At length Spielhagen decided to go to Leipzig to prepare for a professorship of literature in the university. After a tour in Thuringia, during which he saw in Ilmenau a gipsy troop which furnished him with the character of Cziska in the _Problematic Characters_, he again took up his study of literature and esthetics. His encounter with Kant's philosophy and Schiller's esthetic theories led him back to Goethe and Spinoza. In the midst of these philosophical problems, he received one day a letter from Robert Hall Westley, an English friend in Leipzig, "a gentleman bred and born," telling him of a vacancy in English at the "Modernes Gesamt-Gymnasium" at that place. Spielhagen accepted the position in 1854, and in good American fashion followed the method of _docendo discimus_. Thus he finds himself again a producer. The first fruit of his critical studies during the early Leipzig period was the completed essay _On Humor_, which was now accepted and published by Gutzkow in _Unterhaltungen am häuslichen Herd_. This, his first printed work, gave him new courage. His studies in English led him again to the English and American poets. The offer of a Leipzig firm to publish a collection of translations of American poetry added new zest to his reading in American literature. The chief source of his translations was Griswold's _Poets and Poetry of America_. A specimen from Emerson's _Representative Men_ will illustrate his skill in translating: SPHINX. "O tiefer und tiefer Muss tauchen der Geist; Weisst alles du, weisst du, Dass gar nichts du weisst; Jetzt zieht es dich mächtig Zum Himmel hinan; Bist droben du, steckst du Dir weiter die Bahn." These translations appeared under the title _Amerikanische Gedichte_. In addition to selections from Bryant, Longfellow, Poe, Bayard Taylor, and others, he translated also George William Curtis' _Nile Notes of an Howadji_, which was published with the title _Nil-Skizzen_. His admiration for American literature was very great, as his own words will show: "But upon this wide, entirely original, field of poetry what abundance, what variety of production! Palmettos grow by the side of gnarly oaks, and the most charming and modest flora of the prairie among the garden flowers of magic beauty and intoxicating perfume." The American poems were followed by translations of Michelet's _L'Amour_ and other French and English works.