Comparative Grammar by Bopp, a lifeless, dull discourse, in which the arrangement of the material is never clear and workmanlike. In many fundamental views however, on the formation of the main stem, I have always been much more of his than of Grimm’s or Müller’s opinion, and on this account he interests me greatly, although Müller’s lectures on the History of the Greek and Latin languages were infinitely more copious and satisfactory than these can ever be. But in his own house Bopp is an agreeable man, by whose vast and profound learning I hope to benefit farther.” This Lepsius did, and to his great advantage, for at that time Bopp, whose lectures were indeed lifeless and tiresome (we too were among his pupils), was at the acme of his great activity, and had raised comparative philology to the rank of a science. We should rather call him the promoter than, as is commonly done, the father of this branch of study, which had indeed an existence, although an irregular one, before his time. His method, which was determinative for subsequent works in the same field, set aside, as idle pastime, the attractive search for and comparison of accidental resemblances between the sounds in different languages, and taught that the common origin of allied idioms should be sought for in a radical manner by examination of their grammatical construction. When Lepsius came to Berlin, Bopp was working with his whole energy on his imperishable colossal work, the “Comparative Grammar,” and exercised far greater influence over such well-equipped young scholars as sought personal acquaintance with him, than through his stiff academic discourses. Lepsius first learned to thoroughly appreciate him and to benefit by his exuberant learning after he had entered into intimate private relations with the master, to whom, as far as comparative philology is concerned, young Lepsius’ teacher at Göttingen was also greatly indebted. From his letters to his father it appears that it was chiefly the lack of that method of exposition to which he had become accustomed in Göttingen, and which was in every respect consummate, that led Richard more than once to undervalue the Berlin professors, and even the excellent Boeckh. He attended Schleiermacher’s lectures on the “Life of Jesus,” in order to have heard at least one theological course, and to learn to know the man. But these lectures too, although for other reasons, found little favor with him. “Schleiermacher,” he writes, “gives in his Life of Jesus nothing but negative dialectics, and to me he is a living contradiction from beginning to end.”