Page:Hans Christian Ørsted - The Soul in Nature - Horner - 1852.djvu/12

the two brothers. He was several years their junior, and formed a most decided contrast in character by his eager excitability, and the exulting pride of youth. This friendship of the youthful trefoil was maintained in undiminished intensity and freshness to the very last, when the two brothers, who from early youth had most intimately and actively participated in the brilliant development of the celebrated poet, accompanied him to his last home. But it was the youthful days of those three young men which presented an amount of talent and mutual emulation, and one common onward striving, such as is rarely to be met with in history. It is well known, and it may be considered as a favourable circumstance, that the period of their youth happened during the greatest mental fermentation which has been exhibited in modern times. A new era of politics commenced in France, and of philosophy and poetry in Germany; mental life was everywhere in action. Steffens returned to Denmark from Germany with a complete series of intellectual lectures, and stood forth as the proclaimer of the new philosophical and poetic Gospels, and the minds of the three young Danes rapidly and powerfully matured under the universal European spring sun. Hans Christian Oersted, ex-officio a physician, but by inclination a natural philosopher, became attached to the new æsthetic tendency, which especially prevailed in the north, and in 1797 he gained the University prize (a gold medal) by a reply to the æsthetic prize question, "On the limits of Poetry and Prose." About the same time he passed his pharmaceutical examination, and in the following year he gained another prize, by a medical prize essay. In 1799 he wrote a dissertation for his doctor's degree on "the Architectonicks of Natutal Metaphysics," and by it proved that not alone had he investigated with clearness and originality the actual matter of his own particular sciences, physics and chemistry; but that he had