eeded to his new post in Poland in the
spring of that same year.

One illustrative and very characteristic anecdote of this period
deserves mention. In a letter to Hippel, dated "Plock, 3rd October,
1803," Hoffmann writes, "My uncle in Berlin will never do much more to
recommend me, for he has become 'a grave man,' as Mercutio says in
Shakespeare;[7] he died on the night of 24-25th September of
inflammation of the lungs." But in his diary of October 1 he writes, in
allusion to the same sad event, "My tears did not flow, nor did fear
and grief draw from me any loud lamentations; but the image of the man
whom I loved and honoured is constantly before my eyes; it never leaves
me. The whole day through my mind has been in a tumult; my nerves are
so excited that the least little noise makes me start." Thus he could
jest in the midst of pain; and it is a type of the man's character.

Warsaw, in notable contrast to other places in the Polish provinces,
possessed many things calculated to excite and engage the attention of
an active mind, of a mind so eager for knowledge and so keenly alive to
all that was especially interesting and extraordinary as was
Hoffmann's. The new scene of his labours cannot be better described
than in the words of Hitzig and of Hoffmann himself. The former says
the city had

"Streets of magnificent breadth, consisting of palaces in the finest
Italian style and of wooden huts which threaten every moment to tumble
together about the ears of their indwellers; in these edifices Asiatic
sumptuousness most closely mingled with Greenland filth; a populace
incessantly on the stir, forming, as in a procession of maskers, the
most startling contrasts--long-bearded Jews, and monks clad in the garb
of every order, closely veiled nuns of the strictest rules and
unapproachable reserve, and troops of young Polesses dressed in the
gayest-coloured silk mantles conversing to each other across the
spacious squares, venerable old Polish gentlemen with moustaches,
caftan, _pass_ (girdle), sabre, and yellow or red boots, the coming
generation in the most matchless of Parisian fashions, Turks and
Greeks, Russians, Italians, and Frenchmen in a constantly varying
crowd; besides this an almost inconceivably tolerant police, who
never interfered to prevent any popular enjoyment, so that the
streets and squares were always swarming with 'punch-and-judy' shows,
dancing-bears, camels, and apes, whilst the occupants of the mos