To this study Scheffel now devoted himself, and, in combining his qualities as a poet with that of an historian, created his famous novel Ekkehard. Based chiefly on the Chronicles of the Monastery of St. Gallen, it gives us a faithful picture of the social life in South Western Germany--the most ancient seat and nucleus of German civilization during the tenth century,--in retaining and reproducing all the naïveté, freshness, and simple-minded views which are the charms of these celebrated chronicles, whilst the poet's figures are marked with that distinct individuality which raises the dry chronicle to a skilful and poetical tale of human passions and conflicts. Ekkehard may be compared with the best of Sir Walter Scott's novels. Another fruit of Scheffel's researches in mediæval literature is his charming little volume '_Frau Aventiure_,' and likewise, although published much later, '_Juniperus_,' the history of a German Crusader, and his most recent work, '_Die Bergpsalmen_.' Both these latter works (the last one is written in verse) exhibit the same merits as Ekkehard, but they are laid out on a smaller scale, and are of a more fragmentary character. '_Frau Aventiure_' is a collection of songs, partly jocose, partly inspired by the most tender feelings, in the spirit of the poems of the Minnesinger and wandering scholars of the Middle Ages, and is based on a subtle knowledge of mediæval culture and poetry. But to his second residence in Heidelberg we must trace the origin of his most popular work, the collection of songs known under the title of 'Gaudeamus.' A small circle of friends, who met every Wednesday evening at a supper in the Holländer Hof, near the bridge (and amongst whose most conspicuous members were the celebrated historian Ludwig Haeusser, and the venerable pastor of Ziegelhausen, Fr. Schmezer), kindled those sparks of unequalled humour and merriment--the Rodensteiner, 'Im Schwarzen Wallfisch zu Askalon,' and the geological songs, which delighted readers of every class, and found their way into every student's songbook of Germany. The geological songs owe their origin to a course of lectures on geology which Pastor Schmezer delivered at the time. Scheffel regularly attended these lectures of his friend, and the latter was certain to find as regularly on the following morning of his lecture a poetical resumé of it on his desk, in the form of a humorous poem.