"I remember an old English comedy," said Flemming laughing, "in which a scholar is described, as a creature, that can strike fire in the morning at his tinder-box,--put on a pair of lined slippers,--sit ruminating till dinner, and then go to his meat when the bell rings;--one that hath a peculiar gift in a cough, and a license to spit;--or, if you will have him defined by negatives, he is one that cannot make a good leg;--one that cannot eat a mess of broth cleanly. What think you of that?" "That it is just as people are always represented in English comedy," said the Baron. "The portrait is over-charged,--caricatured." "And yet," continued Flemming, "no longer ago than yesterday, in the Preface of a work by Dr. Rosenkranz, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Halle, I read this passage." He opened a book and read. "Here in Halle, where we have no public garden and no Tivoli, no London Exchange, no Paris Chamber of Deputies, no Berlin nor Vienna Theatres, no Strassburg Minster, nor Salzburg Alps,--no Grecian ruins nor fantastic Catholicism, in fine, nothing, which after one's daily task is finished, can divert and refresh him, without his knowing or caring how,--I consider the sight of a proof-sheet quite as delightful as a walk in the Prater of Vienna. I fill my pipe very quietly, take out my ink-stand and pens, seat myself in the corner of my sofa, read, correct, and now for the first time really set about thinking what I have written. To see this origin of a book, this metamorphosis of manuscript into print, is a delight to which I give myself up entirely. Look you, this melancholy pleasure, which would have furnished the departed Voss with worthy matter for more than one blessed Idyl--(the more so, as on such occasions, I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit. Since I began my hermit's life here, I have been printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die with a proof-sheet in my hand."