therefore received counter-orders commanding us to stay at home.  Middendorff, who felt sure of his speedy departure for the army, preferred not to take lodgings for the short time of his stay in Berlin, and as there was room enough in mine for us both, he came and stayed with me.  Yet we still seemed to draw very little closer together at first, because of the diversity of our pursuits; but soon a bond of union wove itself again, which was all the stronger on that very account.  Langethal and Middendorff had endeavoured to secure a sufficiency for their support at the university by taking private tutorships in families, making such arrangements as that their university studies should not be interfered with.  In the beginning of their work all seemed simple and easy, but they soon came upon difficulties both as regards the teaching and the training of the children entrusted to them.  As our former conversations had so often turned upon these very subjects they now came to me to consult me, especially about mathematical teaching and arithmetic, and we set apart two hours a week, in which I gave them instruction on these matters.  From this moment our mutual interchange of thought again became animated and continuous.

* * * * *

Here the autobiography breaks off abruptly.  Herr Wichard Lange had some trouble in deciphering it from Froebel’s almost unreadable rough draft, and here and there he had even to guess at a word or so.  Froebel had intended to present this letter to the Duke of Meiningen at the close of 1827, when the negotiations began to be held about a proposed National Educational Institution at Helba, to be maintained by the duke, after the similar proposal made to the Prince of Rudolstadt for Quittelsdorf earlier in the year had broken down.  It is not known whether the present draft was ever finished, properly corrected, and polished into permanent form, nor whether it was ever delivered to the duke.  It is highly probable that we have here all that Froebel accomplished towards it.  It may be added that soon after Froebel’s repeated plans and drafts for the Helba Institution had culminated in the final extensive well-known plan of the spring of 1829, the whole scheme fell through, from the jealousy of the prince’s advisers, who feared Froebel’s influence too much to allow him ever to get a footing amongst them.

Another fragment of autobiography, going on to a further period of his life, occurs in a long letter to the philosopher Krause,[85] dated Keilhau, 24th March, 1828, in reply to an article written by Krause five years before (1823) in Oken’s journal, the well-known Isis[86] in which article Krause had found fault with Froebel’s two explanatory essays on Keilhau, written in 1822, separately published, and appearing also in the Isis, because Keilhau was there put forward as “an educational institution for all Germany” (Allgemeine Deutsche Erziehungs-Anstalt),