310 
destinios of the world cannot fail to be 
manifest: .a subject so complicated 
and interesting, that it becomes us to 
discuss it methodically. 
—i 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
THE GERMAN STUDENT. 
NO. XXV. 
WIELAND- 
- A T Biberach, in Swabia, Christe- 
pher Martin Wieland was born 
on the 5th of September, 1733, in a 
parsonage-house, called Holzheim, 
which his father inhabited, near the 
little river Riess. Biberach is a free 
municipal city, in which Catholics and 
Lutherans have equal civic rights, and 
use the same church _ alternately. 
Wicland’s father was the Lutheran 
minister, and had studied at Halle. 
He undertook the entire education of 
his son, and, with the usual solicitude 
of parental affection, bestowed too 
much toil on the pupil; began his les- 
sons when the child was hardly three 
years old, and forced, by this hot- 
house confinement,a premature growth 
of knowledge. 
The boy was admired as a prodigy ; 
in his seyenth year he was reading 
Nepos; but had incurred the oppres- 
sed feeling of these who are not allow- 
ed to expand, had contracted a shy 
Jonesomeness of disposition, and ap- 
parently wanted the activity, the rea- 
diness, the emulation, of boys accus- 
tomed to bustle through a crowd. In 
his thirteenth year Virgil and Homer 
were his pocket companions, and he 
was already familiar with Cicero. He 
had not only begun to make German 
verses, especially hymns, but had 
planned an epic poem on the “ De- 
struction of Jerusalem;” the mystically 
pious turn of his father was giving to 
all his ideas a religious direction. 
At the age of fourteen he was first 
exposed to the conflicts of public and 
social education; being then sent to 
the high school at Klosterbergen, near 
Magdeburg, which at that time was 
superintended by the Abbot Stein- 
metz, whose reputation as a teacher 
was great, and whose evangelical tone 
accorded with the sentiments of Wic- 
land’s father. In consequence of the 
popularity. of this institution, the 
school-house had been lately enlarged, 
the discipline had become unremitting, 
and devotional exercises formed a la- 
borious part of the employment of the 
numerous pupils; they were always 
4 
The German Student, No. XXV, 
[Nov. 1, 
praying to be quit of prayers. The 
young Wieland, however, made here 
a rapid pregress in Greek, and grew 
remarkably fond of Xenophon, whose 
Cyropadia was the study of his class ; 
but he took less part than others in the 
sports of his schoolfellows, their play- 
ground being to him rather a show 
than an arena. During his leisure- 
hours he applied to English literature, 
and read attentively Shaftesbury’s 
“‘ Characteristics.” All-curious, he at 
this time peeped also into some liber- 
tine books, but felt compunetion after 
the indulgence ; indecd his conscienti- 
ousness was extremely sensible, what- 
ever were his topics of self-reproach: 
—‘How often (says he,) I almost 
bathed in tears of contrition, and 
wrung my hands sore; I would fain, 
but could not fashion myself into a 
Saint.” 
Adelung, afterwards the celebrated 
glossologist, was one of the scholars 
with whom Wieland formed at Klos- 
terbergen a permanent friendship ; 
they separated at seventeen, but they 
long corresponded. Wieland was next 
removed to the house of a relation at 
Erfurt, named Baumer, who advised 
him, as his lungs were weak, to give 
up the intention of taking orders, and 
to study the law. The year following 
he returned home, and obtained the 
reluctant permission of his father to 
prepare for college on this new plan. 
Sophia von Gutterman, the daughter 
of a physician at Augsburg, a young 
lady of beauty and intellect, was now 
staying at Biberach, and visited at the 
house of Wieland’s father, to whose 
wile she was distantly related. 'Three 
or four years older than her cousin, 
who was still treated as a schoolboy, 
she saw neither danger nor impro- 
priety in walking out frequently with 
a lad, whose talents and accomplish- 
ments she could discern and appre- 
ciate; but Wieland fell enthusiasti- 
cally in love with her. One Sunday, 
when his father had been preaching 
from the text, “God is love,” be ac- 
companied Sophia after seryiée inta 
the fields; said that he thought a 
warmer discourse might have been in- 
spired by the topic; and began to 
declaim in a rhapsodical phraseology, 
recollected or nrodified from Plato’s 
Dialogues: — “You may imagine, 
(says Wieland’s own narrative,) whe- 
ther Espoke coldly when I gazed in 
her eyes, and whether the gentle So- 
' /phia 
