led by the current of events to a little court, where he was arrested by friendship, love, leisure, and opportunities of a freer, nobler life than Frankfurt Law Courts offered him. After much deliberation he chose his career: these pages will show how in it he contrived to be true to his genius.

It is scarcely worth while to notice trash about his 'servility' and 'court slavery.' He was not required to be servile; and his nature was as proud as any prince's. ' They call me a prince's servant,' he said to Eckermann, ' and a prince's slave; as if there were any meaning in such words! Whom do I serve? A tyrant - a despot? Do I serve one who lives for his own pleasures at the people's cost? Such princes and such times are, thank God! far enough from us. For more than half a century I have been connected in the closest relations with the Grand Duke, and for half a century have striven and toiled with him; but I should not be speaking truth were I to that I could name a single day on which the Duke had not his thoughts busied with something to be devised and effected for the good of the country; something calculated to better the condition of each individual in it. As for himself, personally, what has his princely state given him but a burden and a task? Is his dwelling, or his dress, or his table more sumptuously provided than that of any private man in easy circumstances ? Go into our maritime cities, and you will find the larder and cellar of every considerable merchant better filled than his. If, then, I am a prince's slave, it is at least my consolation that I am but the slave of one who is himself a slave of the general good.'

say

And to close this subject, read the following passage from Merck's letter to Nicolai (the Merck who is said by Falk to have spoken so bitterly of the waste of Goethe's

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life at Weimar): I have lately paid Goethe a visit at the Wartburg, and we have lived together for ten days like children. I am delighted to have seen with my own eyes what his situation is. The Duke is the best of all, and has a character firm as iron: I would do, for love of him, just what Goethe does. . . . I tell you sincerely that the Duke is most worthy of respect, and one of the cleverest men that I have ever seen, - and consider that he is a Prince, and only twenty years of age!' The long and friendly correspondence Merck kept up with the Duke is the best pledge that the foregoing judgment was sincere.

FROM out the many flirtations that amused him, there rises one which grew into predominant importance, swallowing up all the others, and leaping from lambent flame into eager and passionate fire. It was no transitory flash, but a fire which burnt for ten years, and thereby is distinguished from all previous attachments. It is a silver thread woven among the many-colored threads which formed the tapestry of his life. I will here detach it, to consider it by itself.

6

The Baroness von Stein, Hofdame,' and wife of the Master of the Horse, was, both by family and position, a considerable person. To us she is interesting, as having sprung from a Scotch family, named Irving, and as being the sister-in-law to that Baron Imhoff, who sold his first wife to Warren Hastings. She was the mother of seven children, and had reached that age which, in fascinating women, is of perilous fascination the of three-andthirty. We can understand something of her power if we look at her portrait, and imagine those delicate, coquettish features animated with the lures of sensibility, gayety, and experience of the world. She sang well, played well, sketched well, talked well, appreciated poetry, and handled sentiment with the delicate tact of a woman of the

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world. Her pretty fingers had turned over many a serious book; and she knew how to gather honey from weeds. With moral deficiencies, which this history will betray, she was to all acquaintances a perfectly charming woman; and retained her charm even in old age, as many living witnesses testify. Some years after her first acquaintance with Goethe, Schiller thus writes of her to his friend Körner: She is really a genuine, interesting person, and I quite understand what has attached Goethe to her. Beautiful she can never have been; but her countenance has a soft earnestness, and a quite peculiar openness. healthy understanding, truth and feeling, lie in her nature. She has more than a thousand letters from Goethe; and from Italy he writes to her every week. They say connection is perfectly pure and blameless.'

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It was at Pyrmont that Goethe first saw the Frau von Stein's portrait, and was three nights sleepless in consequence of Zimmermann's description of her. In sending her that flattering detail, Zimmermann added, he will assuredly come to Weimar to see you.' Under her portrait Goethe wrote, "What a glorious poem it would be to see how the world mirrors itself in this soul! She sees the world as it is, and yet withal sees it through the medium of love; hence sweetness is the dominant expression.' In her reply to Zimmermann, she begs to hear more about Goethe, and intimates her desire to see him. This calls forth a reply that she has no idea of the danger of his magical presence.' Such dangers pretty women gladly run into, especially when, like Charlotte von Stein, they are perfect mistresses of themselves.

Tearing himself away from Lili, his heart still trembling from the agitations of a victory over its desires, he saw this charming woman. The earth continues warm long after the sun has glided below the horizon; and the

heart continues warm some time after the departure of its sun. Goethe was therefore prepared to fall desperately in love with one who viewed all things through the medium of love.' And there is considerable interest in noting the kind of idol now selected. Hitherto he has been captivated only by very young girls, whose youth, beauty, and girlishness, were the charms to his wandering fancy; but now he is fascinated by a woman, a woman of rank and elegance, a woman of culture and experience, a woman who, instead of abandoning herself to the charm of his affection, knew how, without descending from her pedestal, to keep the flame alive. The others loved him,

showed him their love, - and were forgotten. She contrived to keep him in the pleasant fever of hope, made herself necessary to him, made her love an aim, and kept him in the excitement of one

Who never is, but always to be blest.'

Considering the state of society and opinion at that period, and considering moreover that, according to her son's narrative, her husband was scarcely seen in his own home more than once a week, and that no pretence of affection existed between them, we can understand how Goethe's notorious passion for her excited sympathy in Weimar. Not a word of blame escaped any one on this subject. They saw a lover whose mistress gave him just enough encouragement to keep him eager in pursuit, and who knew how to check him when that eagerness would press on too far. In his early letters to her there are sudden outbreaks and reserves; sometimes the affectionate thou escapes, and the next day, perhaps even in the next sentence, the prescribed you returns. These letters follow almost daily. So early as January, 1776, this significant phrase escapes: Adieu, angel! I shall never become