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corum proper to such occasions which we hope the perfect Carlotta did not share. Her real portrait, however, is interesting. It is taken full-face, with the hair turned up over cushions. The eyes are sleepy, and rather Japanese in shape; the upper lip rather long, but delicately cut; and the whole face is sweet and refined in expression, but not heroic. Of "Lili" there is a portrait profile, which looks as if it might have been like. It is a pretty mignonne head, on a long, slender throat. There is a little pertness perhaps in the nez retroussé and the pose of the head, but it is bird-like and delicate, and, like Carlotta, refined, though not heroic. Both these and also Fredericka, from the description we hear of her, must have been "scharmante mädchen." Of the Frau von Stein, unfortunately, no real portrait was exhibited, only an engraving from a picture of the theatricals at the court of Weimar in which Goethe acted, and where Frau von Stein is represented holding out, with a gushing enthusiasm, a wreath of laurels toward him. Both are palpably conventional portraits. Schiller says, writing to his friend Körner about the Frau von Stein : Beautiful she can never have been, but her countenance has a soft earnestness, and a quite peculiar openness." Schiller may have taken a somewhat solemn view of the necessary requisitions for beauty, but it is evident from all the descriptions and from her portrait that the Frau von Stein possessed no beauty which, in itself, was overpowering; that she, together with Fredericka, Lili, and Carlotta, possessed a charm which fascinated Goethe independently of regularity of feature. Unfortunately there was no picture of Christiana, nor of the later loves, and, other visitors arriving, we were left at peace and required to look at nothing more, but to wander about the rooms and let them impress us with thoughts of Goethe. Surrounded by the walls of the house where he was born, and where he lived before he was a great intellectual power, surrounded by these portraits of himself and those who specially cared for him and whom he thought he cared for, by the evidences of the enthusiasm he still creates in the minds of his countrymen and women, and haunted by that interesting book, "Goethe's Life," written by our

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own countryman, who, since the last Goethe birthday, has passed away, we feel more vividly the impression of what Goethe was as a man than what he was an author. A German near us exclaims enthusiastically, 'Wie ein Apollo !" as he looks at Goethe's portrait, and we smile-we do not quite know why, but feel there is something comical in the comparison. An Apollo with a double chin, and with strong materialistic indications about the lines of the mouth!

A very German Apollo, in fact, was Goethe, very handsome, doubtless, but an Apollo whose sentiments were governed by his reason, and what he considered was due to his self-culture and development; whose romances were more or less play, to be begun and ended according as he willed them to begin or end, but whose lasting liaison, ending in marriage, sprang from feelings of the earth, earthy; an Apollo who could so little understand the vagaries of a jealous woman, the vagaries of a temperament that was not entirely governed by reason, that when Frau von Stein would not behave herself amiably when she felt herself replaced in his warmest affections by Christiana, he writes quite solemnly, and with no idea of insulting her, that he fears she has gone back to the bad habit of drinking too much coffee, which she had left off from love of him. Is it possible that a man should be so great a poet and have so little sense of humor, so little imagination of one kind? We feel it was possible, and only possible, because Goethe was a German, and of all Germans, the most typically German. We are constantly hearing and saying that Germans are so sentimental. Their sentimentality is obvious, at times obtrusive, but it is, nevertheless, we think, quite outside the strongest side of their nature. Perhaps it is because they are really thoroughgoing materialists that their ideal is to be romantic. On the same principle that we see those who lead the hardest intellectual lives turning to the simplest games for recreation, so the most reasonable, the most exact minds, will enjoy the most romantic games of sentiment as play. As we look at the relics of Goethe's games in this line, at the little silk jacket preserved under the glass case, because the heart over which

age,

it was worn beat so warmly for one who,
though he excited the warmth, could
leave her when, as he himself says, it al-
most cost her her life-when we think of
this fresh, budding life that was spoiled by
the "
greatest intellectual power of our
we cannot help rather despising,
and certainly hating, the self-culture and
pomposities which were so baneful to her
interests. Particularly are we provoked
when we read how comfortable Goethe
felt about it after revisiting her, and re-
alizing how he had spoiled her life. He
describes his visit and his contentment in
a letter to the same lady to whom he
afterward attributes an excess in coffee-
drinking as the explanation of her annoy-
ance at the game with her being over.
He says: "On the 25th I rode toward
Sesenheim, and there found the family
as I had left it eight years ago.
I was
welcomed in the most friendly manner.
The second daughter loved me in those
days better than I deserved, and more
than others to whom I had given so much
passion and faith. I was forced to leave
her at a moment when it nearly cost her
her life; she passed lightly over that
episode, to tell me what traces still re-
mained of the old illness, and behaved
with such exquisite delicacy and gener-
osity from the moment that I stood be-
fore her unexpected on the threshold,
that I felt quite relieved. I must do her
the justice to say that she made not the
slightest attempt to rekindle in my
bosom the embers of love.

stayed the night there, and departed at
dawn, leaving behind me friendly faces;
so that I can now think once more of this
corner of the world with comfort, and
know that they are at peace with me."
Lili' we have naturally less compas-
sion for. Besides being a coquette, she
was a smarter, more prosperous young
lady. Moreover, she married, and the
closing scene with Goethe was over her
baby, as he describes in another letter
to Frau von Stein : "In the afternoon
I called on Lili, and found the lovely
grasaffen with a baby of seven weeks old,
her mother standing by. There also I
was received with admiration and pleas-
ure. I made many inquiries, and to my
great delight found the good creature
happily married.
Her husband, from
what I could learn, seems a worthy, sen-
sible fellow, rich, well placed in the

world; in short, she has every thing she needs. Supped with Lili, and went away in the moonlight. The sweet emotions which accompanied me I cannot describe." The story of "Lili," whom, in his autobiography, he says he loved more than any other woman- she was the first, and I can also add she is the last, I truly loved "-shows more than any other what he meant by loving. The moment the obstacles preventing his marriage with Lili were removed, from that moment he dreaded it! Why? Because he was perfectly true and real, he had far too great a mind to stand being bored by pretences, and knowing where the reality of his feelings stopped, he would not involve his life by any action which would have entailed an unwise strain upon his affections, which strain would have led to unhappiness to others, as well as to himself. He was right so far, and he was wise, but in this side of his nature he was small. Charming girls made vivid impressions on his very impressionable nature, but he always knew that his heart of hearts, the part of human nature which makes action imperative, was free. He was more in love with the feeling of being in love than with the objects that inspired the feeling. Possibly, according to his lights, he was not selfish, though his love episodes lead so much to this conclusion. At all events, his apparent selfishness in action was not an end in itself-it was the means toward an end he conscientiously thought desirable for others, as well as for himself. He was comfort-loving for others, as well as for himself. In one period of his life we find him trying daily to spend less upon himself, that he may have more to give to others. Early in life we find him enjoying Spinoza with supreme satisfaction, and saying, "But what especially riveted me to him was the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth in every sentence. That wonderful sentiment, 'He who truly loves God must not require God to love him in return, filled my mind. To be disinterested in every thing, but most of all in love and friendship, was my highest desire, my maxim, my practice, so that that saucy speech of Philena's, If I love thee, what is that to thee?' was spoken right out of my heart." We find him in later years generously grateful, disinterested, and

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gently tolerant in his conduct toward Christiana. These cannot have been the feelings nor the actions of a mere egotist. As an artist, the picture of his life is a brilliant picture. There is a sustained power, an elasticity, an ever-spontaneous growth to the end, which made him virtually a younger man at eighty than most men are at forty, but there is a want in the picture-the want there is in the picture of the German nation. Nature seems to have said to Goethe, "I have given you so much, and such a faculty for self-development and self-government, you must now manage yourself. I cannot, in fairness to the rest of the world, help you any more.

And nature did not give him the faculty of worshipping any man or woman, or any thing outside himself, with his whole strength; and without this faculty of worshipping, lives must always be incomplete, must always miss the highest greatness.. Goethe's mind was a grand, firstrate machine; the powers that put it into motion proceeded from the heart and brain, but very little soul went to the propelling of it. His own intellectual light was his hero, and what of clinching completeness is wanting in his actions and feelings was caused, we think, by the want of a light recognized as above himself toward which his soul could yearn. There were no ghosts about his life; there are no ghosts about the lives of the many Germans he has educated, and who are almost too reasonable to need a religion. And Goethe was too reasonable really to love. Mr. Lewes says: "He knew little of the exquisite companionship of two souls striving in emulous spirit of loving rivalry to be

come better, to become wiser, teaching each other to soar. He knew little of this; and the kiss he feared to press upon the loving lips of Fredericka-the life of sympathy he refused to share with herare wanting to the greatness of his works," and, we may add, to the greatness of his life.

But we cannot leave his old home with his shortcomings uppermost. Though his nature was incomplete on one side, it was never capable of any thing small, ignoble, or petty. When he loved and rode away," he was as kind and considerate, barring the riding away, as when he was delighting in the presence of those who fascinated him. This kindness, it is true, may have been enhanced by the gratitude he felt toward those who had afforded him situations for his poems and dramas, as an artist will feel grateful to the beauty that has given him the inspiration for his picture. Still, gratitude is. always something. We must conclude by a sentence from Mr. Lewes, which has. in it the characteristics of this kind of thoughtfulness, and also of the material-ism of the German Apollo: "The heart of the Frau von Stein had no memory but for its wounds. She spoke with petty malice of the low person who had usurped her place, rejected Goethe's friendship, affected to pity him, and circulated gossip about his beloved. They were forced to meet, but they met no longer as before. To the last, he thought and spoke of her tenderly, and I know, on unexceptionable authority, that when there was any thing appetizing brought to table, which he thought would please her, he often said, 'Send some of this to the Frau von Stein.'"-The Spectator.

TEACHING GRANDMOTHER.

BY ALFRED AUSTIN.

GRANDMOTHER dear, you do not know; you have lived the old-world life,
Under the twittering eaves of home, sheltered from storm and strife;
Rocking cradles, and covering jams, knitting socks for baby feet,
Or piecing together lavender bags for keeping the linen sweet :

Daughter, wife, and mother in turn, and each with a blameless breast,
Then saying your prayers when the nightfall came, and quietly dropping to rest..
NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXI., No. 2

13

You must not think, Granny, I speak in scorn, for yours have been wellspent days,

And none ever paced with more faithful feet the dutiful ancient ways.
Grandfather's gone, but while he lived you clung to him close and true,
And mother's heart, like her eyes, I know, came to her straight from you.
If the good old times, at the good old pace, in the good old grooves would run,
One could not do better, I'm sure of that, than do as you all have done.

But the world has wondrously changed, Granny, since the days when you were young;

It thinks quite different thoughts from then, and speaks with a different tongue. The fences are broken, the cords are snapped, that tethered man's heart to home; He ranges free as the wind or the wave, and changes his shore like the foam. He drives his furrows through fallow seas, he reaps what the breakers sow, And the flash of his iron flail is seen mid the barns of the barren snow.

He has lassoed the lightning and led it home, he has yoked it unto his need,
And made it answer the rein and trudge as straight as the steer or steed.
He has bridled the torrents and made them tame, he has bitted the champing tide,
It toils as his drudge and turns the wheels that spin for his use and pride.
He handles the planets and weighs their dust, he mounts on the comet's car,
And he lifts the veil of the sun, and stares in the eyes of the uttermost star.

'Tis not the same world you knew, Granny; its fetters have fallen off;
The lowliest now may rise and rule where the proud used to sit and scoff.
No need to boast of a scutcheoned stock, claim rights from an ancient wrong;
All are born with a silver spoon in their mouths whose gums are sound and
strong.

And I mean to be rich and great, Granny; I mean it with heart and soul :
At my feet is the ball, I will roll it on, till it spins through the golden goal.

Out on the thought that my copious life should trickle in trivial days,
Myself but a lonelier sort of beast, watching the cattle graze,

Scanning the year's monotonous change, or gaping at wind and rain,
And hanging with meek solicitous eyes on the whims of a creaking vane;
Wretched if ewes drop single lambs, blest so is oilcake cheap,

And growing old in a tedious round of worry, surfeit, and sleep.

You dear old Granny, how sweet your smile, and how soft your silvery hair!
But all has moved on while you sate still in your cap and easy-chair.
The torch of knowledge is lit for all, it flashes from hand to hand;
The alien tongues of the earth converse, and whisper from strand to strand.
The very churches are changed and boast new hymns, new rites, new truth;
Men worship a wiser and greater God than the half-known God of your youth.

What! marry Connie and set up house, and dwell where my fathers dwelt,
Giving the homely feasts they gave, and kneeling where they knelt?
She is pretty, and good, and void I am sure of vanity, greed, or guile;
But she has not travelled nor seen the world, and is lacking in air and style.
Women now are as wise and strong as men, and vie with men in renown;
The wife that will help to build my fame was not bred near a country town.

What a notion! to figure at parish boards, and wrangle o'er cess and rate,
I, who mean to sit for the county yet, and vote on an Empire's fate;
To take the chair at the Farmers' Feasts, and tickle their bumpkin ears,
Who must shake a senate before I die, and waken a people's cheers!
In the olden days was no choice, so sons to the roof of their fathers clave:
But now! 'twere to perish before one's time, and to sleep in a living grave.

I see that you do not understand. How should you? Your memory clings
To the simple music of silenced days and the skirts of vanishing things.
Your fancy wanders round ruined haunts, and dwells upon oft-told tales;
Your eyes discern not the widening dawn, nor your ears catch the rising gales.
But live on, Granny, till I come back, and then perhaps you will own
The dear old Past is an empty nest, and the Present the brood that is flown.

GRANDMOTHER'S TEACHING.

AND so, my dear, you're come back at last? I always fancied you would.
Well, you see the old home of your childhood's days is standing where it stood.
The roses still clamber from porch to roof, the elder is white at the gate,
And over the long smooth gravel path the peacock still struts in state.
On the gabled lodge, as of old, in the sun, the pigeons sit and coo,
And our hearts, my dear, are no whit more changed, but have kept still warm
for you.

You'll find little altered, unless it be me, and that since my last attack;
But so that you only give me time, I can walk to the church and back.
You bade me not die till you returned, and so you see I lived on:
I'm glad that I did now you've really come, but it's almost time I was gone.
I suppose that there isn't room for us all, and the old should depart the first.
That's but as it should be. What is sad, is to bury the dead you've nursed.
Won't you take something at once, my dear? Not even a glass of whey?
The dappled Alderney calved last week, and the baking is fresh to-day.
Have you lost your appetite too in town, or is it you've grown over-nice?
If you'd rather have biscuits and cowslip wine, they'll bring them up in a trice.
But what am I saying? Your coming down has set me all in a maze :
I forgot that you travelled down by train; I was thinking of coaching days.

There, sit you down, and give me your hand, and tell me about it all,
From the day that you left us, keen to go, to the pride that had a fall.
And all went well at the first? So it does, when we're young and puffed with
hope;

But the foot of the hill is quicker reached the easier seems the slope.

And men thronged round you, and women too? Yes, that I can understand. When there's gold in the palm, the greedy world is eager to grasp the hand.

I heard them tell of your smart town house, but I always shook my head.
One doesn't grow rich in a year and a day, in the time of my youth 'twas said.
Men do not reap in the spring, my dear, nor are granaries filled in May,
Save it be with the harvest of former years, stored up for a rainy day.
The seasons will keep their own true time, you can hurry nor furrow nor sod·
It's honest labor and steadfast thrift that alone are blest by God.

You say you were honest. I trust you were, nor do I judge you, my dear :
I have old-fashioned ways, and it's quite enough to keep one's own con-
science clear.

But still the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," though a simple and ancient rule,

Was not made for complex cunning to balk, nor for any new age to befool; And if my growing rich unto others brought but penury, chill, and grief,

I should feel, though I never had filched with my hands, I was only a craftier

thief.

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