His disciples, on the other hand, seemed to me to bear a strong resemblance to the apostles, who disagreed immediately after their Master’s death, when each manifestly recognized only a limited view as the right one.  Neither the keenness of Aristotle nor the fulness of Plato produced the least fruit in me.  For the Stoics, on the contrary, I had already conceived some affection, and even procured Epictetus, whom I studied with much interest.  My friend unwillingly let me have my way in this one-sidedness, from which he could not draw me; for, in spite of his varied studies, he did not know how to bring the leading question into a narrow compass.  He need only have said to me that in life action is every thing, and that joy and sorrow come of themselves.  However, youth should be allowed its own course:  it does not stick to false maxims very long; life soon tears or charms it away again.

The season had become fine:  we often went together into the open air, and visited the places of amusement which surrounded the city in great numbers.  But it was precisely here that matters went worse with me; for I still saw the ghosts of the cousins everywhere, and feared, now here, now there, to see one of them step forward.  Even the most indifferent glances of men annoyed me.  I had lost that unconscious happiness of wandering about unknown and unblamed, and of thinking of no observer, even in the greatest crowds.  Now hypochondriacal fancies began to torment me, as if I attracted the attention of the people, as if their eyes were turned on my demeanor, to fix it on their memories, to scan and to find fault.

I therefore drew my friend into the woods; and, while I shunned the monotonous firs, I sought those fine leafy groves, which do not indeed spread far in the district, but are yet of sufficient compass for a poor wounded heart to hide itself.  In the remotest depth of the forest I sought out a solemn spot, where the oldest oaks and beeches formed a large, noble, shaded space.  The ground was somewhat sloping, and made the worth of the old trunks only the more perceptible.  Round this open circle closed the densest thickets, from which the mossy rocks mightily and venerably peered forth, and made a rapid fall for a copious brook.

Scarcely had I dragged hither my friend, who would rather have been in the open country by the stream, among men, when he playfully assured me that I showed myself a true German.  He related to me circumstantially, out of Tacitus, how our ancestors found pleasure in the feelings which Nature so provides for us, in such solitudes, with her inartificial architecture.  He had not been long discoursing of this, when I exclaimed, “Oh! why did not this precious spot lie in a deeper wilderness! why may we not train a hedge around it, to hallow and separate from the world both it and ourselves!  Surely there is no more beautiful adoration of the Deity than that which needs no image, but which springs up in our bosom merely from the