CONTENTS
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Richard Lepsius

A BIOGRAPHY

BY
G E O R G   E B E R S

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN

BY
ZOE DANA UNDERHILL

WITH FRONTISPIECE

—AUTHORIZED EDITION—

NEW YORK
WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER
11 MURRAY STREET
1887


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887
by William S. Gottsberger
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington

TO DR. JOHANNES DÜMICHEN,
REGULAR PROFESSOR OF THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE AND
ARCHAEOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF STRASBURG.

My dear Johannes!

To you shall this biography be dedicated. As the eldest pupil of our master you have in a certain sense a right to it. From many conversations with you, and from your letters since his death, I have seen with what cheerful alacrity you were always prepared to recognize the great qualities of our Lepsius; and how often, behind your back, has the departed spoken warmly to me of your enthusiastic and self-sacrificing devotion to our science.

Accept this offering, then, as a slight countervailing gift for the many donations which you have bestowed upon me and every Egyptologist. Imitating the master’s example you have followed him to Egypt, and there, like him, undertaken the task of disclosing to your colleagues at home the wealth of unexplored inscriptions in which the temples and tombs of the Nile valley are still so rich. From hundreds of walls you have copied the pictorial and hieroglyphic decorations, and made them accessible for investigation by collecting them in convenient volumes. A stately row of folios,—yonder they stand and each contains cordial words which assure me of your faithful remembrance,—bears witness to your industry, the acuteness of your eye and intellect, and the precision of your hand. But few know what great sacrifices of comfort, sleep, health, and your own property, lie hidden within these volumes, for without assistance worth mentioning, either from the government or its chiefs, you, relying upon yourself alone, have achieved great results. You were aided by no firmans to afford you protection, no powerful patron to assume the cost of publication, no helpful fellow-traveller, as for years you made your way up the Nile far into the Sudān. Month after month have you been a self-invited guest of the god to whom the sanctuary of your choice was dedicated, you have passed the nights on a hard couch in a chamber of the temple which you desired to examine, and shared their scanty meal with the Arabs. To me it will ever be incomprehensible whence you derived the endurance to copy, through weeks of labor, the inscriptions on the walls of the tomb of Petuamenapt, the so-called bat sepulchre, while those misshapen creatures which dread the day extinguished your lights, flapped about you in swarms, and entangled themselves in that magnificent beard which procured for you among the Arabs the name of Abu Dakn (Father of the Beard).

But your endurance has borne admirable fruits. Through you and your works the inscriptions of the time of Ptolemy, formerly neglected, have for the first time received due honor. The keys to many mysteries lie concealed within them, and with what sagacity have you established the value of the enigmatical signs with which the priests during the Lagid period knew how to withdraw from the understanding of the multitude the mysteries to which they gave freer expression than their predecessors of earlier epochs. Golden Hathor of the beautiful countenance, under whose protection you spent such long months of privation, has endowed you with her dearest sanctuary, that of Dendera, entirely for your own, and Tehuti has aided you to apprehend correctly the fractional reckoning of the Egyptians, to determine many of their measures, and to make clear the division of the Egyptian land in ancient time.

It is a delight to offer a gift to such a giver, and if mine, my dear Johannes, pleases you, I shall be happy.

I have allowed neither diligence nor care to be lacking in its preparation, but nevertheless I should not have attained the goal which from the first I have had in view, if the family of the deceased had not committed to my use, with such great kindness and noble confidence, all the materials at their disposal. Of the greatest service have been the diaries of Mrs. Lepsius, her husband’s letters to her, to his parents, to Bunsen and many others, and the master’s own memoranda in the form of note-books and diaries, or on scraps of paper and in little books of poetry, in which are also included the poems of Abeken, the family friend.

The heads of the school, especially the principal, Professor Volkmann, as well as Professor Buchbinder, willingly furnished me with such information as I desired; memoirs and collections of letters already published helped me to make good many deficiencies, and where I wished to consult the records of public authorities I have everywhere met with a courtesy which merits thanks. I owe special acknowledgment for the many communications, both by letter and word of mouth, which I have received from the eldest son of the deceased, Professor R. Lepsius of Darmstadt.

As is natural, the principle materials have been drawn from the works of the master, and my own vivid memories of his character.

The index to his writings will, I think, be welcome to you and to many colleagues. To bring it to the perfection which he had desired was a task attended with many difficulties.

You must yourself judge whether the old adage “a pupil’s praise is lame,” is applicable to this biography. I am conscious of having handled my brush with love indeed, but also with all fidelity. On account of the great abundance of material there was far less need of original research than of sifting and selecting, and this had to be done with special pains and prudence in regard to the twenty-seven volumes of Mrs. Lepsius’ interesting diary.

I hope that you, the master’s eldest pupil, will miss, in this likeness painted by the hand of friendship, no essential trait of the dead who was dear to us both, and that you will find that the artist has introduced into it no more of his own personality than may be permitted to an historian. He tenders you this book with affection, and knows that you will receive it in the same spirit from

Your very faithful,

Georg Ebers.

Leipsic, Easter, 1885.

CONTENTS.

RICHARD LEPSIUS,

the head master of Egyptology, closed his eyes during the past summer, and his departure has been deeply lamented, not only in our own country, but among scholars of all lands. The task of portraying his life has fallen to me, and this task I have willingly assumed, for I am—with the exception of my dear and excellent friend and colleague, Dümichen of Strasburg—the oldest of his pupils. Till his latter end an intimate untroubled friendship united me to the beloved master, the benevolent promoter of my studies, the colleague, the man who followed with sympathy my poetical as well as my scientific productions. His family have assisted me in the kindest manner by placing at my disposal everything left by the deceased which could possibly aid my purpose. Diaries, memorandum books, letters of great interest, were submitted to my inspection, and these abundant materials confirmed my conviction that the personality of a German scholar has seldom presented so rounded and happily balanced a whole as that of the man whose life it has devolved upon me to describe. In him are united all things which can be required of a scholar in the highest sense of the word, and hence his biographer, while depicting the development, the individuality, and the vast activity of the man, can at the same time present to his nation such a model, such a beautiful type, of the German master of science, as is worthy of imitation.

In that great community which we call “the cultivated world,” and which has its home in every civilized land, the name of Richard Lepsius stands among those which are well known. Everyone within this circle knows, too, that he was a great Egyptologist. As one holds the diamonds in a king’s crown for genuine, even if he sees them only from afar, so one believes in the value and importance of the works of the celebrated scholar, although one may not even so much as know their titles, and although it is scarcely granted to one amongst ten thousand to comprehend them, or even to study them deeply.

The brief obituaries and biographical sketches published in the papers and periodicals shortly after the death of the great master, could give but a general idea of his labors, and yet these extended over many important domains of science, and his strong and firm hand laid the foundations upon which a long and varied series of future researches can and must be based.

It will be ours to show, in a way accessible and intelligible to every educated person, of what nature were the scientific achievements to which Lepsius owed his high and well-deserved honor and renown, and what a man the nation lost in him.

Georg Ebers.

BOYHOOD AND APPRENTICESHIP.

His father, afterwards President of the provincial court of justice and Privy Counsellor, was at that time Saxon Finance Procurator for the whole Thuringian district, and as such one of the leading men of the place and region. Naumburg is rich in fine buildings of the middle ages, and Charles Peter Lepsius, the father of young Richard, applied such leisure as his exacting occupations afforded him to searching out the history of these venerable monuments. It was he who founded the Thuringian-Saxon Archæological Society, the seat of which was subsequently removed to Halle, and the three volumes of his short papers testify to his zeal and ability as an investigator. He is represented as a strict and methodical official, of distinguished bearing, as well as an indefatigable worker; and precisely these qualities fell as a paternal inheritance to his son, and afterwards constituted the conditions of his greatness.

Among those remarkable men who have compassed high aims by means of marked qualities of temperament or of the imaginative faculty, the maternal influence has usually predominated, while in those cases where strength and acuteness of intellect have made a man great, the paternal character has commonly had most weight. A poet like Goethe, a man of faith like Augustine, a Napoleon Bonaparte, whose imagination transgressed all limits, owed what was best in them to their mothers; the mind of a Lepsius, severe, never seeking after uncertainties, but always inclined to profound research, must be an inheritance from the father.

Throughout Thuringia and Saxony all who were interested in antiquities were connected with the archæologists and founders of the society at Naumburg, the air of the house in which the boy grew up was permeated with historical and antiquarian interests, and its master early permitted his son to take part in those occupations which he himself could only pursue as an amateur, and yet to which his tastes so entirely inclined. Thus it is easy to understand how the Minister of Finance, as soon as he recognized the scientific bent of his son, did everything to further it and to make of his child what he himself, under more favorable circumstances, might have become: a great investigator to whom science should be all and everything, the end and aim of existence, in short, the vocation of life.

THE SCHOOL.

Professor Koberstein had come to the school three years before Lepsius, and had introduced new life into the teaching of German. He understood how to interest the pupils in ancient and mediæval high German, and after the fashion of Tieck he read German and Shakespearian dramas at his own house in the evenings to a select circle. How greatly Lepsius was affected by the instruction of this able pedagogue and scholar may be seen from the so-called valedictory theme which he was obliged to compose and hand in before his departure, according to the custom in the school at that time. This painstaking essay, unusually mature for a lad of eighteen, handles the following subject, selected by himself: “On the Influence which must be Exerted on the Tendency of Philology in General, and Especially of Classic Philology, by the Most Recent Methods of Treating German Grammar, and the Universal Comparison of Languages Arising from this and the Wider Knowledge of Sanscrit.” It appears from the little sketch of his life appended to this essay that Koberstein had also given Lepsius special instruction in ancient German and Italian. “The time which I spent with you will ever appear to me the bright spot of my life here,” writes the pupil, on his departure from the excellent institution which he long remembered with affection and gratitude.

And he had reason to be grateful to Koberstein, for in the valedictory theme mentioned above and composed under his auspices we see indicated, as it were, the path which, after much groping and many essays, the studies of Lepsius were finally to follow.

With him, as with so many others, a vigorous individuality had, even in his school-days, exerted a decisive influence upon his subsequent intellectual tendencies. The elder Lepsius, the antiquarian, and Koberstein the accomplished linguist, indicated to their son and pupil from afar the goal for which he afterwards strove, it was reserved for others to be the guides who should determine and direct him thither.

At Easter, 1829, Lepsius, then seventeen years old, passed the final examination with the general certificate I., and left the school with a body invigorated by the merry games of boyhood on the gymnastic-ground and skating-pond and in the swimming-school, with a mind well prepared for every study, and a thorough mastery of the old classical languages.

How dear the school had been to him is shown by the following verses, taken from the farewell poem which he dedicated to it:

His father who, as president of the provincial court and commissioner for the examinations previous to matriculation, was a person of influence with the directors of the school, had desired that in the final scrutiny the performances of his son should be no more indulgently judged than those of every other alumnus. After Richard had been honored with the I., Ilgen wrote to his father in the following reassuring manner, having first announced the results of the examination: “You must on no account imagine that you are under obligations to any one. I assure you for my part that I would have done as I have, even if you were my worst enemy, and that I have only acted according to my conscience, as you may hear from Neue and Jacobi.”

It need not be said that young Lepsius was among the most prominent pupils of the institution. On the king’s birthday, on the third of August, 1826, the task of composing and delivering a poem in honor of the festival was imposed upon him. He chose for his subject “Albert of Babenberge,” and handled it, skilfully enough, in the Nibelungen stanza.

He derived great pleasure, in after days, from poetical composition, and although he ardently devoted himself to science from the very first, yet among the poems lying before us many a gay song bears witness to the vivacity of his youthful spirit.

LEIPSIC.

The elder Lepsius kept most of the letters which his son wrote him from Leipsic, where he began his studies. They show how earnestly he took hold of the matter from the start, and how attentively the president of the court at Naumburg watched not only the practical daily life, but also the scientific activity of his son. The methodical official wished to be informed as to the expenditure of every groschen which he allowed his son, and the accounts accompanying the student’s letters show us how cheaply it was possible to live in Leipsic some fifty years ago. A good dinner, with soup, roast, and salad or compote, cost three groschen, Richard thought the morning coffee too dear at a groschen, the beer at dinner for fourteen days came to seven groschen, a room at the inn for one night was three groschen, a pat (half-pound) of butter was two groschen, three pfennigs. However, the hard-working student seems to have been absolved from this exact rendering of accounts in the third term, but it had been of great advantage to him, for it would have been impossible for him to bring the greatest of his subsequent works to such a successful issue, or indeed to produce them at all, without the strict sense of order which he had acquired both by inheritance and training. For example, after his return from Egypt he was able without the slightest error to join and fit into their proper places the thousands of sheets of paper with which he had taken impressions of the inscriptions. This shows a painstaking exactness in the marking and numbering of each leaf such as had been practised by no previous traveller, not even by Champollion and Rosellini, in whose works errors are by no means rare.

From the first, it was clear to him that he wished to study philology, but he hesitated for some time as to what course he should pursue afterwards. He had presented himself at the proper time, but in those days the professors took things easily. Godfrey Hermann, of whom he had the highest expectations, only began to lecture after Whitsuntide, “most of the others, such as Beck, Rost, Nobbe, Weiske, only at the beginning of June.” The first course of lectures which he attended was Wachsmuth’s “Universal History.” “I was much pleased,” he writes to his father, “with his introduction, in which he expressed his views on the exposition of the general conception, on the division and proper treatment of history. He has besides an agreeable fluent delivery, and a very pleasant voice. Yet his public lectures on Roman History, which followed immediately, were almost more interesting to me. Here his discourse is perfectly unfettered, because he has already laid his foundations in the preceding lectures on Universal History. Roman History is a department to which he has given special attention, and in the treatment of which he repeatedly differs from those views of Niebuhr’s which have introduced a new epoch. On this account it is very interesting to hear him criticise Niebuhr, of whom, however, he speaks with the greatest respect.”

The philosopher Krug he had imagined as quite a different person and much younger. He writes to his father of him: “He has the face of an old philosopher, and it is so beset with solemn wrinkles that at first I could not reconcile it with the biting satirical wit which one finds in his writings. His eyes, however, are very brilliant, and they wander perpetually over the ceiling as if he were unaware of the presence of auditors, during the quiet almost monotonous, but pointed discourse, in which he never blunders or hesitates for a syllable.”

From what might be called the more fortuitous selection of the other courses of lectures which he attended, it is apparent with how little consciousness of his ultimate goal he began his studies, and he makes his father the confidant of his indecision. The interesting letter of the seventh of August, 1829, which we give herewith, shows the young aspirant for the right path in the best light, and proves that he had just discerned in the great philologist, Godfrey Hermann, the man in Leipsic from whom he had most to gain.

Before the end of his first term he writes to his father in this letter:

This letter, certainly unusually mature and thoughtful for a lad of eighteen, is followed by many others, from which we may see how judiciously Lepsius knew how to divide his time, with what diligence he not only attended lectures, but also twice a day read Greek and Roman classics with his friend Schweckendieck for hours, and still found time to practise music, play chess and visit socially, a welcome guest, among families of good standing in Leipsic. Shortly before the outbreak of the revolution of July, there was a significant fermentation among the German students. After the momentous Carlsbad Decrees, and in consequence of the “Executive Order” carried through by Metternich, the University was placed under political supervision “for the security of public order.” Thus it became not only dangerous to take an active share in the movement for liberty, but even to have any close intercourse with a fellow-student who was suspected of having taken part in “seditious intrigues,” and what were not so styled by the wretched oppressors of political liberty during the supremacy of Metternich’s influence?

How anxious must the Naumburg Landrath have felt when he learned that an older fellow-student of his son’s, of whom the latter wrote to him with great warmth, was involved in demagogic alliances in his native city of Brunswick, at that time a centre of the political dissatisfaction which was soon to lead to the expulsion of Duke Charles. This singularly talented man, named Silberschmidt, was ten years older than young Richard, and had interested him greatly. He had an eventful life behind him, and was so thoroughly at home in the most diverse departments of science, that Lepsius described him to his father as a “universal genius.” In his nine-and-twentieth year he began to study law, had essayed all possible branches of literature, had been page to the King of Westphalia in Cassel, huntsman and fencing-master, said he had studied in Giessen, written a dissertation “On the Immortality of the Soul,” a book on the art of fencing, many dramas, reviews, etc., and called himself also the author of a work on chess. Lepsius who, even as a student, was already an able chess-player, recognized in his fellow-lodger one of the greatest masters of this noble game, and when he visited Silberschmidt in his apartment the latter showed him a very remarkable testimonial. It contained a certificate from the parish of Ströbeck, in Halberstadt, that it had been beaten at chess by Silberschmidt. This was subscribed by the local town magistrate, and stamped with the seal of the parish. The parish in question enjoyed a wide celebrity on account of its chess playing, in which every peasant was a master, and in which even the boys had to pass an examination. Old electoral foundations had endowed the people of Ströbeck with great privileges and possessions on account of their skill in this game. They had never been beaten until Silberschmidt had appeared to conquer them. A Jew from Brunswick had also told Richard’s landlord that his remarkable new friend was the most famous of all living chess-players. As he also proved to be “pleasant, and anything but conceited,” and showed himself “an industrious man of excellent moral principles, and at the same time always cheerful and interesting in his conversation,” Richard supposed he could derive nothing but benefit from intercourse with him. All that he writes to his father of the Brunswicker proves the brilliant talents of the latter, but also shows that he tried to win his younger fellow-student by boasting. Silberschmidt had spoken to Lepsius about his demagogic associations, and as soon as the father had warned his son against this dangerous man, Richard knew how to withdraw from the connection with tact and address. Here, as in every similar case, the youth, scarcely past his boyhood, shows himself entirely submissive to the superior wisdom of his father, and at the same time he already evinces the discretion which he afterwards exhibited in every position in which he was placed during a long life in the midst of the world, where there could not fail to be conflicts and collisions of every kind.

At the end of the second term at Leipsic he debated with his father whether he should not exchange the Leipsic University for another, and in this consultation also we see him weigh the pros and cons with a clear head and great circumspection. To Leipsic he was attached by many a good comrade and many a pleasant family, from whom he had received kindness, and beneath whose roof he had sung and danced and been treated like a son of the house. Of the academic instructors, Hermann alone detained him on the Pleisse, and as the latter intended to travel during the coming summer term, he decided on a change of University. At first his father had some objection, we can no longer fathom what, to Göttingen, whither Richard most desired to go. He therefore weighed Berlin, to which he was particularly attracted by Böeckh, Lachmann, C. Ritter and Bopp, against Bonn, where he had the highest expectations of Welcker and Niebuhr. In his last letter from Leipsic the son decides for the Rhenish University, but during the vacation, which brought him and his father once more together, he seems to have succeeded in inducing the latter to accede to his desire to enter the Georgia Augusta, and so we see him, in the spring of 1830, proceed to Göttingen by way of Eisenach and Cassel, where he saw Spohr conduct a performance of “The White Lady.”

GÖTTINGEN.

On the eight of May Lepsius arrived in Göttingen, and found good lodgings with the tailor, Volkmann, 129 Kurze Street. For fellow-lodger he had again his friend Schweckendieck of Leipsic, with whom he continued to work and to read Greek and Latin classics. He took with him excellent letters of introduction to those professors of whom he expected most, Otfried Müller, Dissen, and the Grimms, and was thus received by them in the kindest manner. During the first term he attended the lectures of Dissen, on Universal Science; of Müller, on Archaeology and Thucydides; of J. Grimm, on Ancient Law, and of Beneke, on the Poems of Walter von der Vogelweide.

All that he writes to his father concerning the more illustrious of his teachers, is interesting enough. It shows us how here in Göttingen, and especially through listening to and associating with Otfried Müller, Dissen, and the Grimms, science was revealed to him in a new and clearer light. We observe, too, how his mind became accustomed to take cognizance of a subject as a whole, and to its fullest extent, and yet preserve due regard to details; how he acquired his esthetic ideals, and how he laid the foundation for those works which were afterwards to make him famous, not only in philology, but also in history, the history of art, and mythology.

His first visit was paid to the excellent scholar and sufferer, G. L. Dissen, the illustrious editor of Pindar, Tibullus and Demosthenes.

“I can give you briefly,” he tells his father, “what I noted down of Dissen’s views on my return from him. ‘Above all else,’ he said, ‘the time has come to elevate hermenentics, the advanced science of exegesis, for the old poets as well as prose writers, to a higher standard. Up to this time scholars have usually been content to expound the words in their grammatical connection, and according to their significance in the dictionary or by the rules of syntax. They have sought to discover the meaning of detached passages, or perhaps the nexus sententiarum. But they have neither recognized nor expressed in a sufficient manner the inestimable superiority of the Greek language especially, in the perfect correspondence between thought and form,—in the possibility of easily reproducing the least modulation of thought by an appropriate adaptation of the expression. Nor have they known how to detect the deep technical design, the economy of words, of poems, of choral songs, which can be shown everywhere, and which is executed with admirable poetical perfection, as well as with severe logical art. Yet the superiority of the ancients consists precisely in this, that in their works they develop in admirable harmony these two powers, lofty poetic inspiration in the conception, and clear, penetrating judgment in the execution. It is just this that separates them from the poesy of to-day, in which one side is almost always cultivated at the expense of the other. Classic poetry and the whole of classic literature is not yet, by any means, valued as it should be, and it is now incumbent upon hermenentics to instruct us therein, and to exhibit in detail all the treasures of classical literature to their profoundest depths. Such commentaries as are at present written upon the ancients usually contain explanations of isolated words, and matters which often have but a very slight connection with the text. They consist for the most part of general remarks on grammar, and are compiled from collectanea. Such dull and lifeless handiwork should at least be abandoned to those who can attain no higher standpoint of science; but the higher hermenentics must proceed from the basis of grammatical knowledge, which is requisite in every case, to point out in their works the genius and art of the ancients. A correct understanding of the separate parts can only be attained by steadily keeping in view the essential order, the fundamental idea, and it can be proved repeatedly with regard to Hermann that he has neglected this in his writings and commentaries, or he would have perceived that often, in a chorus, the notes to strophe and anti-strophe contradict each other. Pindar especially must be treated in this way.” Lepsius then describes the law which Dissen thinks he has found to be observed, in an analogous manner, through all the poems of Pindar.

“I was also received very cordially,” writes Richard to his father, “by O. Müller. He is just such a man as I had expected, and that is saying a great deal; his whole external appearance, even, corresponded amazingly to the idea which I had formed of him. This morning he depicted himself most aptly in describing the Greek character. He is at the same time earnest and vivacious, enthusiastic and calm, imaginative and lucid. This is, of course, most applicable to the manner in which he expresses himself in his lectures, yet his whole character is so transparently manifested in them, especially in the first lectures on the archaeology of art, that it is safe to draw conclusions thence as to all other relations. He has besides an almost ideally fine figure, an expressive countenance which exhibits real humanity, and a distinct, sonorous voice. His lectures are almost entirely extemporaneous, as far as the subject permits, enthusiastic, yet calm too, clear and convincing.”

Jacob Grimm he calls a “very kind-hearted, unaffected man. This is apparent in everything. He is also prodigiously learned in every possible direction, but yet, it seems, very easily embarrassed in expressing himself, perhaps because he does not yet feel at home among the affectations of Göttingen life.” Later he learned to esteem the brothers Grimm more and more highly, and met with the most cordial reception in their house. “Eight days ago,” he writes to his father, “I dined with the Grimms, and I cannot praise the family enough to you. The whole family are simplicity and affection personified, and it is especially funny to see these two men forget all their immense learning, and play with their little Hermann, until the mother really becomes quite troubled lest he should be spoiled. William, the husband, is still more agreeable and easy in conversation,” (than Jacob).

In Otfried Müller’s Seminary, to which he, as well as his friends Schweckendieck and Gravenhorst, was admitted, he reaped an abundant intellectual harvest, and the Göttingen Philological Society, into which he had been received as a member, was also of great benefit to him. This consisted of seven or eight of the best young philologists, elected by vote, who met once every week (on Tuesdays, at half past seven o’clock). They began by discussing some critical paper presented by a member, often in the presence of O. Müller. This was submitted for inspection to each member, who was free to make remarks upon it, and defend his own views. The business of the society was then transacted, and finally they all sat sociably together, engaged in pleasant and serious conversation, and cosily enjoyed their beer and tobacco, both of which the society was bound to furnish. Lepsius informs his father that he, who always before expected to play the persona muta, to his astonishment here became a homo disputax, which he did not indeed, in its full sense, exactly desire, but which still appeared to him a much more interesting role than that of the persona muta.

Upon the whole, Müller, in Göttingen, exerted the deepest and most lasting influence over him. Thus while, in Leipsic, he had still hesitated whether he should devote himself to the grammatical or the archaeological division of philology, he here decided in favor of the latter, although without entirely losing sight of the former. No other scholar of that time had such a lofty and far-reaching apprehension of archaeology as Otfried Müller, and hence we see Lepsius allow himself to be locked in daily for hours, in order to trace on transparent paper the copper-plates from all the works which had at that time appeared on the architecture and plastic art of the ancients. He wished to make their forms his own, and to retain them in his possession, even if in the unsatisfactory shape of copies. The architectural pictures thus traced he afterwards copied at home.

All that Müller had to offer the students, whether in the lecture-room, in the seminary, or by personal intercourse, was received by Lepsius with enthusiasm, and at the close of the term, he wrote to his father: “To-morrow Müller will finish the historical portion of his archaeology, and thus once more lies fully extended before my vision a new branch of science, which, if any so deserves, should be called the very flower of science. It is fostered, too, with such unusual care as none other receives, and rejoices in such noble foundations as the Institute for Archaeological Correspondence, which, for two years, has been under the patronage of our Crown Prince (afterwards Frederick William IV.). The Central Board of Directors are in Rome, and thence it extends over the whole of northern Europe, with the co-operation of almost all eminent scholars and experts. Its results in the various departments of science are recorded in several languages, and within a few weeks are spread abroad from Syracuse to Belt, from Paris to Petersburg. So that any one should indeed be accounted fortunate who is in a position to obtain even a superficial comprehension of the whole of this immeasurable field, whose boundaries cannot even be discerned, if we have regard only to the material yet to be obtained. For even such comprehension will furnish the means for a more thorough understanding and farther progress.”

To secure these very means, he continued to work hard under O. Müller’s direction. Yet he could not, at that time, foresee that he himself was destined, first to enter into close connection with that Archaeological Institute at Rome of which he writes to his father, and finally to be chosen one of its directors.

In Göttingen also he was a welcome guest in some of the best professors’ families, and his refined and reticent nature led him, as he wrote to his father, to prefer social intercourse in pleasant families, and profitable communion with one or two friends, even to the assemblies of the Philological Society, where he took little pleasure in the rough comradeship and the enforced intimacy with many a young fellow with whom he had really little in common.

Whenever a superior artistic performance was produced, he know how to profit by it here, as he had done before during his stay in Berlin. When Paganini came to Göttingen, he and Schweckendieck took a seat together (it cost a thaler and a half), and he went to the second half of the concert after his friend had enjoyed the first. “It would be useless,” he writes, “to try to describe in any way Paganini’s playing. One can only comprehend the nature and method of such playing while he is actually playing; afterwards one loses sight of nearly every measuring scale that could be applied to it, in order to retain it in the imagination.”

His interest in politics had also been excited by the revolution of July, and in order to follow political events and changes, he subscribed, at that time, to the Hamburg Correspondent. He prudently keeps out of the way of the Brunswicker Silberschmidt, who was involved in “seditious intrigues,” when he meets him again in Göttingen, and mentions that by his fellow-students, who almost universally called themselves “Republicans,” he was accounted a Conservative and aristocrat, on account of his well-known monarchial tendencies.

During a pedestrian tour in the long vacation of 1830, which took him into the Hartz, to Hanover, etc., he was to become witness of an historical incident, and soon afterwards, at Göttingen, to be an onlooker at a revolution.

Unfortunately, the limits of this biography forbid our giving in full the letters addressed to his father by the active young wanderer through the Hartz, so susceptible to all that was beautiful or remarkable. We can only mention here his experiences in and around Brunswick. He had been invited thither by Gravenhorst, his fellow-student at Göttingen, whose parents were to be his hosts. His travelling-companions separated from him at Blankenburg, and he had still nine post-miles to travel alone. “As I walked on the ‘Faust’ which I had brought with me luckily occurred to me, and for the rest of the way I occupied myself with learning some of the scenes by heart, which shortened the road wonderfully. Meanwhile the Brocken was brewing behind me, soon the whole range was enveloped in thick mist, and thick rain clouds gathered, which were driven towards me by a violent wind. It was indeed a splendid sight as the storm came on, but it inspired me with no very pleasant anticipations of the time when it should reach me, and now I regularly began to run a race with the rain, which came more from one side; twice it actually caught me, another time I could only escape it by hard running. So it happened that I got over four post-miles in four hours without once stopping, and I should soon have finished the fifth when a postilion called to me to ask whether I would not like to ride back with him to Brunswick in an hour.” The young traveller accepted the offer, and sat down in the inn to wait for the conveyance. “While I,” he writes, “sat with a glass of beer at the big oaken table, knapsack and stick beside me, reading this poem of all poems (Faust), this poem which unites the heights and depths of human life, conceived and represented by such a genius, one by one there assembled at this and a neighboring table some wagoners, a tipsy shopkeeper, and some mechanics, who entertained themselves after their own fashion, talked politics, railed, and so formed an incomparable foreground to some of the scenes in Faust. The events at Brunswick particularly were represented and criticized in the most glaring and original colors; in short, my Faust played upon a stage such as could scarcely be found again.”

After this prelude, he was himself to take part, at Brunswick, in the conclusion of the tragic-comic revolutionary drama which occurred there. The father of his friend, Gravenhorst, was chief of police, and in the hospitable house of this man, who had been concerned as an active participant in all the phases of the expulsion and reinstatement of the Duke, Lepsius had a good opportunity to obtain an authentic account of all that had happened.

“Naturally,” writes the young traveller, “the conversation fell chiefly on present events, which, however, interested me none the less, because I had long been well acquainted with them, and was now here on the very spot, besides being in the house of the chief of police, where we received each of the fresh reports, which crowded in every hour, at first hand and in the most trustworthy manner. No excess had occurred beyond the burning of the castle (at the expulsion of the Duke Charles in 1830), ... but all the lamps had been smashed and several of the windows. I will copy for you some of the lampoons, of which Gravenhorst has fifty or sixty, as they all have to be handed in here. You may see from them the universal feeling against ‘Charley,’ as he is called, the former Duke. The rage against him was, and still is, indescribable, but it is completely justified against such a scum of all humanity. Fortunately (and a sign, too, that the burning of the castle did not proceed from the mob, which is notorious here), there was rescued from the fire one chest alone, with private papers and books, amongst which the black and the blue book are especially noticeable. In one are recorded all the officials, and beside the names are remarks by the Duke in his own handwriting, such as ‘dog,’ ‘blockhead,’ ‘must be worried to death,’ ‘he shall be invited, allow to stand for three hours in the ante-chamber, and then told it was a mistake,’ ‘he is to be provoked to a duel until he sends a challenge, then dismissed,[2] etc.’ Beside all the police officials stood three crosses, beside Gravenhorst and his brother-in-law, Langerfeldt, four. Gravenhorst’s successor had also already been decided on. In the other book was the record of the secret police, and an autograph essay on the best mode of tyrannizing, in which there are the most abominable things, such as one would not credit if the majority of the maxims had not been already carried out in detail. I could repeat a hundred anecdotes of him which are all notorious here, but are not known abroad; they all show that the Duke, in his miserable, tyrannical life, was not only a man devoid of all heart, but also actually without common-sense. By this you may measure the fury with which all the inhabitants of Brunswick were filled when it came at last to acts of violence, and the rejoicing with which William,[3] the brother of the banished Charles, and the last scion of the house, is received here.”

The reception which was prepared for the new Duke seems indeed to have been especially cordial. While the deputies delivered the address to the new prince, Lepsius saw the populace rejoicing and singing the LaFayette hymn, and Götte,[4] “with all his coarseness, a very droll man,” quietly submit to the honors which were heaped upon him. “They wanted to go back to Richmond in crowds, and Götte gave out songs which were to be sung there. The Duke’s answer to the address was read amid great rejoicings. Every one was carried away by the happiest hopes of the future. Then they flocked to Richmond. The Duke was still at dinner. Permission was requested to sing the song: “Hail to Thee, William.” The Duke came out with General Hertzberg and several others, and remained standing during the whole song, which was sung by the crowd to a musical accompaniment. He then caused several citizens of consideration, who stood near, to be summoned, conversed graciously with them, etc. The rejoicing is indescribable, and the Brunswick ladies especially take the most active part in it all.”

An illumination was announced for the evening, and as Lepsius’ friends, who were members of the city militia, had to patrol, he also, to his delight, took a gun over his shoulder, and as an impromptu soldier, accompanied them through the brightly-lighted streets, unobserved and unmolested. The main guard, where the patrol finally came to anchor, was stationed on the old market-place, just opposite to the very beautifully-illuminated town-hall. Here he first listened to several remarkable narratives, and then heard them sing the so-called “ballad,” a satirical poem on the banished Duke Charles. The author himself, a goldsmith, sang the verses, and the whole chorus joined in the refrain, “Go ahead slowly!” It sounded very well. The first verse of this song, which in every respect was very moderate, ran thus: