He has been called the Father of Rationalism; in truth he was only an enlightened Pietist, one of those who seem called to prepare, by the union of opposite conceptions, a new life. He was born in Saalfeld, the son of an ecclesiastic, a scholar at Halle of the learned Baumgarten; then for a year the _redacteur_ of the newspaper at Coburg, and for a year professor of history and poetry at the Nuremberg University of Altorf. He was called back by Baumgarten to Halle, where he, for nearly forty years, combated the old Pietists victoriously, and died one of the most worthy heads of the great University. The following is the account which he himself gives of his love and wooing; it cannot be given here without some small alteration in the language, for Semler has--what is characteristic of him--little in his style of the broad, sure method of his philosophical contemporaries, but much of the indistinct mode of speech of the Pietists. He does not use figurative language nor primitive phrases, but he loves, like them, a certain mysterious circumlocution and remote allusions, that sometimes make the meaning almost incomprehensible and require slow reading. Yet it is necessary to remember one thing, that the following narrative may not disappoint expectation: he who here narrates was in fact a man of worth and refined feeling, who rightly enjoyed the full esteem and veneration of those who lived with him. Semler has gone through the separation from the family of Baumgarten, has returned as Master of Arts from Halle to his father's house at Saalfeld, and has there renewed his acquaintance with a young lady friend. He relates thus:--