He was an
affectionate parent, and at the same time tyrannical to a degree.

It was the old story where the father wishes to direct every step that
his son takes, and where the son, bursting out into youthful manhood,
feels that he has the right to freedom. The father thinks how he has
toiled for the son; the son thinks that if this toil were given for
love, it should not be turned into a fetter and restraint. Young
Lassalle, instead of becoming a clever silk-merchant, insisted on a
university career, where he studied earnestly, and was admitted to the
most cultured circles.

Though his birth was Jewish, he encountered little prejudice against
his race. Napoleon had changed the old anti-Semitic feeling of fifty
years before to a liberalism that was just beginning to be strongly
felt in Germany, as it had already been in France. This was true in
general, but especially true of Lassalle, whose features were not of a
Semitic type, who made friends with every one, and who was a favorite
in many salons. His portraits make him seem a high-bred and
high-spirited Prussian, with an intellectual and clean-cut forehead; a
face that has a sense of humor, and yet one capable of swift and cogent
thought.

No man of ordinary talents could have won the admiration of so many
compeers. It is not likely that such a keen and cynical observer as
Heinrich Heine would have written as he did concerning Lassalle, had
not the latter been a brilliant and magnetic youth. Heine wrote to
Varnhagen von Ense, the German historian:

My friend, Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of
remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with
the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever
known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy
of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I
found united so much enthusiasm and practical intelligence.

No better proof of Lassalle's enthusiasm can be found than a few lines
from his own writings:

I love Heine. He is my second self. What audacity! What overpowering
eloquence! He knows how to whisper like a zephyr when it kisses
rose-blooms, how to breathe like fire when it rages and destroys; he
calls forth all that is tenderest and softest, and then all that is
fiercest and most daring. He has the sweep of the whole lyre!

Lassalle's sympathy with Heine was like his sympathy with every one
whom he knew. This wa