debate was maintained among the gossips who presided at that event. It was argued by some of them, that the tenor of my future life would necessarily be coloured by the witching hour in which I had been born—that this hour being the solemn time "when night and morning meet "—when ghosts come out of the graves, and license is given to the powers of darkness—the just conclusion was, that I could not escape being a ghost-seer, an animal magnetizer, a mystic, or fanatic of one kind or another. Others, again, of these she sages, who prided themselves upon greater astronomical or astrological skill, predicted for me a directly opposite fate. This very time, they said, being the crisis of the year in which the sun is highest in heaven, and his light, even at midnight, scarcely sunk beneath the horizon, it followed, most undeniably, that I would be the born foe of darkness, obscurity, and mysticism, in all its shapes—the friend of clearness and enlightenment, and the zealous advocate of liberty of thought, if not, perhaps, an absolute freethinker. Upon the breathing of this latter suspicion, I understand that the whole conclave crossed themselves devoutly, and muttered a pious "God forbid," expressive of the hope that the unconscious squaller before them might never become any such devil's brat. Let the world, which has my writings before it, decide whether any of these prophecies have been fulfilled.
My extraction was neither mean nor exalted. My father was a respectable farmer; and my mother was nearly related to Oeser, an artist of some celebrity at the period of which I am writing. Though at all seasons of my life I have been partial to exercises which demand bodily exertion, and bring the muscles into play, particularly to riding—as my galloping off upon a butcher's pony when not seven years old, may testify—in which adventure I very nearly met with a broken neck—still, I evinced from my earliest years a yet greater tendency towards the sedentary pursuits of literature. My fondness for study determined my father to make a scholar of me, and an event which occurred about this time, led my family to select theology as the vocation in which I was most likely to make a figure. In these days my grandmother was alive, and a very kind and pious old lady she was. It was her practice every morning to prepare herself for the duties of the day, by singing a spiritual hymn. Now, happening to have an excellent ear for music, I overheard her one morning pouring forth a strain which more than usually took my fancy. I immediately caught the tune, and began to hum in unison. The old lady, attributing my accompaniment entirely to an overflow of precocious piety, was vastly delighted. "Never was such a pious child seen. We must by all means make a minister of' him. When he is of age to enter the Church, he will indeed be a great and a shining light." Meanwhile, my mouth was crammed with sugar-plums and lolly-pops, and, saint or not, I was at any rate in the fair way of being made an incorrigible hypocrite; for from that time I made a point of partaking daily in my grandmother's devotional exercises, and was as devout as gingerbread could make me.
Even at this early age, the diligence with which I prosecuted my scholastic and theological pursuits was so great, that I soon exhausted all the knowledge that was to be obtained at our village school, besides draining dry the biblical information of my grandmother. It was therefore fixed that
I should be sent to the great national seminary at Pforta. Many and bitter were the tears I shed on leaving the paternal roof in 1782. Pforta, I had been told, was distant two days' journey from Radis, and hence I felt as if I were going to be banished to the uttermost regions of the earth. I believed that J should never more behold the countenances of my home. There are certainly few trials more severe than that which accompanies the first untwisting of a child's affections from around the persons and places familiar to him from infancy. I at least can testify that I left my father's house with a heart laden with the entire affliction of an exile. But the pangs of boyhood are transitory—novelties broke in upon my wondering eyes at every advance of our journey. I became absorbed in the interest of new scenes: so that by the time the mountains of Naumberg, which lay near the place of my destination, were visible, I had entirely got the better of my home-sickness, and was ready to enter upon the new career to which I had been called.
