A more salutary moral effect than that of these rude and hazardous antiquities was produced by Fenelon’s “Telemachus,” with which I first became acquainted in Neukirch’s translation, and which, imperfectly as it was executed, had a sweet and beneficent influence on my mind.  That “Robinson Crusoe” was added in due time, follows in the nature of things; and it may be imagined that the “Island of Falsenberg” was not wanting.  Lord Anson’s “Voyage round the Globe” combined the dignity of truth with the rich fancies of fable; and, while our thoughts accompanied this excellent seaman, we were conducted over all the world, and endeavored to follow him with our fingers on the globe.  But a still richer harvest was to spring up before me, when I lighted on a mass of writings, which, in their present state, it is true, cannot be called excellent, but the contents of which, in a harmless way, bring near to us many a meritorious action of former times.

The publication, or rather the manufacture, of those books, which have at a later day become so well known and celebrated under the name Volkschriften, Volksbucher (popular works or books), was carried on in Frankfort.  The enormous sales they met with led to their being almost illegibly printed from stereotypes on horrible blotting-paper.  We children were so fortunate as to find these precious remains of the Middle Ages every day on a little table at the door of a dealer in cheap books, and to obtain them at the cost of a couple of Kreutzer.  “The Eulenspiegel,” “The Four Sons of Haimon,” “The Emperor Octavian,” “The Fair Melusina,” “The Beautiful Magelone,” “Fortunatus,” with the whole race down to “The Wandering Jew,” were all at our service, as often as we preferred the relish of these works to the taste of sweet things.  The greatest benefit of this was, that, when we had read through or damaged such a sheet, it could soon be reprocured, and swallowed a second time.

As a family picnic in summer is vexatiously disturbed by a sudden storm, which transforms a pleasant state of things into the very reverse:  so the diseases of childhood fall unexpectedly on the most beautiful season of early life.  And thus it happened with me.  I had just purchased “Fortunatus with his Purse and Wishing-hat,” when I was attacked by a restlessness and fever which announced the small-pox.  Inoculation was still with us considered very problematical; and, although it had already been intelligibly and urgently recommended by popular writers, the German physicians hesitated to perform an operation that seemed to forestall Nature.  Speculative Englishmen, therefore, had come to the Continent, and inoculated, for a considerable fee, the children of such persons as were opulent, and free from prejudices.  Still, the majority were exposed to the old disease:  the infection raged through families, killed and disfigured many children; and few parents dared to avail themselves of a method, the probable efficacy of which had been