French varnish which, in the days before ever, of which I knew not the exact nature the great war, used to cover the mental - which I dared not talk about to others. barbarism of the Russian man of the world Seldom did I fall asleep without weeping. with a specious outside. He was now on I was like one of those stage-actors who his way back to St. Petersburg, to receive can afford delight to others by their ancredentials from the Empress for the post tics while they shed bitter tears in secret." of ambassador at the Hague, to which she At first, her natural spirits would somehad appointed him; and he naturally times rise to the surface, and at such mofound his place in the society assembled ments her wit and sprightliness would around the Princess Ferdinand of Prussia. gain for her a social popularity to which To Amelia von Schmettau his conversation she was not wholly indifferent; but by dewas attractive. He could talk of the grees even this excitement palled upon great metaphysicians of the Encyclopædist her, and, to fill the void in her heart, she school. His own character for learning, felt there was no real resource for her but amply certified by the flattering letters study. Greek and Latin, metaphysics and which these famed savants wrote to him, moral philosophy - such were the subjects and which he displayed to the Countess on which her ardent curiosity fastened. with much self-satisfaction, did not fail to Now there was at the Hague at this time impress her ardent spirit. He wooed and a philosopher of considerable repute won her. "My heart did not require Francis Hemsterhuys. He was the son of what the world calls love," she said, writ- Tiberius Hemsterhuys, the well-known ing at a later time of this epoch in her philologist, and was himself learned in the life's history; but the desire of Perfec- learning of the Greeks, especially in the tion had planted its Ideal deep within my writings of Plato, which he both studied heart, had become a necessity to me, and and imitated. His principal work was a was independent of concrete form. I felt treatise entitled De l'Homme et ses Rapports, that the Prince might become everything published at Paris in 1773. Some of his to me, if he were capable of participating metaphysical lucubrations had been comin these sentiments." The Prince admired posed before the Princess came to the the pretty and well-born lady who was Hague, and inspired her with great enthuready to incline her ear to his self-lauda-siasm. The philosophy of Hemsterhuys tions, and thought her admirably calcu- was a Deistic rationalism, based, in great lated to grace an ambassador's reception-measure, on the ideal doctrines of Plato, rooms, but certainly did not enter into her and admitting of sentimental and spiritual secretly indulged transcendentalisms of feeling. applications, which made it far more at- In a They were married at Aix-la-Chapelle in August, 1768. After the marriage they went to St. Petersburg, where the Prince received credentials for his mission, and in the course of 1770 they took up their residence at the Hague. The style of representation which was considered as part of a Russian ambassador's duty, and which the tastes of Prince Gallitzin rendered quite congenial to him, was in the highest degree splendid and showy. Everlasting visits and receptions, balls, theatres, and ceremonials, made up the round of occupation. The Prince, puzzled at first by the pensive sentimentality of his bride, thought that her spirits could not fail to rise when once she had become thoroughly More than ever restless to escape the imbued with the excitement of these so- round of social dissipation as the divine cial stimulants. But poor Amelia was suf- charms of philosophy became more intelfering not only from the infliction of habits ligible to her through the eloquence of a which were contrary to her taste, but from living expounder, Princess Galitzin imthe bitterness of her heart's disillusion. plored her spouse to allow of her retire"I brought back," she said afterwards, ment from the great world. At first she every evening from the eeaseless round implored in vain; but it so happened that of dissipation an increased but futile long- Diderot came to pay them a visit. He ing for something better—something, how-saw the fundamental difficulties of the case, 66 ге otima really seems to have been without limits. She carried away with her, moreover, two young children, a boy and a girl Mitri" and Mimi," whom she solved it should be the one main business of her life to educate, enriching her own mind for that purpose with learning of every sort, and exacting from them a degree of application proportionate to her own. and he persuaded his friend the Prince, as the best means of dealing with the increasing misunderstanding between himself and his young wife, to allow of her to retreat to a small farm in the neighbourhood of the town, where she might follow her whim of seclusion and study without hindrance. To this farm, situated a little off the Allée leading from the Hague to Schevening, Amelia now betook herself with her two children. She changed its Her uncongenial but indulgent husname from Hahn to Nithuyss, the Dutch band seems to have allowed her free conrendering for Nicht-zu-Hause, or "Not at trol over her actions; and her first idea Home:" meaning thereby to imply the was to settle at Geneva, in a house belongutter seclusion from all company in which ing to him on the banks of the lake. But it she wished to pass her days. She took so happened that the first stage of her inmore effectual measures still to mark her tended journey thither led her to the capital secession from the world of fashion. She of Westphalia, and she seized the opportunhad her hair shaved off, and donned a ity to make acquaintance with the eminent round perruque, abjured stays, and adopt- statesman and philanthropist who then ed a peasant's garb. The gay world held office as Prime Minister for the laughed at her, but she was quite content Prince-Bishop of Münster and Cologne, to let it laugh; and meanwhile she did not and who had made his administration an exclude from her presence some few envy and a model to neighbouring states, visitors who really admired her renuncia- particularly in the matter of educational tion for the sake of science. Hemsterhuys institutions. Fürstenberg was almost fifty had ready access to her sanctuary. His years of age at this time one of those visits were frequent, but at first they were Roman Catholic reformers of large soul always made in company with her husband, and enlightened tolerance, who figured who appears to have taken the conjugal sep- among the best class of political philosaration with great good humour after the ophers in the quarter of a century precedfirst difficulty. As time went on, however, ing the French Revolution. It was his it happened that Prince Gallitzin was fre- fixed aim to counterwork the influence of quently absent from the Hague. Then the licentious opinions with which French Hemsterhuys came to Nithuyss all the philosophy was then inundating Europe; same, and would remain for days in her but this he did not by a bigoted course company. Her dignity and self-respect of repression, but by encouraging to the were beyond reproach; but it would seem utmost school-teaching under moral and that Hemsterhuys did begin to feel some- religious, but at the same time liberal, thing warmer than studious sympathy conditions. Energetic and ardent, posiwith his adorable Diotima. A few expres- tive and dictatorial, Fürstenberg was the sions in her extant letters seem to hint at prince and leader among a number of able rebuke on her part; and it is probable men assembled at this time at Münster, that a growing sense of the ambiguity of and comprising, more or less within the their relations possibly some conscious- sphere of their influence, neighbouring ness of danger to her own susceptibilities coteries at Düsseldorff and Pempelfort. - decided her to break up her residence To the Princess Gallitzin his character at Nithuyss, after she had continued it for seemed to supply that element of the heupwards of five years. This was in 1779, roic which had been wanting in the philowhen she had attained the age of thirty. sophic phlegm of Hemsterhuys. She She carried away with her, as the net re- threw herself under his influence at once, sult of this epoch of her life, a consider- renounced her notion of settling at Geneable store of philosophical ideas, habits of va, and decided that Münster should be intense application, an ever-increasing her home. Impulsive as she was, howthirst for knowledge, a satisfied accept- ever, she showed what must be called a ance of the Deist's position as against high-minded distrust of herself in one rematerialistic Atheism on the one hand, spect. Jealous lest her warm admiration and as against positive revelation on of the Westphalian statesman should iuthe other, and, in general, no mean es- fluence her to accept his religion on intimate of her own powers and achieve- sufficient grounds, she laid it down as a ments; for Hemsterhuys' praise had been condition of their social intercourse that without stint, as his admiration of his Di- he should not attempt her conversion. "The confidential intercourse I had had which others followed. My sentiments with many minds," she says of herself, for the great man (Fürstenberg) made "wrought in me the conviction that none people call me first a Platonist and then a really and truly believed in Christianity lunatic. In matter of philosophy, I was save the common people; for it seemed a Stoic, an Epicurean, a Leibnitzian, a impossible that men could have faith in its Hemsterhuysian, -ian, -ian, -ián, anythreatenings and promises, and yet live so thing, everything; and as for my way of contrary to its doctrines as I saw to be life, I was almost always set down as ecthe case with almost all." "I could not centric or as mad." endure," so she told Fürstenberg, “that in Her practice was to spend her winters matters concerning God, my mind should in the town of Münster and her summers receive any impressions save what He at the neighbouring village of Anglehimself should operate in me. I prayed modde, where she hired some furnished for light, and would keep my heart open rooms at a farmer's house, and received to welcome it." She was content, mean- the friends who were wont to resort to while, to regard Fürstenberg's faith as a her. Her husband and Hemsterhuys prejudice of education, without allowing visited her for some weeks every year; it, in the slightest degree, to abate her en- and during their absence she kept up a thusiasm for "the great man," as she in- correspondence with both of them. The variably called him. "He is so unaffect-conversations which the Dutch philosopher edly great," she says in one of her letters, held with her as they paced the pathways “and with so much simple geniality, that of Angelmodde, were memorialized by him three-fourths of mankind pass before him on his periodic returns to the Hague, and without perceiving his greatness or stop-sent from thence in manuscript to the ping to admire it. I might compare him to Princess for revision. Such, for instance, the immense dome of St. Peter's at Rome. were the dialogues entitled, Alexis: ou, sur All who have seen that stupendous ob-l' Age d'Or, and Simon: ou, sur les Facultés ject tell me that the first impression is of de l'Ame; both of which were subsequentsurprise at not being more struck by its ly translated into German by Jacobi. immensity — an effect due to the exquis- Prebendary Katercamp of Münster, who ite harmony of its proportions." It is drew up a memoir of the Princess's life, amusing to read after-entries in her diary, deduces from these two dialogues an elabwhen another star had risen on her hori-orate system of her opinions in education zon, and she was capable of seeing Fürst- and in metaphysics. enberg's little defects as well as his eminent virtues. Her letters written during the first three years of her residence at Münster show On settling down at Münster the Prin- her incessant zeal for study. "I have alcess devoted herself eagerly to the work ready learnt to content myself with five of educating her children. She strained hours of sleep," she tells Hemsterhuys, in their intellectual faculties to the utmost, September, 1779; and a month or two keeping them at work many hours of the later she writes, "I read Diodorus Siculus day, urging them continually to more zeal, two or three years ago with pleasure, but scolding them vehemently, by her own con- I was not then sufficiently advanced to fession, when they fell short of her re-read it with all the profit I might have quirements. She subjected them, at the same time, to the hardening practices brought into vogue by Rousseau, and set them a personal example of early rising, small eating, vigorous walking, and bathing and swimming in all weathers. The people of Münster stared at her ways of going on. Writing to Hemsterhuys in 1787, she says, "During the seven years I have been here, my reputation strangely varied. As for my religion, I have passed by turns for a Greek, an Atheist, a Deist, a Christian, a Magician, of the fashionable sect so calling itself. As for my morals. a cynic, for the first and second year, because I swim, and make my children swim a drastic disciplinarian afterwards, when our swimming had set an example done, and if you come to Münster I will go over it again with you most willingly. At present all my spare moments are taken up with mathematics, of which hitherto I have acquired nothing but the merest smattering; and for my children's sake, whose education gives the primary direction to all my studies, it is needful I should make sure my footing in this science, for which the place where I am affords certain advantages. Latin occupies me likewise; and I am beginning to spell out Horace, who enchants me." Again, "I am busy reading Locke, and comparing him with Leibnitz, in order to familiarize myself with the [modern] German philosophy, which is founded in part on those two authors." To Fürstenberg she writes concerning once most delightful to me, set apart for her mathematical studies: "I have been the instruction of my children. Every able to appropriate and enjoy, without any new science, every language, or every indigestion, 17 per cent. of the Spherical book of which I heard, to whatever deTrigonometry. Only just as much again, partment it might belong, awoke in me, and the business is done. It is really a not as formerly, a mere desire or impulse, shame that professors should make so but a real hypochondriacal pain, a gnawmuch fuss about things. I believe they do ing worm of discontent at my physical it, like the Egyptian priests, in order to weakness, which appeared ever in the light keep the public off their subjects and of an obstacle to the satisfaction of my reserve to themselves a special property eager thirst for knowledge. So much did in them." it prey upon me, that on the days when I Such strenuous exertions were not long felt at all better I would study with posiin provoking their Nemesis. The Princess tive fury, but only to become more weak had to endure the miseries of an over- by reaction, till at length I fell into a state wrought brain. This evil is unconsciously of chronic hypochondria, and knew scarcely hinted at in a note to Fürstenberg. "I a day's health up to the epoch of my danam so dull, stupid, and knocked up with gerous illness. .. "Fragment of May, 1789. my exertions of yesterday, which spent That illness was a nervous fever, which in dealing with the shadows of shadows, prostrated her in March, 1783. Her life i. e. logic and metaphysics, that I must oc- was despaired of. Fürstenberg sent his cupy myself to-day in simply doing noth-confessor to her bedside; but, firm to her ing.' Of this period of her life she af- principle, she declined to accept, in a moterwards took an elaborate review. We ment of danger and weakness, the offices extract some passages: of whose validity her unbiassed judgment was not convinced. The whole subject of religion, however, forced itself upon her in "When I made the attempt, at twenty- a manner not to be resisted in her waking four years of age, to call out my as yet un- thoughts and in her nightly visions during tried powers, and in perfect ignorance of the long, weary period of her convalesall things to set forward on a road whose cence. The sense of the nearness of God goal was to be nothing less than the sum filled her with ineffable joy. She conof all the knowledge requisite for the in-ceived an utter contempt of earthly things struction and training of my children, I -a shame and dread of the ambition and believed myself to be simply courageous; but in fact I very soon became proud; for I came to rely upon my own strength, since God, taking compassion perhaps on my ignorance, allowed all that I undertook to prosper. . . . That I was really proud and ambitious, however, I was the longer in becoming aware of, because I was perfectly content with my solitude, avoided all external distractions disapproved both of Hemsterhuys' overbearing pride in himself, and of his exaggerated estimate of my merits; and finally, because my heart's affections seemed so decidedly to be the motive of my actions and desires, and the measure of my enjoyments, that I should scarcely have been willing to sacrifice one day of friendly confidence to the most brilliant glory. What first began to open my eyes to the truth concerning myself, was a gradual diminution of ease in the gratification of my boundless appetite for knowledge, as by the exhaustion of my too rashly employed powers my health began to fail. Finding now that I required more time to get through a less amount of work, I was forced unwillingly to leave my books, in order to give myself to the hours, pride which stood revealed to her as the motives of her conduct hitherto. She made a firm resolve to renounce all further search after learning, save what might be required for the training of her children. "It was some time," she says, "before I could bring myself to look tranquilly at my unused books, my unfinished writings; above all, to say to my learned friends, I don't know this,' or 'I have not read that.' But as the Christian life became more and more a necessity to me, I got to that point and farther; farther, indeed, than I had ever hoped to get." The method she had adopted with regard to her children's religious education helped to turn her mind towards Christianity. She wished them to be religious, yet could not bring herself to teach them dogmas she did not herself believe in. She, therefore, after some delibération, resolved to make a study of the Bible in order to convey to their minds an historical knowledge of its contents, leaving special doctrine to their future choice when they should grow up. But broken health and closer acquaintance with the sacred pages brought the Gospel teaching home to her in an unex pected manner. "It comforted me so wrote a series of papers on religious suboften," she said, "in my disordered, hy-jects "Sibylline leaves," Goethe calls pochondriacal state, from which every them—which, though they seemed dark prop seemed to have been removed, that to the majority of readers, by their strange 1 determined to follow literally the touch- flashes of insight edified a few. Menzel ing injunction of Christ-only to follow in his History of German Literature, proHis doctrine faithfully if we would make proof of its divine authority. I resolved I would act as if I entirely believed in Him." She then relates how her new plan of conduct opened her eyes to failings, both in herself and others, of which she had not thought before; how it drove her to have recourse to prayer as a necessity; how pride, and even, when regareded as an end and not as a means, love itself became grounds of suspicion to her. After her illness of 1783 followed three years of inward contemplation and much bodily weakness. She celebrated her first communion, as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, in the course of the autumn of 1786, and became at once relieved of all her doubts and perplexities. The improvement in her health and spirits, she says, was such as to create the greatest surprise in her friends and children. nounced them worthy of more attention than they had yet received. The Princess Gallitzin made his acquaintance in 1787; he was then fifty-seven years of age. In June of the following year he died at Münster, the Princess attending him in his dying hours. He was the truest Christian, she said, whom she had ever met. How he admired and loved her - the Christian Aspasia, as he calls her his last letters to his daughter, written during the days of his decline, bear witness. He was very plain-spoken with her, however, and she rejoiced in his faithfulness. In the review of her inner life to which we have before referred — written in May, 1789 - - the Princess relates that in the early days of her Christian conversion, she took pride in her conquest over former failings, but the subject of her self-satisfaction made her blind to the wrongness of the emotion. "At last," she says, "Hamann The Catholic society of Münster rejoiced came, and he showed me the heaven of true in their convert. Fürstenberg had retired humility and devotion - a childlike temper from the ministry in 1780, but retained his towards God. He inspired me more than supervision of the educational institutes any thing or person I had yet seen with enwhich he had set on foot, and continued to thusiasm for the religion of Christ, inasbe the presiding spirit of the place. Pre- much as he presented to me in himself the bendary Katercamp, professor of theology, image of the true Christian in its most with his three noble pupils of the house of exalted aspect. To him alone, up to that Droste-Vischering-two of them after-time, was it given to remove the thickest wards bishops respectively of Münster film from my eyes - he alone indeed perand Cologne Sprickmann, whom the ceived the film that lay on them. All my Princess engaged as tutor for her children, other friends, Fürstenberg not excepted, Overberg, the pious and simple-minded had regarded my ardent desire of perfecschoolmaster, Kistermacher, and others, tion as in itself a most estimable-nay, were regular members of the coterie. At most beautiful-trait of character. And Pempelfort, near Düsseldorff, lived the so, far from seeing any evil in it, this conmystic-rationalist philosopher, Jacobi; at stant impulse had become the pillow of my or near Düsseldorff, also, Baron Buchholz soul in moments of despondency. But -a strange religious visionary. These, Hamann saw pride in it, and told me so. and Hamann, the Könisberg theological He tore the very skin from my bones with professor, called by Goethe "der Magus this declaration; it seemed to me as if the des Nordens," were frequent associates only crutch for my lameness was taken with the Münster circle, though they were from me; but I loved and honoured him not Romanists by creed. The Princess too deeply not to let his declaration sink was in intimate relations with all of them. into my soul." That Hamann was a Hamann acted upon her like a spell. Protestant and the Princess a Catholic, He succeeded, during the short time that made no difference in the closeness of their their friendship lasted, to more than the spiritual relations. When he died, she influence of Fürstenberg over her mind. conceived the extraordinary idea of havHamann was unquestionably a very re- ing him buried in her garden, in order that markable man. Goethe gives a detailed the holy influences of his memory might account of him in his Wahrheit und Dich- dwell the more with her and her children. tung. He set himself strongly against the She obtained the consent of the authorities, prevailing current of rationalism, and 'not without difficulty; and then she and |