"If my beloved desires that I should know or look after aught else, may it please him to speak out freely: his orders shall at all times be commands to me. To the most highly-esteemed Frau Mamma and the Frau Schwester I send my dutiful congratulations on this new year, and request of them further their gracious favour. My papa and mamma send equally their compliments, and wish my beloved to enjoy in undisturbed contentment all blessings and prosperity. We expect with great desire a kind answer, and my papa is the more desirous to receive one, as he himself dictated mamma's letter. I am anxious to learn what resolution his honour has come to touching this matter. I beg leave, my heart, to send with this a bad specimen of my workmanship for a waistcoat, humbly requesting his honour not to regard the smallness of its value, but rather the goodwill with which it is given, for I assure him there are not as many stitches in it, as there are good wishes accompanying it. In conclusion, I remain, with constant esteem, "My beloved one's "Most affectionate "C. C. K. "A. Monsieur, Monsieur ... at Coburg." So cautious, formal, and florid were the love-letters of a true-hearted frank maiden, like the dear wife of Professor Semler. But he himself, Johann Salomo Semler,--the father of modern theology, long the highly-honoured head of the University, who, in his scientific views, was a bolder, rasher man than his older contemporaries,--how should we judge him, if measured by the standard of our time? Because he has no money for his journey, and some debts in Coburg, he determines to marry; he informs his love in Saalfeld of his situation, and woos the daughter of his wealthy landlady, to whom hitherto he had appeared indifferent. The like of this in our time, speaking mildly, would be called--pitiful. And yet when the aged Professor gave his narrative to the public, he plainly assumed that his conduct would not appear dishonourable in the eyes of his contemporaries. There is no reason to doubt that the friends of his youth thought exactly the same, perhaps somewhat less conscientiously. When he was young, what rights had the heart of a poor scholar against a cold, tyrrannical world? Little as yet. What was the aim and object of his life? To learn and labour from early mom till dead of night, in order to instil his painfully gained knowledge into other souls, to spread by writings and teaching, all that was important and new that he searched out, descried, or conceived. Therein lay his highest duty and honour, the object and pride of his earthly days; to this must his private life be adapted and accommodated. Thus it was not only the few, that felt a burning ambition, it was a general feeling, as with Semler, in many hundreds who starved, bowed themselves before the powerful and changed