their functions, so that I experienced great uneasiness on this account, yet without being able to embrace a resolution for a more rational mode of life.  My natural disposition, supported by the sufficient strength of youth, fluctuated between the extremes of unrestrained gayety and melancholy discomfort.  Moreover, the epoch of cold-water bathing, which was unconditionally recommended, had then begun.  One was to sleep on a hard bed, only slightly covered, by which all the usual perspiration was suppressed.  These and other follies, in consequence of some misunderstood suggestions of Rousseau, would, it was promised, bring us nearer to nature, and deliver us from the corruption of morals.  Now, all the above, without discrimination, applied with injudicious alternation, were felt by many most injuriously; and I irritated my happy organization to such a degree, that the particular systems contained within it necessarily broke out at last into a conspiracy and revolution, in order to save the whole.

One night I awoke with a violent hemorrhage, and had just strength and presence of mind enough to waken my next-room neighbor.  Dr. Reichel was called in, who assisted me in the most friendly manner; and thus for many days I wavered betwixt life and death:  and even the joy of a subsequent improvement was embittered by the circumstance that, during that eruption, a tumor had formed on the left side of the neck, which, after the danger was past, they now first found time to notice.  Recovery is, however, always pleasing and delightful, even though it takes place slowly and painfully:  and, since nature had helped herself with me, I appeared now to have become another man; for I had gained a greater cheerfulness of mind than I had known for a long time, and I was rejoiced to feel my inner self at liberty, although externally a wearisome affliction threatened me.

But what particularly set me up at this time was, to see how many eminent men had, undeservedly, given me their affection.  Undeservedly, I say; for there was not one among them to whom I had not been troublesome through contradictory humors, not one whom I had not more than once wounded by morbid absurdity,—­nay, whom I had not stubbornly avoided for a long time, from a feeling of my own injustice.  All this was forgotten:  they treated me in the most affectionate manner, and sought, partly in my chamber, partly as soon as I could leave it, to amuse and divert me.  They drove out with me, entertained me at their country houses, and I seemed soon to recover.

Among these friends I name first of all Docter Hermann, then senator, afterwards burgomaster at Leipzig.  He was among those boarders with whom I had become acquainted through Schlosser, the one with whom an always equable and enduring connection was maintained.  One might well reckon him the most industrious of his academical fellow-citizens.  He attended his lectures with the greatest regularity, and his private