We see him in those youthful days intensely absorbed in the study of his own Ego. His plans are constantly changing; at one time he determines to be the diligent, ardent student, at another to throw up the pursuit of science and be a soldier. Strange as it may sound, the men whom he at this time regards as his models are those friends of freedom who were at the same time apostles of the gospel of utilitarianism. He writes to his brother: "Buy Franklin's autobiography, and let the genius of this book be your guide." We occasionally hear of a little youthful folly; he is now and again in trouble because of debts he has contracted; but he reasons very sensibly with his father, when the latter is inclined to take his peccadilloes too seriously. Father and uncle naturally regarded the French Revolution with horror and loathing, but Friedrich and his elder brother were its ardent partisans. Things in Saxony being on too small a scale to suit Friedrich's taste, his kinsman, the Prussian Minister (afterwards Chancellor) von Hardenberg, offered him an appointment in Prussia; this, however, he was unable to accept, owing to his father's unwillingness to allow him to become a member of the liberal-minded Berlin cousin's household. He was finally sent to Tennstedt, near Erfurt, to acquire practical experience of the administration of the laws of the Electorate of Saxony under the excellent district magistrate, Just. Novalis's first friend among the Romanticists was Friedrich Schlegel, whose acquaintance he made at Jena. The two had much in common, and Novalis at once fell under Schlegel's influence. At the age of twenty-five he writes to him: "To me you have been the high priest of Eleusis; you have revealed heaven and hell to me; through you I have tasted of the tree of knowledge." Young Hardenberg shows himself to be entirely free from political prejudice; he takes a great fancy to Schlegel's landlord, because of the man's "honest republicanism," and jokes at Schlegel's severity in blaming him and the said landlord for their loyalty to the princely house. He has an extremely high opinion of Friedrich Schlegel as a critic, admires the fineness of the meshes of his critical net, which allows no fish, however small, to escape, and calls him "einen dephlogistisirten Lessing." When, in 1797, Schlegel visited Hardenberg at his home, he found him utterly broken down. A young girl, Sophie von Kühn, to whom he had been passionately and absorbingly devoted, had just died. His despair took the form of longing for death, and he fully believed that his body must succumb to this desire and to his longing for the departed. Though he had no definite plans of suicide, he called the desire for annihilation by which he was possessed, "a firm determination, which would make of his death a free-will offering." It was under the influence of these thoughts that he wrote his _Hymns to Night_.