Another glass! And then look on a few years. Do you remember the sad morning when you were taken to see all the mournful solemnities of grandfather's funeral? Ah! what would you not have given to get him back. Peace, 'tis but for awhile that he slumbers. And then the delightful hours in the old library filled with folios that were evidently bound in leather for no other purpose than that of forming huts to protect you and your imaginary sheep and cattle from the imaginary rain. How roughly you treated the Higher Literature of your native land. Why, I remember throwing a quarto Lessing at my brother's head, for which he beat me unmercifully with 'Sophy's Journey from Memel to Saxony.' Rise too, ye walls of the old castle, with your half-ruined passage, your cellar, your gate, your courtyard, all of which served only as a playground for a squad of boys; soldiers and robbers, nomads and caravans we were. I didn't much care whether I represented Platoff or a Cossack trooper, Napoleon or Napoleon's charger. Scattered all over the world, in every rank of life, and the sport of every kind of fortune is now the little knot of boys who were the companions of my childhood; and you and I, my dear soul, being alone too erratic to turn soldier, chamberlain, artisan, or parson, have become that remarkable thing called Doctor of Philosophy, having had just sufficient brains between us to write a dissertation. Brains enough to find our way into the Bremen cellars, however. Another glass! Sure there's an affinity between wine and the tongue. It goes quite straight till it comes to the throat; here, however, is set up a finger-post, directing 'To the Stomach' and 'To the Head.' The latter is the path of the nobler particles of the grape-juice; the pure spirits that inhabit it will ever soar, and sensible, peaceful people they are for the most part, if there are not too many of them there together; but you know the best philosophers will quarrel when half a dozen of them of different intellectual complexions are closely packed in a small room. How fair is that fourth period of life, (which we begin with the fourth glass.) Fourteen years old, my soul; but the boyish games are left behind, and you are steeped to the lips in reading--especially Goethe and Schiller, over whom you pore without understanding much. You think, however, you understand it all, and you have already kissed Elvira behind the cupboard door, and broken Emma's heart. Perjured villain! she may be another Charlotte, and she may possibly even have read some of Clauren, and be deeply in love with thee (and him). Let the scene change. I blow a greeting to that dear Alpine valley [Blaubeuern] where I spent so many years at school; the cloister roof, the walks over the brasses of dead abbots, the church with the wonderful high altar, the images dipped in the bright gold of sunrise. Thanks be to the strong Alpine air that I was ever full fledged and can fly as well as most people.