that study.

At the latter's lectures he became acquainted with Middendorf. At
first he obtained little from either. Schleiermacher seemed to him
too temporizing and obscure. "He makes veils." He thought the young
Westphalian, at their first meeting, merely "a nice fellow." But in
time he learned to understand the great theologian, and the "favourite
teacher" noticed him and took him into his house.

But first Fichte, and then Friedrich August Wolf, attracted him far
more powerfully than Schleiermacher. Whenever he spoke of Wolf his calm
features glowed and his blind eyes seemed to sparkle. He owed all that
was best in him to the great investigator, who sharpened his pupil's
appreciation of the exhaustless store of lofty ideas and the magic of
beauty contained in classic antiquity, and had he been allowed to follow
his own inclination, he would have turned his back on theology, to
devote all his energies to the pursuit of philology and archaeology.

The Homeric question which Wolf had propounded in connection with
Goethe, and which at that time stirred the whole learned world, had also
moved Langethal so deeply that, even when an old man, he enjoyed nothing
more than to speak of it to us and make us familiar with the pros and
cons which rendered him an upholder of his revered teacher. He had been
allowed to attend the lectures on the first four books of the Iliad,
and--I have living witnesses of the fact--he knew them all verse by
verse, and corrected us when we read or recited them as if he had the
copy in his hand.

True, he refreshed his naturally excellent memory by having them all
read aloud. I shall never forget his joyous mirth as he listened to my
delivery of Wolf's translation of Aristophanes's Acharnians; but I was
pleased that he selected me to supply the dear blind eyes. Whenever he
called me for this purpose he already had the book in the side pocket
of his long coat, and when, beckoning significantly, he cried, "Come,
Bear," I knew what was before me, and would have gladly resigned the
most enjoyable game, though he sometimes had books read which were by
no means easy for me to understand. I was then fourteen or fifteen years
old.

Need I say that it was my intercourse with this man which implanted in
my heart the love of ancient days that has accompanied me throughout my
life?

The elevation of the Prussian nation led Langethal also from the
university to the war. Rumor first brought to Berlin the