heless, slumbered on in my mind till years afterwards it was
called out and became a strong influence for the whole of my life. I
still have some lines which he wrote for my album. They were the
well-known lines from Horace, which, at the time, I had great
difficulty in construing, but which have remained graven in my memory
ever since:

"Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis,
Est in iuvencis est in equis patrum
Virtus nec imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilae columbam.
Doctrina sed vim promovet insitam,
Rectique cultus pectora roborant;
Utcunque defecere mores,
Dedecorant bene nata culpae."

In my childhood I had to pass through the ordinary illnesses, but it
was the faith in our doctor that always saved me. The doctor was to my
mind the man who was called in to make me well again, and while my
mother was agitated about her only son, I never dreamt of any danger.
The very idea of death never came near me till my grandfather died
(1835), but even then I was only about twelve years old, and though I
had seen much of him, particularly during the years that my mother
lived again in his house, yet he was too old to take much share in his
grandchildren's amusements. He left a gap, no doubt, in our life, but
that gap was filled again with new figures in the life of a boy of
twelve. He was only sixty-one years old when he died, and yet my idea
of him was always that of a very old man. Everything was done for him,
his servant dressed him every morning, he was lifted into his carriage
and out of it, and he certainly lived the life of an invalid, such as
I should not consent to own to at seventy-six. He made no secret that
he cared more for the son of his son who was the heir, and was to
perpetuate the name of von Basedow, than for the son of his daughter.
He was very fond of driving and of shooting, and he frequently took my
cousin out shooting with him. When my cousin came home with a hare he
had shot, I confess I was sometimes jealous, but I was soon cured of
my wish to go with my grandfather into the forest. Once when I was
with him in his little carriage, my grandfather, not being able to see
well, had the misfortune to kill a doe which had come out with her two
little ones. The misery of the mother and afterwards of her two young
ones, was heart-rending, and from that day on I made up my mind never
to go out shooting, and never to kill an animal. And I have kept my
word, th