Friedrich You Hardenberg, baron, better known under his nom de plume of Novalis, a German author, born at his family estate of Wiederstedt, Saxony, May 2, 1772, died there, March 25, 1801. He was educated at the gymnasium of Eisleben, and at the universities of Jena, Leipsic, and Wittenberg. He studied philosophy and jurisprudence, and prepared himself for the practice of the law, but accepted an appointment as auditor in the salt works of Weissenfels, of which his father was director. His delicate and sensitive mind received a fatal shock from the death in 1797 of a young lady, Sophie von Kuhn, with whom he was in love. The moral beauty of his life, the spiritual penetration and suggestiveness of some of his writings, and his enthusiastic love for the chivalric periods of Christianity and history, made him the idol of his friends; and although his works are but few and fragmentary, he holds a position in German literature as one of the chief representatives of the romantic school. A full collection of his writings was prepared by Friedrich von Schlegel and Tieck, with a biography by Tieck, and published in Berlin in 1802 (5th ed., 1838). An English translation of his Heinrich von Ofter-dingen appeared in Cambridge, Mass., in 1842.