yet quite young, her parents let her go, for the advantages of
instruction, to her grandfather, Johann Schmidgall, in Loewenstein.

Here were discovered in her the sensibility to magnetic and ghostly
influences, which, the good Kerner assures us, her grandparents deeply
lamented, and did all in their power to repress. But, as it appears that
her grandfather, also, had seen a ghost, and there were evidently
legends in existence about the rooms in which the little Frederika saw
ghosts, and spots where the presence of human bones caused her sudden
shivering, we may be allowed to doubt whether indirect influence was not
more powerful than direct repression upon these subjects.

There is the true German impartiality with regard to the scene of
appearance for these imposing visiters; sometimes it is "a room in the
Castle of Loewenstein, long disused," a la Radcliffe, sometimes "a
deserted kitchen."

This "solemn, unhappy gift," brought no disturbance to the childish life
of the maiden, she enjoyed life with more vivacity than most of her
companions. The only trouble she had was the extreme irritability of the
optic nerve, which, though without inflammation of the eyes, sometimes
confined her to a solitary chamber. "This," says Dr. K. "was probably a
sign of the development of the spiritual in the fleshly eye."

Sickness of her parents at last called her back to the lonely Prevorst,
where, by trouble and watching beside sick beds, her feelings were too
much excited, so that the faculty for prophetic dreams and the vision of
spirits increased upon her.

From her seventeenth to her nineteenth year, when every outward relation
was pleasant for her, this inward life was not so active, and she was
distinguished from other girls of her circle only by the more
intellectual nature, which displayed itself chiefly in the eyes, and by
a greater liveliness which, however, never passed the bounds of grace
and propriety.

She had none of the sentimentality so common at that age, and it can be
proved that she had never an attachment, nor was disappointed in love,
as has been groundlessly asserted.

In her nineteenth year, she was by her family betrothed to Herr H. The
match was desirable on account of the excellence of the man, and the
sure provision it afforded for her comfort through life.

But, whether from presentiment of the years of suffering that were
before her, or from other hidden feelings, of which we only know with
cert