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curious to know what was going on, I sallied forth alone into the street, where I happened immediately to fall in with Coleridge, who suggested that, as we were neutrals, we had better take the safe side and fall into the rear of the police, who were already mustered, and could be discerned approaching by the tramp of their feet, and the thump, thump, thump of their staves on the pavement. These gentlemen, not very unlike a file of old London watchmen, but rather more en militaire, we allowed to pass us, and then, following close at their heels, proceeded to the principal square, in which the rioters were by this time assembled, and raising their courage by singing the celebrated "Ein frcues leben," from "Schiller's Robbers," preparatory to their making a rush upon the windows of some unhappy professor who had offended them; or, it might be with no other intention than to honour him with a 66 pereat," indicative of a further rod in pickle, unless he complied with their terms. They were so busy at their work of excitement, that we appeared to come upon them unawares; and the police, evidently knowing what they were about, struck such immediate panic into the multitudinous choir, that their dispersion was instantaneous. In their

confusion several were made prisoners, and forthwith incarcerated in the lock-up house of the University, from whence they were to be taken on the following

morning before the constituted authorities, to be dealt with as the statutes should direct.

Coleridge and myself, the fun being over, returned to our respective lodgings, where we were again at liberty to light our candles and resume our previous occupations, his being probably the Life of Lessing, on which he was understood to be, at that time, engaged; mine, the writing of a letter to some friend in England, to whom I had now the adventure of the evening to communicate.

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After close application to our academic pursuits for about six weeks, it was proposed and agreed that the following party; viz. Coleridge, the two Parrys, Chester, a son of Professor Blumenbach, and myself, should make a pedestrian tour over the Harz Mountains, to the summit of the Brocken. The spring had made such slow progress that the month of May had this year but small pretensions to the glowing praises of the poets. Still, whether lingering in the lap of winter, or unfolding all the charms with which Buchanan has arrayed its calends, May is always, to the young especially, more or less joyous, and to all more or less the

"Flos renascentis juventæ
In senium properantis ævi."

Nevertheless, backward as was the spring of 1799, its beauties were beginning to expand in bud and leaf

and many a modest blossom, when, on Saturday, the 11th of May, we sallied forth from Göttingen.

Frederick Parry led the way on horseback, for, being subject to attacks of asthma, and the youngest, by several years, of the party, this indulgence was allowed him, not without an understanding that the pony on which he rode was, in some measure, common property. Our whole appearance was grotesque enough. Coleridge, whose own costume, as usual, was by no means studied, seemed struck with the great comfort and convenience of a jacket which I had ordered to be made for the occasion, and finding that I perceived on what part of my dress his eyes were fixed, he exclaimed, "Haud equidem invideo, miror magis," and trudged on. -'s boots were tight, and caused him no small pain, and in fact it soon appeared that we were, none of us, exactly equipped as we ought to have been for a pedestrian tour.

The first part of our road lay chiefly through forests of beech, and Coleridge's muse presented us with nothing better for our journals, than the following couplet :

"We went, the younger Parry bore our goods

O'er d- bad roads through d— delightful woods."

But if his muse was dull, the genius of metaphysics was in full activity, and he endeavoured to enlighten the minds of his companions by a long discussion,

among other things, in favour of an opinion which he maintained, in opposition to, that, throughout nature, pleasurable sensations greatly predominate over painful. He said, that it must be so, for as the tendency of pain is to disorganize, the disorganization of the whole living system must ensue if the balance lay on its side. Exquisite pleasure becomes pain; does exquisite pain, he asked, ever become pleasure? There was another point which he could not settle so entirely to his satisfaction, and that was the nature or essential quality of happiness. He seemed to think that it might be defined "a consciousness of an excess of pleasurable sensations, direct or reflex." And when we find Johnson, in his Dictionary, telling us, in a quotation from Hooker, that "Happiness is that estate whereby we attain, so far as possibly may be attained, the full possession of that which, simply for itself, is to be desired, and containeth in it after an eminent sort, the contentation of our desires, the highest degree of all our perfection;" he too may at least be considered as leaving this inestimable treasure open to further analysis, and a more precise definition. It would certainly have been a high treat to have heard Johnson and Coleridge discuss this point together.

Passing from the territory of Hanover into a district appertaining to the Elector of Mentz, we found ourselves, for the first time, among Catholics, not the most bigotted in the world, but sufficiently so, at least as

far as regarded the peasantry, to make them very sensible of the smallest indignity supposed to be offered to the most uncouth statues and images that ever mortals set up as objects or instruments of adoration. An image of our Saviour, as it proved, with a mitre on its head and a crucifix in its arms, happening particularly to attract our notice, Coleridge, with his natural good-humoured effrontery, asked a peasant who was passing by, whether it was not intended for the Elector of Mentz. "The Elector!" exclaimed the indignant peasant. "Nein, mein Herr! Das ist Jesus Christus." No, Sir, that is Jesus Christ. Which was letting us off more easily than happened to be the case upon another short excursion which we afterwards made from Göttingen into the adjoining territory of Hesse-Cassel, of which I hope I may be here excused for saying a word or two, albeit rather out of order.

We arrived (the same party, with the omission of Blumenbach) late on a fine summer's evening at a Hessian village. The inhabitants had, for the most part, already retired to rest, but there remained a group or two of peasants to stare at us, and wonder who we were. They showed no disposition to be courteous; but, trusting to the ordinary springs of hospitality with which, although pedestrians, our pockets were pretty well lined, we entered the large room of the village alehouse, and asked for refresh

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