held throughout the province, and vacancies filled up; Overberg presiding and controlling all discordant elements by his patient wisdom.

The Gymnasium of Münster was considered by Fürstenberg as the foundation-stone of all the higher-class education. He found this institution entirely in the hands of the Jesuits, and tied up to their formal and conventional system of instruction. The German language was entirely neglected; mathematics and psychology, history and geography, scarcely less so; grammar and rhetoric were taught on vicious principles. Now Fürstenberg had, with all the stirring spirits of his time, imbibed the awakening interest in a national literature and in scientific truth. He put it to the Jesuit authorities of the Gymnasium that they must either adopt new methods of instruction or give up their institution into other hands. As it happened, this was the moment when the Jesuits were tottering to their fall; and the Bull of Pope Clement XIV. issued in July, 1778, soon relieved the minister from any embarrassment that might have been caused by their educational superintendence, besides putting at his disposal large funds for working out his reforming designs. Fürstenberg called the remodelled Gymnasium his "own child"; and the elaborate programme which he drew up for its management, though framed with the concurrent advice of Sprickmann and other competent counsellors, reflected in a notable manner the character and principles of its chief author. At a time when the subject of education was making a considerable stir in the world, and many schools were being founded or reorganised, the Gymnasium of Münster excelled all others in the completeness and sagacity of its constitutional legislation: in fact, it may be considered as the model result of educational effort in Germany in the eighteenth century. Wide as were the minister's aims for all sorts of culture, he made religious training the cardinal point of his system; but it was to be religious training on the basis of conscience and tolerance. He desired that young men should be brought up as "reasonable" Christians; neither as heathenish philosophers nor as superstitious children. He was himself a loyal Catholic; but he tolerated and loved good men of all persuasions, and desired that, in view of the encroaching scepticism of the age, believers in Revelation should be able to render an intelligent reason of the faith that was in them. In his affectionate and earnest exhortation to make the sense of religious responsibility and the feeling of love to God the incentives to all moral and intellectual effort, we are reminded forcibly of the spirit and example of our great English pedagogue.

Another of his achievements in the cause of education was the reorganisation of the Münster University. The idea of extending this institution-hitherto devoted, under Jesuit management, to the faculties of Theology and Philosophy only-so as to make it a comprehensive University on the most liberal modern principles, Fürstenberg was not the first to entertain. The warlike Von Galen had cherished some such scheme. Fürstenberg looked about for means wherewith to proceed, and found them in the confiscation, by Electoral decree, of the property of the useless nunnery attached to the Ueberwasser Church.

The University on its

new plan was opened in the year 1780. Fürstenberg continued to be its "Curator" till the year 1805, when he laid down his office on account of his advanced age. The University then underwent new modifications under Prussian rule, to meet the altered requirements of the times. With the mention of the Seminary for priests which he also instituted in Münster on improved principles, we close the catalogue of Fürstenberg's principal achievements in the cause of education. He was himself not merely a legislator from outside. He loved learning for its own sake. He was an adept in mathematics and in military science, a skilled Latinist, a lover of history, and a sagacious inquirer into its phenomena. He loved to attend the classes in the Gymnasium, examining the answers and exercises of the students, suggesting themes, dispensing praise or blame. Amusing stories used to be told of the good minister's absorption in the prevailing interest of the moment. Sometimes he would take the book from the teacher's hand, and give the lesson himself; and perhaps enlarge upon it with such entire forgetfulness of anything but the subject itself, that he would commend the progress of the class when it was over, while really no voice had been heard but his own! If he happened to be present during the delivery of the religious lesson, he would often feel and speak so earnestly that his hearers were moved to tears.

The great disappointment of Fürstenberg's life, and the cause of indignation to his friends, was his failure to get appointed coadjutor, and therefore effectively successor, to the Prince Bishop Maximilian Friedrich in 1780. The superior interest of the House of Austria carried the election in favour of the Hapsburg Archduke, Maximilian Francis. But the new ruler was virtuous and enlightened, and appreciated Fürstenberg's rare merits and capacities; and the late Prime Minister, though he could no longer hold the post which the indolence and infirmities of Maximilian Friedrich had made one of almost absolute power in his hands, was too magnanimous to retire in disgust from the affairs of the diocese. The office of Vicar-General was still left him, together with the direction of educational affairs; and for the rest of his working life he devoted himself, only with the more undivided zeal, to that department which had already engaged his keenest interest. In conjunction with Overberg, he spared no pains to energise and improve the schools and their administration; and he would often make journeys to other parts of Germany, to extend his experience by varied observation.

In those journeys he was wont to be accompanied by the Princess Galitzin and her cortége. The fast friendship which had sprung up between the "Christian Aspasia" and the Westphalian statesman was by no means influential on one mind only. Fürstenberg, receptive as well as dogmatic, learnt much from the cultivated female disciple of Hemsterhuys, and moreover was brought by her into connection with many thinkers of divergent views and opinions, who would scarcely have crossed his path otherwise. If often abrupt and positive in his intercourse with them, none the less was he loved and reverenced by all who came within

his sphere; and when he finished his long life on September 16, 1810, in his eighty-second year, the regret felt at Münster was deep and general.

And now let us for a brief moment record that pleasant April evening, when, intent on reviving the memories of Amelia von Galitzin, we drove to the village of Angelmodde, situated about three miles to the south-east of the city, first along a solid causeway raised above the flat cultivated land, then through byeways of such encumbering sand that the driver could only get on at a foot's pace. An hour's leisurely procession brought us to the church, an old but unimpressive edifice, on the white stuccoed south wall of which we found the stone monument erected to the Princess by her friend and confessor Overberg. Inquiring at the little hostelry hard by, the farm-house was pointed out to us where she was wont to spend the summer months in her hired apartments; and thither we strolled across a couple of fields. It is an old building, and bears over the back entrance the arms and inscription of the Count de Merveldt, to whom it belonged. The back spaces of the house are occupied by stalled cattle; the front looks out on the little river Werse, with a pleasant garden between, and the meadows along which the Princess and Hemsterhuys used to walk, discussing Platonic problems, and furnishing material for the philosophical "Dialogues," which the sage of the Hague afterwards put into literary form.

During the rest of our short stay in Münster, we were much occupied in identifying the Princess's town residence. We found her memory fresh in the city, but the directions as to her former whereabouts were at first difficult of comprehension. The "frühe Ascheberger Hof" is in one of the least attractive streets of the city-the Grüne Gasse; but the Princess loved to dwell among her poor, one of our informants told us. It is now divided into three dwelling-houses, the central compartment being occupied by one Wolff, a baker. Once it was the residence of a noble Westphalian family, who afterwards migrated to a better spot. At the back lies a spacious garden-ground, now in the hands of a Jesuit establishment, whose modern chapel stands over a part of it. We thought of Hamann, the "Magus of the North," and the nocturnal burial of his remains, in 1788, at which Fürstenberg assisted, and which scandalised the people of Münster, to whom the sentimental mysticism of the Princess was a conundrum.

And we visited the cemetery of the Ueberwasser Kirche, so called, the cemetery which lies outside the Neu Thor, where rest most members of the Münster coterie, excepting the Princess herself-Hamann, removed from the garden of the Ascheberger Hof to a more befitting place, Overberg, Katercamp, Sprickmann, and the great and good minister himself, on whose monument, situated near an exalted crucifix in the centre of the cemetery, we read, "Hier liegt zu den Fassen des Gekreuzigten, seiner und unser aller einziger Hoffnung, der Vater des Vaterlandes und des Armen Freund, Franz Friedrich Wilhelm, Freyherr von Fürstenberg zu Herderingen," &c.

595

Don Quixote.

"IF," said the Curate in that priestly scrutiny of the library of the Cavalier of La Mancha, "I find here Ariosto speaking in any other tongue than his own, I shall treat him with no respect whatever; but if he speaks in his own language, I shall set him on my head."

"I've got him in Italian," quoth the Barber, "but I don't understand him."

"Nor would it be well, my son, that you should," replied his spiritual father; and we ourselves would not have found fault with the Captain if he had never brought him to Spain, and turned him into a Castilian, for he has deprived him of much of his natural excellence by so doing."

How much of his natural excellence Cervantes has been deprived of by his own particular "Captain," the worthy John Stevens, and others who have brought him to England, it would present a tedious problem in addition to determine. He has been treated worse by his exegetists than ever his hero was by those desalmados Yanguéses, and he gained more honour in the huts of the goatherds than he has since in any English harbour. Enlarged, contracted, altered, abridged, adapted, mutilated, or, as the slang goes, "expurgated," this second Theseus or Hercules of a more modern world is turned into a contemptible dwarf or drivelling idiot. Seen through the dark glass of translation, often doubly dark, as the adaptation in English of an adaptation in French, Don Quixote is Don Quixote no more. Perhaps, as Voltaire said of Hudibras, the book is introduisible, and his translators have aimed at the impossible. At any rate, Don Quixote suffered no hardships so cruel as he has undergone at the hands of the majority of those, about whom it is too often a question whether they know less of the Spanish tongue or of their own. He was unconcerned in the memorable sally on the mill-stream; he remained unmoved in sight of the floury faces of those many demon-millers; but would he remain so, could he now see himself in the sentences of Motteux ? He suffered, not for his own fault, but through the envy and deceit of evil magicians, enchantment in that cage where he was mocked by the world, because he came on earth too late, after Astræa, the last of the gentile angels, had left it for heaven; but could all the Magi of Persia, the Brahmans of India, and the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia change him as he has been changed by Jarvis? Cervantes made the book of the soi-disant Avellaneda the diversion of devils in hell. To what purpose would he have devoted the highly original histories of Smollett and of Smirke? In the very newest cloth woven out of that old story of the maimed hero of

Lepanto, idleness or incapacity has left unsightly knots where it has not left less unsightly holes, as in that fabric produced under the auspices of Mr. J. W. Clark, M.A., in which the perhaps inimitable tirade of Altisidora against the unfortunate Cavalier has been, without any defence or explanation, entirely omitted.

"My book," said Cervantes, "is so easy that none can find any difficulty in it; it is thumbed by children, understood by men, and celebrated by the old." Cervantes credited his readers with too much knowledge—even those of his own country and of his own time. How much those of another land and a far later period stand in need of assistance, it will be needless to explain to anyone who has made the "Ingenioso Hidalgo" an object of any study. Many men, more or less able, have offered their aid-the learned Vicente de los Rios, the laborious John Bowle, the ingenious Antonio Pellicer. Take as an example of the careful minuteness of the last his criticism of the title, the second word of the title, "Ingenioso," which, he says, should not be applied to the Hidalgo, but to the book. It is evident; however, from the epigraphs of the second chapter and of the sixteenth, and the conclusion of the second part, that the author intended the term "Ingenioso" to be applied to his hero. "But," says Clemencin, himself an ingenious critic, "Ingenioso' seems scarcely the correct word to apply to a madman, and if it applies to the book, it argues ill of the modesty of the author."

Whether or not "la lengua Castellana es una lengua muerta," as the Spanish writers de la vieille roche affirm, and therefore the proper intelligence of such men as Garcilaso, Cervantes, Calderon be a study like that of the classics, it seems still certain that there are many forms of speech, especially proverbial, occurring in the subject of this article which cannot be understood by the scholar in modern Spanish alone, but for the explanation of which recourse must be had to the assistance of Horozco y Covarruvias; not to mention those words which, like the Asturian "argado," are provincialisms.

Don Juan and the chaste Lady Adeline Amundeville

... studied Spanish

To read Don Quixote in the original

A pleasure before which all others vanish.

But if their studies were attended with any success, which is extremely doubtful, seeing that Venus rather than Saturn was dominator over their desires, and that even almighty love is but of little assistance in learning those irregular verbs, they must have consulted other lexicographers than Baretti, Higgins, and Pineda.

We take a single instance of what has been said concerning translations in the mouth of one or two witnesses :

"Duelos y quebrantos" a phrase occurring at the beginning of the work, by which Cervantes describes his hero's food on Saturdays, means, according to the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy, a composition of eggs and brains, ex ovis cerebrique medullâ frixus orbiculus; but, accord