head-master for impertinence. But the latter rather took my side; and declared that no boy belonging to his class ought to be subjected to the indignity of having auch childish questions put to him.
Most of our teachers had nicknames, and one of the most appropriate which I now remember, was that which we applied to an usher, called Liebelt. This man had an affected habit of construing our lessons to us with his eyes shut. Now, we had remarked, that cocks in the act of crowing frequently closed their eyes, for the purpose, as we used to allege, of showing that they were able to crow by heart.
Both he and the cock, therefore, appearing to be actuated by the same kind of vanity—namely, by the desire of letting people see how completely au fait to the matter each of them was in his respective walk—there seemed to us to be a decided good reason for transferring to the unplumed biped the title of his feathered compeer.
But, amidst these frivolous reminiscences, a melancholy remembrance throws its shadows across the page on which I write. The wife of one of our most honoured teachers died suddenly—a woman whom I loved—ay, sneer at the expression, ye worldling, as ye will—loved, I say, with all the pure and unselfish passion of a boyish heart. I saw her but seldom; but I well remember that on Sundays at church, whether the minister preached well or ill, I at least was sure of finding, though she knew it not, a sermon of beauty in her angelic face. But her light was gone for ever, and I mourned for her with an incommunicable sorrow. When any of our teachers or their wives died, it was the custom that their remains should be carried to the grave on the shoulders of the six oldest and stoutest scholars. On the present occasion, I was one of the number on whom this melancholy duty devolved: and, deeply afflicted as I was, I felt a secret satisfaction in being thought by the companionship of death into contact with one whom in life I had loved, and looked up to but as a far off and unapproachable star.
I had now spent five years and eight months at Pforta. It was therefore time that I should leave school and betake myself to the university. When my father had fixed the day for my departure, I bade adieu to my playmates in a copy of Latin elegiac verses; and waiting upon the rector, I requested that he would favour me with a certificate of my qualifications. This he very readily agreed to do, although I had feared that he bore me a grudge in consequence of various little disagreements that had arisen between us. But in harbouring that suspicion I wronged him, for nothing could be more handsome or more elegantly expressed than the testimonial he presented me with—written out, too, in the true patent form, and in our writing-master' s most elaborate penmanship. Playing facetiously on my name, he took occasion to remark, that various kinds of human clay came under the hands of the teacher, which it was his lot to fashion, sometimes into vessels of honour, and sometimes into vessels of dishonour; that in allusion to the latter, it might be said in the words of Horace,
"Amphora cœpit
Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?'
but that, with regard to me, the very reverse of the Horatian illustration held good; that I had come to Pforta, a small krug, or urceus, or mug, but that in the course of the revolutions of the scholastic potter's wheel, I had issued forth a well-finished amphora—a capacious vase amply replenished with good things. This strain of compliment was more than I expected—perhaps more than, with all my vanity, I felt myself entitled to. It was therefore with considerable emotion that I bade adieu to my worthy teacher, while to part with the companions of my boyhood cost me a severer pang.
Stage the third. My Student Life—1788, 1794. The question now being at what university should complete my studies, I fixed upon that of Wittenberg. This university lay nearest to my home, and the affections of my heart were ever riveted to the woods and meadows of my native place. There the sun shone, I thought, with a purer light than elsewhere—there the heavens laughed with a brighter blue, and there the greetings of the human voice sounded with a friendlier tone. Besides, it was at Wittenberg that I had seen an early vision of a stately procession of professors clothed in their paraphernalia of office—a vision which had charmed my childish fancy, and which I had never forgot-
