And if we, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who lived when Goethe and Schiller grew up, smile at the constraint of the feelings which appears in the wooings and betrothals of 1750; at the want of genuine tenderness, in spite of the general yearning for tender and pathetic feelings; and at the incapacity to give full expression in language and demeanour to the most exquisite of passions, we must remember, that just then the nation stood at the portals of a new time which was to change this poverty into wealth. The reign of Pietism had introduced a mild sentimentality into the nation; the philosophy of mathematics had spread over language and life a calm brightness, and the following fifty years of intense political activity and powerful productiveness in every realm of science were to bring the nation a richer development of the mental life. After this took place, the German was so far fortified by the good spirit of his home, that, even after the most horrible devastation and destruction, his soul was strengthened, through the interests of private life, for greater tasks and more manly labours. After Spener, Wolf, and Goethe came the volunteers of 1813. But here we will verify what has been said of the condition, character, and wooing of Germans about the year 1750 by the record of a contemporary. He who speaks has already been mentioned several times in the preceding pages; he is one of whom science will ever preserve a kindly remembrance. Johann Salomo Semler, Professor of Theology at Halle, who lived from 1725 to 1791, was one of the first who broke loose from the orthodox faith of the Protestant Church; and, following their own investigations, ventured, with the help of the scientific culture of the period, to form a judgment on the origin and changes of the church dogmas. His youth was passed in struggle with Pietism, but at the same time, under its dominion, his warm heart clung, as long as it continued to beat, like Luther and the Pietists, to the child-like relation to his God and Father; but, as a scholar, this same man who, in respect to the daily occurrences of life, was so often yielding, uncertain, and dependent on those around him, became bold, decided, and sometimes radical. With him began the criticism of holy traditions; he was the first who ventured to handle systematically the historical development and changes of Christianity, and exhibited theology as an historical process, and as a momentum in the gradual development of the human mind, not logically, and with very deficient understanding of ancient times, but yet according to the laws of science. He veiled from himself the opposition between his faith and his researches in science, by making a rigid distinction, like the Pietists, betwixt religion and theology--betwixt the eternal cravings of human nature, which were satisfied by the old revered forms of revealed faith, and the eternal impulse of the mind to understand every earthly phenomenon.