found a release from his satires; the present, as well as the past, the history of the development, its mysteries, all was a subject of his derision, and the apostles, even the Saviour himself, were not spared by him, how much less Luther, or Calvin, and Zwingli, or even those so named mystics, who desire to form in themselves a peculiar spirit to recognise God. My mind had soon become so intimately connected with his, that I could not endure that there should be any religion for me on the earth, that any pious sentiments should ever arise in my heart. I had indeed my heroes of the former world, the Grecian antiquity, the high-minded Romans, in whose patriotism I glowed in dreams, the boundless fields of poetry with its gardens of wit and humour; and out of Sophocles and Eschylus, those dreamers of a world of spirits not understood, these seemed to me the most sublime objects that could ever have the power to shake my soul. In a
