EAELY HOME. 21 



able for private study, yet in the first few years I was fortunate 

 enough not to have to expend my strength on dull and stupid 

 pupils. The instruction of such youths as William and Alex- 

 ander von Humboldt, and Joseph Mendelssohn, cannot be 

 classed among those uninteresting labours to which duty and 

 necessity so often reduce a man of learning. I recall with 

 extreme pleasure the hours passed almost daily for several 

 successive years with the family of Major von Humboldt, 

 engaged in giving instruction in Latin, Greek, - and mathema- 

 tics, and cheered by the bright hopes which enchanted me at 

 that time as much by anticipation as now they do by their 

 happy fulfilment.' It may here be remarked that Alexander 

 could not have been included in these instructions in Greek, 

 since it was not till June 1788, therefore only after his first 

 academical term, that he began, 6 in his nineteenth year, under 

 the tuition of Bartholdi, to decline e^tSi/a.' l 



Loflfler, who became afterwards Professor in the University 

 of Frankfort-on-the-Oder and later Councillor of the Upper 

 Consistory at Gotha, a free-thinker and author of a pamphlet 

 on the Neo-Platonism of the Fathers, gave instruction at one 

 time to the family of Major von Humboldt in Latin and 

 Greek. 



Among the lectures attended by the youths may be men- 

 tioned those of Engel, Professor at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium 

 and ^Esthetic Director on the Board of Management of the 

 Royal Theatres the author of 'Popular Philosophy,' who, 

 with a delivery almost rivalling that of Garve and Mendels- 

 sohn, familiarised the minds of his youthful hearers with that 

 modest, practical philosophy which he so ably advocated as 

 adapted equally to the guidance of the conscience and the 

 control of the reason. In his biography of William von Hum- 

 boldt, Haym remarks : ' The power of communicating know- 

 ledge in an attractive manner existed in Engel in an eminent 

 degree ; a transparent clearness of thought characterised his 

 understanding, a correct and elegant taste regulated his feel- 

 ings, while he gave expression to both thought and feeling in 

 chaste and appropriate language. In his ' Popular Philosophy,' 



1 Letter from Alexander von Hmnboldt to Wegener, his fellow-student at 

 Frankfort, dated Berlin, June 9, 1788. 



