The adventures of Don Sylvio de Rosalva

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Introduction

WiELAND bdoQ^ to that inferior order of genius that brings no creative energy, no epoch-making ideas to bear upon human Ufe and thought, but receives the impress of the age, reflects its movements and revolutions, and reacts upon them with the force and insight of an acute and subtle mind, richly stored with the learning of the past. Such a mind finds its appropriate task in criticism and interpretation. Wieland's Ufe coincided with the epoch of fermenting. i>piiuons and

)te(^ed the birth of the nineteenth century, and his life and works may be r^arded as, in a measure, an epitome of the intellectual '.^'"^ ^ history of his time. \^-/c

The Ufe of Christoph Martin Wieland divides itself ^'

into three periods, more or less clearly marked out by the stages of his mental conflict between thejigid pie^sm^ in which he was nurtured and his instinctiv e, tendency towards freedom, of thought and enjoymfiiit of nature. The impulses of youth were almost wholly eliminated by his father's training and the discipline of a pecuUarly monastic school : under their influence he tried sincerely but unsuccessfuUy to make himself a saint. His earUest writings were mainly the offspring of Christian or . theosophic al enthusiasm : Plato was not austere enough J for his Puntamsm, without a strong infusion of Stoic severity ; and he went out of his way to make aiLXm- »slaught_OD ttie brotherhood of Anacreontic poets, Gleim, rCptz, and Uz. The second period, among the first-fruits *''of wliich was the present work, was distinguTshed by a i, violent revolt against these repressive influences. In it he wrote much that is frivolous and Ucentious, if not

Bom -ji i^;^ It 3ib«^ich. i :re» rjmjmccn town of Swabia. he :vas *iM joir n x l-itheran zumstBT. x learned man, who imiertock the sitip? rharse if his echicatii^ti, and with Tapsrrui jklL rushed '^rm ?a 50 fast that at SKveii he was alrie to rraii Veros *jrLth enjoytnent. and at thntEgi m:it*K rocket vr?iiiranions of Virgil and Horace. This onwise sthnmaticn of the mental faculties bad nie osual -f^ect of iivmu ■'^irn i distaste for the bealthy recreances of bcyhocd : he frew shy, and fond of solitary muan^. nroit xr comretition with his equals, and indined bv his father's relicious discipline to morbid habits of self-anal^Tzs. and. it may be added, of selfdeceptiotL His frequent tears of contritioEL his outbursts of religiosity, were not insincere : they were the trazsient emotions of an impressionable soul, and by no means implied any deep and lasting coaWction.

His fathers perse\"erance was rewarded by making tiim a pnxiig\" of learning ; his turn for writing and imitation was not less precocious. From the age of eleven he was passionateK* fond of poetr\\ and used to rise at davbreaic to compose Uttle operas and cantatas, not being allowed to write verses during the day. Among the ju\-enilia which he is supposed to have burned later on was an epic on the destruction of Jerusalem, written at this period. At fourteen, his father sent him to the hkh school of Klosterberg, near Magdeberg, a college

""l^[ually renowned for the excellence of its classical teaching and for its semi-monastic sj'stem of instruction, an evangelical monasticism that made it a stronghold of

INTRODUCTION vii

then domin;pLnt among German Protestants. ' Ufe, the spiritual exercises, and the habits of meditation, penitence, and devotion had a powerful effect on Wieland. He applied himself with ardour to the sentimental side of religion, though he had no inclination for dogmatic theology. Yet, at the same time, his constant reading in Greek and Latin poets and philosophers was deepening the inner tendencies of his mind, and preparing silently for the epoch of emancipation. Already he had become acquainted with the pangs of doubt as a consequence of dipping into

Bayle's pictionary and Voltaire ; but he expiated his

cunosity with fears of repentance, and when he left school his piety and orthodoxy seemed to be as great a credit to the religious instruction of home and college, as his classical attainments were to his intellectual training.

The elder Wieland had destined his son for the ministry, but now had, reluctantly, to agree, on accoimt of his weak limgs, that he should follow the law. In 1750 the young man retiimed to Biberach for a short stay before taking up his studies aiTubirgra imiversity, a visit that was fraught with impoFEance as'tHe era of his fiKit love affair. The lady was the ac comp li shed So phia von Guterma nn, known imder her later name of De la Roche as the author of some novels. She was two or three years his senior, and already engaged, but seems to have regarded the brilliant young enthusiast with feelings of real affection, while his love for her was none the less passionate for being of a reverential and idolatrous kind. She was the muse who inspired his first serious poem. His father had been preaching one Sunday on the text, ** God is Love," and as he walked in the fields with Sophia, Wieland began to pour out in rhapsodical language the feelings and visions with which such a theme filled his imagination. He spoke of the destiny of men and spirits, of the dignity of the human soul, and of eternity. "Never in my Ufe,*' he said afterwards to Bodmer, '* had I been so eloquent.*' The lady suggested that he should commit his thoughts to writing, and Wieland, as soon as he took pen in hand, viii DON SYLVIO DE ROSALVA

began the composition of his " Nature of Things/' a metaphysical poem that was to ^me extent an imitation of Lucretius, and analogous in method, though different in style, to Pope 's Es§ay QtkMdn.

At Tiibingen, he devote3 little attention to law, but continued by his wide, if not profotmd, reading in many literatures to amass t he gr eat sto re of lea rning that gives 80 rich and varied a colouring" to "au ms worts. In 1752 appeared his first volimie of poems, containing the ''Nature of Things," the " Anti-Ovid," and his " Moral Episties," the last-named being the earliest example of thisLt Socratic irony which was to be an important ingredient olliis more mature productions. The book was dedicated to Sophia, ^n epic in the style of Ossian, on ^Hermann, or AriminiusX the ancient hero of the Fatherland, which he began at Tubingen, was the occasion of another salient incident in his career. He sent the first portion in manuscript to the critic and autocrat of letters,JBQ^er, who was Uving at Zurich with a coterie of literary men, and conducting a Swiss review. Bodmer's response was to invite the young genius to Ziirich, and to install him in the apartment Klopstock had ^^Lcated a year ago. Here Wieland found himself in a congenial world. Living in a delightful country house, which seemed to him the proper scene for the talks and meditations of Plato and his disciples, with such literary friends about him as Gessner, Bottiger, and Kleist, and in intimate companionship with Bodmer, whose character and opinions he revered, he had a stronger incentive than ever to devote himself to authorship. His visionary tendencies were strengthened by their conversation and his sedulous study of Plato, and by the peculiar tenets held by the circle. From Bodmer also, who availed himself of bis services as a contributor to the journal, he derived the pra ctice of borrowing from foreign writers, ^ cient and modenj, which he was to turn to such good account throughout his career that he virtually legitimised its morahty. Wieland's mind Was naturally ^pctk.; his aptitude for assimilating ideas from all sources amounted to a gift. Whatever he borrowed he enriched with new implications and an

INTRODUCTION ix

interpretation adapted to the age. To what was old and impotent he gave, so to speaJc, a new life. This is sufficient justification for his seeming pla^arisms. The idea of his Letters from the Dead to the Living (1753), was the result of reacting Mrs Rowe's Friendship in Death. He imitated Bodmer's mannerisms in his Trial of Abraham (1755), after having written a too friendly TOuaegyric on the master's scriptural poem, " Noah." The Flatonic Contemplations on Mankind, the Vision of a World of Innocent Men, the Sympathies, Timoclea, and the Vision of Myrza, were all more or less imitative.

All these works were saturated with the mystical teaching and th e intolerant puri tj^niRm o f Rofjiper and his sect. His metaphysical opinions were of a nebulous and extravagant kind, unadapted to life and conduct, and his practical views narrow and bigoted, identifying religion with all that is gloomy and repressive. It was at this time that he wrote his attack on the lascivious tendencies of the Anacreontic poets, a rebuke that he stultified by his own loose writings at a later period.

He pities Petrarch for speaking of his Laura with an idolatry to whicn no human excellence can be entitled from man ; he laments that the sublime genius of Pindar had been squandered on the decoration of a heathen and profane mythology ; and he adds that whoever did not consider indinerence to religion as an honour was bound in duty infinitely to prefer the feeblest spiritual hymns of the ecclesiastical poets to the seductive imagery of the finest odes of Uz or Gleim.

Xenophon gave him a subject, and the great Frederick of Prussia a hero, for his epigaLpoem, Cynis,'^ begun at the outbreak of the Seven Years* War, the fortimes of which he watched with anxiety. But readers took Uttle interest in this glorification of their monarch as a compendiiun of pubUc and private virtue, and the poem remains a fragment.

The religious inspiration was not destined to last very long, and from the enthusiasm of the visionary and the ' stem denunciation of sensual joys and mundane beaut3jr^ he was soon to pass to the opposite extreme, Wieland had left Bodmer's house in 1754, fSTdiiig "the restraints and the master's love of interference irksome. Bodmer

X DON SYLVIO DE ROSALVA

had been bitteriy di^ppointed in Klopstock, in whom he had affSapated something etihereal,'atind of seraph, and had found a beer-d xinkin g and pipe- sm oking^ ga llsmt, fresh from student Ufe in Leipzig, with no aversionTrom the sentiments or the morals of Gleim and his associates. Wieland was to cause him a still more painful disillusionment. The revolution that was about to take place in the young man's philosophy showed that his xonwtinns bad been without depth, and his.religiott& fervour but

the nffcjpring nf an Pr<ttafir imaginatinn. A letter he

wrote to Zimmerman, the author of Solitude, in 1758 is .)

an indication of the coming change. l^n-^

I am not quite so much of a Platonist as you think me ; I begin to Jp V

be a little more familiar with the inhabitants of this Jower world. ... 'l^y^ My morality is not that of the Capuchins. I no longer confound . '

wisdom with austerity, nor admire those authors who paint the virtues f which they recommend to us as SQ ugly and disgusting. I think with you that the wise man cultivates all his sense s, internal and external ; exercises all his faculties, and enjoys alTDature.'

Soon he went much further, and from the gloomy and morose idealism he had cultivated under Bodmer he rushed headlong into the frankjigdonisin, the doubt and the frivoHty of his middle period.

From Ziirich he went to Berne, to become tutor in

the house of a M. Sinner, partly drawn thither by the

presence of a company of actors who had performed his

translation of Rowe's Lady Jane Grey. This had been

produced witfT very slight alteration as his own work,

and now he composed a tragic drama on an episode from

Sir Charles Grandison, and yet another on the beautiful

/-^story of Araspes and Panthea in the Cyropcedia. The

) last-named, which foreshadowed many" of the ideas of

'^ Agathon, was afterwards published separately, and forms

* the earhest dramatic r omance in German Uterature.

In 1766 he was suddenly recalled to BiSerach by the news that the corporation had spontaneously appointed him town clerk, with a moderate stipend, which he hoped would put him in a situation of independence. Moral independence and a greater measure of selfreliance he did acquire as a result of absence from those

V'

> ' INTRODUCTION xi

who had hitherto exerted too potent sway over his

sponsive to exter pal «^f iir^^^lnk. But the duties of the office'^oved more engrossing than he had anticipated, and the lack of agreeable society was painful. In a letter to Gessner, he compares Biberach with San Marino, describing the tediousness and triviality of his legal occupations, and the uncongenial people among whom his lot was cast. His only relief from the daily round was in the hours he devoted to the Muses. Among the employments of his leisure during the years 1762-6 was a ^[apj^ati^n of Shakespeare, which was afterwards completed and corrected By Eschenburg. ,^ But he was not left long to this Boeotian solitude. In [ 1763, Cou nt Stad ion, a fine old courtier and man of the I world, cultivated, and fond of Uterature, retired from a 1 long career of diplomacy to the family mansion of jJWarthausen, some three miles from Biberach, bringing with him his form er seCTetary,^.La Roche, the husband of^ Sophia, Through lier "firiendBhip, Widand was wel- ' cornea by the Coimt, and soon became a constant guest at Warthausen, where La Roche and his family, with their patron and his visitors, formed a circle of friends and amiable critics, who incited him to new work, and, by introducing him to a more luxurious and more tolerant society, contnbuted with other causes to hasten on the process of emancipation. In the Count's well-stocked library Wieland had access to the works of all the eminent modem writers. rSolingbroke and Shaftesbury, Rousseau, Montesquieu fed Voltaire^) and other exponents of the moral and metaphysical sc«epticisra of the time, helped to shatter the fabric orbelief that was already shaken. The journal of this period of gradual transformation was faithfully kept by Wieland, though _ under many disguises. A^aihon (1766-7) is in reality j his own story ; JEIippias is Count Stadion ; and the / Epicurean arguments by which the hero is converted/ from the austere reUgion of his youth are, in a manner, / Wieland's own apologia. ^

"The touching picture drawn by Euripides of the childhood of Ion suggested the story of Agathon's early years.

xii DON SYLVIO DE ROSALVA

Educated like the Attic hero among the hallowed groves

and shrines of Delphi, Agathon has been initiated into

the transcendental visions of the Orphic theosophy, and

is imbued with the lofty idealism of Plato. His virtue

is tried by collision with the world and its temptations,

and his philosophy by the sophisms of Hippias. Though

he succimibs for a while to these united assaults, yet he

frees himself again from the tranmiels of sensuality,

}) '^'^ and enters upon a career of action, proceeding at the

^ it VlA^ . ^^^ ^o sunmiarise the results oi his experience, and to

find a means of harmonising the rival claims of virtue

and j>leasure.\ In his first draft of the story, Wieland

"hardly succeeded in determining the problem in a way

to satisfy serious thinkers ; but years later he gave the

story a more conclusive ending, and one more in unison

with.a philosophy that admits man's intuitive demand

JSt.^^f^^ss and right. At the present stage, hfa

tEought has not got beyond a \utihtarian/c onception of

^' morality, and even -that was wanting m breadth.

It was at this time, 1764, that he composed the story of Don Sylvio de Rosalva. Wieland was in the habit of reading his manuscript poems to the Warthausen ladies, including such risky stories as that of Diana and Endymion, and oti^ers of the Kamische Erzdhlungen, in which he had cast off the fetters of pietism and Bodmer, and followed in the lascivious footsteps of Voltaire onc^Cr^billon fils. Such light and flippant tales were exactly to the taste of the German aristocracy, dominated as they were by French influences ; but at the same time it gave them a new interest in the literature of their own language. The Attic world depicted by Aristophanes and his favourite, Xenophon, the satirical stories of Lucian, French and Oriental fairy tales,. and the chivalric romances, suppUed him with a multitude of subjects for prose and ^^rse during this period. With an imagination that easily bore the weight of his vast and miscellaneous equipment of learning, he revived the Ufe of < ancient Greece and the Middle Ages, and added thereto^' the delicate charm of his ironical allusion to the present.^

Musarion is the most illustrious of a series of metrical tales whose scenes are laid in classic Greece. Phanias,

INTRODUCTION xiii

an Athenian voluptuary, having lost his wealth, retires Hke Timon to the sea-shore, and persuades himself th^t he is a Stoic, and has learned to despise the pleasures he can no longer enjoy. His friends Cleanthes and Theophron are similar representatives of the Cynic and the rlatonic phflosophies. They are pursued in their retreat by Musarion, a rich and beautiful hetaira, who, by her demonstration of the more potent charms of Epicureanism, puts their convictions to a test they are unable to withstand. The dramatic vivacity, and the half-sportive, half-serious irony of Wieland appear at their best in this admirable dialogue. In the same year, 1768, was written the fairy tale of Idris and Zenide, in which he took Ariosto as his model : only five cantos were finished. Sensual attractions are here again shown in conflict with those of mind and spirit. I(kis, who in the moral implied by the allegory stands for Platonic love, in order to win the hand of Zenide, queen of the four races of genii, is subjected to the ordeal of withstanding the temptations of the most beautiful females in each of the four tribes beneath her sovereignty. He successfully resists the enchantments of the nymphs of Water and of Fire, but the narrative of his trials was not carried any further.

In 1765 Wieland had married. His wife was the daughter of a merchant of Augsberg, a plain, afEectionate, domesticated woman, with no accomplishments, who was unable to appreciate her husband's writing, but looked up to him with a species of blind worship. In Schiller's letters she is said to have been " as ugly as night, but worth her weight in gold, and gay and naive almost to simpUcity." The Ucence of Widand's opinions did not extend to his conduct. He was an excellent husband and father, and found true happiness in his home Ufe. In a little summer-house, quite close to the town, yet completely in the country, he spent his leisure hottrs " in cdmpany with the muses, fauns, and grass-njmiphs " that floated before his fancy, " fair as those which break in upon the meditations of holy hermits in the wilderness.

So nine years rolled away at Biberach, and then, in 1769, Wieland received an invitation from the Elector

XIV of Mayence, probably on the recommendation of Count Stadion, who was anxious to remove him from Biberach after an affair in which Wieland's independence had made him obnoxious to the Court of Vienna, to become Professor of Law at the Umversily bfȣrfurt. The university was in a decadent condition, with few students, and professors out of employ. Widand entered upon his duties with energy, attracted attention by his course of lectures " On the State of Nature and Society," and drew so many hearers that the number of studfents at the university was quickly doubled. Sundry dissertations on poUtical and social philosophy, delivered during his three years at Erfurt, were afterwards embodied in his collected works ; and the same line of thought is pursued in his prose romance of Koxkox and Kikeqaetzd^ or the Mexican Paradise Lost, which ridicules, somewhat after the manner of Candide, the anti-matrimonial and anti-social theories enunciated by ^Rousseau. The Travels of the Priest Abulfanaris into the Interior of Africa is a satire on the missionary work of the time, and the worthless apostles who were being sent out for the nominal purpose of converting and civilising the heathen. More seriously argumentative diatribes upon the paradoxes of Rousseau were his essays " On the Original Condition of Man," " On the Attempts to Discover the True State of Nature," " On the Perpetual AmeUoration of Human Society," and the like. His defence of his erotic poetry, " Cupid Accused," and the exceedingly clever and cynical " Q)mbabus," one of the finest of his Comic Tates, were among the poetical compositions of the period.

An Oriental novel in the style of Cr6billon, The Golden Mirror, or the Kings of Scheshian (1772), also deals in a Utopian manner with schemes of social reform, and was suggested by the revolutionary innovations of the Emperor Joseph II., who is praised under the name of Tifan, the ideal sultan. Its object was to apply the lessons that the beet and noblest of every nation may derive from history ; in other words, it mculcates the theory of an enlightened despotism as the ideal state. With enchanting eloquence, Wieland discourses on the i

INTRODUCTION

eudsemonistic principles he has adopted, propounding his \ philosophy of happiness with a persuasiveness and a nobility of thought far removed from the daring and aggressive mockery of preceding works. Yet the book is not without its comic chapters, in which a fantastic humour like that of Tristram Skandy relieves the gravi^^

' of the nibral discussions. Diogenes of Sinope is another study of a historical personage in which the whimsical humour of Sterne has been adapted to a satirical purpose like that of Voltaire's romances. The cynic philosopher is portrayed as a sharp and humorous critic of mundane folhes, and, as in the Quixotic romances, artistic effect is given to the view that perhaps it is the world that is msS, and not the philosopher.

Wieland did not find much to please him among the "new-fangled, dainty, philosophiad, and literary icrftmaStres with which the school of Baumgarten, Meyer, and Klotz had filled Saxony." Erfurt was a field of strife between the old professors and those recently appointed by the Elector, into which Wieland was reluctantly drawn. He was assailed virulently in the pulpit for his sc^jticism and the hedonistic trend of his philosophy, which was supposed to be an index to the character of his private life. At the same time, the actual licentiousness that prevailed in the most fashionable circles in Erfurt was far from agreeable to him, and he preferred to stay at home with his wife and his two daughters rather than go much into society. The young La Roche, Sophia's son, was now his pupil and an inmate of hk house.

It was, accordingly, a grateful release when he received an invitation from the reigning Duchess of Weimar,

_Anna Amaii^ jo Jiecpme tuF^lo her children, the young duke, r^arr A ugust,! and his brother, Constantin. He moved to Weimar in 1772, and was presented with the honorary title of Aulic Counsellor. Now at length he found himself in a congenial home, in an honourable and lucrative position, with ample leisure for his literary avocations ; ere long he was to be the centre of a brilliant gathering of the finest intellects of modern Germany, In 1773 he b^an the publication of his periodical miscellany.

3tvi DON SYLVIO DE ROSALVA

the Teutscher Merkur, a magazine resemblli^; the Parisian Mercure de France, edited and partly written by himself, and containing all sorts of original contributions, literary notices, criticism, and discussions of the higher topics of polite conversation. In it, from this time forward, appeared the first draft of most of his works, an admirable method of giving them in their more permanent form the advantage of careful and deliberate revision. ' The Mercury had no small share in the reputation Weimar eventually attained in the intellectual world, and, directly or indirectly, it helped to bring together the galaxy of eminent writers that made the city famous as the German Athens. Bertuch, Reinhold, and Schiller successively acted as Wieland's coadjutors ; then he was assisted by Bftttiger, who took over the editorship in 1795. At the same time, he did not escape the ills to which editors must inevitably expose themselves. One party attacked him for his supposed lack of patriotism, and another, headed by Herder and Goethe, for the narrowness of his sesthetlc views, A captious review of GStx von Berlichingen, which happened not to be from Wieland's pen, provoked Goethe to write his farce, Gods, Heroes, and Wteland. Instead of fomenting a quarrel, the persiflage was received with perfect good humour by Wieiand, and when, in response to the X>ake's invitation, Goethe came to Weimar, the two poets met each other in a cordial manner, and with Herder, who shortly followed them, formed a literary alhance unparalleled in Europe. The first number of the Mercury for 1776 was headed by a poem of Goethe's. Schiller also became a member of the cirde, and in his letters to Komer gives an amusing account of Wieland's attempts to capture him as a son-in-law. His opinion of the older writer was somewhat unfavourable. He feared that Wieland's sensitive and vacillating mind was not able to act upon fixed principle. Komer seems to have instilled these suspiaons, for he asks whether Wieiand is anything more than a clever juggler, or a highly finished man of the world. It must be admitted that Wieland's frequent changes, and the veil of irony in which be- wraps his personal opinions, are some jostification for these doubts.

L

I. INTRODUCTION xvii

Among the earliest productions of the Weimar period were the metrical tales modelled on the Fabliaux of the Trouvdres — charming examples of Wieland's genius for borrowing the literary forms, the plots, and the costmnes of a forgotten style, and adapting them to the tastes of his own day. The theme of The King of the Black Isles was taken nx)m the Arabian Nighis ; ihe Summer^ s Tale, from ChresUen de Troyes ; the Pentamerony the Lays de rOiseletf the Conies of le Grande and other Oriental tales and romances of chivalry supplied him with similar material for stories in verse. Some are satirical, some didactic, others, again, preserve the simple garb of the old ballad poetry. The versatiUty of style, and the humour are most pleasing ; and there are few offences against good taste. A gradual and permanent change is evident from the sceptical and ironical philosophy of former years to a deeper and purer feeling, a belief in the existence of goodness, and a vindication of the trimnph of spiritual over corporeal beauty. In Peregrinus Proteus, a Ludanic novel that has twice been translated into English, it is said : " If the spirit be not ever soaring upward, the animal part ¥all soon stagnate in the mire of the earth, and the man who does not strive to become a god will find himself in the end degraded to a beast." ThaX novel and the Agaihodamon are notable exemplars of his acute psychological analysis. Peregrinus was a Cynic philosopher whose portrait Lucian drew as that of a hypocritioLl sensusdist. Wieland retells the story in such a way as to give a more kindly interpretation to the incidents supposed to be narrated to Lucian by an eye-witness. In the Agaihodamon he treats the story of Apollonius of Tyana in an equally ingenious manner, and attempts to furnish a plausible explanation of the reported marvels.

In 1774, in the pages of the Mercury, Wieland brought out his satirical romance. Die Abderilen, finely translated into English by Henry Christmas (1861) tmder the title. The Republic of Fools, The story seems to have ^Eeen the outcome of an tmpleasant affair that had occurred years ago at Biberach, whilst Wieland was the town clerk. A minister named Brechter, whom he had

A xviii DON SYLVIO DE ROSALVA

helped to obtain some preferment in the town, gave offence to the orthodox party, and had to be reinstated in his pulpit by the mayor and his officers in person, assisted by Wieland in his official capacity. An attempt was made by the enemies of Brechter to deprive Wieland of his appointment, but the lawsuit ended in his favour. Under fictitious names, and with an ingenious disguise of the actual incidents, the affair was now parodied in Die Ahderiten, with much personal ridicule of the members of the corporation of Biberach. But the satire has far wider scope than this. According to Wieland, though the city of Abdera has disappeared from the face of the earth, its people are not extinct, but, like the Jews, " they Hve still, undestroyed and immortal .... and, although scattered among the nations, they remain to the present day pure, unmixed, and faithful to their original Abderitish fashions and manners. . . . Notwithstanding that they speak everywhere the language of the country in which they live, acknowledge in common the constitutions, reUgion, and customs of the non-Abderites, eat and drink, walk and act, dress and adorn themselves, curl and perfume their hair, purge and physic themselves ; and, in short, perform everything that is necessary in human Ufe — ^]ust like others, they, I say, notwithstanding this, remain like to themselves only, in all that constitutes them Abderites, just as if from remotest time they had been separated from the sensible beings of our planet by a diamond wall, thrice as high and thick as the walls of Babylon." " There is no town in Germany . . . where ' the Abderites ' have not met with readers ; and, whereever it has been read, the descriptions it contains have been received as portraits, of which everybody has seen the originals in a thousand places where," says the author, '* I had never been, and where I had not the slightest acquaintance."