pipe as the old
ones sing, and the expression accurately indicates the narrow, petty
academic pride so characteristic of the "highly learned" Georgia
Augusta.[51] The fresh morning air blew over the highroad, the birds
sang cheerily, and, little by little, with the breeze and the birds, my
mind also became fresh and cheerful. Such refreshment was sorely needed
by one who had long been confined in the Pandect stable. Roman casuists
had covered my soul with gray cobwebs; my heart was as though jammed
between the iron paragraphs of selfish systems of jurisprudence; there
was an endless ringing in my ears of such sounds as "Tribonian,
Justinian, Hermogenian, and Blockheadian," and a sentimental brace of
lovers seated under a tree appeared to me like an edition of the _Corpus
Juris_ with closed clasps. The road began to take on a more lively
appearance. Milkmaids occasionally passed, as did also donkey-drivers
with their gray pupils. Beyond Weende I met the "Shepherd" and "Doris."
This is not the idyllic pair sung by Gessner, but the duly and
comfortably appointed university beadles, whose duty it is to keep watch
and ward so that no students fight duels in Bovden, and, above all, that
no new ideas (such as are generally obliged to remain in quarantine for
several decades outside of Goettingen) are smuggled in by speculative
private lecturers. Shepherd greeted me as one does a colleague, for he,
too, is an author, who has frequently mentioned my name in his
semi-annual writings. In addition to this, I may mention that when, as
was frequently the case, he came to cite me before the university court
and found me "not at home," he was always kind enough to write the
citation with chalk upon my chamber door. Occasionally a one-horse
vehicle rolled along, well packed with students, who were leaving for
the vacation or forever.

In such a university town there is an endless coming and going. Every
three years beholds a new student-generation, forming an incessant human
tide, where one semester-wave succeeds another, and only the old
professors stand fast in the midst of this perpetual-motion flood,
immovable as the pyramids of Egypt. Only in these university pyramids no
treasures of wisdom are buried.

From out the myrtle bushes, by Rauschenwasser, I saw two hopeful youths
appear ... singing charmingly the Rossinian lay of "Drink beer, pretty,
pretty 'Liza!" These sounds I continued to hear when far in the
distance, and after