THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
be sure, it did not count among its members scions of noble houses nor men of exceptional wealth. At any rate rank and wealth did not count. But its scientific and literary tone was marked, and many of its members later made a name for themselves in various walks of life. Among these were Johannes Overbeck, the archæologist, of whom it has been said that he wrote the best book that has ever been written on Herculaneum and Pompeii, without ever having seen either spot; Julius Schmidt, an astronomer, who gave to the world various works of great scientific value, and died as director of the astronomical observatory at Athens; Carl Otto Weber, of Bremen, a young man of rare brightness of mind and the most charming sweetness of character, whose distinguished merit gave him a professorship of medicine at Heidelberg, where, like a soldier in battle, he died of diphtheritic poison in an heroic effort to save a human life; Ludwig Meyer, who became an expert in mental diseases and a professor at Göttingen, and director of various institutions for the insane; Adolph Strodtmann, the biographer of Heine, who also excelled as a remarkably able translator of French, English and Danish literature; Friedrich Spielhagen, in whom in spite of his somewhat distant and reserved character we all recognized a man of rare intellectuality and moral elevation, and who later became a star of the first magnitude among the novelists of the century. There were several other young men of uncommon capacity and sound ambition who afterwards rose to honorable if less conspicuous positions in life.
Although in this company there was earnest and hard work done, its members were neither priggish nor did they lack youthful exuberance of spirits. But these spirits only very seldom degenerated into those excesses which usually pass as characteristic of German student-life. There were indeed a
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