and the beautiful soul, the pure will, and the interest of the noble man in our welfare, his exhortations, warnings, and entreaties, uttered in a somewhat hollow and sorrowful tone, made indeed an impression for the moment; but this did not last long, the less so as there were many scoffers, who contrived to make us suspicious of this tender, and, as they thought, enervating, manner.  I remember a Frenchman travelling through the town, who asked what were the maxims and opinions of the man who attracted such an immense concourse.  “When we had given him the necessary information, he shook his head, and said, smiling, “Laissez le faire, il nous forme des dupes.”

And thus also did good society, which cannot easily endure any thing worthy near it, know how to spoil, on occasion, the moral influence which Gellert might have had upon us.  Now it was taken ill of him that he instructed the Danes of distinction and wealth, who were particularly recommended to him, better than the other students, and had a marked solicitude for them; now he was charged with selfishness and nepotism for causing a table d’hote to be established for these young men at his brother’s house.  This brother, a tall, good-looking, blunt, unceremonious, and somewhat coarse, man, had, it was said, been a fencing-master; and, notwithstanding the too great lenity of his brother, the noble boarders were often treated harshly and roughly:  hence the people thought they must again take the part of these young folks, and pulled about the good reputation of the excellent Gellert to such a degree, that, in order not to be mistaken about him, we became indifferent towards him, and visited him no more; yet we always saluted him in our best manner when he came riding along on his tame gray horse.  This horse the elector had sent him, to oblige him to take an exercise so necessary for his health,—­a distinction for which he was not easily to be forgiven.

And thus, by degrees, the epoch approached when all authority was to vanish from before me, and I was to become suspicious—­nay, to despair, even—­of the greatest and best individuals whom I had known or imagined.

Frederick the Second still stood at the head of all the distinguished men of the century in my thoughts; and it must therefore have appeared very surprising to me, that I could praise him as little before the inhabitants of Leipzig as formerly in my grandfather’s house.  They had felt the hand of war heavily, it is true; and therefore they were not to blame for not thinking the best of him who had begun and continued it.  They, therefore, were willing to let him pass as a distinguished, but by no means as a great, man.  “There was no art,” they said, “in performing something with great means; and, if one spares neither lands nor money nor blood, one may well accomplish one’s purpose at last.  Frederick had shown himself great in none of his plans, and in nothing that he had, properly speaking, undertaken.