At first I had felt much older than my companions, and I really had seen more of life; but I soon perceived that they were splendid, lovable fellows.  My wounded heart speedily healed, and the better my physical and mental condition became the more my demon stirred within me.  It was no merit of mine if I was not dubbed “the foolhardy Ebers” here also.  The summer in Quedlinburg was a delightful season of mingled work and pleasure.  An Easter journey through the Hartz with some gay companions, which included an ascent of the Brocken—­already once climbed from Keilhau—­is among my most delightful memories.

Like the Thuringian Mountains, the Hartz are also wreathed with a garland of legends and historical memories.  Some of its fairest blossoms are in the immediate vicinity of Quedlinburg.  These and the delight in nature with which I here renewed my old bond tempted more than one of us to write, and very different poems, deeper and with more true feeling, than those produced in Kottbus.  A poetic atmosphere from the Hercynian woods and the monuments of ancient days surrounded our lives.  It was delightful to dream under the rustling beeches of the neighbouring forest; and in the church with its ancient graves and the crypt of St. Wiperti Cloister, the oldest specimen of Christian art in that region, we were filled with reverence for the days of old.

The life of the great Henry, which I had celebrated in verse at Kottbus, became a reality to me here; and what a powerful influence a visit to the ancient cloister exerted on our young souls!  The nearest relatives of mighty sovereigns had dwelt as abbesses within its walls.  But two generations ago Anna Amalie, the hapless sister of Frederick the Great, died while holding this office.

A strange and lasting impression was wrought upon me by a corpse and a picture in this convent.  Both were in a subterranean chamber which possessed the property of preserving animal bodies from corruption.  In this room was the body of Countess Aurora von Konigsmark, famed as the most beautiful woman of her time.  After a youth spent in splendour she had retired to the cloister as superior, and there she now lay unveiled, rigid, and yellow, although every feature had retained the form it had in death.  Beside the body hung her portrait, taken at the time when a smile on her lips, a glance from her eyes, was enough to fire the heart of the coldest man.

A terrible antithesis!

Here the portrait of the blooming, beautiful husk of a soul exulting in haughty arrogance; yonder that husk itself, transformed by the hand of death into a rigid, colourless caricature, a mummy without embalming.

Art, too, had a place in Quedlinburg.  I still remember with pleasure Steuerwald’s beautiful winter landscapes, into which he so cleverly introduced the mediaeval ruins of the Hartz region.

Thus, Quedlinburg was well suited to arouse poetic feelings in young hearts, steep the soul with love for the beautiful, time-honoured region, and yet fill it with the desire to make distant lands its own.  Every one knows that this was Klopstock’s birthplace; but the greatest geographer of all ages, Karl Ritter, whose mighty mind grasped the whole universe as if it were the precincts of his home, also first saw the light of the world here.