They Smoke And Study

Victor Jacquemont, a very hig-hly cultivated .Frenchman, wrote as follows: "Being astonished at the prodigious variety and extent of the knowledge possessed by the Gennans, I begged one oí my friends, Saxon by birth, and one of the foremost geologists in Europe, to teil me how his countrymen managed to lmow so many things. II ere is his answer, nearly in his own words: 'A German (except myself , who am the idlest of men) gets up early summer and winter at about five o'clock. He works four hours before breakfast, sometimes smoking all the time, which does not interfere with his application. His 'breakfast lasts half an hour, and he remains afterward another half hour, talking with his wife and playing with his children. He returns to his work for six hours, smokes an hour after dinner, playing again with the children; and before he goes to bed he works four hours more. He begins again every day and never goes out. This is how it comes to pass that Oersted, the greatest natural philosopher in Germany, is at the same time the greatest physician; this is how Kant, the metaphysieian, "was one of the most learned astronomers in Europe; and how Goethe, the "ñist and most fertile author in Germany in almost all kinds of literature, is an excellent botanist, mineralogist and natural philosopher.'"