INTRODUCTION. 17 



' The Wealth of Nations.' During the last quarter of the 

 eighteenth century A. G. Werner raised the Mining 

 Academy at Freiberg, which had been founded in 1766, 

 from a mere provincial institution to be one of the great 

 centres of scientific light in Europe, to which students 

 from all parts of the world flocked to listen to his eloquent 

 teaching. Towards the end of the century Wordsworth 

 and Coleridge went on a trip to Germany, whence the 29. 

 latter brought to England the new philosophy of Kant thought 



brought to 



and Schelling. Madame de Stae'l, in an age when tidings England by 



> Coleridge 



of a new literary life in Germany had reached French * v n rt^ ords " 



Society through some of the emigrants of the Eevolution, 



set herself reluctantly to learn German, 1 convinced that a 30. 



i German 



new phase of thought had appeared there ; and then with thought 

 Benjamin Constant visited the country itself at the end into France 



* by Madame 



of 1803, and again in 1807. The result of these journeys deStagl - 

 of exploration was her work 'De L'Allemagne.' Whilst 

 Coleridge and Madame de Stae'l drew inspiration from the 

 new life which centred in the Weimar of Goethe and 

 Schiller, the scientific students of the whole Continent 

 directed their gaze to Paris, where alone for many 

 decades the modern methods could be learnt, where the 

 new scientific ideas were, so to speak, collected in a focus. 31 

 For more than half a century Paris remained the centre J^ s O f 6 

 of scientific thought, 2 and even English philosophers, who idels. 1 ' 



1 See Lady Blennerhasset's in- 

 teresting work on Madame de Stae'l, 

 German ed., vol. ii. p. 461 sqq. ; 

 especially the remarkable passage 

 quoted there, p. 465, in her letter 

 to the Baron de GeYando, October 

 1802: "Ich glaube wie Sie, dass 

 der menschliche Geist, der zu wan- 



dern scheint, jetzt bei Deutschland 

 angelangt ist." 



2 See Bruhns, 'Life of A. v. Hum- 

 boldt,' translated by Lassell, vol. i. 

 p. 232 : " Notwithstanding the 

 sardonic expression of the frantic 

 judge, 'Nous n'avons pas besoin de 

 savans,' Paris was yet at the close 



VOL. I. B 



