Rugged Hulsen, this very season, who commands in Freyberg Country, alleviates the poor village of Hainichen from certain official inflictions, and bids the poor people say "It is because Gellert was born among you!" Plainly the Trismegistus of mankind at that date:--who is now, as usual, become a surprising Trismegistus to the new generations! He had written certain thin Books, all of a thin languid nature; but rational, clear; especially a Book of FABLES IN VERSE, which are watery, but not wholly water, and have still a languid flavor in them for readers.

His Book on LETTER-WRITING was of use to the rising generation, in its time.

Clearly an amiable, ingenious, correct, altogether good man; of pious mind,--and, what was more, of strictly orthodox, according to the then Saxon standard in the best circles.

This was the figure of his Life for the last fifteen years of it; and he was now about the middle of that culminating period.

A modest, despondent kind of man, given to indigestions, dietetics, hypochondria: "of neat figure and dress; nose hooked, but not too much; eyes mournfully blue and beautiful, fine open brow;"-- a fine countenance, and fine soul of its sort, poor Gellert: "punctual like the church-clock at divine service, in all weathers." [Jordens, _Lexikon Deutscher Dichter und Prosaisten_ (Leipzig, 1807), ii.