The reverence and love with which Gellert was regarded by all young people was extraordinary.  I had already called on him, and had been kindly received by him.  Not of tall stature; elegant without being lean; soft and rather pensive eyes; a very fine forehead; a nose aquiline, but not too much so; a delicate mouth; a face of an agreeable oval,—­all made his presence pleasing and desirable.  It cost some trouble to reach him.  His two Famuli appeared like priests who guard a sanctuary, the access to which is not permitted to everybody, nor at every time:  and such a precaution was very necessary; for he would have sacrificed his whole time, had he been willing to receive and satisfy all those who wished to become intimate with him.

At first I attended my lectures assiduously and faithfully, but the philosophy would not enlighten me at all.  In the logic it seemed strange to me that I had so to tear asunder, isolate, and, as it were, destroy, those operations of the mind which I had performed with the greatest ease from my youth upwards, and this in order to see into the right use of them.  Of the thing itself, of the world, and of God, I thought I knew about as much as the professor himself; and, in more places than one, the affair seemed to me to come into a tremendous strait.  Yet all went on in tolerable order till towards Shrovetide, when, in the neighborhood of Professor Winkler’s house on the Thomas Place, the most delicious fritters came hot out of the pan just at the hour of lecture:  and these delayed us so long, that our note-books became disordered; and the conclusion of them, towards spring, melted away, together with the snow, and was lost.

The law-lectures very soon fared not any better, for I already knew just as much as the professor thought good to communicate to us.  My stubborn industry in writing down the lectures at first, was paralyzed by degrees; for I found it excessively tedious to pen down once more that which, partly by question, partly by answer, I had repeated with my father often enough to retain it forever in my memory.  The harm which is done when young people at school are advanced too far in many things was afterwards manifested still more when time and attention were diverted from exercises in the languages, and a foundation in what are, properly speaking, preparatory studies, in order to be applied to what are called “Realities,” which dissipate more than they cultivate, if they are not methodically and thoroughly taught.

I here mention, by the way, another evil by which students are much embarrassed.  Professors, as well as other men in office, cannot all be of the same age:  but when the younger ones teach, in fact, only that they may learn, and moreover, if they have talent, anticipate their age, they acquire their own cultivation altogether at the cost of their hearers; since these are not instructed in what they really need, but in that which the professor finds it necessary