In those days I spoke of my life and my aims in the following words:  “I desire to educate men whose feet shall stand on God’s earth, rooted fast in Nature, while their head towers up to heaven, and reads its secrets with steady gaze, whose heart shall embrace both earth and heaven, shall enjoy the life of earth and nature with all its wealth of forms, and at the same time shall recognise the purity and peace of heaven, that unites in its love God’s earth with God’s heaven.”  In these phrases I now see my former life and aims vividly brought before me as in a picture.

Little by little a desire gained strength within me to free myself from my engagement at the Model School, to which I had bound myself as teacher for at least three years.  The headmaster (Gruner), whom I have already named, was sufficiently a student of men to have perceived that so excitable a man as I could never work harmoniously in such an institution as that which he directed; so I was released from my engagement, under the condition that I should provide a suitable successor.  Fate was propitious to me once more.  I found a young private tutor with whom I had long been in friendly correspondence, and who had all those qualities which were lacking in me.  He was not only thoroughly proficient in the grammar of his mother tongue (German), but also in the grammar of the classical tongues; and, if I am not mistaken, in French also.  He had a knowledge of geography far beyond anything I could boast, was acquainted with history, knew arithmetic, possessed some familiarity with botany,—­much greater, indeed, than I suspected.  And what was worth more than all this, he was full of vigour in mind, heart, and life.  Therefore the school was every way the gainer by my departure, so greatly the gainer indeed, that from that time no further change has been necessary.  That same teacher still lives and works in that same post.[58]

Before I begin a new chapter of my career, there are yet a few things which need mention.

To know French was at that time the order of the day, and not to know it stamped a man at once as of a very low degree of culture.  To acquire a knowledge of French, therefore, became one of my chief aims at the moment.  It was my good fortune to obtain instruction from an unrivalled teacher of French, M. Perrault, a Frenchman by birth, who still, even though an old man, diligently worked at the study of his mother tongue, and who at the same time wrote and spoke German with elegance.  I pursued the study with ardour, taking two lessons a day, because I desired to reach a certain proficiency by a given time.  Slow, however, were my steps, for I was far from having a sufficient knowledge of my own tongue whereon to build a bridge that might carry me into French.  I never could properly acquire what I did not fully understand in such a way that it had a living meaning for me; and so from all the genuine zeal and considerable cost which I spent over this