My childhood at home was often very sad. My mother, who was left a widow at twenty-eight with two children, my sister and myself, was heart-broken. The few years of her married life had been most bright and brilliant. My father was a rising poet, and such was his popularity that he was able to indulge his tastes as he liked, whether in travelling or in making his house a pleasant centre of social life. Contemporaries and friends of my father, particularly Baron Simolin, a very intimate friend, who spent the Christmas of 1825 in our house, have written of the bright gaiety, the whole-hearted enjoyment of life that reigned there, and have told how, though his income was to say the least of it small, Wilhelm Mueller's home was the rallying-point for all the cultivated, scientific, and artistic society of Dessau, who felt attracted by the simple and unaffected yet truly genial disposition of the master of the house.

It would be interesting to know how much an author could make at that time by his pen. Publishers seem to have been far more liberal then than they are now. The circumstances were different. The number of writers was of course much smaller, and the sale of really popular books probably much larger. Anyhow, my father, whose salary was minute, seems to have been able to enjoy the few years of his married life in great comfort. The thought of saving money, however, seems never to have entered his poetical mind, and after his unexpected death, due to paralysis of the heart, it was found that hardly any provision had been made for his family. Even the life insurance, which is obligatory on every civil servant, and the pension granted by the Duke, gave my mother but a very small income, fabulously small, when one considers that she had to bring up two children on it. It has been a riddle to me ever since how she was able to do it.

However, it was done, and could only have been done in a small town like Dessau, where education was as good as it was cheap, and where very little was expected by society. We must also take into account the very low prices which then ruled at Dessau with regard to almost all the necessaries of life. I see from the old newspapers that beef sold at about threepence a pound (two groschen), mutton at about twopence. Wine was sold at seven to eight groschen a bottle, a better sort for twelve to fourteen groschen—a groschen being about a penny. People drank mostly beer, and this was sold under Government inspection at two to three groschen per quart. Fish was equally cheap, and such, at the beginning of the century, was the abundance of salmon caught in the Elbe, and even in the Mulde at Dessau, that it was stipulated as in Scotland, that servants should not have salmon more than twice or thrice in the week. The lowest price for salmon was then twopence halfpenny a pound. As a boy I can remember seeing the salmon in large numbers leap over a weir in the very town of Dessau, and though they had travelled for so many miles inland, the fish was very good, though not so good as Severn salmon. Game also was very cheap, and sold for not much more than mutton, nay, at certain times it was given away; it could not be exported. Corn was sold at three shillings per Scheffel, and by corn was chiefly meant rye. No one took wheaten bread, and the bread was therefore called brown bread and black bread. White bread was only taken with coffee, and peasants in the villages would not have touched it, because it was not supposed to make such strong bones as rye-bread. With such prices we can understand that a salary of L300 was considered sufficient for the highest officers of state.

My mother's relations, who were all high in the public service, my grandfather, as I said, being the Duke's chief minister, made life more easy and pleasant for us; but for many years my mother never went into society, and our society consisted of members of our own family only. All I remember of my mother at that time was that she took her two children day after day to the beautiful Gottesacker (God's Acre), where she stood for hours at our father's grave, and sobbed and cried. It was a beautiful and restful place, covered with old acacia trees. The inscription over the gateway was one of my earliest puzzles. Tod ist nicht Tod, ist nur Veredlung menschlicher Natur (Death is not death, 'tis but the ennobling of man's nature). On each side there stood a figure, representing the genius of sleep and the genius of death. All this was the work of the old Duke, Leopold Friedrich Franz, who tried to educate his people as he had educated himself, partly by travel, partly by intercourse with the best men he could attract to Dessau.



At home the atmosphere was certainly depressing to a boy. I heard and thought more about death than about life, though I knew little of course of what life or death meant. I had but few pleasures, and my chief happiness was to be with my mother. I shared her grief without understanding much about it. She was passionately devoted to her children, and I was passionately fond of her. What there was left of life to her, she gave to us, she lived for us only, and tried very hard not to deprive our childhood of all brightness. She was certainly most beautiful, and quite different from all other ladies at Dessau, not only in the eyes of her son, but as it seemed to me, of everybody. Then she had a most perfect voice, and when I first began music she helped and encouraged me in every possible way. We played a quatre mains, and soon she made me accompany her when she sang. As far as I can recollect, I was never so happy as when I could be with her. She read so much to us that I was quite satisfied, and saw perhaps less of my young friends than I ought. When my mother said she wished to die, and to be with our father, I feel sure that my sister and I were only anxious that she should take us with her, for there were few golden chains that bound us as yet to this life. I see her now, sitting on a winter's evening near the warm stove, a candle on the table, and a book from which she read to us in her hands, while the spinning-wheel worked by the servant-maid in the corner went on humming all the time. She read Paul Gerhard's translation of St. Bernard's:

"Salve caput cruentatum, Totum spinis coronatum, Conquassatum, vulneratum, Arundine verberatum, Facies sputis illita."

"O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn! O Haupt zu Spott gebunden Mit einer Dornenkron, O Haupt sonst schoen gezieret Mit hoechster Ehr und Zier, Jetzt aber hoch schimpfiret: Gegruesset seist du mir!"

Though the German translation does not come near the powerful majesty of the original, yet such was the effect produced on me that I saw the bleeding head before my eyes, and cried and cried until my mother had to comfort me by assuring me that the sufferer was now in Heaven and that it was only a song to be sung in church. How deeply such scenes seem engraved on the memory; how vividly they return when the rubbish of many years is swept away and all is again as it was then, and the caput cruentatum looks down on us once more, as it did then, with the human eyes full of divine love, so truly human that one could say with St. Bernard, "Tuum caput huc inclina, in meis pausa brachiis." But willingly as I listened to these readings at home, and full as my heart was of love to Christ, I suffered intensely when I was taken to church as a young boy. It was a very large church, and in winter bitterly cold. Even though I liked the singing, the long sermon was real torture to me. I could not understand a word of it, and being thinly clad my teeth would have chattered if I had not been told that it was wrong "to make a noise in church." Oh! what misery is inflicted on childhood by this enforced attendance at church. When a church can be warmed the suffering is less intense, but a huge whitewashed church that feels like an ice-cellar is about the worst torture that human ingenuity could have invented to make children hate the very name of church. These early impressions often remain for life, and the worst of it is that the idea remains in the minds of children, and of grown-up people too, that by going to church and repeating the same prayers over and over again, and listening to long and often dreary sermons, they are actually doing a service to God (Gottesdienst). Why does no new prophet arise and say in the name of God, as David did in the name of Jehovah, "Sermons and long prayers 'thou didst not desire'"?

Many years later I had to discuss the same question with Keshub Chunder Sen, the Indian Reformer. He wanted to know what kind of service should be adopted by his new church, the Brahmo Somaj; his friends thought of sermons, singing, and processions with flags and flowers through the streets. "No," I said to him, "service of God should be service of men; if you want divine service, let it be a real service, such as God would approve of. Let other people go to church, to their mosques or their temples, but take you your own friends on certain days of the week to whatever you like to call your meeting-place, and after a short prayer or a few words of advice send some of them to the poorest streets in the city, others to the prisons, others to the hospitals. Let them pray with all who wish to pray, but let them speak words of true love and comfort also, and when they can, let them help them with their alms. That would be a real Divine Service and a divine Sunday for you, and you would all come home, it may be sadder, but certainly wiser and better men."

I am afraid he did not agree with me. He did not think that true religion was to visit the poor and the afflicted. That might do for a practical people like the English, but the Hindu wanted something else, he wanted some outward show and ceremony for the people, and at the same time some silent communion with God. Who can tell what different people understand by religion? and who can prescribe the spiritual food that is best for them? "Only," I said, "do not call it practical to encourage millions of people to waste hours and hours in mere repetition, and to spend millions and millions in supplying this cold comfort, when next door to the magnificent cathedral there are squalid streets, and squalid houses, and squalid beds to lie and die on."

The religious and devotional element is very strong in Germany, but the churches are mostly empty. A German keeps his religion for weekdays rather than for Sunday. When the German regiments marched, and when they made ready for battle, they did not sing ribald songs, they sang the songs of Luther and Paul Gerhard, which they knew by heart and which strengthened them to face death as it ought to be faced.

Fortunately, while enforced attendance at church was apt to produce the strongest aversion in the young heart against anything that was called religion, religious instruction both at home and at school too was excellent, and undid much of the mischief that had been done during cold winter days. True religious sentiments can be planted in the soul at home only, by a mother better even than by a father. The sense of a divine presence everywhere, [Greek: panta plere theon], once planted in the heart of a child remains for life. Of course the child soon begins to argue, and says to his mother that God cannot be at the same time in two rooms. But only let a mother show to the child the rays of the sun in the sky, in the streets, and in every corner of the house, and it will begin to understand that nothing can be hid from the eyes of Him who is greater than the sun. And when a child doubts whether the voice of conscience can be the voice of God, and asks how he could hear that voice without seeing the speaker, ask him only whose voice it can be that tells him not to do what he himself wishes to do, and not to say what he could say without any fear of men; and his idea of God will be raised from that of a visible being like the sun, to the concept of a presence that never vanishes, that is not only without, in the sky, in the mountains, and in the storm, but nearer also within, in the sense of fear, in the sense of shame, and in the hope of pardon and love.

At school our religious teaching was chiefly historical and moral. There was no difficulty in finding proper teachers for that, and there were no attempts on the part of parents to interfere with religious instruction or to demand separate teaching for each sect. It is true that religious sects are not so numerous in Germany as they are in England. Some, though by no means all, children of Roman Catholic and Jewish parents were allowed to be absent from religious lessons. But most parents knew that the history of the Jewish religion would be taught at school in so impartial and truly historical a spirit as never to offend Jewish children. Respect for historical truth, and an implanted sense of the reverence due to children, would keep any teacher from making the history of the Christian Church, whether before or after the Reformation, an excuse for offending one of the little ones committed to his care. If Jews or Roman Catholics wished for any special religious instruction it was given by their own priests or Rabbis, and was given without any interference on the part of the Government. But such was at my time the state of public feeling that I hardly knew at school who among my young friends were Roman Catholics, or Lutherans, or Reformed. I must admit, however, that the very name of Luther might have offended Roman Catholics. He was represented to us as a perfect saint, almost as inspired and infallible. His hymns sung in church seemed to us little different from the Psalms of David, and I well remember what a shock it gave me when at Oxford, much later in life, I heard Luther spoken of like any other mortal, nay, as a heretic, and a most dangerous heretic too. When I was a boy I remember that in some places the same building had to be used for Protestant and Roman Catholic services. All that, I am afraid, is now changed, and the old liberal and tolerant feeling then prevailing on all sides is now often stigmatized as indifference, and by other ugly names. It should really be called the golden age of Christianity, and this so-called indifference should be classed among the highest Christian virtues, and as the fullest realization of the spirit of Christ.

Thus we grew up from our earliest youth, being taught to look upon Christianity as an historical fact, on Christ and His disciples as historical characters, on the Old and New Testaments as real historical books. Though we did not understand as yet the deeper meaning of Christ and of His words, we had at least nothing to unlearn in later times, or to feel that our parents had ever told us what they themselves could not have held to be true. Our simple faith was not shaken by mere questions of criticism, or by the problem how any human being could take upon himself to declare any book to be revealed, unless he claimed for himself a more than human insight. The simplest rules of logic should make such a declaration impossible, whatever the sacred book may be to which it is applied. Granted that the Pope was infallible, how could the Cardinals know that he was, unless they claimed for themselves the same or even greater infallibility? It is far more easy to be inspired than to know some one else is or was inspired; the true inspiration is, and always has been, the spirit of truth within, and this is but another name for the spirit of God. It is truth that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes truth. Whoever knows what truth is, knows also what inspiration is: not only theopneustos, blown into the soul by God, but the very voice of God, the real presence of God, the only presence in which we, as human beings, can ever perceive Him.

How often have I in later life tried to explain this to my friends in France and in England who endured mental agonies before they could arrive at the simple conclusion that revelation can never be objective, but must always be subjective. I may return to this question at a later period of my life, when I had to discuss with Renan, at Paris, with Froude, Kingsley, and Liddon, in England, and tried to show how entirely self-made some of their difficulties were. At present I have only to explain how it was that I had never to extricate myself from a net in which so many honest thinkers find themselves entangled without any fault of their own; as Samson, when he awoke, found himself bound with seven green withs and had to break them with all his might before he could hope to escape from the Philistines. The Philistines never bound me. During my early school-days these difficulties did not exist, but I have often been grateful in after life that the seven locks of my head have never been woven with the web.

I remember a number of small events in my school-life at Dessau, but though they were full of interest to me, nay, full of meaning, and not without an influence on my later life, they would have no meaning and no interest for others, and may remain as if they had never been. The influence which music exercised on my mind, and, I believe, on my heart also, I have related in my Musical Recollections. The image of those passing years, though its general tone was melancholy, chiefly owing to my mother's melancholy, seemed to me at the time free from all unhappiness. My work at school and at home was not too heavy; I was fond of it, and very fond of books. Books were scarce then, and whoever possessed a new and valuable book was expected to lend it to his friends in the little town. If a man was known to possess, say, Goethe's works or Jean Paul's works, the consequence was that one went to him or to her to ask for the loan of them. And not only books, but paper and pens also were scarce. The first steel pens came in when I was still in the lower school, and bad as they were they were looked upon as real treasures by the schoolboys who possessed them. Paper was so dear that one had to be very sparing in its use. Every margin and cover was scribbled over before it was thrown away, and I felt often so hampered by the scarcity of paper that I gladly accepted a set of copybooks instead of any other present that I might have asked for on my birthday or at Christmas. I am sorry to say I have had to suffer all my life from the inefficiency of our writing master, or maybe from the fact that my thoughts were too quick for my pen. In other subjects I did well, but though I was among the first in each class, I was by no means cleverer than other boys. In the lower school work was more like conversation or like hearing news from our teachers. The idea of effort did not yet exist. The drudgery began, however, when I entered the upper school, the gymnasium, and learnt the elements of Latin and Greek. Though our teachers were very conscientious, they tried to make our work no burden to us, and the constant change of places in each class kept up a lively rivalry among the boys, though I am not sure that it did not make me rather ambitious and at times conceited. Still, I had few enemies, and it seemed of much more consequence who could knock down another boy than who could gain a place above him. I feel sure I could have done a great deal more at school than I did, but it was partly my music and partly my incessant headaches that interfered with my school work.

I remember as a boy that certain streets were inhabited exclusively by Jewish families. A large number of Jews had been received at Dessau by a former Duke; but though he granted them leave to settle at Dessau when they were persecuted in other parts of Germany, he stipulated that they should only settle in certain streets. These streets were by no means the worst streets of the town; on the contrary they showed greater comfort and hardly any of the squalor which disgraced the Jewish quarters in other towns in Germany. As children we were brought up without any prejudice against the Jews, though we had, no doubt, a certain feeling that they were tolerated only, and were not quite on the same level with ourselves. We also felt the religious difficulty sometimes very strongly. Were not the Jews the murderers of Christ? and had they not said: "the blood be on us and on our children"? But as we were told that it was wrong to harbour feelings of revenge, we boys soon forgot and forgave, and played together as the best friends. I remember picking up a number of Jewish words which would not have been understood anywhere else. I was hardly aware that they were Jewish and used them like any other words. But I once gave great offence to my friend Professor Bernays, who was a Jew. He had uttered some quite incredible statement, and I exclaimed, "Sind Sie denn ganz maschukke?"—Hebrew for "mad." I meant no harm, but he was very much hurt.

I knew several Jewish families, and received much kindness from them as a boy. Many of these families were wealthy, but they never displayed their wealth, and in consequence excited no envy. All that is changed now. The children of the Jews who formerly lived in a very quiet style at Dessau, now occupy the best houses, indulge in most expensive tastes, and try in every way to outshine their non-Jewish neighbours. They buy themselves titles, and, when they can, stipulate for stars and orders as rewards for successful financial operations, carried out with the money of princely personages. Hence the revulsion of feeling all over Germany, or what is called Anti-Semitism, which has assumed not only a social but a political significance. I doubt whether there is anything religious in it, as there was when we were boys. The Anti-Semitic hatred is the hatred of money-making, more particularly of that kind of money-making which requires no hard work, but only a large capital to begin with, and boldness and astuteness in speculating, that is in buying and selling at the right moment. The sinews of war for that kind of financial warfare were mostly supplied by the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation. Sometimes, no doubt, the capital was lost, and in those cases it must be said that the Jewish speculator disappears from the stage without a sigh or a cry. He begins again, and if he should have to do what his grandfather did, walk from house to house with a bag on his back, he does not whine.

One cannot blame the Jews or any other speculators for using their opportunities, but they must not complain either if they excite envy, and if that envy assumes in the end a dangerous character. The Jews, so far from suffering from disabilities, enjoy really certain privileges over their Christian competitors in Germany. They belong to a regnum, but also to a regnum in regno. They have, so to say, our Sunday and likewise their Sabbath. Jew will always help Jew against a Christian; and again who can blame them for that? All one can say is that they should not complain of their unpopularity, but take into account the risk they are running. No one hated the Jews such as they were in Dessau fifty years ago. They had their own schools and synagogues, and no one interfered with them when they built their bowers in the streets at the time of their Feast of Tabernacles, and lived, feasted, and slept in them to keep up the memory of their sojourning in the desert. They indulged in even more offensive practices, such as, for instance, putting three stones in the coffins to be thrown by the dead at the Virgin Mary, her husband, and their Son. No one suspected or accused them of kidnapping Christian children, or offering sacrifices with their blood. They were known too well for that. Conversions of Jews were not infrequent, and converted Jews were not persecuted by their former co-religionists as they are now. Even marriages between Christians and Jews were by no means uncommon, particularly when the young Jewesses were beautiful or rich, still better if they were both. Disgraceful as the Anti-Semitic riots have been in Germany and Russia, there can be no doubt that in this as in most cases both sides were to blame, and there is little prospect of peace being re-established till many more heads have been broken.

What helped very much to keep the peace in the small town of Dessau, as it did all over Germany, nay, all over the world, till about the year 1848, was the small number of newspapers. In my childhood and youth their number was very small. In Dessau I only knew of one, which was then called the Wochenblatt, afterwards the Staatsanzeiger. At that time newspapers were really read for the news which they contained, not for leading or misleading articles and all the rest. What a happy time it was when a newspaper consisted of a sheet, or half a sheet in quarto, with short paragraphs about actual events, which had often taken place weeks and months before. A battle might have been fought in Spain or Turkey, in India or China, and no one knew of it till some official information was vouchsafed by the respective Governments or by Jewish bankers. War-correspondents or regular reporters did not exist, and the old telegraphic dispatches were sent by wooden telegraphs fixed on high towers, which from a distance looked like gallows on which a criminal was hanging and gesticulating with arms and feet. Anybody who watched these signals could decipher them far more easily than a hieroglyphic inscription.

The peace of Europe, nay, of the whole world, was then in the keeping of sovereigns and their ministers, and Prince Metternich might certainly take some credit for having kept what he called the Thirty Years' Peace. Shall we ever, as long as there are newspapers, have peace again—peace between the great nations of the world, and peace at home between contending parties, and peace in our mornings at home which are now so ruthlessly broken in upon, nay, swallowed up by those paper-giants, most unwelcome yet irresistible callers, just when we want to settle down to a quiet day's work? It is no use protesting against the inevitable, nor can we quite agree with those who maintain that no newspaper carries the slightest weight or exercises the smallest influence on home or foreign politics. A very influential statesman and wise thinker used to say that we should never have had Christianity if newspapers had existed at the time of Augustus. When unsuccessful litterateurs or bankrupt bankers' clerks were the chief contributors to the newspapers, their influence might have been small; but when Bismarcks turned journalists, and Gortchakoffs prompted, newspapers could hardly be called quantites negligeables.

The horizon of Dessau was very narrow, but within its bounds there was a busy and happy life. Everybody did his work honestly and conscientiously. There were, of course, two classes, the educated and the uneducated. The educated consisted of the members of the Government service, the clergy, the schoolmasters, doctors, artists, and officers; the uneducated were the tradesmen, mechanics, and labourers. The trade was mostly in the hands of Jews, it had become almost a Jewish monopoly. When one of these tradesmen went bankrupt, there was a commotion over the whole town, and I remember being taken to see one of these bankrupt shops, expecting to find the whole house broken up and demolished, and being surprised to see the tradesman standing whole, and sound, and smiling, in his accustomed place. My etymological tastes must have developed very early, for I had asked why this poor Jew was called a bankrupt, and had been duly informed that it was because his bank had been broken, banca rotta, which of course I took in a literal sense, and expected to see all the furniture broken to pieces. The commercial relations of our Dessau tradesmen did not extend much beyond Leipzig, Berlin, possibly Hamburg and Cologne. If a burgher of Dessau travelled to these or to more distant parts the whole town knew of it and talked about it, whereas a journey to Paris or London was an event worthy to be mentioned and discussed in the newspapers. These old newspapers are full of curious information. We find that if a person wished to travel to Cologne or further, he advertised for a companion, and it was for the Burgomaster to make the necessary arrangements for him.

French was studied and spoken, particularly at Court, but English was a rare acquirement, still more Italian or Spanish. There was, however, a small inner circle where these languages were studied, chiefly in order to read the master-works of modern literature. And this was all the more creditable because there were no good teachers to be found at Dessau, and people had to learn what they wished to learn by themselves, with the help of a grammar and dictionary. We learnt French at school, but the result was deplorable. As in all public schools, the French master who had to teach the language at the Ducal Gymnasium could not keep order among the boys. He of course spoke French, but that was all. He did not know how to teach, and could not excite any interest in the boys, who insisted on pronouncing French as if it were German. The poor man's life was made a burden to him. His name was Noel, and he had all the pleasing manners of a Frenchman, but that served only to rouse the antagonism of the young barbarians. The result was that we learnt very little, and I was sent to an old Jew to learn French and a little English. That old Jew, called Levy Rubens, was a perfect gentleman. He probably had been a commercial traveller in his early days, though no one knew exactly where he came from or how he had learnt languages. He had taught my father and grandfather and he was delighted to teach the third generation. He certainly spoke French and English fluently, but with the strongest Jewish accent, and this was inherited by all his pupils at Dessau. I feel ashamed when I think of the tricks we played the old man—putting mice into his pockets, upsetting inkstands over his table, and placing crackers under his chairs. But he never lost his temper; he never would have dared to punish us as we deserved; but he went on with his lesson as if nothing had happened. He took his small pay, and was satisfied when his lessons were over and he could settle down to his long pipe and his books. He lived quite alone and died quite alone, a hardworking, honest, poor Jew, not exactly despised or persecuted, but not treated with the respect which he certainly deserved, and which he would have received if he had not been a Jew.

Our public school was as good as any in Germany. These small duchies generally followed the example of Prussia, and they carried out the instructions issued by the Ministry of Education at Berlin according to the very letter. Besides, several of the reigning dukes had taken a very warm and personal interest in popular education, and at the beginning of the century the eyes of the whole of Germany, nay, of Europe, were turned towards the educational experiments carried on by my great-grandfather, Basedow,[6] at the so-called Philanthropinum at Dessau under the patronage of the Duke and of several of the more enlightened sovereigns of Europe, such as the Empress Catherine of Russia, the King of Denmark, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, Prince Adam Czartoryski, &c. Even after Basedow's death the interest in education was kept alive in Dessau, and all was done that could be done in so small a town to keep the different schools—elementary, middle-class, and high schools—on the highest possible level of efficiency.

[6] Johann Bernhard Basedow, von seinem Urenkel, F. M. M. (Essays, Band IV).

Bathing was a very healthful recreation, though I very nearly came to grief from trusting to my seniors. They could swim and I could not yet. But while bathing with two of my friends in a part of the river which was safe, they swam along and asked me to follow them. Having complete confidence in them I jumped in from the shore, but very soon began to sink. My shouts brought my friends back, and they rescued me, not without some difficulty, from drowning.

In an English school the influence of the master is, of course, more constant, because one of the masters is always within call, while in Germany he is visible during school-hours only. If a master is fond of his pupils, and takes an interest in them individually, he can do them more good than parents at home, or the teacher at a day school. The boys at a German school are, no doubt, a very mixed crew, but that cannot be helped. This mixture of classes may be a drawback in some respects, but from an educational point of view the sons of very rich parents are by no means more valuable than the poor boys. Far from it. Many of the evils of schoolboy life come from the sons of the rich, while the sons of poor parents are generally well behaved. But for all that, there was a rough and rude tone among some of the boys at school, arising from defects in the education at home, and this sometimes embittered what ought to be the happiest time of life, particularly in the case of delicate boys. The son of a Minister has often to sit by the side of the son of a wealthy butcher, and the very fact that he is the son of a gentleman often exposes the more refined boy to the bullying of his muscular neighbour. I was fortunate at school. I could hold my own with the boys, and as to the masters, several of them had known my father or had been his pupils, and they took a personal interest in me.

I remember more particularly one young master who was very kind to me, and took me home for private lessons and for giving me some good advice. There was something sad and very attractive about him, and I found out afterwards that he knew that he was dying of consumption, and that besides that he was liable to be prosecuted for political liberalism, which at that time was almost like high treason. I believe he was actually condemned and sent to prison like many others, and he died soon after I had left Dessau. His name was Dr. Hoenicke, and he was the first to try to impress on me that I ought to show myself worthy of my father, an idea which had never entered my mind before, nay, which at first I could hardly understand, but which, nevertheless, slumbered on in my mind till years afterwards it was called out and became a strong influence for the whole of my life. I still have some lines which he wrote for my album. They were the well-known lines from Horace, which, at the time, I had great difficulty in construing, but which have remained graven in my memory ever since:

"Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, Est in iuvencis est in equis patrum Virtus nec imbellem feroces Progenerant aquilae columbam. Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam, Rectique cultus pectora roborant; Utcunque defecere mores, Dedecorant bene nata culpae."

In my childhood I had to pass through the ordinary illnesses, but it was the faith in our doctor that always saved me. The doctor was to my mind the man who was called in to make me well again, and while my mother was agitated about her only son, I never dreamt of any danger. The very idea of death never came near me till my grandfather died (1835), but even then I was only about twelve years old, and though I had seen much of him, particularly during the years that my mother lived again in his house, yet he was too old to take much share in his grandchildren's amusements. He left a gap, no doubt, in our life, but that gap was filled again with new figures in the life of a boy of twelve. He was only sixty-one years old when he died, and yet my idea of him was always that of a very old man. Everything was done for him, his servant dressed him every morning, he was lifted into his carriage and out of it, and he certainly lived the life of an invalid, such as I should not consent to own to at seventy-six. He made no secret that he cared more for the son of his son who was the heir, and was to perpetuate the name of von Basedow, than for the son of his daughter. He was very fond of driving and of shooting, and he frequently took my cousin out shooting with him. When my cousin came home with a hare he had shot, I confess I was sometimes jealous, but I was soon cured of my wish to go with my grandfather into the forest. Once when I was with him in his little carriage, my grandfather, not being able to see well, had the misfortune to kill a doe which had come out with her two little ones. The misery of the mother and afterwards of her two young ones, was heart-rending, and from that day on I made up my mind never to go out shooting, and never to kill an animal. And I have kept my word, though I was much laughed at. It may be that later in life and after my grandfather's death I had little opportunity of shooting, but the cry of the doe and the whimpering of the young ones who tried to get suck from their dead mother have remained with me for life.

My grandfather, though he aged early, remained in harness as Prime Minister to the end of his life, and it was his great desire to benefit his country by new institutions. It was he who, at the time when people hardly knew yet what railroads meant, succeeded in getting the line from Berlin to Halle and Leipzig to pass by Dessau. He offered to build the bridge across the Elbe and to give the land and the wood for the sleepers gratis, and what seemed at the time a far too generous offer has proved a blessing to the duchy, making it as it were the centre of the great railway connecting Berlin, Leipzig, Magdeburg, the Elbe, Hanover, Bremen, nay, Cologne also, the Rhine, and Western Europe. He was in his way a good statesman, though we are too apt to measure a man's real greatness by the circumstances in which he moves.

As far back as I can remember I was a martyr to headaches. No doctor could help me, no one seemed to know the cause. It was a migraine, and though I watched it carefully I could not trace it to any fault of mine. The idea that it came from overwork was certainly untrue. It came and went, and if it was one day on the right side it was always the next time on the left, even though I was free from it sometimes for a week or a fortnight, or even longer. It was strange also that it seldom lasted beyond one day, and that I always felt particularly strong and well the day after I had been prostrate. For prostrate I was, and generally quite unable to do anything. I had to lie down and try to sleep. After a good sleep I was well, but when the pain had been very bad I found that sometimes the very skin of my forehead had peeled off. In this way I often lost two or three days in a week, and as my work had to be done somehow, it was often done anyhow, and I was scolded and punished, really without any fault of my own. After all remedies had failed which the doctor and nurses prescribed (and I well remember my grandmother using massage on my neck, which must have been about 1833 to 1835) I was handed over to Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy. Hahnemann (born 1755) had been practising as doctor at Dessau as early as 1780—that is somewhat before my time—but had left it, and when in 1820 he had been prohibited by the Government from practising and lecturing at Leipzig, he took refuge once more in the neighbouring town of Coethen. From there he paid visits to Dessau as consulting physician, and after I had explained to him as well as I could all the symptoms of my chronic headache, he assured my mother that he would cure it at once. He was an imposing personality—a powerful man with a gigantic head and strong eyes and a most persuasive voice. I can quite understand that his personal influence would have gone far to effect a cure of many diseases. People forget too much how strong a curative power resides in the patient's faith in his doctor, in fact how much the mind can do in depressing and in reinvigorating the body. I shall never forget in later years consulting Sir Andrew Clarke, and telling him of ever so many, to my mind, most serious symptoms. I had lost sleep and appetite, and imagined myself in a very bad state indeed. He examined me and knocked me about for full three quarters of an hour, and instead of pronouncing my doom as I fully expected, he told me with a bright look and most convincing voice that he had examined many men who had worked their brains too much, but had never seen a man at my time of life so perfectly sound in every organ. I felt young and strong at once, and meeting my old friend Morier on my way home, we ate some dozens of oysters together and drank some pints of porter without the slightest bad effect. In fact I was cured without a pill or a drop of medicine.

And who does not know how, if one makes up one's mind at last to have a tooth pulled out, the pain seems to cease as soon as we pull the bell at the dentist's?

However, Hahnemann did not succeed with me. I swallowed a number of his silver and gold globules, but the migraine kept its regular course, right to left and left to right, and this went on till about the year 1860. Then my doctor, the late Mr. Symonds of Oxford, told me exactly what Hahnemann had told me—that he would cure me, if I would go on taking some medicine regularly for six months or a year. He told me that he and his brother had made a special study of headaches, and that there were ever so many kinds of headache, each requiring its own peculiar treatment. When I asked him to what category of headaches mine belonged, I was not a little abashed on being told that my headache was what they called the Alderman's headache. "Surely," I said, "I don't overeat, or overdrink." I had thought that mine was a mysterious nervous headache, arising from the brain. But no, it seemed to be due to turtle soup and port wine. However, the doctor, seeing my surprise, comforted me by telling me that it was the nerves of the head which affected the stomach, and thus produced indirectly the same disturbance in my digestion as an aldermanic diet. Whether this was true or was only meant as a solatium I do not know. But what I do know is, that by taking the medicine regularly for about half a year, the frequency and violence of my headaches were considerably reduced, while after about a year they vanished completely. I was a new being, and my working time was doubled.

One lesson may be learnt from this, namely, that the English system of doctoring is very imperfect. In England we wait till we are ill, then go to a doctor, describe our symptoms as well as we can, pay one guinea, or two, get our prescription, take drastic medicine for a month and expect to be well. My German doctor, when he saw the prescription of my English doctor, told me that he would not give it to a horse. If after a month we are not better we go again; he possibly changes our medicine, and we take it more or less regularly for another month. The doctor cannot watch the effect of his medicine, he is not sure even whether his prescriptions have been carefully followed; and he knows but too well that anything like a chronic complaint requires a chronic treatment. The important thing, however, was that my headaches yielded gradually to the continued use of medicine; it would hardly have produced the desired effect if I had taken it by fits and starts. All this seems to me quite natural; but though my English doctor cured me, and my German doctors did not, I still hold that the German system is better. Most families have their doctor in Germany, who calls from time to time to watch the health of the old and young members of the family, particularly when under medical treatment, and receives his stipulated annual payment, which secures him a safe income that can be raised, of course, by attendance on occasional patients. Perhaps the Chinese system is the best; they pay their doctor while they are well, and stop payment as long as they are ill. I know the unanswerable argument which is always thrown at my head whenever I suggest to my friends that there are some things which are possibly managed better in Germany than in England. If my remarks refer to the study and practice of medicine I am asked whether more men are killed in England than in Germany; if I refer to the study and practice of law I am assured that quite as many murderers are hanged in England as in Germany; and if I venture to hint that the study of theology might on certain points be improved at Oxford, I am told that quite as many souls are saved in England as in Germany, nay, a good many more. As I cannot ascertain the facts from trustworthy statistics, I have nothing to reply; all I feel is that most nations, like most individuals, are perfect in their own eyes, but that those are most perfect who are willing to admit that there is something to be learnt from their neighbours.

But to return to Hahnemann. He was very kind to me, and I looked up to him as a giant both in body and in mind. But he could not deliver me from my enemy, the ever recurrent migraine. The cures, however, both at Dessau and at Coethen, where he had been made a Hofrath by the reigning Duke, were very extraordinary. Hahnemann remained in Coethen till 1835, and in that year, when he was eighty, he married a young French lady, Melanie d'Hervilly, and was carried off by her to Paris, where he soon gained a large practice, and died in 1843, that is at the age of eighty-eight. Much of his success, I feel sure, was due to his presence and to the confidence which he inspired. How do I know that Sir Andrew Clarke, seeing that I was in low spirits about my health, did not think it right to encourage me, and by encouraging me did certainly make me feel confident about myself, and thus raised my vitality, my spirits, or whatever we like to call it? "Thy faith hath made thee whole" is a lesson which doctors ought not to neglect.

How little we know the effect of the environment in which we grow up. My old granny has drawn deeper furrows through my young soul than all my teachers and preachers put together. I am not going to add a chapter to that most unsatisfactory of all studies, child-psychology. It is an impossible subject. The victim—the child—cannot be interrogated till it is too late. The influences that work on the child's senses and mind cannot be determined; they are too many, and too intangible. The observers of babies, mostly young fathers proud of their first offspring, remind me always of a very learned friend of mine, who presented to the Royal Society most laborious pages containing his lifelong observations on certain deviations of the magnetic needle, and who had forgotten that in making these observations he always had a pair of steel spectacles on his nose. However, I have nothing to say against these observations, nor against their more or less successful interpretations. But the real harm begins when people imagine that in studying the ways of infants they can discover what man was like in his original condition, whether as a hairy or a hairless creature. To imagine that we can learn from the way in which children begin to use our old words, how the primitive language of mankind was formed, seems to me like imagining that children playing with counters would teach us how and for what purpose the first money was coined. There is no doubt a grain of truth in this infantile psychology, but it requires as many caveats as that which is called ethnological psychology, which makes us see in the savages of the present day the representation of the first ancestors of our race, and would teach us to discover in their superstitions the antecedents of the mythology and religion of the Aryan or Semitic races. The same philosophers who constantly fall back on heredity and atavism in order to explain what seems inexplicable in the beliefs and customs of the Brahmans, Greeks, or Romans, seem quite unconscious of the many centuries that must needs have passed over the heads of the Patagonians of the present day as well as of the Greeks at the time of Homer. They look upon the Patagonians as the tabula rasa of humanity, and they forget that even if we admitted that the ancestors of the Aryan race had once been more savage than the Patagonians, it would not follow that their savagery was identical with that of the people of Tierra del Fuego. Why should not the distance between Patagonian and Vedic Rishis have been at least as great as that between Vedic Rishis and Homeric bards? If there are ever so many kinds of civilized life, was there only one and the same savagery?

To take, for instance, the feeling of fear; is it likely that we shall find out whether it is innate in human nature or acquired and intensified in each generation, by shaking our fists in the face of a little baby, to see whether it will wink or shrink or shriek? Some children may be more fearless than others, but whether that fearlessness arises from ignorance or from stolidity is again by no means easy to determine. A burnt child fears the fire, an unburnt child might boldly grasp a glowing coal, but all this would not help us to determine whether fear is an innate or an acquired tendency or habit.

All I can say for myself is that my young life and even my later years were often rendered miserable by the foolish stories of one of my grandmothers, and that I had to make a strong effort of will before I could bring myself to walk across a churchyard in the dark. This shows how much our character is shaped by circumstances, even when we are least aware of it. I did not believe in ghosts and I was not a coward, but I felt through life a kind of shiver in dark passages and at the sound of mysterious noises, and the mere fact that I had to make an effort to overcome these feelings shows that something had found its way into my mental constitution that ought never to have been there, and that caused me, particularly in my younger days, many a moment of discomfort.

All such experiences constitute what may be called the background of our life. My first ideas of men and women, and of the world at large, that is of the unknown world, were formed within the narrow walls of Dessau, for Dessau was still surrounded by walls, and the gates of the city were closed every night, though the fears of a foreign enemy were but small. Of course the views of life prevailing at Dessau were very narrow, but they were wide enough for our purposes. Though we heard of large towns like Dresden or Berlin, and of large countries like France and Italy, my real world was Dessau and its neighbourhood. We had no interests outside the walls of our town or the frontiers of our duchy. If we heard of things that had happened at Leipzig or Berlin, in Paris or London, they had no more reality for us than what we had read about Abraham, or Romulus and Remus, or Alexander the Great. To us the pulse of the world seemed to beat in the Haupt- und Residenzstadt of Dessau, though we knew perfectly well how small it was in comparison with other towns.

And this, too, has left its impression on my thoughts all through life, if only by making everything that I saw in later life in such towns as Leipzig, Berlin, Paris, and London, appear quite overwhelmingly grand. Boys brought up in any of these large towns start with a different view of the world, and with a different measure for what they see in later life. I do not know that they are to be envied for that, for there is pleasure in admiration, pleasure even in being stunned by the first sight of the life in the streets of Paris or London. I certainly have been a great admirer all my life, and I ascribe this disposition to the small surroundings of my early years at Dessau.

And so it was with everything else. Having admired our Cavalier-Strasse, I could admire all the more the Boulevards in Paris, and Regent Street in London. Having enjoyed our small theatre, I stood aghast at the Grand Opera, and at Drury Lane. This power of admiration and enjoyment extended even to dinners and other domestic amusements. Having been brought up on very simple fare, I fully enjoyed the dinners which the Old East India Company gave, when we sat down about 400 people, and, as I was told, four pounds was paid for each guest. I mention this because I feel that not only has the Spartan diet of my early years given me a relish all through life for convivial entertainments, even if not quite at four pounds a head, but that the general self-denial which I had to exercise in my youth has made me feel a constant gratitude and sincere appreciation for the small comforts of my later years.

I remember the time when I woke with my breath frozen on my bedclothes into a thin sheet of ice. We were expected to wash and dress in an attic where the windows were so thickly frozen as to admit hardly any light in the morning, and where, when we tried to break the ice in the jug, there were only a few drops of water left at the bottom with which to wash. No wonder that the ablutions were expeditious. After they were performed we had our speedy breakfast, consisting of a cup of coffee and a semmel or roll, and then we rushed to school, often through the snow that had not yet been swept away from the pavement. We sat in school from eight to eleven or twelve, rushed home again, had our very simple dinner, and then back to school, from two to four. How we lived through it I sometimes wonder, for we were thinly clad and often wet with rain or snow; and yet we enjoyed our life as boys only can enjoy it, and had no time to be ill. One blessing this early roughing has left me for life—a power of enjoying many things which to most of my friends are matters of course or of no consequence. The background of my life at Dessau and at Leipzig may seem dark, but it has only served to make the later years of my life all the brighter and warmer.

The more I think about that distant, now very distant past, the more I feel how, without being aware of it, my whole character was formed by it. The unspoiled primitiveness of life at Dessau as it was when I was at school there till the age of twelve, would be extremely difficult to describe in all its details. Everybody seemed to know everybody and everything about everybody. Everybody knew that he was watched, and gossip, in the best sense of the word, ruled supreme in the little town. Gossip was, in fact, public opinion with all its good and all its bad features. Still the result was that no one could afford to lose caste, and that everybody behaved as well as he could. I really believe that the private life of the people of Dessau at the beginning of the century was blameless. The great evils of society did not exist, and if now and then there was a black sheep, his or her life became a burden to them. Everybody knew what had happened, and society being on the whole so blameless, was all the more merciless on the sinners, whether their sins were great or small. So from the very first my idea was that there were only two classes—one class quite perfect and pure as angels, the other black sheep, and altogether unspeakable. There was no transition, no intermediate links, no shading of light and dark. A man was either black or white, and this rigid rule applied not only to moral character, but intellectual excellence also was measured by the same standard. A work of art was either superlatively beautiful, or it was contemptible. A man of science was either a giant or a humbug. Some people spoke of Goethe as the greatest of all poets and philosophers the world had ever known; others called him a wicked man and an overvalued poet.[7]

[7] That this was not only the case at Dessau, may be seen by a number of contemporary reviews of Goethe's works republished some years ago and the exact title of which I cannot find.

It is dangerous, no doubt, to go through life with so imperfect a measure, and I have for a long time suffered from it, particularly in cases where I ought to have been able to make allowance for small failings. But as I had been brought up to approach people with a complete trust in their rectitude, and with an unlimited admiration of their genius, it took me many years before I learnt to make allowance for human weaknesses or temporary failures. I have lost many a charming companion and excellent friend in my journey through life, because I weighed them with my rusty Dessau balance. I had to learn by long experience that there may be a spot, nay, several spots on the soft skin of a peach, and yet the whole fruit may be perfect. I acted very much like the merchant who tested a whole field of rice by the first handful of grains, and who, if he found one or two bad grains, would have nothing to do with the whole field. I had to learn what was, perhaps, the most difficult lesson of all, that a trusted friend could not always be trusted, and yet need not therefore be altogether a reprobate. What was most difficult for me to digest was an untruth: finding out that one who professed to be a friend had said and done most unfriendly things behind one's back. Still, in a long life one finds out that even that may not be a deadly sin, and that if we are so loth to forgive it, it is partly because the falsehood affected our own interests. Thus only can we explain how a man whom we know to have been guilty of falsehoods towards ourselves may be looked upon as perfectly honest, straightforward, and trustworthy, by a large number of his own friends. We see this over and over again with men occupying eminent positions in Church and State. We see how a prime minister or an archbishop is represented by men who know him as a liar and a hypocrite, while by others he is spoken of as a paragon of honour and honesty, and a true Christian. My narrow Dessau views became a little widened when I went to school at Leipzig; still more when I spent two years and a half at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards at Berlin. Still, during all this time I saw but little of what is called society, I only knew of people whom I loved and of people whom I disliked. There was no room as yet for indifferent people, whom one tolerates and is civil to without caring whether one sees them again or not. Of the simplest duties of society also I was completely ignorant. No one ever told me what to say and what to do, or what not to say and what not to do. What I felt I said, what I thought right I did. There was, in fact, in my small native town very little that could be called society. One lived in one's family and with one's intimate friends without any ceremony. It is a pity that children are not taught a few rules of life-wisdom by their seniors. I know that the Jews do not neglect that duty, and I remember being surprised at my young Jewish friends at Dessau coming out with some very wise saws which evidently had not been grown in their own hot-houses, but had been planted out full grown by their seniors. The only rules of worldly wisdom which I remember, came to me through proverbs and little verses which we had either to copy or to learn by heart, such as:

"Wer einmal luegt, dem glaubt man nicht Und wenn er auch die Wahrheit spricht."

"Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde."

"Kein Faden ist so fein gesponnen, Er kommt doch endlich an die Sonnen."

"Jeder ist seines Glueckes Schmied."

Some lines which hung over my bed I have carried with me all through life, and I still think they are very true and very terse:

"Im Glueck nicht jubeln und im Sturm nicht zagen, Das Unvermeidliche mit Wuerde tragen, Das Rechte thun, am Schoenen sich erfreuen, Das Leben lieben und den Tod nicht scheuen, Und fest an Gott und bessere Zukunft glauben, Heisst leben, heisst dem Tod sein Bitteres rauben."

Still, all this formed a very small viaticum for a journey through life, and I often thought that a few more hints might have preserved me from the painful process of what was called rubbing off one's horns. Again and again I had to say to myself, "That would have done very well at home, but it was a mistake for all that." My social rawness and simplicity stuck to me for many years, just as the Dessau dialect remained with me for life; at least I was assured by my friends that though I had spoken French and English for so many years, they could always detect in my German that I came from Dessau or Leipzig.



CHAPTER III

SCHOOL-DAYS AT LEIPZIG

It was certainly a poor kind of armour in which I set out from Dessau. My mother, devoted as she was to me, had judged rightly that it was best for me to be with other boys and under the supervision of a man. I had been somewhat spoiled by her passionate love, and also by her passionate severity in correcting the ordinary naughtinesses of a boy. So having risen from form to form in the school at Dessau, I was sent, at the age of twelve, to Leipzig, to live in the house of Professor Carus and attend the famous Nicolai-Schule with his son, who was of the same age as myself and who likewise wanted a companion. It was thought that there would be a certain emulation between us, and so, no doubt, there was, though we always remained the best of friends. The house in which we lived stood in a garden and was really an orthopaedic institution for girls. There were about twenty or thirty of these young girls living in the house or spending the day there, and their joyous company was very pleasant. Of course the names and faces of my young friends have, with one or two exceptions, vanished from my memory, but I was surprised when a few years ago (1895) I was staying with Madame Salis-Schwabe at her delightful place on the Menai Straits, and discovered that we had known each other more than fifty years before in the house of Professor Carus at Leipzig. Though we had met from time to time, we never knew of our early meeting at Leipzig, till in comparing notes we discovered how we had spent a whole year in the same house and among the same friends. Hers has been a life full of work and entirely devoted to others. To the very end of her days she was spending her large income in founding schools on the system recommended by Froebel, not only in England, but in Italy. She died at Naples in 1896, while visiting a large school that had been founded by her with the assistance of the Italian Government. Her own house in Wales was full of treasures of art, and full of memorials of her many friends, such as Bunsen, Renan, Mole, Ary Scheffer, and many more. How far her charity went may be judged by her being willing to part with some of the most precious of Ary Scheffer's pictures, in order to keep her schools well endowed, and able to last after her death, which she felt to be imminent.

Public schools are nearly all day schools in Germany. The boys live at home, mostly in their own families, but they spend six hours every day at school, and it is a mistake to imagine that they are not attached to it, that they have no games together, and that they do not grow up manly or independent. Most schools have playgrounds, and in summer swimming is a favourite amusement for all the boys. There were two good public schools at Leipzig, the Nicolai School and the Thomas School. There was plenty of esprit de corps in them, and often when the boys met it showed itself not only in words but in blows, and the discussions over the merits of their schools were often continued in later life. I was very fortunate in being sent to the Nicolai School, under Dr. Nobbe as head master. He was at the same time Professor at the University of Leipzig, and is well known in England also as the editor of Cicero. He was very proud that his school counted Leibniz[8] among its former pupils. He was a classical scholar of the old school. During the last three years of our school life we had to write plenty of Latin and Greek verse, and were taught to speak Latin. The speaking of Latin came readily enough, but the verses never attained a very high level. Besides Nobbe we had Forbiger, well known by his books on ancient geography, and Palm, editor of the same Greek Dictionary which, in the hands of Dr. Liddell, has reached its highest perfection. Then there was Funkhaenel, known beyond Germany by his edition of the Orations of Demosthenes, and his studies on Greek orators. We were indeed well off for masters, and most of them seemed to enjoy their work and to be fond of the boys. Our head master was very popular. He was a man of the old German type, powerfully built, with a large square head, very much like Luther, and, strange to say, when in 1839 a great Luther festival was celebrated all over Germany, he published a book in which he proved that he was a direct descendant of Luther.

[8] His own spelling of his name.

The school was carried on very much on the old plan of teaching chiefly classics, but teaching them thoroughly. Modern languages, mathematics, and physical science had a poor chance, though they clamoured for recognition. Latin and Greek verse were considered far more important. In the two highest forms we had to speak Latin, and such as it was it seemed to us much easier than to speak French. Hebrew was also taught as an optional subject during the last four years, and the little I know of Hebrew dates chiefly from my school-days. Schoolboys soon find out what their masters think of the value of the different subjects taught at school, and they are apt to treat not only the subjects themselves but the teachers also according to that standard. Hence our modern language and our physical science masters had a hard time of it. They could not keep their classes in order, and it was by no means unusual for many of the boys simply to stay away from their lessons. The old mathematical master, before beginning his lesson, used to rub his spectacles, and after looking round the half empty classroom, mutter in a plaintive voice: "I see again many boys who are not here to-day." When the same old master began to lecture on physical science, he told the boys to bring a frog to be placed under a glass from which the air had been extracted by an air-pump. Of course every one of the twenty or thirty boys brought two or three frogs, and when the experiment was to be made all these frogs were hopping about the lecture-room, and the whole army of boys were hopping after them over chairs and tables to catch them. No wonder that during this tumult the master did not succeed with his experiment, and when at last the glass bowl was lifted up and we were asked to see the frog, great was the joy of all the boys when the frog hopped out and escaped from the hands of its executioner. Such was the wrath excited by these new-fangled lectures among the boys that they actually committed the vandalism of using one of the forms as a battering-ram against the enclosure in which the physical science apparatus was kept, and destroyed some of the precious instruments supplied by Government. Severe punishments followed, but they did not serve to make physical science more popular.

We certainly did very well in Greek and Latin, and read a number of classical texts, not only critically at school, but also cursorily at home, having to give a weekly account of what we had thus read by ourselves. I liked my classics, and yet I could not help feeling that there was a certain exaggeration in the way in which every one of them was spoken of by our teachers, nay, that as compared to German poets and prose writers they were somewhat overpraised. Still, it would have been very conceited not to admire what our masters admired, and as in duty bound we went into the usual raptures about Homer and Sophocles, about Horace and Cicero. Many things which in later life we learn to admire in the classics could hardly appeal to the taste of boys. The directness, the simplicity and originality of the ancient, as compared with modern writers, cannot be appreciated by them, and I well remember being struck with what we disrespectful boys called the cheekiness of Horace expecting immortality (non omnis moriar) for little poems which we were told were chiefly written after Greek patterns. We had to admit that there were fewer false quantities in his Latin verses than in our own, but in other respects we could not see that his odes were so infinitely superior to ours. His hope of immortality has certainly been fulfilled beyond what could have been his own expectations. With so little of ancient history known to him, his idea of the immortality of poetry must have been far more modest in his time than in our own. He may have known the past glories of the Persian Empire, but as to ancient literature, there was nothing for him to know, whether in Persia, in Babylonia, in Assyria, or even in Egypt, least of all in India. Literary fame existed for him in Greece only, and in the Roman Empire, and his own ambition could therefore hardly have extended beyond these limits. The exaggeration in the panegyrics passed on everything Greek or Latin dates from the classical scholars of the Middle Ages, who knew nothing that could be compared to the classics, and who were loud in praising what they possessed the monopoly of selling. Successive generations of scholars followed suit, so that even in our time it seemed high treason to compare Goethe with Horace, or Schiller with Sophocles. Of late, however, the danger is rather that the reaction should go too far and lead to a promiscuous depreciation even of such real giants as Lucretius or Plato. The fact is that we have learnt from them and imitated them, till in some cases the imitations have equalled or even excelled the originals, while now the taste for classical correctness has been wellnigh supplanted by an appetite for what is called realistic, original, and extravagant.

With all that has been said or written against making classical studies the most important element in a liberal education, or rather against retaining them in their time-honoured position, nothing has as yet been suggested to take their place. For after all, it is not simply in order to learn two languages that we devote so large a share of our time to the study of Greek and Latin; it is in order to learn to understand the old world on which our modern world is founded; it is in order to think the old thoughts, which are the feeders of our own intellectual life, that we become in our youth the pupils of Greeks and Romans. In order to know what we are, we have to learn how we have come to be what we are. Our very languages form an unbroken chain between us and Cicero and Aristotle, and in order to use many of our words intelligently, we must know the soil from which they sprang, and the atmosphere in which they grew up and developed.

I enjoyed my work at school very much, and I seem to have passed rapidly from class to class. I frequently received prizes both in money and in books, but I see a warning attached to some of them that I ought not to be conceited, which probably meant no more than that I should not show when I was pleased with my successes. At least I do not know what I could have been conceited about. What I feel about my learning at school is that it was entirely passive. I acquired knowledge such as it was presented to me. I did not doubt whatever my teachers taught me, I did not, as far as I can recollect, work up any subject by myself. I find only one paper of mine of that early time, and, curiously enough, it was on mythology; but it contains no inkling of comparative mythology, but simply a chronological arrangement of the sources from which we draw our knowledge of Greek mythology. I see also from some old papers, that I began to write poetry, and that twice or thrice I was chosen at great festivities to recite poems written by myself. In the year 1839 three hundred years had passed since Luther preached at Leipzig in the Church of St. Nicolai, and the tercentenary of this event was celebrated all over Germany. My poem was selected for recitation at a large meeting of the friends of our school and the notables of the town, and I had to recite it, not without fear and trembling. I was then but sixteen years of age.

In the next year, 1840, Leipzig celebrated the invention of printing in 1440. It was on this occasion that Mendelssohn wrote his famous Hymn of Praise. I formed part of the chorus, and I well remember the magnificent effect which the music produced in the Church of St. Thomas. Again a poem of mine was selected, and I had to recite it at a large gathering in the Nicolai-Schule on July 18, 1840.

On December 23 another celebration took place at our school, at which I had to recite a Latin poem of mine, In Schillerum. Lastly, there was my valedictory poem when I left the school in 1841, and a Latin poem "Ad Nobbium," our head master.

I have found among my mother's treasures the far too often flattering testimonial addressed to her by Professor Nobbe on that occasion, which ends thus: "I rejoice at seeing him leave this school with testimonials of moral excellence not often found in one of his years—and possessed of knowledge in more than one point, first-rate, and of intellectual capacities excellent throughout. May his young mind develop more and more, may the fruits of his labours hereafter be a comfort to his mother for the sorrows and cares of the past."

It was rather hard on me that I had to pass my examination for admission to the University (Abiturienten-Examen) not at my own school, but at Zerbst in Anhalt. This was necessary in order to enable me to obtain a scholarship from the Anhalt Government. The schools in Anhalt were modelled after the Prussian schools, and laid far more stress on mathematics, physical science, and modern languages than the schools in Saxony. I had therefore to get up in a very short time several quite new subjects, and did not do so well in them as in Greek and Latin. However, I passed with a first class, and obtained my scholarship, small as it was. It was only the other day that I received a letter from a gentleman who was at school at Zerbst when I came there for my examination. He reminds me that among my examiners there were such men as Dr. Ritter, the two Sentenis, and Professor Werner, and he says that he watched me when I came upstairs and entered the locked room to do my paper work. My friend's career in life had been that of Director of a Life Insurance Company, probably a more lucrative career than what mine has been.



During my stay at Leipzig, first in the house of Professor Carus, and afterwards as a student at the University, my chief enjoyment was certainly music. I had plenty of it, perhaps too much, but I pity the man who has not known the charm of it. At that time Leipzig was really the centre of music in Germany. Felix Mendelssohn was there, and most of the distinguished artists and composers of the day came there to spend some time with him and to assist at the famous Gewandhaus Concerts. I find among my letters a few descriptions of concerts and other musical entertainments, which even at present may be of some interest. I was asked to be present at some concerts where quartettes and other pieces were performed by Mendelssohn, Hiller, Kaliwoda, David, and Eckart. Liszt also made his triumphant entry into Germany at Leipzig, and everybody was full of expectation and excitement. His concert had been advertised long before his arrival. It was to consist of an Overture of Weber's; a Cavatina from Robert le Diable, sung by Madame Schlegel; a Concerto of Weber's, to be played by Liszt, the same which I had shortly before heard played by Madame Pleyel; Beethoven's Overture to Prometheus; Fantasia on La Juive; Schubert's Ave Maria and Serenade, as arranged by Liszt. I was the more delighted because I had myself played some of these pieces. But suddenly there appeared a placard stating that Liszt, on hearing that tickets were sold at one thaler (three shillings), had declared he would play a few pieces only and without an orchestra. In spite of that disappointment, the whole house was full, the staircase crowded from top to bottom, and when we had pushed our way through, we found that about 300 places had been retained for one and a half thalers (four shillings and sixpence), while tickets at the box-office were sold for two thalers (six shillings). Nevertheless, I managed to get a very good place, by simply not seeing a number of ladies who were pushing behind me. When Liszt appeared there was a terrible hissing—he looked as if petrified, glanced like a demon at the public, but nevertheless began to play the Scherzo and Finale of the Pastoral Symphony. Then there burst out a perfect thunder of applause, and all seemed pacified, while Madame Schmidt sang a song accompanied by a certain Mr. Kermann. As soon as that was over, a new storm of hisses arose, which was meant for this Mr. Kermann, who was a pupil, but at the same time the man of business of Liszt. He and three other men had made all arrangements, and Liszt knew nothing about them, as he cared very little for the money, which went chiefly to his managers. A Fantasia by Liszt followed, and lastly a Galop Chromatique—but the public would not go away, and at length Liszt was induced to play Une grande Valse. It was no doubt a new experience; but I could not go into ecstasies like others, for after all it was merely mechanical, though no doubt in the highest perfection. The day after Liszt advertised that his original Programme would be played, but at six o'clock Professor Carus, with whom I lived, was called to see Liszt, who was said to be ill; the fact being he had only sold fifty tickets at the raised prices. Many strangers who had come to Leipzig to hear him went away, anything but pleased with the new musical genius. At one concert, where he appeared in Magyar costume, the ladies offered him a golden laurel wreath and sword. He had just published his arrangement of Adelaida, which he promised to play in one of the concerts.

Another very musical family at Leipzig was that of Professor Froege. He was a rich man, and had married a famous singer, Fraeulein Schlegel. One evening the Sonnambula was performed in their house, which had been changed into a theatre. She acted the Sonnambula, and her singing as well as her acting was most finished and delightful. Mendelssohn was much in their house, and made her sing his songs as soon as they were written and before they were published. They were great friends, the bond of their friendship being music. He actually died when playing while she was singing. People talked as they always will talk about what they cannot understand, but they evidently did not know either Mendelssohn or Madame Froege.

The house of Professor Carus was always open to musical geniuses, and many an evening men like Hiller, Mendelssohn, David, Eckart, &c., came there to play, while Madame Carus sang, and sang most charmingly. I too was asked sometimes to play at these evening parties. I see that Ernst gave a concert at Leipzig, and no doubt his execution was admirable. Still, I could not understand what David meant when he declared that after hearing Ernst he would throw his own instrument into the fire.

Mendelssohn, who was delighted with Liszt—and no one could judge him better than he—gave a soiree in honour of him. About 400 people were invited—I among the rest, being one of the tenors who sang in the Oratorio that Hiller was then rehearsing for the first performance. I think it was the Destruction of Babylon. There was a complete orchestra at Mendelssohn's party, and we heard a symphony of Schubert (posthumous), Mendelssohn's psalm "As the hart pants," and his overture Meeresstille und glueckliche Fahrt. After that there was supper for all the guests, and then followed a chorus from his St. Paul, and a triple concerto of Bach, played on three pianofortes by Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Hiller. It was a difficult piece—difficult to play and difficult to follow. Lastly, Liszt played his new fantasia on Lucia di Lammermoor, and his arrangement of the Erlkoenig. All was really perfect; and hearing so much music, I became more and more absorbed in it. I even gave some concerts with Grabau, a great violoncellist, at Merseburg, and at a Count Arnim's, a very rich nobleman near Merseburg, who had invited Liszt for one evening and paid him 100 ducats. This seemed at that time a very large sum, almost senseless. As a ducat was about nine shillings, it was after all only L45, which would not seem excessive at present for an artist such as Liszt.

I also heard Thalberg at Leipzig. They all came to see Mendelssohn, and I believe did their best to please him. At that time my idea of devoting myself altogether to the study of music became very strong; and as Professor Carus married again, I proposed to leave Leipzig, and to enter the musical school of Schneider at Dessau. But nothing came of that, and I think on the whole it was as well.

While at school at Leipzig I had but little opportunity of travelling, for my mother was always anxious to have me home during the holidays, and I was equally anxious to be with her and to see my relations at Dessau. Generally I went in a wretched carriage from Leipzig to Dessau. It was only seven German miles (about thirty-five English miles), but it took a whole day to get there; and during part of the journey, when we had to cross the deep and desert-like sands, walking on foot was much more expeditious than sitting inside the carriage. But then we paid only one thaler for the whole journey, and sometimes, in order to save that, I walked on foot the whole way. That also took me a whole day; but when I tried it the first time, being then quite young and rather delicate in health, I had to give in about an hour before I came to Dessau, my legs refusing to go further, and my muscles being cramped and stiff from exertion, I had to sit down by the road. During one vacation I remember exploring the valley of the Mulde with some other boys. We travelled for about a fortnight from village to village, and lived in the simplest way. A more ambitious journey I took in 1841 with a friend of mine, Baron von Hagedorn. He was a curious and somewhat mysterious character. He had been brought up by a great-aunt of mine, to whom he was entrusted as a baby. No one knew his parents, but they must have been rich, for he possessed a large fortune. He had a country place near Munich, and he spent the greater part of the year in travelling about, and amusing himself. He had been brought up with my mother and other members of our family, and he took a very kind interest in me. I see from my letters that in 1841 he took me from Dessau to Coethen, Brunswick, and Magdeburg. At Brunswick we saw the picture gallery, the churches, and the tomb of Schill, one of the German volunteers in the War of Independence against France. We also explored Hildesheim, saw the rose-tree planted, as we were told, by Charlemagne; then proceeded to Goettingen, and saw its famous library. We passed through Minden, where the Fulda and Werra join, and arrived late at Cassel. From Cassel we explored Wilhelmshoehe, the beautiful park where thirty years later Napoleon III was kept as a prisoner.

Hagedorn, with all his love of mystery and occasional exaggeration, was certainly a good friend to me. He often gave me good advice, and was more of a father to me than a mere friend. He was a man of the world; and he forgot that I never meant to be a man of the world, and therefore his advice was not always what I wanted. He was also a great friend of my cousin who was married to a Prince of Dessau, and they had agreed among themselves that I should go to the Oriental Academy at Vienna, learn Oriental languages, and then enter the diplomatic service. As there were no children from the Prince's marriage, I was to be adopted by him, and, as if the princely fortune was not enough to tempt me, I was told that even a wife had been chosen for me, and that I should have a new name and title, after being adopted by the Prince. To other young men this might have seemed irresistible. I at once said no. It seemed to interfere with my freedom, with my studies, with my ideal of a career in life; in fact, though everything was presented to me by my cousin as on a silver tray, I shook my head and remained true to my first love, Sanskrit and all the rest. Hagedorn could not understand this; he thought a brilliant life preferable to the quiet life of a professor. Not so I. He little knew where true happiness was to be found, and he was often in a very melancholy mood. He did not live long, but I shall never forget how much I owed him. When I went to Paris, he allowed me to live in his rooms. They were, it is true, au cinquieme, but they were in the best quarter of Paris, in the Rue Royale St. Honore, opposite the Madeleine, and very prettily furnished. This kept me from living in dusty lodgings in the Quartier Latin, and the five flights of stairs may have strengthened my lungs. I well remember what it was when at the foot of the staircase I saw that I had forgotten my handkerchief and had to toil up again. But in those days one did not know what it meant to be tired. Whether my friends grumbled, I cannot tell, but I myself pitied some of them who were old and gouty when they arrived at my door out of breath.



CHAPTER IV

UNIVERSITY

In order to enable me to go to the University, my mother and sister moved to Leipzig and kept house for me during all the time I was there—that is, for two years and a half. In spite of the res angusta domi, I enjoyed my student-life thoroughly, while my home was made very agreeable by my mother and sister. My mother was full of resource, and she was wise enough not to interfere with my freedom. My sister, who was about two years older than myself, was most kind-hearted and devoted both to me and to our mother. There was nothing selfish in her, and we three lived together in perfect love, peace, and harmony. My sister enjoyed what little there was of society, whereas I kept sternly aloof from it. She was much admired, and soon became engaged to a young doctor, Dr. A. Krug, the son of the famous professor of philosophy at Leipzig, whose works, particularly his Dictionary of Philosophy, hold a distinguished place in the history of German philosophy. He was a thorough patriot, and so public spirited that he thought it right to leave a considerable sum of money to the University, without making sufficient provision for his children. However, the young married couple lived happily at Chemnitz, and my sister was proud in the possession of her children. It was the sudden death of several of these children that broke her heart and ruined her health; she died very young. Standing by the grave of her children, she said to me shortly before her death, "Half of me is dead already, and lies buried there; the other half will soon follow."

Of society, in the ordinary sense of the word, I saw hardly anything. I am afraid I was rather a bear, and declined even to invest in evening dress. I joined a student club which formed part of the Burschenschaft, but which in order to escape prosecution adopted the title of Gemeinschaft. I went there in the evening to drink beer and smoke, and I made some delightful acquaintances and friendships. What fine characters were there, often behind a very rough exterior! My dearest friend was Prowe, of Thorn in East Prussia—so honest, so true, so straightforward, so over-conscientious in the smallest things. He was a classical scholar, and later on entered the Prussian educational service. As a master at the principal school at Thorn his time was fully occupied, and of course he was cut off there from the enlivening influences of literary society. Still he kept up his interest in higher questions, and published some extremely valuable books on Copernicus, a native of Thorn, for which he received the thanks of astronomers and historians, and flattering testimonials from learned societies. We met but seldom later in life, and my own life in England was so busy and full that even our correspondence was not regular. But I met him once more at Ems with a charming wife, and decidedly happy in his own sphere of activity. These early friendships form the distant landscape of life on which we like to dwell when the present ceases to absorb all our thoughts. Our memory dwells on them as a golden horizon, and there remains a constant yearning which makes us feel the incompleteness of this life. After all, the number of our true friends is small; and yet how few even of that small number remain with us for life. There are other faces and other names that rise from beyond the clouds which more and more divide us from our early years.

There were some wild spirits among us who fretted at the narrow-minded policy which went by the name of the Metternich system. Repression was the panacea which Metternich recommended to all the governments of Germany, large and small. No doubt the system of keeping things quiet secured to Germany and to Europe at large a thirty years' peace, but it could not prevent the accumulation of inflammable material which, after several threatenings, burst forth at last in the conflagration of 1848. Among my friends I remember several who were ready for the wildest schemes in order to have Germany united, respected abroad, and under constitutional government at home. Splendid fellows they were, but they either ended their days within the walls of a prison, or had to throw up everything and migrate to America. What has become of them? Some have risen to the surface in America, others have yielded to the inevitable and become peaceful citizens at home; nay, I am grieved to say, have even accepted service under Government to spy on their former friends and fellow-dreamers. But not a few saw the whole of their life wrecked either in prison or in poverty, though they had done no wrong, and in many cases were the finest characters it has been my good fortune to know. They were before their time, the fruit was not ripe as it was in 1871, but Germany certainly lost some of her best sons in those miserable years; and if my father escaped this political persecution, it was probably due to the influence of the reigning Duke and the Duchess, a Princess of Prussia, who knew that he was not a dangerous man, and not likely to blow up the German Diet.

I myself got a taste of prison life for the offence of wearing the ribbon of a club which the police regarded with disfavour. I cannot say that either the disgrace or the discomfort of my two days' durance vile weighed much with me, as my friends were allowed free access to me, and came and drank beer and smoked cigars in my cell—of course at my expense—but what I dreaded was the loss of my stipendium or scholarship, which alone enabled me to continue my studies at Leipzig, and which, as a rule, was forfeited for political offences. On my release from prison I went to the Rector of the University and explained to him the circumstances of the case—how I had been arrested simply for membership of a suspected club. I assured him that I was innocent of any political propaganda, and that the loss of my stipendium would entail my leaving the University. Much to my relief, the old gentleman replied: "I have heard nothing about this; and if I do, how am I to know that it refers to you, there are many Muellers in the University?" Fortunately the distinctive prefix Max had not yet been added to my name.

I must confess that I and my boon companions were sometimes guilty of practices which in more modern days, and certainly at Oxford or Cambridge, would be far more likely to bring the culprits into collision with the authorities than mere membership of societies in which comparatively harmless political talk was indulged in.

Duelling was then, as it is now, a favourite pastime among the students; and though not by nature a brawler, I find that in my student days at Leipzig I fought three duels, of two of which I carry the marks to the present day.

I remember that on one occasion before the introduction of cabs we hired all the sedan-chairs in Leipzig, with their yellow-coated porters, and went in procession through the streets, much to the astonishment of the good citizens, and annoyance also, as they were unable to hire any means of conveyance till a peremptory stop was put to our fun. Not content with this exploit, when the first cabs were introduced into Leipzig, thirty or forty being put on the street at first, I and my friends secured the use of all of them for the day, and proceeded out into the country. The inhabitants who were eagerly looking forward to a drive in one of the new conveyances were naturally annoyed at finding themselves forestalled, and the result was that a stop was put to such freaks in future by the issue of a police regulation that nobody was allowed to hire more than two cabs at a time.

Very innocent amusements, if perhaps foolish, but very happy days all the same; and it must be remembered that we had just emerged from the strict discipline of a German school into the unrestricted liberty of German university life.

It is in every respect a great jump from a German school to a German university. At school a boy even in the highest form, has little choice. All his lessons are laid down for him; he has to learn what he is told, whether he likes it or not. Few only venture on books outside the prescribed curriculum. There is an examination at the end of every half-year, and a boy must pass it well in order to get into a higher form. Boys at a public school (gymnasium), if they cannot pass their examination at the proper time, are advised to go to another school, and to prepare for a career in which classical languages are of less importance.

I must say at once that when I matriculated at Leipzig, in the summer of 1841, I was still very young and very immature. I had determined to study philology, chiefly Greek and Latin, but the fare spread out by the professors was much too tempting. I read Greek and Latin without difficulty; I often read classical authors without ever attempting to translate them; I also wrote and spoke Latin easily. Some of the professors lectured in Latin, and at our academic societies Latin was always spoken. I soon became a member of the classical seminary under Gottfried Hermann, and of the Latin Society under Professor Haupt. Admission to these seminaries and societies was obtained by submitting essays, and it was no doubt a distinction to belong to them. It was also useful, for not only had we to write essays and discuss them with the other members, generally teachers, and with the professor, but we could also get some useful advice from the professor for our private studies. In that respect the German universities do very little for the students, unless one has the good fortune to belong to one of these societies. The young men are let loose, and they can choose whatever lectures they want. I still have my Collegien-Buch, in which every professor has to attest what lectures one has attended. The number of lectures on various subjects which I attended is quite amazing, and I should have attended still more if the honorarium had not frightened me away. Every professor lectured publice and privatim, and for the more important courses, four lectures a week, he charged ten shillings, for more special courses less or nothing. This seems little, but it was often too much for me; and if one added these honoraria to the salary of a popular professor, his income was considerable, and was more than the income of most public servants. I have known professors who had four or five hundred auditors. This gave them L250 twice a year, and that, added to their salary, was considered a good income at that time. All this has been much changed. Salaries have been raised, and likewise the honoraria, so that I well remember the case of Professor von Savigny, who, when he was chosen Minister of Justice at Berlin, declared that he would gladly accept if only his salary was raised to what his income had been as Professor of Law. Of course, professors of Arabic or Sanskrit were badly off, and Privatdocenten (tutors) fared still worse, but the professores ordinarii, particularly if they lectured on an obligatory subject and were likewise examiners, were very well off. In fact, it struck me sometimes as very unworthy of them to keep a famulus, a student who had to tell every one who wished to hear a distinguished professor once or twice, that he would not allow him to come a third time.