The reason why I came home without completing the tour of Europe was that my worthy father died insolvent. The little severalty which I had from my grandfather Winston, was in that most unmanageable of realties, which Randolph of Roanoke used to describe as the designation of a Virginian estate—“plenty of woolly-heads, plenty of gullies, but ne’er a shilling of coin.” I managed, however, by favor of a young friend, an attachÉ of the Marshall and Pinckney legation at Paris, to go freely into the Low Countries, and as far up the Rhine as Heidelberg and the Schwarzenwald.

At the borders of Holland and Germany I lingered awhile, in the flat country near the Lippe, in the house of a licentiate in physic, who was about to emigrate to Philadelphia, and who was eager to learn English. In my turn I took some lessons in German. Pfeiffers was a smoker, and so was I. He was a violinist, and I played the flute. He loved to read aloud, and I loved to loll and listen, among the lindens of a low-lying but verdant village on the Rhine.

The book which engaged him just then, was a publication of Goethe’s, translated from Diderot, entitled Rameau’s Nephew. I mean Rameau the great musical composer. The original French I could never alight on; but the version was irresistibly comic, as I find on reperusal many years since. Diderot used to frequent the CafÉ de la RÉgence, then as now, the resort of chess-players. There he found LÉgal, Philidor, and Mayot. And there he encountered the Nephew aforesaid, an odd mixture of pride and meanness, a man of drunken eloquence, venomous sarcasm, and music-mad enthusiasm.