Upon the whole, Müller, in Göttingen, exerted the deepest and most lasting influence over him. Thus while, in Leipsic, he had still hesitated whether he should devote himself to the grammatical or the archaeological division of philology, he here decided in favor of the latter, although without entirely losing sight of the former. No other scholar of that time had such a lofty and far-reaching apprehension of archaeology as Otfried Müller, and hence we see Lepsius allow himself to be locked in daily for hours, in order to trace on transparent paper the copper-plates from all the works which had at that time appeared on the architecture and plastic art of the ancients. He wished to make their forms his own, and to retain them in his possession, even if in the unsatisfactory shape of copies. The architectural pictures thus traced he afterwards copied at home.
All that Müller had to offer the students, whether in the lecture-room, in the seminary, or by personal intercourse, was received by Lepsius with enthusiasm, and at the close of the term, he wrote to his father: “To-morrow Müller will finish the historical portion of his archaeology, and thus once more lies fully extended before my vision a new branch of science, which, if any so deserves, should be called the very flower of science. It is fostered, too, with such unusual care as none other receives, and rejoices in such noble foundations as the Institute for Archaeological Correspondence, which, for two years, has been under the patronage of our Crown Prince (afterwards Frederick William IV.). The Central Board of Directors are in Rome, and thence it extends over the whole of northern Europe, with the co-operation of almost all eminent scholars and experts. Its results in the various departments of science are recorded in several languages, and within a few weeks are spread abroad from Syracuse to Belt, from Paris to Petersburg. So that any one should indeed be accounted fortunate who is in a position to obtain even a superficial comprehension of the whole of this immeasurable field, whose boundaries cannot even be discerned, if we have regard only to the material yet to be obtained. For even such comprehension will furnish the means for a more thorough understanding and farther progress.”
To secure these very means, he continued to work hard under O. Müller’s direction. Yet he could not, at that time, foresee that he himself was destined, first to enter into close connection with that Archaeological Institute at Rome of which he writes to his father, and finally to be chosen one of its directors.
In Göttingen also he was a welcome guest in some of the best professors’ families, and his refined and reticent nature led him, as he wrote to his father, to prefer social intercourse in pleasant families, and profitable communion with one or two friends, even to the assemblies of the Philological Society, where he took little pleasure in the rough comradeship and the enforced intimacy with many a young fellow with whom he had really little in common.
Whenever a superior artistic performance was produced, he know how to profit by it here, as he had done before during his stay in Berlin. When Paganini came to Göttingen, he and Schweckendieck took a seat together (it cost a thaler and a half), and he went to the second half of the concert after his friend had enjoyed the first. “It would be useless,” he writes, “to try to describe in any way Paganini’s playing. One can only comprehend the nature and method of such playing while he is actually playing; afterwards one loses sight of nearly every measuring scale that could be applied to it, in order to retain it in the imagination.”
His interest in politics had also been excited by the revolution of July, and in order to follow political events and changes, he subscribed, at that time, to the Hamburg Correspondent. He prudently keeps out of the way of the Brunswicker Silberschmidt, who was involved in “seditious intrigues,” when he meets him again in Göttingen, and mentions that by his fellow-students, who almost universally called themselves “Republicans,” he was accounted a Conservative and aristocrat, on account of his well-known monarchial tendencies.
During a pedestrian tour in the long vacation of 1830, which took him into the Hartz, to Hanover, etc., he was to become witness of an historical incident, and soon afterwards, at Göttingen, to be an onlooker at a revolution.
Unfortunately, the limits of this biography forbid our giving in full the letters addressed to his father by the active young wanderer through the Hartz, so susceptible to all that was beautiful or remarkable. We can only mention here his experiences in and around Brunswick. He had been invited thither by Gravenhorst, his fellow-student at Göttingen, whose parents were to be his hosts. His travelling-companions separated from him at Blankenburg, and he had still nine post-miles to travel alone. “As I walked on the ‘Faust’ which I had brought with me luckily occurred to me, and for the rest of the way I occupied myself with learning some of the scenes by heart, which shortened the road wonderfully. Meanwhile the Brocken was brewing behind me, soon the whole range was enveloped in thick mist, and thick rain clouds gathered, which were driven towards me by a violent wind. It was indeed a splendid sight as the storm came on, but it inspired me with no very pleasant anticipations of the time when it should reach me, and now I regularly began to run a race with the rain, which came more from one side; twice it actually caught me, another time I could only escape it by hard running. So it happened that I got over four post-miles in four hours without once stopping, and I should soon have finished the fifth when a postilion called to me to ask whether I would not like to ride back with him to Brunswick in an hour.” The young traveller accepted the offer, and sat down in the inn to wait for the conveyance. “While I,” he writes, “sat with a glass of beer at the big oaken table, knapsack and stick beside me, reading this poem of all poems (Faust), this poem which unites the heights and depths of human life, conceived and represented by such a genius, one by one there assembled at this and a neighboring table some wagoners, a tipsy shopkeeper, and some mechanics, who entertained themselves after their own fashion, talked politics, railed, and so formed an incomparable foreground to some of the scenes in Faust. The events at Brunswick particularly were represented and criticized in the most glaring and original colors; in short, my Faust played upon a stage such as could scarcely be found again.”
After this prelude, he was himself to take part, at Brunswick, in the conclusion of the tragic-comic revolutionary drama which occurred there. The father of his friend, Gravenhorst, was chief of police, and in the hospitable house of this man, who had been concerned as an active participant in all the phases of the expulsion and reinstatement of the Duke, Lepsius had a good opportunity to obtain an authentic account of all that had happened.
“Naturally,” writes the young traveller, “the conversation fell chiefly on present events, which, however, interested me none the less, because I had long been well acquainted with them, and was now here on the very spot, besides being in the house of the chief of police, where we received each of the fresh reports, which crowded in every hour, at first hand and in the most trustworthy manner. No excess had occurred beyond the burning of the castle (at the expulsion of the Duke Charles in 1830), ... but all the lamps had been smashed and several of the windows. I will copy for you some of the lampoons, of which Gravenhorst has fifty or sixty, as they all have to be handed in here. You may see from them the universal feeling against ‘Charley,’ as he is called, the former Duke. The rage against him was, and still is, indescribable, but it is completely justified against such a scum of all humanity. Fortunately (and a sign, too, that the burning of the castle did not proceed from the mob, which is notorious here), there was rescued from the fire one chest alone, with private papers and books, amongst which the black and the blue book are especially noticeable. In one are recorded all the officials, and beside the names are remarks by the Duke in his own handwriting, such as ‘dog,’ ‘blockhead,’ ‘must be worried to death,’ ‘he shall be invited, allow to stand for three hours in the ante-chamber, and then told it was a mistake,’ ‘he is to be provoked to a duel until he sends a challenge, then dismissed,[2] etc.’ Beside all the police officials stood three crosses, beside Gravenhorst and his brother-in-law, Langerfeldt, four. Gravenhorst’s successor had also already been decided on. In the other book was the record of the secret police, and an autograph essay on the best mode of tyrannizing, in which there are the most abominable things, such as one would not credit if the majority of the maxims had not been already carried out in detail. I could repeat a hundred anecdotes of him which are all notorious here, but are not known abroad; they all show that the Duke, in his miserable, tyrannical life, was not only a man devoid of all heart, but also actually without common-sense. By this you may measure the fury with which all the inhabitants of Brunswick were filled when it came at last to acts of violence, and the rejoicing with which William,[3] the brother of the banished Charles, and the last scion of the house, is received here.”