ship of Frankfort and to the guild of tailors. This was in 1687. Several children were born, and vanished; in 1700 his wife, too, vanished, to be replaced, five years afterward, by Frau Cornelia Schellhorn, the daughter of another tailor, Georg Walter; she was then a widow, blooming with six and thirty summers, and possessing the solid attractions of a good property, namely, the hotel Zum Weidenhof, where her new husband laid down the scissors, and donned the landlord's apron. He had two sons by her, and died in 1730, aged seventy-three.

Of these two sons, the younger, Johann Caspar, was the father of our poet. Thus we see that Goethe, like Schiller, sprang from the people. He makes no mention of the lucky tailor, nor of the Thuringian. farrier, in his Autobiography. This silence may be variously interpreted. At first, I imagined it was aristocratic prudery on the part of von Goethe, minister and nobleman; but it is never well to put ungenerous constructions, when others, equally plausible and more honourable, are ready; let us rather follow the advice of Arthur Helps, to "employ our imagination in the service of charity." We can easily imagine that Goethe was silent about the tailor, because, in truth, having never known him, there was none of that affectionate remembrance which encircles the objects of early life, to make this grandfather figure in the Autobiography beside the grandfather Textor, who was known and loved. Probably, also, the tailor was seldom talked of in the parental circle. There is a peculiar and indelible ridicule attached to the idea of a tailor in Germany, which often prevents people of much humbler pretensions than Goethe from whispering their connection with such a trade. Goethe does mention this grandfather in the Second Book of his Autobiography, and tells us how he was teased by the taunts of boys respecting his humble parentage; these taunts even

went so far as to imply that he might possibly have had several grandfathers; and he began to speculate on the possibility of some latent aristocracy in his descent. This made him examine with some curiosity the portraits of noblemen, to try and detect a likeness. Johann Caspar Goethe became an imperial councillor in Frankfort, and married, in 1748, Katharina Elizabeth, daughter of Johann Wolfgang Textor, the chief magistrate (Schultheiss).1

The genealogical tables of kings and conquerors are thought of interest, and why should not the genealogy of our poet be equally interesting to us? In the belief that it will be so, I here subjoin it.

1The family of Textor and Weber (Textor being simply the Latinised form of Weber) exist to this day, and under both names, in the Hohenlohe territory. Karl Julius Weber, the humourous author of "Democritus" and of the "Briefe eines in Deutschland reisenden Deutschen," was a member of it. In the description of the Jubilæum of the Nürnberg University of Altorf, in 1723, mention is made of one Joannes Guolfgangus Textor as a bygone ornament of the faculty of law; and Mr. Demmler, to whom I am indebted for these particulars, suggests the probability of this being the same John Wolfgang, who died as Oberbürgermeister in Frankfort, 1701.

Born Sept. 7, 1657, at Artern, in the county of Mansfeld, where his father was a farrier; from 1687 a citizen and tailor in Frankforton-the-Main; married first, ANNA ELIZABETH LUTZ, a tailor's daughter (died 1700); secondly, May 4, 1705, MRS. CORNELIA SCHELLHORN (born Sept. 27, 1668; buried March 28, 1754); died as keeper of the inn Zum Weidenhof at Frankfort; buried Feb. 13, 1730.

WALTHER WOLFGANG V.
GOETHE, born Feb., 1818.

WOLFGANG MAX. V. ALMA V. GOETHE, born GOETHE, born Sept. 18, Oct., 1827, died 1844. 1820.

Goethe's father, who had studied law in Leipsic and practised it for awhile in Wetzlar, and had travelled in Italy, Holland, and France, so that in those days he appeared an exceptionally cultivated burgher, was a cold, stern, formal, somewhat pedantic, but truth-loving, upright-minded man. He hungered for knowledge; and, although in general of a laconic turn, freely imparted all he learned. In his domestic circle his word was law. Not only imperious, but in some respects capricious, he was nevertheless greatly respected, if little loved, by wife, children, and friends. He is characterised by Krause as ein geradliniger Frankfurter Reichsbürger-" a formal Frankfort citiwhose habits were as measured as his gait.1 From him the poet inherited the well-built frame, the erect carriage, and the measured movement, which in old age became stiffness, and was construed as diplomacy or haughtiness; from him also came that orderliness and stoicism which have so much distressed those who cannot conceive genius otherwise than as vagabond in its habits. The craving for knowledge, the delight in communicating it, the almost pedantic attention to details, which are noticeable in the poet, are all traceable in the father.

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The mother was more like what we conceive as the proper parent for a poet. She is one of the pleasantest figures in German literature, and one standing out with greater vividness than almost any other. Her simple, hearty, joyous, and affectionate nature endeared her to all. She was the delight of children, the favourite of poets and princes. To the last retaining her enthusiasm and simplicity, mingled with great shrewd

1 Perhaps geradliniger might be translated as "an old squaretoes," having reference to the antiquated cut of the old man's clothes. The fathers of the present generation dubbed the stiff coat of their grandfathers, with its square skirts and collars, by the name of magister matheseos, the name by which the Pythagorean proposition is known in Germany.