success in France, because there is nothing characteristic in the general effect of the fiction, and it is difficult to comprehend with what view it was conceived: this uncertainty is not a matter for censure in Germany, as the events of this world often furnish only undecided results, people are satisfied to find in romances which pretend to describe them the same contradictions and the same doubts. Goethe's work contains a number of refined sentiments and observations; but it is true that the interest often languishes, and that we find almost as many vacancies in the novel as in the ordinary course of human life. A romance, however, ought not to resemble the memoirs of individuals; for every thing interests in what has really existed, while fiction can only equal the effect of truth by surpassing it, that is, by possessing greater strength, more unity, and more action.

The description of the Baron's garden, and the embellishments made in it by the Baroness, absorbs more than a third part of the whole story, and it does not dispose the reader to be moved by a tragic catastrophe: the death of the hero and heroine seems no more than a fortuitous accident, because the heart is not prepared long beforehand to feel and to partake the pain they suffer. This work affords a singular mixture of a life of convenience with stormy passions; an imagination full of grace and strength draws near to the production of grand effects to let them go all of a sudden, as if it were not worth the pain to produce them; one would say that the author has been injured by his own emotion, and that, by mere cowardice of heart, he lays aside the one half of his talent for fear of making himself suffer in trying to move his readers.

A more important question is, whether such a work is moral, that is, whether the impression derived from it is favorable to the improvement of the soul? The mere events of a fiction have nothing to do with this question; we so well know their dependence on the will of the author, that they can awa ken the conscience of no man: the morality of a novel consists, therefore, in the sentiments it inspires. It cannot be denied that there is in Goethe's book a profound knowledge of the

human heart, but it is a discouraging knowledge; it represents life as at best very indifferent, in whatever manner it passes; when probed to the bottom, sad and mournful, only tolerably agreeable when slightly skimmed over, liable to moral diseases which must be cured if possible, and must kill if they cannot be cured.

The passions exist, the virtues also exist; there are some who assure us that the first must be counteracted by the second; others pretend that this cannot be; see and judge, says the writer who sums up with impartiality the arguments which fate may furnish for and against each method of viewing the subject.

It would be wrong to imagine, however, that this skepticism was inspired by the materialistic tendency of the eighteenth century; the opinions of Goethe are much more profound, but they do not present any greater consolation to the soul. His writings offer to us a contemptuous philosophy, that says to good as well as to evil: "It ought to be so because it is so;" a wonderful imagination, which rules over all the other faculties, and grows tired of genius itself, as having in it something too involuntary and too partial. In fine, what is most of all defective in this romance, is a firm and positive feeling of religion; the principal personages are more accessible to superstition than to faith; and we perceive that in their hearts religion, like love, is only the effect of circumstances, and liable to vary with them.

In the progress of this work, the author displays too much uncertainty; the forms he draws, and the opinions he indicates, leave only doubtful recollections: it must be agreed that, to think a great deal sometimes leads to the total unsettling of our fundamental ideas; but a man of genius like Goethe should serve as a guide to his admirers in an ascertained road. It is no longer time to doubt, it is no longer time to place, on every possible subject, ingenious ideas in each scale of the balance; we should now abandon ourselves to confidence, to enthusiasm, to the admiration which the immortal youth of the soul may always keep alive within us; this youth springs forth again ou

of the very ashes of the passions; it is the golden bough that can never fade, and which gives entrance to the Sibyl into the Elysian fields.'

Tieck deserves to be mentioned in many different styles of

1 "Among the Jena friends whom Goethe saw with constant pleasure, was Frommann, the bookseller, in whose family there was an adopted child, by name Minna Herzlieb, strangely interesting to us as the original of Ottilie in the Wahlverwandtschaften. As a child she had been a great pet of Goethe's; growing into womanhood she exercised a fascination over him which his reason in vain resisted. The disparity of years was great: but how frequently are young girls found bestowing the bloom of their affections on men old enough to be their fathers! and how frequently are men at an advanced age found trembling with the passion of youth! In the Sonnets addressed to her, and in the novel of Elective Affinities, may be read the fervor of his passion, and the strength with which he resisted. Speaking of this novel, he says: 'No one can fail to recognize in it a deep, passionate wound, which shrinks from being closed by healing, a heart which dreads to be cured. In it, as in a burial-urn, I have deposited with deep emotion many a sad experience. The third of October, 1809 (when the publication was completed), set me free from the work; but the feelings it embodies can never quite depart from me.' If we knew as much of the circumstances out of which grew the Elective Affinities as we do of those out of which grew Werther, we should find his experience as clearly embodied in this novel as it is in Werther; but conjecture in such cases being perilous, I will not venture beyond the facts which have been placed at my disposal; and may only add, therefore, that the growing attachment was seen with pain and dismay, for no good issue could be found. At length it was resolved to send Minna to school, and this absolute separation saved them both.

"It is very curious to read Die Wahlverwandtschaften by the light of this history, and to see in it not only the sources of its inspiration, but the way in which Goethe dramatizes the two halves of his own character. Eduard and Charlotte loved each other in youth. Circumstances separated them; and each made a mariage de convenance, from which, after a time, they were released by death. The widower and the widow, now free to choose, naturally determine on fulfilling the dream of their youth. They marry. At the opening of the story we see them placidly happy. Although a few quiet touches make us aware of a certain organic disparity between them, not enough to create unhappiness, but enough to prevent perfect sympathy, the keenest eye would detect no signs which threatened the endurng stability of their happiness. Eduard has a friend, almost a brother, always called 'The Captain,' whom he invites to come and live with then. Charlotte has strongly opposed this at first, having a dim presentiment of evil; but she yields, the more so as she desires that her adopted daughter Ottilie should now be taken from school, and come to live with them.

"Thus are the four actors in the drama brought together on the stage:

composition; he is the author of a novel called Sternbald, which it is delightful to read; the events are but few, and even those few are not conducted to the dénoûment; but we can nowhere else, I believe, meet with so pleasing a picture of the

and no sooner are they brought together than the natural elective affinities of their natures come into play. Charlotte and the Captain are drawn together Eduard and Ottilie are drawn together. This is shown to be as inevitable as the chemical combinations which are made to illustrate it. A real episode in the tragedy of life is before us; felt to be inevitable; felt to be terrible; felt also to present a dilemma to the moral judgment, on which two parties will pronounce two opposite opinions.

"Those critics who reason about human life, and consequently out Art from the abstract point of view-who, disregarding fact and necessity, treat human nature as a chess-board on which any moves may be made which the player chooses, the player himself being considered an impersonal agent untroubled by rashness, incapable of overlooking what is palpable to the bystanders,-those critics, I say, will unhesitatingly pronounce the situation an immoral situation, which the poet should not have presented, and which in real life would at once have been put an end to, by the stern idea of Duty.

"Others again, whose philosophy is evolved from life as it is, not as it might be who accept its wondrous complexity of impulses, and demand that art should represent reality-look upon this situation as terribly true, and although tragic, by no means immoral; for the tragedy lies in the collision of Passion and Duty-of Impulse on the one hand, and on the other of Social Law. Suppose Chariotte and Eduard unmarried, and these 'affinities' would have been simple impulses to marriage. But the fact of Marriage stands as a barrier to the impulses; the collision is inevitable.

"The divergence of opinion here indicated must necessarily exist among the two great classes of readers. Accordingly, in Germany and in England, the novel is alternately pronounced immoral, and profoundly moral. I do not think it is either the one or the other. When critics rail at it, and declare it saps the whole foundation of marriage, and when critics enthusiastically declare it is profoundly moral because it sets the sacredness of marriage in so clear a light, I see that both have drawn certain general conclusions from an individual case; but I do not see that they have done more than put their interpretations on what the author had no intention of being interpreted at all. Every work of art has its moral, says Hegel; but the moral depends on him that draws it. Both the conclusion against marriage, and the conclusion in favor of marriage, may therefore be drawn from this novel, and yet neither conclusion be correct, except as the private interpretation of the reader. Goethe was an artist, not an advocate; he painted a true picture, and because he painted it truly, he necessarily presented it in a form which would permit men to draw from it those opposite conclusions which the reality itself would permit. Suppose the story ac tually to have passed before our eyes, the judgments passed on it even by

life of an artist. The author places his hero in the fine age of the arts, and supposes him to be a scholar of Albert Durer, the contemporary of Raphael. He makes him travel in different countries of Europe, and paints with the charm of novelty

those thoroughly acquainted with all the facts would have been diametrically opposite. It is not difficult to write a story carrying the moral legible in every page; and if the writer's object be primarily that of illustrating a plain moral, he need not trouble himself about truth of character. And for this reason: he employs character as a means to an end-he does not make the delineation of character his end; his purpose is didactic, not artistic. Quite otherwise is the artist's purpose and practice: for him human life is the end and aim; for him the primary object is character, which is, as all know, of a mingled woof, good and evil, virtue and weakness, truth and falsehood, woven inextricably together.

"Those who object to such pictures, and think that truth is no warrant, may reasonably consider Goethe blamable for having chosen the subject. But he chose it because he had experienced it. And once grant him the subject, it is difficult to blame his treatment of it, if we except one scene which, to English readers, will always be objectionable. Two of the actors represent Passion in its absorbing, reckless, irresistible fervor, rushing onwards to the accomplishment of its aims. The two other actors represent, with equal force, and with touching nobleness, the stern idea of Duty. Eduard and Ottilie love rapidly, vehemently, thoughtlessly. Not a doubt troubles them. Their feeling is so natural, it so completely absorbs them that they are like two children entering on a first affection. But, vividly as they represent Instinct, Charlotte and the Captain as vividly represent Reason; their love is equally profound, but it is the love of two rational beings, who, because they reason, reason on the cirumstances in which they are placed; recognize society, its arrangements and its laws; and sacrifice their own desires to this social necessity. They subdue themselves; they face suffering, upheld by Conscience, which dictates to them a line of conduct never dreamed of by the passionate Eduard and Ottilie. "Eduard no sooner knows that he is loved than he is impatient for a divorce (allowable in Germany), which will enable him to marry Ottilie, and enable Charlotte to marry the Captain. Unfortunately, Charlotte, who has hitherto had no children by Eduard, feels that she is about to be a mother. This complicates a position which before was comparatively simple. Childless, she might readily have consented to a divorce. She cannot now. Every argument fails to persuade Eduard to relinquish the one purpose of his life; and he only consents to test by absence the durability of his passion.

"He joins the army, distinguishes himself in the field, and returns with passion as imperious as ever. Meanwhile, the Captain has also absented himself. Charlotte bears her fate meekly, nobly. Ottilie in silence cherishes her love for Eduard, and devotes herself, with intense affection, to Charlotte's child. This child, in accordance with a popular superstition