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The private labors of the retired scholar, however, were not interrujjted during this gloomy period, although he was left destitute of all public encouragement. The Berlin Academy of Science, founded by Leibnitz, led the way to great discoveries in the mathematical and natural sciences. Literary societies and associations were everywhere formed, and the Germans began to m-.ike the purity and elegance of their native tongue an object of attention. Von Haller, Gellert, and others gave energy, elegance and ease to their native language. The old Qallomnnia, which had been for half a century vigorously opposed by sincere poets, and sturdy critics, had become almost extinct. The German genius had already arrogated a dynasty, and found in Klopstock an altar and a throne. He was an enthusiast for his country and his religion. He felt like an honest man and he wrote like a man in earnest. By his sacred songs he raised the German language and poetry to a pitch of loftiness, richness and originality, which it had never attained. "What was begun by Klopstock was continued, with profounder views and on a grander scale, by the illustrious Lessing. Well does Heine exclaim, that " Lessing was the literary Arminius, who freed the German theatre from every foreign domination." All German art was embraced by his vast criticism and his vigorous genius. Like Schiller, he loved to delineate human nature in Its nobler qualities, and sympathize with its graver ends, rather than, like Goethe, to dissect its infirmities; or, like Wieland, to trifle with its interests.