impulse of
scientific curiosity prompted him, in spite of warnings and
remonstrances, to experiment on what is called the "cannon-fever." For
this purpose he rode to a place in which he was exposed to a cross-fire
of the two armies, and coolly watched the sensations experienced in that
place of peril.

Command of himself, acquired by long and systematic discipline, gave him
that command over others which he exercised in several memorable
instances. Coming from a ball one night,--a young man fresh from the
University,--he saw that a fire had broken out in the Judengasse, and
that people were standing about helpless and confused without a leader;
he immediately jumped from his carriage, and, full dressed as he was, in
silk stockings and pumps, organized on the spot a fire-brigade, which
averted a dangerous conflagration. On another occasion, voyaging in the
Mediterranean, he quelled a mutiny on board an Italian ship, when
captain and mates were powerless, and the vessel drifting on the rocks,
by commanding sailors and passengers to fall on their knees and pray to
the Virgin,--adopting the idiom of their religion as well as their
speech, of which he was a master.

As a student, first at Leipsic, then at Strasburg, including the years
from 1766 to 1771, he seems not to have been a very diligent attendant
on the lectures in either university, and to have profited little by
professional instruction. In compliance with the wishes of his father,
who intended him for a jurist, he gave some time to the study of the
law; but on the whole the principal gain of those years was derived from
intercourse with distinguished intellectual men and women, whose
acquaintance he cultivated, and the large opportunities of social life.

In Strasburg occurred the famous love-passage with Friederike Brion,
which terminated so unhappily at the time, and so fortunately in the
end, for both.

Goethe has been blamed for not marrying Friederike. His real blame
consists in the heedlessness with which, in the beginning of their
acquaintance, he surrendered himself to the charm of her presence,
thereby engaging her affection without a thought of the consequences to
either. Besides the disillusion, which showed him, when he came fairly
to face the question, that he did not love her sufficiently to justify
marriage, there were circumstances--material, economical--which made it
practically impossible. Her suffering in the separation, great as it
was,-