1823.] 
became acquainted with Dr. Zimmer- 
man, the author of a well-known work 
on Solitude; and he visited there at 
the lodgings of the accomplished ac- 
quaintance of Rousseau, Julia Bon- 
deli, whose declining charms had, 
however, the reputation of inspiring 
Wieland with a more than friendly 
attachment. 
From Bern, Wieland was suddenly 
recalled, in the year 1760, to his na- 
tive city; the town-clerkship having 
become vacant, and the corporation of 
Biberach having nominated him to the 
office without any solicitation on his 
‘part. The confidence of fellow-citizens 
is peculiarly flattering, because it re- 
poses on long familiarity ; and, as the 
situation offered, if not a liberal, yet 
an honourable independance, Wieland 
accepted the place, and undertook its 
laborious duties. His return to Bibe- 
rach was, however, not free from dis- 
appointment: Sophia, to whose hand 
he might now have aspired, having 
become the wife of M. Laroche, a se- 
eretary of Count Stadion. 
A translation of Shakspeare was at 
this time the employment of Wieland’s 
leisure; and, between the years 1762 
and 1766, he published in eight vo- 
lumes the twenty-two principal plays. 
He seems to have used Pope’s edition, 
and often leaves out the feebler pas- 
sages, there placed between commas, 
as supposed interpolations of the 
players. Of the bookseller he re- 
ceived two dollars per sheet for the 
job. 
Wieland was not Jong in discover- 
ing that the necessary duties of his 
office made grievous inroads on his 
leisure ; and the inglorious comforts 
of competency seemed ill exchanged 
for the precarious earnings of literary 
publicity. Ina letter, dated 1763, he 
compares his Biberach with San Ma- 
rino; describes the triviality of those 
legal records which formed his morn- 
ing task, and of those quadrille parties 
which his patrons expected him to join 
in the afternoon. He laments that he 
is as much without society as Milton’s 
Adam among the beasts of Paradise ; 
and adds, that his only tolerable hours 
are those which he can snatch from 
business and from company to devote 
to composition. In one respect, how- 
ever, this situation was of moral use; 
having no one on whom to lean, he 
gradually acquired an upright and 
self-propped character ; hitherto, with 
the suppleness of a cameleon, he had 
The German Student, No. XXVI. 
493 
too much imitated the hues of his ac- 
quaintance, and had _ cultivated the 
arts of ingratiation with some sacri- 
fice of the dignity of independence: 
he now first became himself, and his 
native tinge was slowly perceived to 
be very different from that which he 
reflected or assumed in the circle of 
his Swiss connexions. 
At Warthausen, about three miles 
from Biberach, on an _ eminence, 
which overlooks a valley stretching 
toward the Danube, stands a stately 
mansion belonging to the noble fa- 
mily of Stadion; and hither the old 
Count Frederic, now a widower, who 
had been Austrian ambassador at the 
court of George the Second, came, in 
his seventieth year, at the close of 
1763, to reside. With him dwelt his 
former secretary Laroche, to whom 
the stewardship of the Suabian manors 
was now intrusted; and Laroche was 
of course accompanied by his wife, 
the Sophia of Wieland. Indeed they 
alinost supplied the place of a son 
and daughter to the old Count, and 
were the companions of his table, and 
the helpmates of his infirmity. 
Through the friendship of Sophia, 
Wieland was induced to visit often 
at Warthausen; and, finding her happy 
in the protection of a man of merit, 
and surrounded by amiable children, 
the fruits of a marriage of seven years, 
he soon acquiesced in that brotherly 
feeling, which fate and nature (their 
grandmothers had been sisters,) seem- 
ed to have predestined for the quality 
of their attachment. He was also 
made welcome by the old Count, who 
felt the value, in a rural solitude, of 
so accomplished a guest. An expe- 
rienced courtier, who had long moved 
in the first cireles of Europe, this no- 
bleman was formed, by exquisite 
politeness, by his ready talent and 
fund of anecdote, by his penetrating 
observation, and by those luxurious 
appendages which decorate the exte- 
rior of opulence, to make a strong and 
progressive impression on the young 
poet, to whom his conversation re- 
vealed a new and higher world. Still 
this impression had at first more of 
admiration than complacence. Wie- 
land’s scheming philanthropy was 
often thwarted and chilled by the 
practical mistrust and sarcastic good 
sense of the Count, and of Laroche ; 
his sentimental enthusiasm was made 
to collapse by many mortifying sneers; 
and he incurred something of that 
unwelcome 
