pestilent poems
You'll hasten away."

There was also an elderly and very pleasant Englishman, with whom I
became rather intimate, and who was very kind to me. This was the well-
known Captain Medwin, who had known so well Byron, Shelley, Trelawny, and
their compeers. He was full of anecdotes, which I now wish that I had
recorded. He introduced me to Lady Caroline de Crespigny, who was then
living permanently in Heidelberg. This lady, who was said to be then
fifty years of age, was still so young-looking and beautiful, that I
cannot remember in all my life to have ever seen such an instance of time
arrested. I also made the acquaintance of Professor Creutzer, author of
the _Symbolik_, a work of vast learning. {156} And I went to balls, one
at Professor Gervinus's.

I entered myself with the great Leopold Gmelin for a course of lectures
on chemistry, and worked away every morning with the test-tubes at
analytical chemistry under Professor Posselt, at which I one day nearly
poisoned myself by tasting oxalic acid, which I did not recognise under
its German name of _Kleesaure_. I read broad and wide in German
literature, as I think may be found by examining my notes to my
translation of Heine's works, and went with Field several times to
Frankfort, to attend the theatre, and otherwise amuse ourselves. There I
once made the acquaintance of the very famous comic actor Hasselt. He
was a grave, almost melancholy man when off the stage, very fond of
archaeology and antiquities.

The winter drew to an end. I had long felt a deep desire to visit
Munich, to study art, and to investigate fundamentally the wonderful and
mysterious science of AEsthetics, of which I had heard so much. So I
packed up and paid my bills, and passing through one town where there was
in the hotel where I stopped, the last wolf ever killed in Germany, and
freshly killed (I believe he has been slain two or three times since),
and at another where I was invited to see a criminal beheaded by the
sword--which sight I missed by over-sleeping myself--I came through
Stuttgart, Ulm, and Augsburg to the German Athens.

I went to the Hotel Maulick, where I stayed a week. Opposite to me at
table every day sat the famous Saphir, the great Vienna wit and licensed
joker. Of course I soon became acquainted with some students, and was
entered at the University, and got the card which exempted me from being
arrested by any save the University beadles. I b