Schiller; fourth, the later schools, the romantic, represented by the two Schlegels, Novalis, and the patriotic; fifth, the modern school of reaction against absolute government, headed by H. Heine. Of these schools, only the second and third gave M. Laemmer delight. There was a hidden sympathy between the qualities of his own mind and the exquisite critical genius and reasoning power of Lessing, which made him find the writers of the first class insipid and trivial. He came under the influence of Lessing to a remarkable degree, and if to that influence he owes the gain of an important truth, to it must be attributed also his acceptance of a most fatal error. That remarkable man, author, or, as it now appears, editor of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, in consequence of that publication, had a warm controversy with the Lutheran pastor Göze, in which he forcibly showed, by historical arguments chiefly, that the principle of the Bible and nothing but the Bible, was illogical and false. M. Laemmer followed the course of the controversy, and found to his dismay that the arguments of Lessing had brought home to him the conviction that Lutheranism rested on a false basis. This was a great gain; but it was counter-balanced by a great loss. The ardour of his youthful admiration blinded him to the dangerous principles of indifferentism and doubt contained in his master's works, and particularly in his Education of the World. The third Fragment sets it forth as impossible, that all men should be brought to believe revelation on rational grounds. These principles, destructive of all faith and certainty in belief, were adopted by the young student, and warmly defended by him in a special dissertation.

Towards the end of his course he devoted himself to the study of Herder; and here again vague reading brought to him gain and loss, truth and falsehood together. He learned from this writer to believe in the mysterious action of Providence in the world; but the view he was led to form of the Divine plan was confined, superficial, and vague. He also gave much time to the reading of Schiller, in whose works he found an assault on the frigid deism then predominant in Germany. But, the deity which that poet brought so near to men was not the Blessed Trinity, but the gods of Olympus; and whilst his strains rebuked the philosophy which never rose above the laws of gravity, he himself did but serve the cause of epicureanism by his praises of the pleasures of the earth.

From Goethe M. Laemmer learned to appreciate, in some measure, the Sacraments of the Church, and to think kindly of the Church itself. But what solid advantage could he gain from the man who wrote to Lavater of the chief gospel miracles that "he held them for blasphemies against the great God and His revelation in nature"?

The reader will have observed that this course of reading made several important additions to M. Laemmer's religious views. And yet the books among which his reading lay were either not at all, or not directly religious. We are now to inquire how far his ideas were modified by any directly religious training. The answer to this question opens up such a view of the condition of Protestantism in the country of its birth, as well deserves our careful study. Let M. Laemmer tell us what fruits it has produced at Koenigsberg. First of all, in the various schools where he resided during his stay in that town, there was no common practice of religion: the religious exercises of the gymnasium were limited to the singing of a few stereotyped chants. The religious instruction of the students was attended to by an aged professor, who was one of the leaders of the Freemasons, and whose religion was the religion of pure reason. He was assisted in the religious training of the students by a younger man, whose doctrines were kindred with his own, and whose lectures, though erudite, were arid. Fortunately for himself, M. Laemmer had learned from his mother the habit of night and morning prayer. This habit he retained, although for want of fixed principles it became a work of mere routine. Such was the state of religion in the gymnasium. In the city itself things were still worse. From the orthodox Lutheranism of Superintendent Sartorius, down to the absolute Rationalism of Rupp, every intermediate stage of error had its exponents and followers in the city of Kant. In the eyes of Sartorius, Catholicism, which he knew only from Luther's caricatures, stood on the same level with Rationalism; he assigned to the Confession of Augsburg almost the same authority which Catholics claim for tradition, and together with Baur, Nitsch, and Winer, made an unsuccessful attempt to refute Moehler's Symbolism. Rupp, on the other hand, denounced all symbols, even that of St. Athanasius, which he declared to be incompatible with Christian doctrine; his system was based on Indifferentism of the lowest kind, and conceded to women as well as to men the right of deliberating and of teaching in religious matters. And yet, these two men, so diametrically opposed to each other in doctrine, preached for a time in the same church and from the same pulpit. And, whilst Sartorius, who revered Luther as a man of God, preached to empty benches, Rupp found assembled around him a crowded audience, composed of the highest as well as the lowest in the land. The different churches at Koenigsberg had preachers of every shade of doctrine. During the course of his studies M. Laemmer made trial of them all, but found not satisfaction in any. At length, in the midst of this Babel, he became acquainted with the man who was destined to exercise a most salutary influence on his life. That man was Lehnerdt, Superintendent-General of the province of Saxony. Born in Brandenburg, and educated at Berlin, in the school of Schleiermacher and Hegel, he escaped the pernicious influence of his masters by a profound course of historical studies. On the one hand, he combated the rationalistic exegesis of Paulus, and on the other, devoted himself with all his might to the study of the Fathers. He was a man of great piety; and in preparing M. Laemmer for confirmation, spoke with such unction of God and the world, man and sin, Christ and salvation, that his words wrought in the young student's soul a blessed reaction. An intimate and affectionate relationship sprang up between the two, which was interrupted in the middle of 1851 by Lehnerdt's departure for Berlin, where he succeeded Neander as professor of history, but was resumed again at a later period in that city.

M. Laemmer passed from the gymnasium to the university of Koenigsberg at Easter, 1852. He remained there but one year, during which time he acted as secretary to Voigt, whose able History of Gregory VII. was the beginning of a new epoch for ecclesiastical history in Germany. One of the professors of philosophy was Rosenkranz, the pupil and biographer of Hegel. This able man was an eloquent partisan of Hegelianism, and by the poetic colouring he contrived to throw around its doctrines, exercised an extraordinary influence over the youth of the university. M. Laemmer tells us that during a fever which at this time brought him to death's door, one of his keenest regrets was his inability to attend Rosenkranz's lectures. He made up for his absence from lecture by a careful study of his professor's writings, and completely adopted the views expressed therein. It was long before he was able to shake off the yoke of Hegelianism which he then assumed. In the university, Biblical literature was treated altogether from the rationalistic point of view. One of the fruits of this method is the isolated and independent study of various parts of Sacred Scripture. "It was reserved for Protestantism", says M. Laemmer, "to cultivate in minute detail what is called Biblical Theology, and to write volumes upon the doctrine of such and such an apostle in particular.... This