while at Leipzig; from which, apparently after no long stay, he returned to Schwarzbach to his parents, uncertain what he should betake him to. In a little while, he attempted authorship; publishing various short miscellaneous pieces, distinguished by intellectual vigour, copious fancy, the wildest yet truest humour, the whole concocted in a style entirely his own, which, if it betrayed the writer's inexperience, could not hide the existence in him of a highly-gifted, strong and extraordinary mind. The reception of his first performances, or the inward felicity of writing, encouraged him to proceed: in the midst of an unsettled and changeful life, his pen was never idle, its productions never otherwise than new, fantastic and powerful: he lived successively in Hof, in Weimar, Berlin, Meiningen, Coburg, 'raying forth, wherever he might be stationed, the wild light of his genius over all Germany.' At last he settled in Bayreuth, having here, in testimony of his literary merit, been honoured with the title of Legations-Rath, and presented with a pension from his native Prince. In Bayreuth his chief works were written; he had married, and been blessed with two children; his intellectual labours had gained him esteem and love from all ranks of his countrymen, and chiefly from those whose suffrage was of most value; a frank and original, yet modest, good and kind deportment seems to have transferred these sentiments to his private circle: with a heart at once of the most earnest and most sportful cast; affectionate, and encompassed with the objects of his affection; diligent in the highest of all earthly tasks, the acquisition and the diffusion of Truth; and witnessing from his sequestered home the working of his own mind on thousands of fellow-minds, Richter seemed happy and at peace; and his distant reader loved to fancy him as in his calm privacy enjoying the fruit of past toils, or amid the highest and mildest meditations, looking forward to long honourable years of future toil. For his thoughts were manifold; thoughts of a moralist and a sage, no less than of a poet and a wit. The last work of his I saw adver-
