of clear springs shaded by dense thickets.  They now gazed kindly at us, but later we were to learn their irresistible power.  I have said, and I still think, that the eyes of the artist, Peter Cornelius, are the most forceful I have ever seen, for the very genius of art gazed from them.  Those of our Barop produced no weaker influence in their way, for they revealed scarcely less impressively the character of a man.  To them, especially, was clue the implicit obedience that every one rendered him.  When they flashed with indignation the defiance of the boldest and most refractory quailed.  But they could sparkle cheerily, too, and whoever met his frank, kindly gaze felt honoured and uplifted.

Earnest, thoroughly natural, able, strong, reliable, rigidly just, free from any touch of caprice, he lacked no quality demanded by his arduous profession, and hence he whom even the youngest addressed as “Barop” never failed for an instant to receive the respect which was his due, and, moreover, had from us all the voluntary gift of affection, nay, of love.  He was, I repeat, every inch a man.

When very young, the conviction that the education of German boys was his real calling obtained so firm a hold upon his mind that he could not be dissuaded from giving up the study of the law, in which he had made considerable progress at Halle, and devoting himself to pedagogy.

His father, a busy lawyer, had threatened him with disinheritance if he did not relinquish his intention of accepting the by no means brilliant position of a teacher at Keilhau; but he remained loyal to his choice, though his father executed his threat and cast him off.  After the old gentleman’s death his brothers and sisters voluntarily restored his portion of the property, but, as he himself told me long after, the quarrel with one so dear to him saddened his life for years.  For the sake of the “fidelity to one’s self” which he required from others he had lost his father’s love, but he had obeyed a resistless inner voice, and the genuineness of his vocation was to be brilliantly proved.

Success followed his efforts, though he assumed the management of the Keilhau Institute under the most difficult circumstances.

Beneath its roof he had found in the niece of Friedrich Froebel a beloved wife, peculiarly suited both to him and to her future position.  She was as little as he was big, but what energy, what tireless activity this dainty, delicate woman possessed!  To each one of us she showed a mother’s sympathy, managed the whole great household down to the smallest details, and certainly neglected nothing in the care of her own sons and daughters.

A third master, the archdeacon Langethal, was one of the founders of the institution, but had left it several years before.

As I mention him with the same warmth that I speak of Middendorf and Barop, many readers will suspect that this portion of my reminiscences contains a receipt for favours, and that reverence and gratitude, nay, perhaps the fear of injuring an institution still existing, induces me to show only the lights and cover the shadows with the mantle of love.