The back of the house, from the second story particularly, commanded a very pleasant prospect over an almost immeasurable extent of neighboring gardens, stretching to the very walls of the city.  But, alas! in transforming what were once public grounds into private gardens, our house, and some others lying towards the corner of the street, had been much stinted; since the houses towards the horse-market had appropriated spacious out-houses and large gardens to themselves, while a tolerably high wall shut us out from these adjacent paradises.

On the second floor was a room which was called the garden-room, because they had there endeavored to supply the want of a garden by means of a few plants placed before the window.  As I grew older, it was there that I made my favorite, not melancholy, but somewhat sentimental, retreat.  Over these gardens, beyond the city’s walls and ramparts, might be seen a beautiful and fertile plain, the same which stretches towards Hoechst.  In the summer season I commonly learned my lessons there, and watched the thunderstorms, but could never look my fill at the setting sun, which went down directly opposite my windows.  And when, at the same time, I saw the neighbors wandering through their gardens, taking care of their flowers, the children playing, parties of friends enjoying themselves, and could hear the bowls rolling and the ninepins dropping, it early excited within me a feeling of solitude, and a sense of vague longing resulting from it, which, conspiring with the seriousness and awe implanted in me by nature, exerted its influence at an early age, and showed itself more distinctly in after-years.

The old, many-cornered, and gloomy arrangement of the house was, moreover, adapted to awaken dread and terror in childish minds.  Unfortunately, too, the principle of discipline, that young persons should be early deprived of all fear for the awful and invisible, and accustomed to the terrible, still prevailed.  We children, therefore, were compelled to sleep alone; and when we found this impossible, and softly slipped from our beds, to seek the society of the servants and maids, our father, with his dressing-gown turned inside out, which disguised him sufficiently for the purpose, placed himself in the way, and frightened us back to our resting-places.  The evil effect of this any one may imagine.  How is he who is encompassed with a double terror to be emancipated from fear?  My mother, always cheerful and gay, and willing to render others so, discovered a much better pedagogical expedient.  She managed to gain her end by rewards.  It was the season for peaches, the plentiful enjoyment of which she promised us every morning if we overcame our fears during the night.  In this way she succeeded, and both parties were satisfied.