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 1*766, 

 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 Stael, in an age when tidings coi g eridge by 

 of a new literary life in Germany had reached French ^orto. ^ 3 

 Society through some of the emigrants of the Kevolution, 

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

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



imported 



Benjamin Constant visited the country itself at the end 



of 1 8 3 , and again in 1 8 7. The result of these journeys de staa 

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

 Coleridge and Madame de Stael 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 de- 

 cades the modern methods could be learnt, where the 

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



Paris the 



For more than half a century Paris remained the centre focus f 



scientific 



of scientific thought, 2 and even English philosophers, who ideas - 



1 See Lady Blennerhasset's in- j dern scheint, jetzt bei Deutschland 

 teresting work on Madame de Stael, angelangt ist." 

 German ed., vol. ii. p. 461 sqq. ; \ 2 See Bruhns, 'Life of A. v. Hum- 

 especially the remarkable passage boldt,' translated by Lassell, vol. i. 



quoted there, p. 465, in her letter 

 to the Baron de Gerando, October 



p. 232 : " Notwithstanding the 

 sardonic expression of the frantic 



1802: " Ich glaube wie Sie, dass judge, 'Nous u'avons pas besoin de 

 der menschliche Geist, der zu wan- savans,' Paris was yet at the close 



VOL. I. B 



