conscious of the presence of death. After a time these fearful symptoms were allayed, and he was removed from his bed into the armchair, which stood at his bedside. There, toward evening, he was once more restored to perfect calmness, and spoke with clearness and interest of ordinary matters; especially pleased he was to hear that his appeal for a young artist, a protégé, had been successful; and with a trembling hand, he signed an official paper which secured a pension to another artist, a young Weimar lady, for whom he had interested himself.

On the following day, the approach of death was evident. The painful symptoms were gone. But his senses began to fail him, and he had moments of unconsciousness. He sat quiet in the chair, spoke kindly to those around him, and made his servant bring Salvandy's "Seize Mois, ou la Révolution et les Révolutionnaires," which he had been reading when he fell ill; but after turning over the leaves, he laid it down, feeling himself too ill to read. He bade them bring him the list of all the persons who had called to inquire after his health, and remarked that such evidence of sympathy must not be forgotten when he recovered. He sent every one to bed that night, except his copyist. He would not even allow his old servant to sit up with him, but insisted on his lying down to get the rest so much needed.

The following morning-it was the 22d March, 1832 he tried to walk a little up and down the room, but, after a turn, he found himself too feeble to continue. Reseating himself in the easy chair, he chatted cheerfully with Ottilie on the approaching Spring, which would be sure to restore him. He had no idea of his end being so near.

She

The name of Ottilie was frequent on his lips. sat beside him, holding his hand in both of hers. It was now observed that his thoughts began to wander

incoherently. "See," he exclaimed, "the lovely woman's head with black curls in splendid colours - a dark background!" Presently he saw a piece of paper on the floor, and asked them how they could leave Schiller's letters so carelessly lying about. Then he slept softly, and on awakening, asked for the sketches he had just seen. These were the sketches seen in a

dream.

In silent anguish the close now so surely approaching was awaited. His speech was becoming less and

less distinct. The last words audible were: More light! The final darkness grew apace, and he whose eternal longings had been for more Light, gave a parting cry for it, as he was passing under the shadow of death.

He continued to express himself by signs, drawing letters with his forefinger in the air, while he had strength, and finally, as life ebbed, drawing figures slowly on the shawl which covered his legs. At halfpast twelve he composed himself in the corner of the chair. The watcher placed a finger on her lip to intimate that he was asleep. If sleep it was, it was a sleep in which a great life glided from the world.

Appendix

GOETHE EXPLODED.1

(From the Pall Mall Gazette, October 4, 1869.)

IT is enough to sicken the soul and turn one's hair gray to see the frantic efforts of our time, not so much to "investigate" as to "find out." We have no objection to the exegete and the scholiast of the period. He is a worthy and useful member of society. His remarks may not be very brilliant, his mind may be none of the largest, but he plods away over his author, young or old, good or bad, and produces in due time his honestly begotten tome. But what we do abominate is that morbid hankering to startle the world with some revelation or other about the productions of some of the proudest and greatest of its men, to "show up," to "explode" them, to prove that their noblest efforts, the things for which we honour their memories, belong in fact to the genius of some obscure, deluded woman. Poor thing! Our great man not only robbed her of her affections, but of her work, her glory, her wages. And she knows it; and though he be long dead, she is silent-like a woman. But justice slumbers not. Mrs. A., in time, makes the acquaintance of a young and aspiring writer, and one day they walk in the garden; the clouds are gathering in the west; if they are Germans they say “Du" to each other (though she may be as old as his greatgrandmother); and he quotes poetry, and she listens

1 See page 347.

strangely. And of a sudden he looks at her fixedly, and, seized with a sudden prophetic inspiration, says, "Thou art the poet: this song, supposed to be (say) Goethe's, it is thine! it is thine!" And she, blushing, looks as if there were a struggle in her breast; she looks as if she wanted to say something, and at last she does say something. Yes, I did write this little song, but pray don't tell anybody. I wrote many another thing too which he afterward called his. But pray don't tell anybody." Proof she has none. Yes, she has a handkerchief of that larcenous poet's, and certain letters, and an embossed wax picture, and, oh! many more relics. And the young littérateur forthwith sits down and indites a "sensational," or, rather, a "sentimental," and sends it to press. And while he is busy with the proof-sheet his friends speak in little paragraphs of the tremendous Goethe discovery that has been made by Herr Hermann Grimm.

We have blurted out the story. Yes, Hermann Grimm, under the modest signature of H. G., has given a Goethe revelation to the world, and he has come by it pretty much in the way above described. It is to be found in full in a recent number of the Preussische Jahrbücher. Goethe, according to him, has misappropriated a woman's poems in the "West-östlicher Divan." We confess we would fain have silenced this affair to death stillgeschwiegen, as the Germans have most wisely attempted-if to do so were in our power. What to us is most painful about it is the fact that a writer of Grimm's standing should so far have yielded to an impulse of righteousness, let us call it, as to overlook the absurd position he was preparing for himself. The worst part, however, is this; that, being without the faintest trace of proof for the assertion he brings forward, he actually dares to hint that Goethe must have stolen a great deal more than Hermann Grimm has heard of.