Hegel found time during two years in Heidelberg to write a part of his "Encylopædia of Philosophical Science," a great work, which obtained for the author a chair at the University of Berlin, where he lectured for about thirteen years. He died of cholera, in 1831, at the age of sixty-one.
Another illustrious man of Heidelberg was the poet Viktor Von Scheffel, to whose memory a monument stands in the terrace of the castle.
The castle and the university are the two historic buildings in Heidelberg that attract the traveller. One does not easily tire of the view from the hill three hundred feet above the ruins of the castle, nor of the beauties of the environs, and the banks of the Neckar.
The city is made cheerful by its law and medical students, who drink their lager beer with gusto, sing their staves, and keep up the old university traditions and customs. There are bright clean streets, and many shops that prosper through the college and the host of summer visitors.
Two fine bridges span the Neckar. The older bridge was constructed in 1788, and the new bridge was built about a hundred years later. It connects Heidelberg with Neuenheim.
The old town is curiously elongated, stretching along the riverside. Modern suburbs are extending to-day, to provide for a population numbering about forty thousand.
Unfortunately, very little of old Heidelberg has survived the devastation of wars and conflagrations. Even the churches were despoiled of their monuments by the French soldiery, and scarcely one of the ancient houses remains as a memorial of the Middle Ages.
Climb the hill of Anlagen, and you will reach the church associated with Jerome of Prague, the contemporary of Huss. To the door of this church Jerome affixed his heretical affirmations, and in the graveyard he preached to a vast crowd.
Olympia Morata is buried here. This beautiful and cultured Italian woman was a second Hypatia, who, however, escaped the too common fate of innovating philosophers. She married a German doctor, after a flight from her native land, and lived in Heidelberg, where her lectures were attended by the learned of the town.
Few towns in Europe have preserved so much of the spirit of the Middle Ages as Nuremberg. Its history is pregnant with romance, and its annals of mediæval art are of marked interest. Amsterdam recalls Rembrandt; Antwerp calls to mind Rubens, and with the town of Nuremberg, the student of painting associates its illustrious native, Albert Durer.