As I was now engaged in studying the languages I easily learned to read
Italian, Spanish, and Dutch books.

In view of this experience, which is not wholly personal, I have wondered
whether the instruction of boys might not be shortened to give them more
outdoor exercise. In how brief a time the pupils, as men studying for
their own benefit, not the teacher's, would acquire many things! Besides
the languages, I studied, at first exclusively under Lepsius's thoroughly
admirable instruction, ancient history and archeology.

Later I owed most to Gerhard, Droysen, Friederichs, and August Bockh.

A kind fate afterwards brought me into personal relations with the
latter, whose lectures on the Athenian financial system were the finest
and the most instructive I have ever heard. What clearness, what depth
of learning, what a subtle sense of humour this splendid old man
possessed! I attended his lectures in 1863, and how exquisite were the
allusions to the by no means satisfactory political conditions of the
times with which he spiced them. I also became sincerely attached to
Friederichs, and it made me happy to be able to requite him in some small
degree in Egypt for the kindness and unselfishness he had shown me in
Berlin.

Bopp's lectures, where I tried to increase my meagre knowledge of
Sanscrit, I attended, unfortunately, only a few hours.

The lectures of the African traveller Heinrich Earth supplied rich
sources of material, but whoever expected to hear bewitching narratives
from him would have been disappointed. Even in more intimate intercourse