ation was interesting as
showing how little the traditions of the people can be relied on, and
how easily, by the side of real history, a popular history could grow
up. After all, the poems of Charlemagne besieging Jerusalem owed their
origin very likely to some similar confusion in the minds of old
women. My sister and I were always terrified when we were sent to
visit her, for with her dishevelled grey hair, her thin white face,
and her piercing eyes, she was to us the old grandmother, or the witch
of Grimm's stories; and the language she used was such that, if we
repeated it at home, we were severely reprimanded. She knew very
little about my father, but her memory about her first husband and
about her own youth and childhood was very clear, though not always
edifying. Her stories about ghosts, witches, ogres, nickers, and the
whole of that race were certainly enough to frighten a child, and some
of them clung to me for a very long time. On my mother's side my
relations were more civilized, and they had but little social
intercourse with my grandmother and her relatives. My mother's father
was von Basedow, the President, that is Prime Minister of the Duchy of
Anhalt-Dessau, a position in which he was succeeded by his eldest son,
my uncle. He was the first man in the town; the Duke and he really
ruled the Duchy exactly as they pleased. There was no check on them of
any kind, and yet no one, as far as I know, ever complained of any
tyranny. My grandfather's father again was the famous reformer of
public education in Germany. He (1723-1790) had to brave the
conservative and clerical parties throughout the country. His home at
Hamburg was burnt in a riot, and it was then that he migrated to
Dessau, to become the founder of the _Philanthropinum_, and at the
same time the path-breaker for men such as Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and
Froebel (1782-1852). Considering his lifelong struggles, he deserved a
better monument at Dessau than he has found there. No doubt he was a
passionate and violent man, and his outbreaks are still remembered at
Dessau, while his beneficial activity has almost been forgotten. I was
often told that I took after my mother's family, whatever that may
mean, and this was certainly the case in outward appearance, though I
hope not in temper. My great grandfather, the Pedagogue as he was
called, was a friend of Goethe's, and is mentioned in his poems.

My childhood at home was often very sad. My mother, who w