GERMANY. Early Years of F. A. Wolf.-This celebrated scholar was the son of a schoolmaster and organist in the village of Hainrode, within a short distance of Nordhausen; he was born on the 15th of February, 1759. His father, who was in narrow circumstances, never extended his views with regard to the youth's education beyond the inculcating of half-a-dozen sound maxims, which were calculated to make him a cheerful and contented member of society; but his mother, though a thrifty housewife, possessed a mind of more aspiring cast. In his earlier years he knew nothing but what was carefully taught him by this worthy pair; the father, from mending the son's pens, an office at which he was an adept, without initiating his pupil in the mystery, effectually marred his penmanship for after-life. Young Wolf learned music; but to no purpose. At the age of six, his parents took him to Nordhausen and placed him in the gymnasium, where he was grounded in the classics: by the time he had reached eleven years of age, his mind was made up to pursue a learned career, but, as the school declined after the death of its then master, he was left without any competent teachers but his books and his industry. One Frankenstein, a music-master, became his instructor in modern languages. Nothing could damp the ardour of his thirst for knowledge; not even the injury which his health received from intense study. He used to revert, in after years, not without a shudder, to the physical pains under which it was prosecuted; whole nights of freezing vigils spent in an apartment without a fire, with feet immersed in a tub of cold water, and one eye, that was wearied, bound up, whilst the other was kept hard at work. He retained whatever he read; nay, it was currently affirmed at Nordhausen, that he knew the whole Greek Lexicon by heart. He added volume to volume as rapidly as his means allowed, and ceased to attend school; for he soon found that he could teach more than was taught. In 1777, he went to Göttingen with a Nordhausen exhibition in his purse and attended Heyne, who was too much busied with other matters to pay much attention to the young philologist. The library of that university, to which he easily obtained access, became almost his home; for Heyne's indifference to him, and perchance his own acquirements, had sickened him of public lecturing. I can make nothing of the man's prælections,' Wolf would say; and off he started for his favourite haunt, to the neglect even of the Philological Seminary, whose threshold he never crossed. So persevering a course of reading as Wolf now entered upon, is scarcely to be paralleled; by the end of the year he had turned over the leaves of between seven and eight hundred volumes; but the exertion had well nigh been fatal, and he was compelled to return home for a time, in order to recruit. In the meanwhile, Heyne, by whom his extraordinary application and acquirements had not been unnoticed, so highly appreciated both, that, at the end of his second year's course at Göttingen, he procured him the appointment of joint-master of the school for educating teachers at Ilfeld, where he entered upon his public career at the age of twenty. The youngest scholar in the Pedagogium was at once installed one of its heads. (From Körte's Life and Studies of F. A. Wolf, 1833.) LEIPZIG the Book Trade.--At the beginning of the present year there were 23 printing establishments in this town, which employed 170 hand-presses, and four steam-presses; together with 648 compositors and printers. The quantity of paper annually consumed amounts to 10,740 bales, more or less, which, taken at an average of 25 dollars each, may be valued at 268,500 dollars* (about £39,000). The average weight of the publications exported from Leipzig, for each of the last few years, has been 30,000. cwts., and the returns of such publications have weighed, on a yearly average, 8000 cwts.; the absolute quantity sold has, therefore, averaged 22,000 cwts. The net value of a cwt. may be estimated at 145 dollars, whence the yearly circulation of books printed in this town will probably amount to 3,190,000 dollars, or about £465,000. BAVARIA. MUNICH. (26th January.)—The Bavarian government is still as busily engaged as ever in re-considering and re-modelling the system of education to be adopted in the public seminaries; and it is somewhat remarkable, that the plan which has been carried is founded upon the former system of the years 1803 and 1808, such as it was laid down by the minister, Montgelas, in Napoleon's time. Thiersch's plan, which was promulged in 1830, and created much noise in its day, has been altogether laid on the shelf. According to the new scheme, none but portions of the classics are to be placed in the hands of youth. During the past year, the university was attended by 1592 students, including 60 alumni (students enjoying a government stipend), and 175 youths from foreign parts. They entered to the following classes respectively: philosophy, 316; jurisprudence, 469; divinity, 244; medicine, 378; philology, 34; science of politics, &c., 26; pharmacy, 64; architecture, 26; and forest-economy, 35. They consisted of 1339 Catholics, 212 Protestants, 10 Greeks, and 31 Jews. Three hundred of them (including 60 alumni of the crown) enjoyed public stipends, and 25 were wholly or partially supported by the liberality of private individuals. There are 33 professors who lecture on various branches of philosophy; but only 7 on divinity. SAXE-WEIMAR-EISENACH. JENA.—The number of youths studying here last summer was 535; *There appears to be some error in this calculation; for it reduces the value of a bale of printing paper to less than £3. 138. Now, the ordinary paper used for printing in Germany is, we believe, worth from 12s. to 14s. a ream; so that the assumed contents of a bale, as here taken, cannot be more than six reams at the utmost; which is much below the actual contents. nearly one half of them (257) followed the theological courses. Their conduct is stated to have been unexceptionably good; and the recent arrests are alleged to have originated in offences connected with excesses of a former period. During the present (winter) session, the numbers have declined to 485, of whom 220 are students in divinity. BADEN. FREIBURG.-At the close of last summer there were 484 students at this university; of whom 175 were entered to the theological courses; 79 to the law; 133 to the medical, surgical, and pharmaceutical; and 97 to the philosophical :-409 of them were natives of the Grand-Duchy, and 75 were from other parts of Germany, &c. WÜRTEMBERG. Popular Feeling with respect to Education.-' Whilst at Göppingen,' says Menzel, and sitting at the table d'hôte, I was greatly struck with the sight of a lank elderly personage, whose look seemed as if his heart were ready to burst with joy; though, to judge from the hard furrows of his solemn academic countenance, the man must have been dead to every pleasurable emotion for the last fifty years. My worthy neighbour did not conceal the cause of his delight from me; his son had got happily through the examination for which he had been preparing him from his very childhood; and he confessed to me, that he was now, for the second time in his life, in perfect good humour with the world; the first occasion was, the passing his own examination without mishap; but during the long and tedious interval of twenty years, which had rolled over his head before that great event, and the next twenty, which elapsed between his own and his son's examination, he had lived a life of incessant torture from dread of the ordeal; and this torture, I must confess, was imperishably recorded in the deep wrinkles of his haggard features. The incident recalled to my mind what Paulus says on the subject of the "Seer of Prevorst." "The repeated assertion of this seer," he observes, "that there is an abundance of teaching and learning in the intermediate state of existence, lead me to recognise her, and with no little pleasure, as a genuine fellow-country woman from the Würtemberg soil. It redounds indeed highly to the credit of that country, that it laid the foundation of excellent methods of scholastic instruction from the very dawn of the Reformation. And I should know the seer to be Würtemberg-born, were it evidenced by no other circumstance, than that she cannot form an idea of a future world, independent of the existence of a school, with pupils numberless, both male and female.”—No stronger corroboration of this conjecture can be instanced than what may be found in the Swabian Mercury' of the 3rd August, 1831. It is literally to the following effect" On the 26th of July, God removed our beloved N. N., a pupil in the seminary for teachers at Esslingen, to the care of his heavenly academy in higher regions ;"—or, turn to the same paper of the 19th September: "Frederica, the youngest of our dear children, ་ has been called away by Jesus, the children's friend, to receive a heavenly education." And of a truth, the spirit which characterizes Würtemberg is not the love of enjoyment, but a determined love of labour. The stranger looks with perfect astonishment on the husbandman's weariless industry in the field; on human forms hardened and not unfrequently attenuated by labour; on aged creatures, already bending under exhausted powers, yet bearing their ponderous loads across the field; and unfledged striplings, whom habit has accustomed to carry an almost equal burden. Nor will he feel less astonished at the activity of the townsmen, the total absence of street-loungers and mere idlers, the modest sobriety of the Sabbath recreations, and the comparative solitude of public places of amusement. But in no corner of Würtemberg will you meet with a trace of the dolce-far-niente and noisy mirth which are indigenous to the Rhine, Franconia, and Bavaria. Still wider separated is the serious, well-behaved, and temperate Würtemberger from the easy, jocund, enjoyment-seeking Austrian. earnestness of character is equally observable in the higher circles and amongst men of learning. Its profound thinkers, sterling poets and men of solid acquirements will render the name of Swabia eternal; but your belles lettres ephemeræ, that flit about elsewhere by whole swarms at a time, are quite unknown along the banks of the Neckar.'-(Notes on a Journey to Austria.) This TÜBINGEN. The number of students here has for some time past been gradually decreasing with each successive session. Last winter they amounted to 824; in the summer half-year they declined to 822; and at present they are reduced to 756. Many of them, however, who had been ordered away by government, have now been permitted to resume their studies. AUSTRIA. LEMBERG. This university was attended last year by 1291 students. At the present day it consists of three faculties; namely, philosophy, law, and divinity. As every student who is desirous of entering either of the last two faculties is required to have completed his two years' course in philosophy, no less than 499 students attended the philosophy lectures last year: among them were 177 Poles, 200 Russians, and 69 Germans. The four years' course in law and the science of administration (Administrations-Urssenschaft), was followed by 242 students, amongst whom were 117 Poles, 23 Russians, and 92 Germans; and the course in divinity, which extends over a similar period of years, by 485, of whom 143 were Poles, 320 Russians, and 9 Germans. No other medical science is taught but what is comprised in a two years' course of medicosurgery,' for which there were but 65 pupils enrolled last year, and of these 41 were Jews, 12 Poles, and 10 Germans; those who may be ambitious of a degree are obliged to go to Vienna, where there are stipends for students of limited means who are natives of Galicia. There is no scientific journal in all Poland of higher value than 6 the Czasopismo Naukowe od Zakiadu Norodowego Ossolinskich Wydane,' which is published by the Ossolinski Institute in this town. Those who are engaged in historical pursuits will derive much information from the extracts given from Ossolinski's work on The Earliest Records of the Slavonians,' which is about to appear, and Francis Starczynski's History of the Age of Sigismund the Third.' RUSSIA. DORPAT.-The number of students at this university, in September last, was 577; namely, 219 Livonians, 117 Courlanders, 85 Esthonians, 141 native Russians from other parts of the empire, and 15 foreigners. They matriculated as follows: 52 in theology, 47 in jurisprudence, 302 in medicine, and 176 in philosophy. There is one feature in this university which no other establishment of the kind in Russia possesses; the choice of studies is left to the student himself. It has its four faculties; but in selecting and matriculating in any one of them, it is not compulsory on the student to follow any particular course of study. Unfortunately those from whom the country may reasonably expect greater acquirements—we mean young men intended for official sta tions are not allowed to avail themselves of the advantages which are here afforded, but are tied down to the very limited range of instruction allowed in the Lyceums, which have been established in various parts of Russia for their exclusive use. Russian Literature. Some idea of the literary labours of the Russians may be gathered from an analysis of the contents of a single library in St. Petersburg, which is wholly confined to publications in the Russian language. They range under the subsequent heads : existing 4250 1225 1081 678 616 548 519 452 405 292 239 219 132 117 113 38-151 The total number of works of any note would, therefore, appear to be 10,924.. We should add, that the enumeration was made in 1828. |