hem,--no one does anything properly, nothing
is in its place. How very different is Gellert's melancholy! Not a soul
suffers from it but himself, against himself alone his gloomy thoughts
turn, and towards every other creature he is always kind, amiable, and
obliging: he bites his lips; but when he speaks to any one, he is wholly
good, forbearing, and self-forgetful."

Whilst they were talking together, Gellert was sitting in his room, and
had lighted a pipe to dispel the agitation which he would experience
in opening his letters; and while smoking, he could read them much more
comfortably. He reproached himself for smoking, which was said to be
injurious to his health, but he could not quite give up the "horrible
practice," as he called it.

He first examined the addresses and seals of the letters which had
arrived, then quietly opened and read them. A fitful smile passed over
his features; there were letters from well-known friends, full of
love and admiration, but from strangers also, who, in all kinds of
heart-distress, took counsel of him. He read the letters full of
friendly applause, first hastily, that he might have the right of
reading them again, and that he might not know all at once; and when he
had read a friend's letter for the second time, he sprang from his seat
and cried, "Thank God! thank God! that I am so fortunate as to have
such friends!" To his inwardly diffident nature these helps were a real
requirement; they served to cheer him, and only those who did not know
him called his joy at the reception of praise--conceit; it was, on the
contrary, the truest modesty. How often did he sit there, and all that
he had taught and written, all that he had ever been to men in word and
deed, faded, vanished, and died away, and he appeared to himself but a
useless servant of the world. His friends he answered immediately;
and as his inward melancholy vanished, and the philanthropy, nay, the
sprightliness of his soul beamed forth, when he was among men and looked
in a living face, so was it also with his letters. When he bethought
him of the friends to whom he was writing, he not only acquired
tranquillity, that virtue for which his whole life long he strove; but
his loving nature received new life, and only by slight intimations did
he betray the heaviness and dejection which weighed upon his soul. He
was, in the full sense of the word, "philanthropic," in the sight of
good men; and in thoughts for their welfar