Of Neander's outward history there is but little to be reported; his life was the retired and uneventful one of a peculiarly intense and abstracted student. It is hardly a figure of speech, but almost exactly the literal truth to say that he was born, and lived, and died, beneath the shadow of the Universities. He was not, indeed, quite so much of a recluse as his fellow-countryman Kant, the renowned Koenigsberg philosopher, who, though he reached the age of eighty, and had a reputation which filled all Europe, was never more than thirty-two miles away from the spot where his mother rocked him in his cradle. But considering the ampler means at his command, and the greatly increased facilities for travelling, Neander's neglect of locomotion is nearly as much to be wondered at as Kant's; I doubt if he was ever beyond the boundaries of Germany. He was born January 16th, 1789, in Goettingen, a city of some eleven thousand inhabitants in the kingdom of Hanover, the seat of a famous University, which, though now less prominent than formerly, has numbered amongst its professors such men as Blumenbach, Eichhorn, and Michaelis. His parents were of Jewish blood and the Jewish religion, and he inherited from them, in a strong degree, both the peculiar physiognomy and the distinguishing faith of that despised but most remarkable race. Nor was he a Jew only outwardly; from the beginning he was marked as an Israelite indeed, a true Nathanael soul. At an early period in his life, his father having suffered reverses and been reduced to poverty, he removed with his parents to Hamburg, a commercial city on the Elbe, and one of the four free municipalities of Germany. In the Hamburg gymnasium, corresponding in rank with our American academies, though prescribing a wider range of studies, he received his first public instruction. It is related of him, that he used frequently to steal into one of the book-stores, and for hours together sit buried in some rare and erudite volume. And here the original bent of his genius was early developed; subtlety, profoundness, and intense subjectivity of thought were noticed as the distinguishing characteristics of his mind. In a letter from Neumann to Chamisso, bearing date February 11th, 1806, when, of course, he was only seventeen years old, it is said of him: "Plato is his idol, and his perpetual watchword. He pores over that author night and day; and there are probably few who receive him so completely into the sanctuary of the soul. It is surprising to see how all this has been accomplished without any influence from abroad. It proceeds simply from his own reflection and his innate love of study. He has learned to look with indifference upon the outward world." Such was the beginning of his illustrious career. He was thoroughly a Platonist. And it happened to him, as to so many of the early fathers of the church before him; he was led from Plato to Christ. The honored walks of the Academy were exchanged for