It is needless to add that the event proved very much the reverse. As to criticism, it was particularly the "able editor" Harnisch who pulled to pieces the "Menschen Erziehung" so pitilessly on its appearance, and who is probably here referred to. [107] This passage may serve as a sufficient illustration of Froebel's metaphysical way of looking at his subject. It is scarcely our habit at the present day to regard the science of being (ontology) as a science at all, since it is utterly incapable of verification; but it is not difficult to trace the important truth really held by Froebel even through the somewhat perplexing folds of scholastic philosophy in which he has clothed it. [108] See the previous footnote, p. 93. [109] These events and situations are fully set forth in the letter to the Duke of Meiningen, _ante._ [110] As mineralogist. [111] Christian Ludwig Froebel. [112] Christoph. [113] This younger Langethal afterwards became a Professor in the University of Jena. [114] The minister's widow lost her widow's privilege of residence at Griesheim by the death of her father, and bought a farm at Keilhau. [115] Froebel told his sister-in-law that he "desired to be a father to her orphaned children." The widow understood this in quite a special and peculiar sense, whereof Froebel had not the remotest idea. Later on, when she came to know that Froebel was engaged to another lady, she made over to him the Keilhau farm, and herself went to live at Volkstaedt. [116] This young girl, the adopted daughter of the first Madame Froebel, was named Ernestine Chrispine, and afterwards married Langethal. Froebel's first wife, Henrietta Wilhelmine Hoffmeister, was born at Berlin 20th September, 1780, and was therefore thirty-eight at the time of her marriage. She was a remarkable woman, highly cultured, a pupil of Schleiermacher and of Fichte. Before her marriage with Froebel she had been married to an official in the War Office, and had been separated from him on account of his misconduct. Middendorff and Langethal knew the family well, and had frequently spoken with Froebel about this lady, who was admired and respected by both of them. Froebel saw her once in the mineralogical museum at Berlin, and was wonderfully struck by her, especially because of the readiness in which she entered into his educational ideas. When afterwards he desired to marry, he wrote to the lady and invited her to give up her life to the furtherance of those ideas with which she had once shown herself to be so deeply penetrated, and to become his wife. She received his proposal favourably, but her father, an old War Office official, at first made objections. Eventually she left her comfortable home to plunge amidst the privations and hardships of all kinds abundantly connected with educational struggles. She soon rose to great honour with all the little circle, and was deeply loved and most tenderly treated by Froebel himself. In her willingness