Lassalle was born in 1825 at Breslau, where his father was a wholesale dealer. He was educated at the Universities of Breslau and Berlin, and at the latter city saw, through the Mendelssohns, a good deal of the best literary society there, and made the acquaintance, among others, of Alexander von Humboldt, who used to call him a _Wunderkind_. On finishing his curriculum, he went for a time to Paris, and formed there a close friendship with H. Heine, who was an old acquaintance of his family. He meant to qualify himself as _privat Docent_ when he returned, but was diverted from his purpose by the task of redressing a woman's wrongs, into which he flew with the romantic enterprise of a knight-errant, and which he carried, through years of patient and zealous labour, to a successful issue. The Countess Hatzfeldt had been married when a girl of sixteen to a cousin of her own, one of the great nobles of Germany; but the marriage turned out most unhappily after a few years, and she was obliged, on account of the maltreatment she suffered, to live apart from her husband. His persecution followed her into her separation. He took child after child from her, and was now seeking to take the last she had left, her youngest son. He allowed her very scanty and irregular support, while he lavished his money on mistresses, and was, at this very moment, settling on one of them an annuity of £1,000. This state of things had continued for twenty years, and the Countess's own relations had, for family reasons, always declined to take up her case. Lassalle, who had made her acquaintance in Berlin, was profoundly touched by her story, and felt that she was suffering an intolerable wrong, which society permitted only because she was a woman, and her husband a lord. Though not a lawyer, he resolved to undertake her case, and after carrying the suit before thirty-six different courts, during a period of eight years, he at length procured for her a divorce in 1851, and a princely fortune in 1854, from which she rewarded him with a considerable annuity for his exertions. Lassalle's connection with this case not unnaturally gave rise to sinister construction. It was supposed he must have been in love with the Countess, and wanted to marry her, but this was disproved by the event. Darker insinuations were made, but had there been truth in them, it could not have escaped the spies the Count sent to watch him, and the servants the Count bribed to inform on him. Chivalry, vanity, and temerity at the season of life when all three qualities are at their height, account sufficiently for his whole conduct, and I see no reason to doubt the explanation he himself gives of it. "Her family," he states, "were silent, but it is said when men keep silence the stones will speak. When every human right is violated, when even the voice of blood is mute, and helpless man is forsaken by his born protectors, there then rises with right man's first and last relation--man. You have