First English translation of a small masterpiece of the German Enlightenment. This interesting but neglected eighteenth-century novel, by von Lo?n - a successful merchant and a great-uncle of Goethe - comes at the end of the tradition in which members of upper-class society narrate their life-stories; the author uses the device to show the education of a prince to bring about a paragon of nobility. As a whole, it provides a revealing mirror...