the
Stag-Ditch. Formerly the street had been a ditch, in which stags were
kept. On the second floor of the dwelling was a room called the
garden-room, because there they had endeavoured to supply the want of a
garden by means of a few plants placed before a window. As I grew older,
it was there that I made my somewhat sentimental retreat, for from
thence might be viewed a beautiful and fertile plain.

When I became acquainted with my native city, I loved more than anything
else to promenade on the great bridge over the Maine. Its length, its
firmness, and fine aspect rendered it a notable structure. And one liked
to lose oneself in the old trading town, particularly on market days,
among the crowd collected about the church of St. Bartholomew. The
Roemerberg was a most delightful place for walking.

My father had prospered in his own career tolerably according to his
wishes; I was to follow the same course, only more easily and much
further. He had passed his youth in the Coburg Gymnasium, which stood as
one of the first among German educational institutions. He had there
laid a good foundation, and had subsequently taken his degree at
Giessen. He prized my natural endowments the more because he was himself
wanting in them, for he had acquired everything simply by means of
diligence and pertinacity.

During my childhood the Frankforters passed a series of prosperous
years, but scarcely, on August 28, 1756, had I completed my seventh
year, when that world-renowned war broke out, which was also to exert
great influence upon the next seven years of my life. Frederick II. of
Prussia had fallen upon Saxony with 60,000 men. The world immediately
split into two parties, and our family was an image of the great whole.
My grandfather took the Austrian side, with some of his daughters and
sons-in-law; my father leaned towards Prussia, with the other and
smaller half of the family; and I also was a Prussian in my views, for
the personal character of the great king worked on our hearts.

As the eldest grandson and godchild, I dined every Sunday with my
grandparents, and the event was always the most delightful experience of
the week. But now I relished no morsel that I tasted, because I was
compelled to listen to the most horrible slanders of my hero. That
parties existed had never entered into my conceptions. I trace here the
germ of that disregard and even disdain of the public which clung to me
for a whole period of my life,