among them. It were well to consider that "touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out." On such a topic, therefore, God's fractions are worth more than man's integers.

ARTICLE II.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HEINRICH STEFFENS.

With personal reminSchleiermacher, Fichte, By HEINRICH STEF

The Story of my Career, as Student at Freiburg and Jena, and as Professor at Halle, Breslau and Berlin. iscences of Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, Novalis, Schlegel, Neander, and others. FENS. Translated by WILLIAM LEONHARD GAGE. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1863.

THIS is a tempting title. To redeem its promise the translator renders into fluent English, in this modest volume, the substance of ten volumes of four thousand pages through which the autobiographer "in all the garrulousness of old age," tells the story of his octogenarian life. Steffens was a Norwegian, born in 1773. His present editor, with great good sense, passes the first three volumes of his original with only such notices as serve intelligently to introduce his subject to the reader, and begins the narrative at the point where, at the age of twenty-five, the young philosopher sets forth for Germany to mature his studies and seek his scholarly fortunes, under patronage of the minister of finances at Copenhagen. His specialty was physical science, which he pursued however rather upon speculative than empirical grounds. Starting as a Spinozist, he ripened into a disciple of Schelling. His mind was transcendentally metaphysical, and vaguely enwrapped with religious idealisms, yet playful and active to an unusual degree. "He was known (says his translator) as the genial Steffens,' and always wore an air of benignity, mingled with nobleness." We shall approach him on his common-sense side, accepting at the

outset his own dictum respecting the inability of the AngloSaxon intellect

"to know what German philosophy is, and what it proposes to solve. . . . . It was not comprehensible to them. They, caring for no evidence but that of the senses, and valuing no results but those which are gained by experiment and observation, satisfied with a religion which has a determinate and absolute value, and which lets the seen world and the unseen world touch each other, without being in unity, were not the men to comprehend our philosophy."p. 88.

We receive the verdict rendered on the Englishmen" without criticism. It is near enough trué for present purpose; and letting the "excess of light" remain without an effort to penetrate it, will use this pleasant book merely as a gallery from which to take down and set on our pages a few of the pictures which it contains of men whose names are famous and honored in the republic of letters, whatever strong differences of opinion there may be as to their soundness of judgment or correctness of beliefs.

Steffens was a young aspirant for professional distinction just at the date when Europe was shaken to its centre by the ambition and triumphs of Napoleon. He was occupying a chair in the University of Halle when the French Emperor bombarded and captured that city. He fully shared in the fever and the ferment which agitated all minds amid those stormy days, and as an anti-Gallican of the directest type, was not exempt from serious personal dangers. The taking of Halle suspended the course of University studies, and set the professor with his friends adrift in the most sorry plight. Schleiermacher was one of these. It is curious to read this bit of biography concerning the personal embarrassments of men so noted.

"After adjusting all my accounts I found that I had seven dollars left. Schleiermacher had no more than I. It was impossible to receive any from distant friends. An army was between them and us, and all communication was cut off.

"We resolved to unite the little capital which was at our command, and to keep house in common. Schleiermacher removed into my little tenement. My wife and child and Schleiermacher's sister

occupied one small chamber, he and I another, and we all worked and studied in one room. In a corner of that room Schleiermacher wrote his Commentary on the first Epistle of Paul to Timothy. We lived most sparingly, saw very few visitors, almost never left the house, and when our money was gone I sold my silver.

"Yet, though troubled in these ways, we had some sources of comfort left us. We had great and unshaken faith in the future, and believed that we should live to see the restoration of our land. We used soon to gather in at our tea some friends and the few students who had had the courage to remain in Halle. Fortunately we had laid in a large store of sugar and tea before the enemy came. The evenings we then spent together I shall never forget." pp. 161, 162.

This celebrated German theologian and preacher is made a very attractive figure in these notices of his evidently ardent admirer.

"Schleiermacher, as is well known, was small in stature, and somewhat deformed, yet not so much as to be very apparent. He was quick in all his movements, and his countenance was very expressive. A certain sharpness in his eye might to some be a little repulsive. He seemed to look you through. He was some years older than I. His face was long, his features sharply drawn, the lips firmly pressed together, the chin protruding, the eye keen and fiery, the countenance composed, serious, and thoughtful. I saw him in the most varied circumstances in deep meditation, playful, jocose, mild, and indignant, moved with joy and with pain; but in all there was a constant underlying calmness, greater and more able to control his spirit than the passing gush of feeling. And yet there was nothing impassive in this calmness. A touch of irony played over his features, real sympathy with man never deserted him, and a child's goodness and sweetness were always his. His constant thoughtfulness had wonderfully mastered his natural temper and While he was in the most mirthful conversation, nothing escaped him. He saw everything that transpired around him, he heard everything, even the low talk of others. Art has wonderfully perpetuated his face. Rauch's bust of him is one of the mastertriumphs of skill, and whoever has lived as intimately with him as I, is almost startled when he looks upon it. It often seems to me as if he were there, in my presence, as if he were just on the point of opening those lips and uttering some weighty word." pp. 136, 137.

tone.

His power over men was certainly uncommon.

His genius

brought to him the easy and graceful homage of the public ear and heart, while those who knew him best well-nigh idolized their brilliant favorite. We willingly let his companion and panegyrist tell the following incident of their intimacy, albeit we hardly see our way to interpret, in the circumstances, the highly wrought religious allusions introduced, yet would not hastily question their reality. The reference to his personal and clerical habits is life-like and racy.

"Schleiermacher had not only the post of a professor, but he was preacher to the university also. An old church was fitted up for the use of the students, and when the widowed queen died, it was Schleiermacher's duty to preach the funeral sermon. It was in March. A delightful spring day enticed us both, accompanied by a common friend, to walk out to Petersberg on the evening before the solemn burial service should be held. We spent the night in a hut in the little village of Ostrow. That night will never be forgotten by me. We never drew so near each other as then. Schleiermacher never displayed himself to me more exalted or more pure. That night still comes back to me as one of the marked periods of my life I might almost say it seems hallowed. The day closed glorious and beautiful; the landscape stretched away, made fair by the new activities of spring. The whole scene was like a vast natural temple: the magnificence gave wings to every thought, it penetrated us through and through, and as the spring quickens the earth, so did this prospect quicken our spirits. I have a witness of the deep impression which this night made upon Schleiermacher, in a letter to his friend, Lady Herz. It was the reflection of his own purity, in which I stood, as it were, illumined. His deep spirituality was more apparent to me than ever before. The Saviour was with us then, as he had promised to be when two or three were gathered together in his name. It was plain to me that a positive religious character has been his from his childhood among the Moravians up, and that what he called in a technical way sensibility, was, when lifted up into the Christian consciousness, touched with the eternal love of God: and it grieved me sorely that the faith of so eminent a philosopher was so misunderstood. This sensibility of his was what faith is to love, what thought is to feeling, the second the cherishing guardian of the first.

"It was past midnight, and between nine and ten o'clock the next day Schleiermacher must be in the pulpit. The subject must be treated with a great deal of delicacy. After a few hours' sleep we

6

awoke, and yet some eight miles to walk. During the night it had frozen. The warm days which had gone before had melted the snow, and so the road, when frozen again, was uneven. Schleiermacher, an excellent pedestrian, kept ahead of us, and sped along over the roughness. We could scarcely keep up. We noticed how deeply sunk in thought he was, despite the bad walking, and we did not disturb him. When I came home, I had hardly time to put myself in readiness before the time for church arrived. When I appeared among my brothers there was a general movement. Ah,' said they, now you have come, we may hope at last to see Schleiermacher.' His excursion of the day before had transpired and made the round of the city, and it was even known that we had passed the night in a hut. Early in the morning they had sent to his lodgings, and as he had not returned an hour before the time to commence the funeral service, and the church bells had all begun to ring, they began to think, and some, perhaps, to hope, that he would not come. I kept my peace and let the professors talk.

"Schleiermacher ascended to the pulpit. Every one who has heard him remembers the imposing earnestness of his manner while officiating in the sacred desk. His sermon displayed that careful arrangement which always was a distinguishing mark with him. His very calmness and unimpassioned air made a deep impression, and every one left the church with a new conviction of the nothingness of all earthly relations, even the highest, when brought into conflict with the purposes of God. All my brother professors applauded and wondered at the discourse. The fact that he who had pronounced such an elaborate, clear, finished, and judicious funeral oration, had passed the hours previous in a rustic merry-making, appeared to them unparalleled. I do not think that the rumor of his night in the hut at Ostrow made any abiding impression." pp.

139-141.

Fichte, in those days, was the acknowledged leader in German speculative philosophy, while Schelling was its rising star. The latter, at the age of twenty, had already published his "Possibility of a Form of Philosophy;" and now, not yet turned of thirty, was drawing crowds to his lecture room.

"Professors and students were mingled together in his auditory. Schelling ascended to his chair. He had a youthful countenance ; he was two years younger than I, and now the first of the men of eminence whose acquaintance I was eager to make. He had an air of decision, I might say, a half-defiant look, broad shoulders, the