Most impressive was the accuracy and fulness of the information he even then possessed regarding a variety of subjects, and his linguistic proficiency. His study of foreign languages began with French, while he still was very young, and was conducted in a novel way, his father giving him French translations of books with which he was already familiar in German, and telling him to read them for a certain time each day. No attempt was made to teach him the grammar of the language as it is commonly taught in the schools, his father’s belief being that the boy could best pick up the grammar for himself in the course of his reading, and that he would be able to master the French translations with comparatively little trouble by reason of his previous training in the art of observation, analysis, and synthesis. This expectation was realised so fully that, according to his father’s statement, Karl within a year was reading French with ease. Meantime he had begun the study of Italian, and from Italian passed to Latin. Chance played some part in introducing him to this language. His father had taken him to a concert in Leipzig, and during an intermission handed him the libretto. He looked at it casually, then with some intentness, and exclaimed: “Why, father, this is not French, nor is it Italian. It must be Latin!” “Let it be what it may,” said Witte, “if only you can make out what it means. Try at least.” The boy, already grounded in two languages derived from Latin, puzzled out the meaning with considerable success, and declared enthusiastically: “Father, if Latin is such an easy language as this, I should like to learn it.” English came next, and then the study of Greek, a language regarding which the boy’s curiosity was whetted by tales from Homer and Xenophon told to him by his father. Again the process was chiefly one of self-education, the father answering—when he could—the questions put to him by Karl, but always insisting to the latter that the proper way to learn anything is to overcome its difficulties for oneself. He was now studying and reading French, Italian, Latin, English, and Greek, in all of which he made such progress that, we are told, by the time he was nine he had read Homer, Plutarch, Virgil, Cicero, Fénelon, Florian, and Metastasio in the original, besides Schiller and other classical German writers.