especially of all philosophers, to note down with accuracy the
characteristic circumstances of their Education, what furthered, what
hindered, what in any way modified it: to which duty, nowadays so pressing
for many a German Autobiographer, I also zealously address myself."--Thou
rogue! Is it by short clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, that
an infant of genius is educated? And yet, as usual, it ever remains
doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical
times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond ineptitude.
For he continues: "If among the ever-streaming currents of Sights,
Hearings, Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young
Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to select and specify,
perhaps these following were also of the number:

"Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, so the young
creature's Imagination was stirred up, and a Historical tendency given him
by the narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his
battle-reminiscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could
not but appear another Ulysses and 'much-enduring Man.' Eagerly I hung
upon his tales, when listening neighbors enlivened the hearth; from these
perils and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades itself, a dim world
of Adventure expanded itself within me. Incalculable also was the
knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden-tree: the
whole of Immensity was yet new to me; and had not these reverend seniors,
talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof for nigh
fourscore years? With amazement I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood
in the middle of a Country, of a World; that there was such a thing as
History, as Biography to which I also, one day, by hand and tongue, might
contribute.

"In a like sense worked the _Postwagen_ (Stage-coach), which, slow-rolling