By means of a ready apprehension, practice, and a good memory, I very soon outgrew the instructions which my father and the other teachers were able to give, without being thoroughly grounded in any thing.  Grammar displeased me, because I regarded it as a mere arbitrary law:  the rules seemed ridiculous, inasmuch as they were invalidated by so many exceptions, which had all to be learned by themselves.  And if the first Latin work had not been in rhyme, I should have got on but badly in that; but, as it was, I hummed and sang it to myself readily enough.  In the same way we had a geography in memory-verses, in which the most wretched doggerel best served to fix the recollection of that which was to be retained; e.g.,—­

“Upper-Yssel has many a fen, Which makes it hateful to all men.”

The forms and inflections of language I caught with ease; and I also quickly unravelled what lay in the conception of a thing.  In rhetoric, composition, and such matters, no one excelled me; although I was often put back for faults of grammar.  Yet these were the attempts that gave my father particular pleasure, and for which he rewarded me with many presents of money, considerable for such a lad.

My father taught my sister Italian in the same room in which I had to commit Cellarius to memory.  As I was soon ready with my task, and was yet obliged to sit quiet, I listened with my book before me, and very readily caught the Italian, which struck me as an agreeable softening of Latin.

Other precocities, with respect to memory and the power to combine, I possessed in common with those children who thus acquire an early reputation.  For that reason, my father could scarcely wait for me to go to college.  He very soon declared that I must study jurisprudence in Leipzig, for which he retained a strong predilection; and I was afterwards to visit some other university and take my degree.  As for this second one he was indifferent as to which I might choose, except that he had for some reason or other a disinclination to Goettingen, to my disappointment, since it was precisely there that I had placed such confidence and high hopes.

He told me further, that I was to go to Wetzlar and Ratisbon, as well as to Vienna, and thence towards Italy; although he repeatedly mentioned that Paris should first be seen, because after coming out of Italy nothing else could be pleasing.

These tales of my future youthful travels, often as they were repeated, I listened to eagerly, the more so as they always led to accounts of Italy, and at last to a description of Naples.  His otherwise serious and dry manner seemed on these occasions to relax and quicken, and thus a passionate wish awoke in us children to participate in the paradise he described.