ppears to have been a person
of great probity and meekness of temper, sincerely desirous to approve
himself a useful member of society, and to do his duty conscientiously
to all men. The seeds of many valuable qualities had been sown in him
by nature; and though his early life had been unfavourable for their
cultivation, he at a late period laboured, not without success, to
remedy this disadvantage. Such branches of science and philosophy as
lay within his reach, he studied with diligence, whenever his
professional employments left him leisure; on a subject connected with
the latter he became an author.[2] But what chiefly distinguished him
was the practice of a sincere piety, which seems to have diffused
itself over all his feelings, and given to his clear and honest
character that calm elevation which, in such a case, is its natural
result. As his religion mingled itself with every motive and action of
his life, the wish which in all his wanderings lay nearest his heart,
the wish for the education of his son, was likely to be deeply
tinctured with it. There is yet preserved, in his handwriting, a
prayer composed in advanced age, wherein he mentions how, at the
child's birth, he had entreated the great Father of all, "to supply in
strength of spirit what must needs be wanting in outward instruction."
The gray-haired man, who had lived to see the maturity of his boy,
could now express his solemn thankfulness, that "God had heard the
prayer of a mortal."

[Footnote 1: She was of humble descent and little education,
the daughter of a baker in Kodweis.]

[Footnote 2: His book is entitled _Die Baumzucht im Grossen_
(the Cultivation of Trees on the Grand Scale): it came to a
second edition in 1806.]

Friedrich followed the movements of his parents for some time; and had
to gather the elements of learning from various masters. Perhaps it
was in part owing to this circumstance, that his progress, though
respectable, or more, was so little commensurate with what he
afterwards became, or with the capacities of which even his earliest
years gave symptoms. Thoughtless and gay, as a boy is wont to be, he
would now and then dissipate his time in childish sports, forgetful
that the stolen charms of ball and leapfrog must be dearly bought by
reproaches: but occasionally he was overtaken with feelings of deeper
import, and used to express the agitations of his little mind in words
and actions, which were first r