One of them actually did wish to learn Persian, and became afterwards a very distinguished scholar. He was then called Paul Bötticher, but he is best known by his later name, Paul de Lagarde, a man of extraordinary power of work and an enormous accumulation of knowledge. When Rückert saw there was no escape, he yielded, at first not with a very good grace; but he soon became most delightful. We were really working together, and when he found out that I was the son of his old friend Wilhelm Müller, nothing could exceed his kindness to me. At first he often confessed to his pupils that he had forgotten his Persian, but with every week it seemed to come back to him. Nothing more was said about Neusess, and the fields and meadows and woods that he had to desert for our sakes. Whatever may have been said about Rückert as a professor, he was more useful in his informal teaching than many learned professors who year after year read their lectures to large admiring audiences. “I cannot teach you Persian,” he used to say, “I can only tell you and show you how to learn it. I learnt everything I know by myself, and so can you. We will work together, but that is all I can do.” It was astounding to see how this giant had worked, all by himself. No one at that time thought, for instance, of studying Tamil. He showed me a copy of a complete Tamil, or was it Telugu, dictionary in folio, which he had copied and largely added to. He had studied Chinese too. He was far advanced in Sanskrit and Zend, and in Arabic and Persian he had probably read more, though in his own way, than many a learned professor. Such an honest student as Rückert was could do more good to his pupils in one hour than others by a whole semester of lecturing. And this is the secret of the success of German professors. They take their pupils into their work-shops, they do not keep them standing and gaping at the show-window. Thus the immense advantage which English Universities enjoy in being able to combine professorial with tutorial teaching, is made up for to a certain extent by the devotion of the German professors, who give up their time in their seminaries and so-called societies for the benefit of students who want to learn how to work, and do not wish to be simply crammed for examinations. They make friends of their pupils, their pupils are proud to do much of the drudgery work for them, while they remain for life their grateful pupils and afterwards their loyal colleagues. After term was over, there was, of course, no holding Rückert in Berlin, but he invited me to see him at Neusess, which a few years afterwards I did.