2 7 o EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. PT. IIL 



off than at home. At last, when he was nineteen, he went 

 to the university at Leipzig, where he had more liberty, but 

 even then his great desire to turn his attention to medicine 

 was checked, and his father insisted on his studying law. 

 This severe discipline seems to have been very unnecessary 

 as Ernst was a quiet, studious lad, and though at one time 

 he tells us he was almost driven to run away from home, 

 the mere . thought of grieving his father was sufficient to 

 detain him. He studied physics and natural history in 

 secret, and being passionately fond of music, he took lessons 

 on the piano while at Leipzig, but for all this he did not 

 neglect his legal studies, and took his degree as Doctor of 

 Law in 1782. 



Just in this year, when his future career seemed fixed 

 without any hope of change, his father died, and the 

 moment he was free he gave up the law for ever and 

 turned to science. As he had no fortune, this resolution 

 cost him a long struggle with poverty, but his stepmother, 

 who loved him as her own son, helped him out of her own 

 income, and at last he earned enough by his writings and 

 his musical instruments to live comfortably. 



Chladni tells us that when his love of music led him to 

 study harmony, he found so much in it that no one could 

 explain, that he thought he might make some discoveries 

 about musical sound. He had noticed that a piece of 

 glass or metal gave out different notes when struck, accord- 

 ing to the place in which he held it, but the reason for 

 this he could not find given in any book. 



About this time a celebrated physician, named Lichten- 

 berg, had devised a way of making electrical figures by 

 means of resinous powders scattered on glass. This sug- 

 gested to Chladni that if musical notes were produced by 

 longer or shorter vibrations with nodes or points of rest, 



