generally spelled, a pleasure resort on
the Regnitz, about half an hour distant from Bamberg. Hoffmann was in
the habit of visiting it almost daily when he lived at Bamberg.]

[Footnote 14: In the days before ice was preserved on such an extensive
scale by the German brewers as it is at the present time, beer was kept
in excavations in rock, wherever a suitable place could be found; this
made it deliciously cool and fresh.]

[Footnote 15: Goethe's well-known work.]

[Footnote 16: A once rich and celebrated Benedictine abbey between
Bamberg and Coburg, founded in the eleventh century, and frequently
destroyed and sacked in war.]

[Footnote 17: That is, they were golden, or gilded.]

[Footnote 18: Hinze is Tieck's _Gestiefelter Kater_ (Puss in Boots).
The reference is perhaps to act ii. scene 2, where Hinze goes out to
catch rabbits, &c., and hears the nightingale singing, the humour of
the scene lying in the quick alternation of the human poetic sentiments
and the native instincts of the cat.]

[Footnote 19: So named from the place where they were struck. See note,
p. 281, Vol. I., viz.--Imperial thalers varied in value at different
times, but estimating their value at three shillings, the sum here
mentioned would be equivalent to about L22,500. A _Frederick d'or_ was
a gold coin worth five thalers.]

[Footnote 20: A church situated at the beginning of the Steinweg.]

[Footnote 21: It need scarcely be said this refers to the excessively
sentimental hero of Goethe's _Leiden des jungen Werthers_.]

_BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE._[1]

Like many others whose pens have been employed in authorship, the
subject of this notice, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm[2] Hoffmann, led a very
chequered life, the various facts and incidents of which throw a good
deal of light upon his writings.

Hoffmann was born at Koenigsberg in Prussia on the 24th January,
1776.[3] His parents were very ill-assorted, and led such an unhappy
life that they parted in young Ernst's third year. His father, who was
in the legal profession, was a man of considerable talent and of acute
intellect, but irregular and wild in his habits and given to
reprehensible practices. His mother, on the contrary, the daughter of
Consistorialrath Doerffer, had been trained up on the strictest moral
principles, and to habits of orderliness and propriety; and to her
regard for outward conformity to old-established forms and conventional
routine was a