ns, there was nothing of that
wild, exuberant, often obtrusive kind of fraternizing, affected by our
studious youth. From that, we were as far, when we parted in the
autumn, as we had been on our first walk by the Rhine; when the same
road, and the same delight in the marvellous beauty of the spring
scenery before us had first introduced us to each other's notice.

Even of his worldly circumstances, I had learned but little. I had
heard that he came of an ancient and noble house;--that his boyhood had
been passed at his father. Count ----'s castle, under the direction of
a French tutor, with whom he had then been sent to travel; and finally,
at his own express desire, to college. There, he had ascertained, what
he had long suspected; viz.: that in each and every branch of regular
instruction he was totally deficient--Upon which, straightway he shut
himself up with books and private tutors;--suffered the tumult of loose
Burschen-life to sweep by him, without once lifting his eyes from his
task;--and by the time I knew him, he had got so far as to rise every
morning with the Ethica of Aristotle, and to lie down, at night, with a
chorus of Euripides.

Not a shade of pedantry;--not a taint of scholastic rust,--was left to
clog the free play of his mind, at the close of all those years of
sharp-set study.--Numbers of industrious people work, because they do
not know how to live. But his life was in his work;--he took science in
its plenitude, with all his faculties at once. He acknowledged no
intellectual gain, that did not tend to elevate his character, or stood
at variance with his mental instincts.

In this sense, his was, perhaps, the most ideal nature I ever knew; if
the term be not abused, as it too often is, to mean a vapid kind of
beauty worship, and a sentimental distaste for rough realities; but
used in its loftier, and certainly far rarer sense: an ideal standard
of human character, resolutely upheld, and steadily pursued; with
undaunted spirit, if with moderate expectations; and at whatever
sacrifice of present brilliance and success, a thorough contempt of
cram, as well as of every other form of professional narrow mindedness.

It is quite conceivable therefore, that the coarser kind of student
pleasures could not prove ensnaring to this young hermit, whose
seclusion came to be interpreted as aristocratic prejudice, from which
no man could be more free. Education may have done something to confirm
his natura