my mother had a severe headache, so we saw none of the sights
of Weimar except the Goethe house in the city and the other one in the
park. I cannot tell what my feelings were, they are too strongly blended
with later impressions. I only know that the latter especially seemed to
me very small. I had imagined the "Goethe House" like the palace of the
Prince of Prussia or Prince Radziwill in Wilhelmstrasse. The Grand Duke's
palace, on the contrary, appeared aristocratic and st