The confidence of new friends develops itself by degrees.  The religious sentiments, the affairs of the heart which relate to the imperishable, are the things which both establish the foundation and adorn the summit of friendship.  The Christian religion was wavering between its own historically positive base and a pure deism, which, grounded on morality, was in its turn to lay the foundation of ethics.  Langer was of the class who, though learned, yet give the Bible a peculiar preeminence over other writings.  He belongs to those who cannot conceive an immediate connection with the great God of the universe; a mediation, therefore, was necessary for him, an analogy to which he thought he could find everywhere, in earthly and heavenly things.  Grounded as I was in the Bible, all that I wanted was merely the faith to explain as divine that which I had hitherto esteemed in human fashion.  To a sufferer, delicate and weak, the Gospel was therefore welcome.

I left Leipzig in September, 1768, for my native city and my home, where my delicate appearance elicited loving sympathy.  Again sickness ensued, and my life was once more in peril, chiefly through a disturbed, I might even say, for certain moments, destroyed digestion.  But a skillful physician helped me to convalescence.  In the spring I felt so much stronger that I longed to wander forth again from the chambers and spots where I had suffered so much.  I journeyed to beautiful Alsace and took up lodgings on the summer-side of the fish-market in Strasburg, where I designed to continue my studies in law.  Most of my fellow-boarders were medical students, and at table I heard nothing but medical conversations.

I was thus easily borne along the stream, and at the beginning of the second half-year I attended lectures on chemistry and anatomy.  Yet this dissipation and dismemberment of my studies were not enough, for a remarkable political event secured for us a succession of holidays.  Marie Antoinette was to pass through Strasburg on her way to Paris, and the solemnities were abundantly prepared.  In the grand saloon erected on an island in the Rhine I saw a specimen of the tapestries worked after Raffaele’s cartoons, and this sight was for me a very decided influence, for I became acquainted with the true and the perfect on a large scale.

IV.—­Fascinating Friendship

The most important event at this period, and one that was to have the weightiest consequences for me, was my meeting with Herder.  He accompanied on his travels the Prince of Holstein-Eutin, who was in a melancholy state of mind, and had come with him to Strasburg.  Herder was singular, both in his personal appearance and also in his demeanour.  He had somewhat of softness in his manner, which was very suitable and becoming, without being exactly easy.  I was of a very confiding disposition, and with Herder especially I had no secrets; but from one of his habits—­a spirit of contradiction—­I had much to endure.