ther's translation, but in the literal version of Schmid. I
also paid great attention to sermons at church, and wrote out many that
I heard, doing this in a style that greatly gratified my father.

At this time my first romantic experience occurred. I fell under the
enchantment of Gretchen, a beautiful girl who waited on me and some
comrades at a restaurant. The form of that girl followed me from that
moment on every path. At church, during the long Protestant service, I
gazed my fill at her. I wrote her love-letters, which she did not
resent. The first propensities to love in an uncorrupted youth take
altogether a spiritual direction. Nature seems to desire that one sex
may by the senses perceive goodness and beauty in the other. And thus to
me, by the sight of this girl, a new world of the beautiful and
excellent had arisen. But my friendship for this maiden being discovered
by my father, a family disturbance ensued which plunged me into illness.
I had been ordered to have nothing to do with anyone but the family.

My sorrow was deepened as I slowly recovered by the addition of a
certain secret chagrin, for I plainly perceived that I was watched. It
was not long before my family gave me a special overseer. Fortunately,
it was a man whom I loved and valued. He had held the place of tutor in
the family of one of our friends, and his former pupil had gone to the
university. This friend, in skillful conversations, began to make me
acquainted with the secrets of philosophy. He had studied at Jena under
Daries, and had acutely seized the relations of that doctrine, which he
now sought to impart to me.

After a time I took to wandering about the mountain range, and thus
visited Homburg, Kronenburg, Wiesbaden, Schwalbach, and reached the
Rhine. But the time was approaching when I was to go to the university.
My mind was quite as much excited about my life as about my learning. I
grew more and more conscious of an aversion from my native city. I never
again went into Gretchen's quarter of it, and even my old walls and
towers had become disagreeable.

_III.--University Life_

I had always had my eye upon Goettingen, but my father obstinately
insisted on Leipzig. I arrived in that handsome city just at the time of
the fair, from which I derived particular pleasure, being specially
attracted by the inhabitants of eastern countries in their strange
dresses. I commenced to study under Boehme, professor of history and
publi