They no longer said that I might relapse into my former attachments and connections:  they left me by degrees perfect liberty.  By accidental inducements and in accidental society I undertook many journeys to the mountain-range, which, from my childhood, had stood so distant and solemn before me.  Thus we visited Homburg, Kroneburg, ascended the Feldberg, from which the prospect invited us still farther and farther into the distance.  Koenigstein, too, was not left unvisited; Wiesbaden, Schwalbach, with its environs, occupied us many days; we reached the Rhine, which, from the heights, we had seen winding along far off.  Mentz astonished us, but could not chain a youthful mind which was running into the open country; we were delighted with the situation of Biberich; and, contented and happy, we resumed our journey home.

This whole tour, from which my father had promised himself many a drawing, might have been almost without fruit; for what taste, what talent, what experience, does it not require to seize an extensive landscape as a picture!  I was again imperceptibly drawn into a narrow compass, from which I derived some profit; for I met no ruined castle, no piece of wall which pointed to antiquity, that I did not think an object worthy of my pencil, and imitate as well as I could.  Even the stone of Drusus, on the ramparts of Mentz, I copied at some risk, and with inconveniences which every one must experience who wishes to carry home with him some pictorial reminiscences of his travels.  Unfortunately I had again brought with me nothing but the most miserable common paper, and had clumsily crowded several objects into one sheet.  But my paternal teacher was not perplexed at this:  he cut the sheets apart; had the parts which belonged to each other put together by the bookbinder; surrounded the single leaves with lines; and thus actually compelled me to draw the outline of different mountains up to the margin, and to fill up the foreground with some weeds and stones.

If his faithful endeavors could not increase my talent, nevertheless this mark of his love of order had upon me a secret influence, which afterwards manifested itself vigorously in more ways than one.

From such rambling excursions, undertaken partly for pleasure, partly for art, and which could be performed in a short time, and often repeated, I was again drawn home, and that by a magnet which always acted upon me strongly:  this was my sister.  She, only a year younger than I, had lived the whole conscious period of my life with me, and was thus bound to me by the closest ties.  To these natural causes was added a forcible motive, which proceeded from our domestic position:  a father certainly affectionate and well-meaning, but grave, who, because he cherished within a very tender heart, externally, with incredible consistency, maintained a brazen sternness, that he might attain the end of giving his children the best education, and of building up, regulating, and preserving