none this ebook was produced by adam kane. man or matter introduction to a spiritual understanding of nature on the basis of goethe's method of training observation and thought by ernst lehrs ph. d. part i science at the threshold i. introductory the author's search for a way of extending the boundaries of scientific understanding. a meeting with rudolf steiner, and with the work arising from his teachings. ii. where do we stand to-day? the self-restriction of scientific inquiry to one-eyed colourblind observation. its effect: the lack of a true conception of 'force'. iii. the onlooker's philosophic malady thought - the sole reality and yet a pure non-entity for the modern spectator. descartes and hume. robert hooke's 'proof' of the non-reality of conceptual thinking. the modern principle of indeterminacy - a sign that science is still dominated by the humean way of thinking. iv. the country that is not ours electricity, man's competitor in modern civilization. the onlooker in search of the soul of nature. galvani and crookes. paradoxes in the discovery of electricity. 'something unknown is doing we don't know what.' part ii goetheanism - whence and whither v. the adventure of reason kant and goethe. goethe's study of the plant - a path toward seeing with the eye-of-the-spirit. nature a script that asks to be read. vi. except we become ... spiritual kinsmen of goethe in the british sphere of human culture. thomas reid's philosophic discovery, its significance for the overcoming of the onlooker-standpoint in science. the picture of man inherent in reid's philosophy. man's original gift of remembering his pre-earthly life. the disappearance of this memory in the past, and its re-appearance in modern times. pelagius versus augustine. wordsworth and traherne. traherne, a 'reidean before reid was born'. vii. 'always stand by form' ruskin and howard - two readers in the book of nature. goethe's meteorological ideas. his conception of the urphenomenon. goethe and howard. viii. dynamics versus kinetics the onlooker science - by necessity a 'pointer-reading' science. the onlooker's misjudgment of the cognitive value of the impressions conveyed by the senses. the parallelogram of forces - its fallacious kinematic and its true dynamic interpretation. the roots in man of his concepts 'mass' and 'force'. the formula f=ma. the origin of man's faculty of mathematical thinking. ix. pro levitate (a) alertness contra inertness limitations of the validity of the concept 'inertia'. restatement of newton's first law. introduction of the term 'magical' as opposed to mechanical. the phenomenon of the rising arm. introduction of the term 'alertness' as opposed to 'inertness' (inertia). van helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter. the four elements. the old concept of 'chaos'. young and old matter. the natural facts behind the ancient fire rites. the event on mount sinai. (b) levity contra gravity the contra levitatem maxim of the florentine academicians. ruskin's warning against science as an interpreter of its own observations. how man's inner nature and the outer universe interpret one another. the solfatara phenomenon. the super-physical character of levity. x. the fourth state of matter the need of raising scientific inquiry to nature's upper border. the laws of conservation, their origin and their validity. joule and mayer. extension of the field-concept from the central to the peripheral field-type. natural phenomena brought about by the suctional effect of the earth's levity-field. the different conditions of matter seen in the light of the levity-gravity polarity. heat, the fourth state of matter. procreation of physical substance - a natural fact. the case of tillandsia. the problem of the trace-elements. homeopathy, an example of the effect of dematerialized matter. the meteorological circuit of water. the nature of lightning. xi. matter as part of nature's alphabet the origin of the scientific conception of the chemical element. study of some prototypes of physical substances in the light of the levity-gravity polarity. the functional concept of matter. the complete order of polarities - cold-warm, dry-moist - in the doctrine of the four elements. the position of sulphur and phosphorus in this respect. vulcanism and snow-formation as manifestations of functional sulphur and phosphorus respectively. the process of crystallization. carbon as a mediator between sulphur and phosphorus. the alchemical triad. xii. space and counter-space geometrical considerations required by the recognition of levity. the value in this respect of projective geometrical thinking. geometrical polarities of the first and second order. xiii. 'radiant matter' electricity and magnetism as manifestations of interacting levity and gravity. electricity - a product of disintegrating matter. modern physics, no longer a 'natural' science. eddington's question,' manufacture or discovery?' man's enhanced responsibility in the age of physical science. xiv. colours as 'deeds and sufferings of light' goethe's farbenlehre - the foundation of an optical science based on the colour-seeing faculty of the eye. the modern physicist's view of the newtonian interpretation of the spectrum. a short history of goethe's search for a satisfactory conception of light and colour. his discovery of newton's cardinal error. first results of his own studies. the 'negative' spectrum. xv. seeing as 'deed' - i goethe's way of studying the totality of the act of seeing. the 'inner light'. xvi. seeing as 'deed' - ii extension of goethe's inquiry to a pursuit of the act of seeing beyond the boundaries of the body. xvii. optics of the doer purging optics from its onlooker-concepts. the role of foregone conclusions in the physical conception of light. the true aspect of the so-called velocity of light. xviii. the spectrum as a script of the spirit evaluation of the foregoing studies for a new understanding of the prismatic phenomenon. the secret of the rainbow. intimation of new possibilities of experimental research guided by the new conception of the spectrum. part iii towards a new cosmology xix. the country in which man is not a stranger (a) introductory note from goethe's seeing with the eye-of-the-spirit to spiritual imagination. levity (ether) as revealed to spiritual imagination. (b) - (e) warmth light sound life the four modifications of ether. their relation to the four elements. xx. pro anima (a) the well-springs of nature's deeds and sufferings the sentient (astral) forces of the cosmos as governors of the various interactions between levity and gravity. the astral aspect of the planetary system. its reflexion in earthly substances. beginnings of an astral conception of the human organism in modern physiology. (b) hearing as deed a goetheanistic study of acoustic phenomena and of the sense of hearing. from hearing with the ear-of-the-spirit to spiritual inspiration. (c) kepler and the 'music of the spheres' goethe's view of kepler. kepler's third law - a revelation of the musical order of the universe. xxi. know thyself index illustrations in colour a the relation of the electrical polarity to levity and gravity b the spectrum phenomenon as conceived by goethe c light under the action of a transverse field-gradient monochrome i. robert hooke's 'proof' of the non-reality of human concepts ii. leaf-metamorphosis iii. leaf-metamorphosis iv. goethe's sketch of a cloud-formation v. a snow-crystal vi. a cluster of calcite crystals vii. various species of bacteria viii. various species of fresh-water algae author's note the author makes grateful acknowledgment of the help he has gained from other works in the wide field opened up by rudolf steiner, and of his debt to the friends who in various ways assisted him in preparing his manuscript. quotations have been made from the following books by kind permission of their respective publishers: the life of sir william crookes by e. e. fournier d'albe (messrs. ernest benn ltd.); man the unknown by a. carrel (messrs. hamish hamilton ltd.); the philosophy of physical science and the nature of the physical worldly a.. eddington (university press, cambridge); science and the human temperament by e. schrödinger (messrs. george allen and unwin ltd.); centuries of meditations and poetical works by th. traherne (messrs. p. j. and a. e. dobell). preface in this book the reader will find expounded a method of investigating nature by means of which scientific understanding can be carried across the boundaries of the physical-material to the supersensible sources of all natural events, and thereby into the realm where is rooted the true being of man. the beginnings of this method were worked out by goethe more than years ago. the nineteenth century, however, failed to provide any fertile ground for the development of the seeds thus sown. it was left to rudolf steiner, shortly before the end of the century, to recognize the significance of 'goetheanism' for the future development not only of science but of human culture in general. it is to him, also, that we owe the possibility of carrying on goethe's efforts in the way required by the needs of our own time. the following pages contain results of the author's work along the path thus opened up by goethe and rudolf steiner - a work begun twenty-seven years ago, soon after he had made the acquaintance of rudolf steiner. with the publication of these results he addresses himself to everyone - with or without a specialized scientific training - who is concerned with the fate of man's powers of cognition in the present age. * the reader may welcome a remark as to the way in which this book needs to be read. it has not been the author's intention to provide an encyclopaedic collection of new conceptions in various fields of natural observation. rather did he wish, as the sub-title of the book indicates, to offer a new method of training both mind and eye (and other senses as well), by means of which our modern 'onlooking' consciousness can be transformed into a new kind of 'participating' consciousness. hence it would be of no avail to pick out one chapter or another for first reading, perhaps because of some special interest in its subject-matter. the chapters are stages on a road which has to be travelled, and each stage is necessary for reaching the next. it is only through thus accepting the method with which the book has been written that the reader will be able to form a competent judgment of its essential elements. e. l. hawkwood college easter part i science at the threshold chapter i introductory if i introduce this book by relating how i came to encounter rudolf steiner and his work, more than twenty-five years ago, and what decided me not only to make his way of knowledge my own, but also to enter professionally into an activity inspired by his teachings, it is because in this way i can most directly give the reader an impression of the kind of spirit out of which i have written. i am sure, too, that although what i have to say in this chapter is personal in content, it is characteristic of many in our time. when i first made acquaintance with rudolf steiner and his work, i was finishing my academic training as an electrical engineer. at the end of the - war my first thought had been to take up my studies from where i had let them drop, four years earlier. the war seemed to imply nothing more than a passing interruption of them. this, at any rate, was the opinion of my former teachers; the war had made no difference whatever to their ideas, whether on the subject-matter of their teaching or on its educational purpose. i myself, however, soon began to feel differently. it became obvious to me that my relationship to my subject, and therefore to those teaching it, had completely changed. what i had experienced through the war had awakened in me a question of which i had previously been unaware; now i felt obliged to put it to everything i came across. as a child of my age i had grown up in the conviction that it was within the scope of man to shape his life according to the laws of reason within him; his progress, in the sense in which i then understood it, seemed assured by his increasing ability to determine his own outer conditions with the help of science. indeed, it was the wish to take an active part in this progress that had led me to choose my profession. now, however, the war stood there as a gigantic social deed which i could in no way regard as reasonably justified. how, in an age when the logic of science was supreme, was it possible that a great part of mankind, including just those peoples to whom science had owed its origin and never-ceasing expansion, could act in so completely unscientific a way? where lay the causes of the contradiction thus revealed between human thinking and human doing? pursued by these questions, i decided after a while to give my studies a new turn. the kind of training then provided in germany at the so-called technische hochschulen was designed essentially to give students a close practical acquaintance with all sorts of technical appliances; it included only as much theory as was wanted for understanding the mathematical calculations arising in technical practice. it now seemed to me necessary to pay more attention to theoretical considerations, so as to gain a more exact knowledge of the sources from which science drew its conception of nature. accordingly i left the hochschule for a course in mathematics and physics at a university, though without abandoning my original idea of preparing for a career in the field of electrical engineering. it was with this in mind that i later chose for my ph.d. thesis a piece of experimental research on the uses of high-frequency electric currents. during my subsequent years of stuffy, however, i found myself no nearer an answer to the problem that haunted me. all that i experienced, in scientific work as in life generally, merely gave it an even sharper edge. everywhere i saw an abyss widening between human knowing and human action. how often was i not bitterly disillusioned by the behaviour of men for whose ability to think through the most complicated scientific questions i had the utmost admiration! on all sides i found this same bewildering gulf between scientific achievement and the way men conducted their own lives and influenced the lives of others. i was forced to the conclusion that human thinking, at any rate in its modern form, was either powerless to govern human actions, or at least unable to direct them towards right ends. in fact, where scientific thinking had done most to change the practical relations of human life, as in the mechanization of economic production, conditions had arisen which made it more difficult, not less, for men to live in a way worthy of man. at a time when humanity was equipped as never before to investigate the order of the universe, and had achieved triumphs of design in mechanical constructions, human life was falling into ever wilder chaos. why was this? the fact that most of my contemporaries were apparently quite unaware of the problem that stirred me so deeply could not weaken my sense of its reality. this slumber of so many souls in face of the vital questions of modern life seemed to me merely a further symptom of the sickness of our age. nor could i think much better of those who, more sensitive to the contradictions in and around them, sought refuge in art or religion. the catastrophe of the war had shown me that this departmentalizing of life, which at one time i had myself considered a sort of ideal, was quite inconsistent with the needs of to-day. to make use of art or religion as a refuge was a sign of their increasing separation from the rest of human culture. it implied a cleavage between the different spheres of society which ruled out any genuine solution of social problems. i knew from history that religion and art had once exercised a function which is to-day reserved for science, for they had given guidance in even the most practical activities of human society. and in so doing they had enhanced the quality of human living, whereas the influence of science has had just the opposite effect. this power of guidance, however, they had long since lost, and in view of this fact i came to the conclusion that salvation must be looked for in the first place from science. here, in the thinking and knowing of man, was the root of modern troubles; here must come a drastic revision, and here, if possible, a completely new direction must be found. such views certainly flew in the face of the universal modern conviction that the present mode of knowledge, with whose help so much insight into the natural world has been won, is the only one possible, given once for all to man in a form never to be changed. but is there any need, i asked myself, to cling to this purely static notion of man's capacity for gaining knowledge? among the greatest achievements of modern science, does not the conception of evolution take a foremost place? and does not this teach us that the condition of a living organism at any time is the result of the one preceding it, and that the transition implies a corresponding functional enhancement? but if we have once recognized this as an established truth, why should we apply it to organisms at every stage of development except the .highest, namely the human, where the organic form reveals and serves the self-conscious spirit? putting the question thus, i was led inevitably to a conclusion which science itself had failed to draw from its idea of evolution. whatever the driving factor in evolution may be, it is clear that in the kingdoms of nature leading up to man this factor has always worked on the evolving organisms from outside. the moment we come to man himself, however, and see how evolution has flowered in his power of conscious thought, we have to reckon with a fundamental change. once a being has recognized itself as a product of evolution, it immediately ceases to be that and nothing more. with its very first act of self-knowledge it transcends its previous limits, and must in future rely on its own conscious actions for the carrying on of its development. for me, accordingly, the concept of evolution, when thought through to the end, began to suggest the possibility of further growth in man's spiritual capacities. but i saw also that this growth could no longer be merely passive, and the question which now beset me was: by what action of his own can man break his way into this new phase of evolution? i saw that this action must not consist merely in giving outer effect to the natural powers of human thinking; that was happening everywhere in the disordered world around me. the necessary action must have inner effects; indeed, it had to be one whereby the will was turned upon the thinking-powers themselves, entirely transforming them, and so removing the discrepancy between the thinker and the doer in modern man. thus far i could go through my own observation and reflexion, but no further. to form a general idea of the deed on which everything else depended was one thing; it was quite another to know how to perform the deed, and above all where to make a start with it. anyone intending to make a machine must first learn something of mechanics; in the same way, anyone setting out to do something constructive in the sphere of human consciousness - and this, for me, was the essential point - must begin by learning something of the laws holding sway in that sphere. but who could give me this knowledge? physiology, psychology and philosophy in their ordinary forms were of no use to me, for they were themselves part and parcel of just that kind of knowing which had to be overcome. in their various accounts of man there was no vantage point from which the deed i had in mind could be accomplished, for none of them looked beyond the ordinary powers of knowledge. it was the same with the accepted theory of evolution; as a product of the current mode of thinking it could be applied to everything except the one essential - this very mode of thinking. obviously, the laws of the development of human consciousness cannot be discovered from a standpoint within the modern form of that consciousness. but how could one find a viewpoint outside, as it were, this consciousness, from which to discover its laws with the same scientific objectivity which it had itself applied to discovering the laws of physical nature? it was when this question stood before me in all clarity that destiny led me to rudolf steiner and his work. the occasion was a conference held in in stuttgart by the anthroposophical movement; it was one of several arranged during the years - especially for teachers and students at the hochschulen and universities. what chiefly moved me to attend this particular conference was the title of a lecture to be given by one of the pupils and co-workers of rudolf steiner - 'the overcoming of einstein's theory of relativity'. the reader will readily appreciate what this title meant for me. in the circles where my work lay, an intense controversy was just then raging round einstein's ideas. i usually took sides with the supporters of einstein, for it seemed to me that einstein had carried the existing mode of scientific thinking to its logical conclusions, whereas i missed this consistency among his opponents. at the same time i found that the effect of this theory, when its implications were fully developed, was to make everything seem so 'relative' that no reliable world-outlook was left. this was proof for me that our age was in need of an altogether different form of scientific thinking, equally consistent in itself, but more in tune with man's own being. what appealed to me in the lecture-title was simply this, that whereas everyone else sought to prove einstein right or wrong, here was someone who apparently intended, not merely to add another proof for or against his theory-there were plenty of those already - but to take some steps to overcome it. from the point of view of orthodox science, of course, it was absurd to speak of 'overcoming' a theory, as though it were an accomplished fact, but to me this title suggested exactly what i was looking for. although it was the title of this lecture that drew me to the stuttgart conference (circumstances prevented me from hearing just this lecture), it was the course given there by rudolf steiner himself which was to prove the decisive experience of my life. it comprised eight lectures, under the title: 'mathematics, scientific experiment and observation, and epistemological results from the standpoint of anthroposophy'; what they gave me answered my question beyond all expectation. in the course of a comprehensive historical survey the lecturer characterized, in a way i found utterly convincing, the present mathematical interpretation of nature as a transitional stage of human consciousness - a kind of knowing which is on the way from a past pre-mathematical to a future post-mathematical form of cognition. the importance of mathematics, whether as a discipline of the human spirit or as an instrument of natural science, was not for a moment undervalued. on the contrary, what rudolf steiner said about projective (synthetic) geometry, for instance, its future possibilities and its role as a means of understanding higher processes of nature than had hitherto been accessible to science, clearly explained the positive feelings i myself had experienced - without knowing why - when i had studied the subject. through his lectures and his part in the discussions - they were held daily by the various speakers and ranged over almost every field of modern knowledge - i gradually realized that rudolf steiner was in possession of unique powers. not only did he show himself fully at home in all these fields; he was able to connect them with each other, and with the nature and being of man, in such a way that an apparent chaos of unrelated details was wrought into a higher synthesis. moreover, it became clear to me that one who could speak as he did about the stages of human consciousness past, present and future, must have full access to all of them at will, and be able to make each of them an object of exact observation. i saw a thinker who was himself sufficient proof that man can find within the resources of his own spirit the vantage-ground for the deed which i had dimly surmised, and by which alone true civilization could be saved. through all these things i knew that i had found the teacher i had been seeking. thus i was fully confirmed in my hopes of the conference; but i was also often astonished at what i heard. not least among my surprises was rudolf steiner's presentation of goethe as the herald of the new form of scientific knowledge which he himself was expounding. i was here introduced to a side of goethe which was as completely unknown to me as to so many others among my contemporaries, who had not yet come into touch with anthroposophy. for me, as for them, goethe had always been the great thinker revealing his thoughts through poetry. indeed, only shortly before my meeting with rudolf steiner it was in his poetry that goethe had become newly alive to me as a helper in my search for a fuller human experience of nature and my fellow-men. but despite all my goethe studies i had been quite unaware that more than a century earlier he had achieved something in the field of science, organic and inorganic alike, which could help modern man towards the new kind of knowledge so badly needed to-day. this was inevitable for me, since i shared the modern conviction that art and science were fields of activity essentially strange to one another. and so it was again rudolf steiner who opened the way for me to goethe as botanist, physicist and the like. i must mention another aspect of the stuttgart conference which belongs to this picture of my first encounter with anthroposophy, and gave it special weight for anyone in my situation at that period. in stuttgart there were many different activities concerned with the practical application of rudolf steiner's teachings, and so one could become acquainted with teachings and applications at the same time. there was the waldorf school, founded little more than a year before, with several hundred pupils already. it was the first school to undertake the transformation of anthroposophical knowledge of man into educational practice; later it was followed by others, in germany and elsewhere. there was one of the clinics, where qualified doctors were applying the same knowledge to the study of illness and the action of medicaments. in various laboratories efforts were made to develop new methods of experimental research in physics, chemistry, biology and other branches of science. further, a large business concern had been founded in stuttgart in an attempt to embody some of rudolf steiner's ideas for the reform of social life. besides all this i could attend performances of the new art of movement, again the creation of rudolf steiner and called by him 'eurhythmy', in which the astounded eye could see how noble a speech can be uttered by the human body when its limbs are moved in accordance with its inherent spiritual laws. thus, in all the many things that were going on besides the lectures, one could find direct proof of the fruitfulness of what one heard in them. under the impression of this conference i soon began to study the writings of rudolf steiner. not quite two years later, i decided to join professionally with those who were putting anthroposophy into outer practice. because it appeared to me as the most urgent need of the time to prepare the new generation for the tasks awaiting it through an education shaped on the entire human being, i turned to rudolf steiner with the request to be taken into the stuttgart school as teacher of natural science. on this occasion i told him of my general scientific interests, and how i hoped to follow them up later on. i spoke of my intended educational activity as something which might help me at the same time to prepare myself for this other task. anyone who learns so to see nature that his ideas can be taken up and understood by the living, lively soul of the growing child will thereby be training himself, i thought, in just that kind of observation and thinking which the new science of nature demands. rudolf steiner agreed with this, and it was not long afterwards that i joined the school where i was to work for eleven years as a science master in the senior classes, which activity i have since continued outside germany in a more or less similar form. this conversation with rudolf steiner took place in a large hall where, while we were talking, over a thousand people were assembling to discuss matters of concern to the anthroposophical movement. this did not prevent him from asking me about the details of my examination work, in which i was still engaged at that time; he always gave himself fully to whatever claimed his attention at the moment. i told him of my experimental researches in electrical high-frequency phenomena, briefly introducing the particular problem with which i was occupied. i took it for granted that a question from such a specialized branch of physics would not be of much interest to him. judge of my astonishment when he at once took out of his pocket a note-book and a huge carpenter's pencil, made a sketch and proceeded to speak of the problem as one fully conversant with it, and in such a way that he gave me the starting point for an entirely new conception of electricity. it was instantly borne in on me that if electricity came to be understood in this sense, results would follow which in the end would lead to a quite new technique in the use of it. from that moment it became one of my life's aims to contribute whatever my circumstances and powers would allow to the development of an understanding of nature of this kind. the speaker was the late dr. elizabeth vreede, for some years leader of the mathematical-astronomical section at the goetheanum, dornach, switzerland. the activities mentioned above do not exhaust the practical possibilities of spiritual science. at that time ( ) rudolf steiner had not yet given his indications for the treatment of children needing special care of soul and body, or for the renewal of the art of acting, or for the conquest of materialistic methods in agricultural practice. nor did there yet exist the movement for religious renewal which dr. fr. rittelmeyer later founded, with the help and advice of rudolf steiner. chapter ii where do we stand to-day? in the year , when the world celebrated the hundredth anniversary of goethe's death, professor w. heisenberg, one of the foremost thinkers in the field of modern physics, delivered a speech before the saxon academy of science which may be regarded as symptomatic of the need in recent science to investigate critically the foundations of its own efforts to know nature. in this speech heisenberg draws a picture of the progress of science which differs significantly from the one generally known. instead of giving the usual description of this progress as 'a chain of brilliant and surprising discoveries', he shows it as resting on the fact that, with the aim of continually simplifying and unifying the scientific conception of the world, human thinking, in course of time, has narrowed more and more the scope of its inquiries into outer nature. 'almost every scientific advance is bought at the cost of renunciation, almost every gain in knowledge sacrifices important standpoints and established modes of thought. as facts and knowledge accumulate, the claim of the scientist to an understanding of the world in a certain sense diminishes.' our justifiable admiration for the success with which the unending multiplicity of natural occurrences on earth and in the stars has been reduced to so simple a scheme of laws - heisenberg implies - must therefore not make us forget that these attainments are bought at the price 'of renouncing the aim of bringing the phenomena of nature to our thinking in an immediate and living way'. in the course of his exposition, heisenberg also speaks of goethe, in whose scientific endeavours he perceives a noteworthy attempt to set scientific understanding upon a path other than that of progressive self-restriction. 'the renouncing of life and immediacy, which was the premise for the progress of natural science since newton, formed the real basis for the bitter struggle which goethe waged against the physical optics of newton. it would be superficial to dismiss this struggle as unimportant: there is much significance in one of the most outstanding men directing all his efforts to fighting against the development of newtonian optics.' there is only one thing for which heisenberg criticizes goethe: 'if one should wish to reproach goethe, it could only be for not going far enough - that is, for having attacked the views of newton instead of declaring that the whole of newtonian physics-optics, mechanics and the law of gravitation - were from the devil.' although the full significance of heisenberg's remarks on goethe will become apparent only at a later stage of our discussion, they have been quoted here because they form part of the symptom we wish to characterize. only this much may be pointed out immediately, that goethe - if not in the scientific then indeed in the poetical part of his writings - did fulfil what heisenberg rightly feels to have been his true task. we mentioned heisenberg's speech as a symptom of a certain tendency, characteristic of the latest phase in science, to survey critically its own epistemological foundations. a few years previous to heisenberg's speech, the need of such a survey found an eloquent advocate in the late professor a. n. whitehead, in his book science and the modern world, where, in view of the contradictory nature of modern physical theories, he insists that 'if science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations'. among the scientists who have felt this need, and who have taken pains to fulfil it, the late professor a. eddington obtains an eminent position. among his relevant utterances we will quote here the following, because it contains a concrete statement concerning the field of external observation which forms the basis for the modern scientific world-picture. in his philosophy of physical science we find him stating that 'ideally, all our knowledge of the universe could have been reached by visual sensation alone - in fact by the simplest form of visual sensation, colourless and non-stereoscopic'. in other words, in order to obtain scientific cognition of the physical world, man has felt constrained to surrender the use of all his senses except the sense of sight, and to limit even the act of seeing to the use of a single, colour-blind eye. let us listen to yet another voice from the ranks of present-day science, expressing a criticism which is symptomatic of our time. it comes from the late physiologist, professor a, carrel, who, concerning the effect which scientific research has had on man's life in general, says in his book, man the unknown: 'the sciences of inert matter have led us into a country that is not ours. ... man is a stranger in the world he has created.' of these utterances, eddington's is at the present point of our discussion of special interest for us; for he outlines in it the precise field of sense-perception into which science has withdrawn in the course of that general retreat towards an ever more restricted questioning of nature which was noted by heisenberg. the pertinence of eddington's statement is shown immediately one considers what a person would know of the world if his only source of experience were the sense of sight, still further limited in the way eddington describes. out of everything that the world brings to the totality of our senses, there remains nothing more than mere movements, with certain changes of rate, direction, and so on. the picture of the world received by such an observer is a purely kinematic one. and this is, indeed, the character of the world-picture of modern physical science. for in the scientific treatment of natural phenomena all the qualities brought to us by our other senses, such as colour, tone, warmth, density and even electricity and magnetism, are reduced to mere movement-changes. as a result, modern science is prevented from conceiving any valid idea of 'force'. in so far as the concept 'force' appears in scientific considerations, it plays the part of an 'auxiliary concept', and what man naively conceives as force has come to be defined as merely a 'descriptive law of behaviour'. we must leave it for later considerations to show how the scientific mind of man has created for itself the conviction that the part of science occupied with the actions of force in nature can properly be treated with purely kinematic concepts. it is the fact itself which concerns us here. in respect of it, note as a characteristic of modern text-books that they often simply use the term 'kinetics' (a shortening of kinematics) to designate the science of 'dynamics'. in the course of our investigations we shall discover the peculiarity in human nature which - during the first phase, now ended, of man's struggle towards scientific awareness - has caused this renunciation of all sense-experiences except those which come to man through the sight of a single colour-blind eye. it will then also become clear out of what historic necessity this self-restriction of scientific inquiry arose. the acknowledgment of this necessity, however, must not prevent us from recognizing the fact that, as a result of this restriction, modern scientific research, which has penetrated far into the dynamic substrata of nature, finds itself in the peculiar situation that it is not at all guided by its own concepts, but by the very forces it tries to detect. and in this fact lies the root of the danger which besets the present age. he who recognizes this, therefore, feels impelled to look for a way which leads beyond a one-eyed, colour-blind conception of the world. it is the aim of this book to show that such a way exists and how it can be followed. proof will thereby be given that along this way not only is a true understanding achieved of the forces already known to science (though not really understood by it), but also that other forces, just as active in nature as for example electricity and magnetism, come within reach of scientific observation and understanding. and it will be shown that these other forces are of a kind that requires to be known to-day if we are to restore the lost balance to human civilization. * there is a rule known to physicians that 'a true diagnosis of a case contains in itself the therapy'. no true diagnosis is possible, however, without investigation of the 'history' of the case. applied to our task, this means that we must try to find an aspect of human development, both individual and historical, which will enable us to recognize in man's own being the cause responsible for the peculiar narrowing of the scope of scientific inquiry, as described by the scientists cited above. a characteristic of scientific inquiry, distinguishing it from man's earlier ways of solving the riddles of the world, is that it admits as instruments of knowledge exclusively those activities of the human soul over which we have full control because they take place in the full light of consciousness. this also explains why there has been no science, in the true sense of the word, prior to the beginning of the era commonly called 'modern' - that is, before the fifteenth century. for the consciousness on which man's scientific striving is based is itself an outcome of human evolution. this evolution, therefore, needs to be considered in such a way that we understand the origin of modern man's state of mind, and in particular why this state of mind cannot of itself have any other relationship to the world than that of a spectator. for let us be clear that this peculiar relationship by no means belongs only to the scientifically engaged mind. every adult in our age is, by virtue of his psycho-physical structure, more or less a world-spectator. what distinguishes the state of man's mind when engaged in scientific observation is that it is restricted to a one-eyed colour-blind approach. * 'death is the price man has to pay for his brain and his personality' - this is how a modern physiologist (a. carrel in his aforementioned book, man the unknown) describes the connexion between man's bodily functions and his waking consciousness. it is characteristic of the outlook prevailing in the nineteenth century that thinking was regarded as the result of the life of the body; that is, of the body's matter-building processes. hence no attention was paid at that time to the lonely voice of the german philosopher, c. fortlage ( - ), who in his system of psychology as empirical science suggested that consciousness is really based on death processes in the body. from this fact he boldly drew the conclusion (known to us today to be true) that if 'partial death' gave rise to ordinary consciousness, then 'total death' must result in an extraordinary enhancement of consciousness. again, when in our century rudolf steiner drew attention to the same fact, which he had found along his own lines of investigation, showing thereby the true role of the nervous system in regard to the various activities of the soul, official science turned a deaf ear to his pronouncement. to-day the scientist regards it as forming part of 'unknown man' that life must recede - in other words, that the organ-building processes of the body must come to a standstill - if consciousness is to come into its own. with the recognition of a death process in the nervous system as the bodily foundation of consciousness, and particularly of man's conceptual activities, the question arises as to the nature of those activities which have their foundation in other systems, such as that of the muscles, where life, not death, prevails. here an answer must be given which will surprise the reader acquainted with modern theories of psycho-physical interaction; but if he meets it with an open mind he will not find it difficult to test. just as the conceptual activity has as its bodily foundation the brain, with the nervous appendages, so it is volitional activity which is based on processes taking place in the muscular region of the body and in those organs which provide the body's metabolism. a statement which says that man's will is as directly based on the metabolic processes of the body, both inside and outside the muscles, as is his perceiving and thought-forming mind on a process in the nerves, is bound to cause surprise. firstly, it seems to leave out the role commonly ascribed to the so-called motoric part of the nervous system in bringing about bodily action; and secondly, the acknowledgment of the dependence of consciousness on corporeal 'dying' implies that willing is an unconscious activity because of its being based on life processes of the body. the first of these two problems will find its answer at a later stage of our discussion when we shall see what entitles us to draw a direct connexion between volition and muscular action. to answer the second problem, simple self-observation is required. this tells us that, when we move a limb, all that we know of is the intention (in its conceptual form) which rouses the will and gives it its direction, and the fact of the completed deed. in between, we accompany the movement with a dim awareness of the momentary positions of the parts of the body involved, so that we know whether or not they are moving in the intended manner. this awareness is due to a particular sense, the 'sense of movement' or 'muscular sense' - one of those senses whose existence physiology has lately come to acknowledge. nothing, however, is known to us of all the complex changes which are set into play within the muscles themselves in order to carry out some intended movement. and it is these that are the direct outcome of the activity of our will. regarding man's psycho-physical organization thus, we come to see in it a kind of polarity - a death-pole, as it were, represented by the nerves including their extension into the senses, and a life-pole, represented by the metabolic and muscular systems; and connected with them a pole of consciousness and one of unconsciousness - or as we can also say, of waking and sleeping consciousness. for the degree of consciousness on the side of the life-pole is not different from the state in which the entire human being dwells during sleep. it is by thus recognizing the dependence of consciousness on processes of bodily disintegration that we first come to understand why consciousness, once it has reached a certain degree of brightness, is bound to suffer repeated interruptions. every night, when we sleep, our nervous system becomes alive (though with gradually decreasing intensity) in order that what has been destroyed during the day may be restored. while the system is kept in this condition, no consciousness can obtain in it. in between the two polarically opposite systems there is a third, again of clearly distinct character, which functions as a mediator between the two. here all processes are of a strictly rhythmic nature, as is shown by the process of breathing and the pulsation of the blood. this system, too, provides the foundation for a certain type of psychological process, namely feeling. that feeling is an activity of the soul distinct from both thinking and willing, and that it has its direct counterpart in the rhythmic processes of the body, can be most easily tested through observing oneself when listening to music. as one might expect from its median position, the feeling sphere of the soul is characterized by a degree of consciousness half-way between waking and sleeping. of our feelings we are not more conscious than of our dreams; we are as little detached from them as from our dream experiences while these last; what remains in our memory of past feelings is usually not more than what we remember of past dreams. this picture of the threefold psycho-physical structure of man will now enable us to understand the evolution of consciousness both in individual life and in the life of mankind. to furnish the foundation of waking consciousness, parts of the body must become divorced from life. this process, however, is one which, if we take the word in its widest sense, we may call, ageing. all organic bodies, and equally that of man, are originally traversed throughout by life. only gradually certain parts of such an organism become precipitated, as it were, from the general organic structure, and they do so increasingly towards the end of that organism's life-span. in the human body this separation sets in gently during the later stages of embryonic development and brings about the first degree of independence of bones and nerves from the rest of the organism. the retreat of life continues after birth, reaching a certain climax in the nervous system at about the twenty-first year. in the body of a small child there is still comparatively little contrast between living and non-living organs. there is equally little contrast between sleeping and waking condition in its soul. and the nature of the soul at this stage is volition throughout. never, in fact, does man's soul so intensively will as in the time when it is occupied in bringing the body into an upright position, and never again does it exert its strength with the same unconsciousness of the goal to which it strives. what, then, is the soul's characteristic relationship to the world around at this stage? the following observations will enable us to answer this question. it is well known that small children often angrily strike an object against which they have stumbled. this has been interpreted as 'animism', by which it is meant that the child, by analogy with his experience of himself as a soul-filled body, imagines the things in his surroundings to be similarly ensouled. anyone who really observes the child's mode of experience (of which we as adults, indeed, keep something in our will-life) is led to a quite different interpretation of such a phenomenon. for he realizes that the child neither experiences himself as soul-entity distinct from his body, nor faces the content of the world in so detached a manner as to be in need of using his imagination to read into it any soul-entities distinct from his own. in this early period of his life the human being still feels the world as part of himself, and himself as part of the world. consequently, his relation to the objects around him and to his own body is one and the same. to the example of the child beating the external object he has stumbled against, there belongs the complementary picture of the child who beats himself because he has done something which makes him angry with himself. in sharp contrast to this state of oneness of the child's soul, in regard both to its own body and to the surrounding world, there stands the separatedness of the adult's intellectual consciousness, severed from both body and world. what happens to this part of the soul during its transition from one condition to the other may be aptly described by using a comparison from another sphere of natural phenomena. (later descriptions in this book will show that a comparison such as the one used here is more than a mere external analogy.) let us think of water in which salt has been dissolved. in this state the salt is one with its solvent; there is no visible distinction between them. the situation changes when part of the salt crystallizes. by this process the part of the salt substance concerned loses its connexion with the liquid and contracts into individually outlined and spatially defined pieces of solid matter. it thereby becomes optically distinguishable from its environment. something similar happens to the soul within the region of the nervous system. what keeps the soul in a state of unconsciousness as long as the body, in childhood, is traversed by life throughout, and what continues to keep it in this condition in the parts which remain alive after the separation of the nerves, is the fact that in these parts - to maintain the analogy - the soul is dissolved in the body. with the growing independence of the nerves, the soul itself gains independence from the body. at the same time it undergoes a process similar to contraction whereby it becomes discernible to itself as an entity distinguished from the surrounding world. in this way the soul is enabled, eventually, to meet the world from outside as a self-conscious onlooker. * what we have here described as the emergence of an individual's intellectual consciousness from the original, purely volitional condition of the soul is nothing but a replica of a greater process through which mankind as a whole, or more exactly western mankind, has gone in the course of its historical development. man was not always the 'brain-thinker' he is to-day. directly the separation of the nerve system was completed, and thereby the full clarity of the brain-bound consciousness achieved, man began to concern himself with science in the modern sense. to understand why this science became restricted to one-eyed, colour-blind observation we need only apply to the human sense system, in particular, what we have learnt concerning man's threefold being. sharply distinguished by their respective modes of functioning though they are, the three bodily systems are each spread out through the whole body and are thus to be found everywhere adjacent to each other. hence, the corresponding three states of consciousness, the sleeping, dreaming and waking, are also everywhere adjacent and woven into one another. it is the predominance of one or other which imparts a particular quality of soul to one or other region of the body. this is clearly shown within the realm of sense activity, itself the most conscious part of the human being. it is sufficient to compare, say, the senses of sight and smell, and to notice in what different degree we are conscious of the impressions they convey, and how differently the corresponding elements of conception, feeling and willing are blended in each. we never turn away as instinctively from objectionable colour arrangement as from an unpleasant smell. how small a part, on the other hand, do the representations of odours play in our recollection of past experiences, compared with those of sight. the same is valid in descending measure for all other senses. of all senses, the sense of sight has in greatest measure the qualities of a 'conceptual sense'. the experiences which it brings, and these alone, were suitable as a basis for the new science, and even so a further limitation was necessary. for in spite of the special quality of the sense of sight, it is still not free from certain elements of feeling and will - that is, from elements with the character of dream or sleep. the first plays a part in our perception of colour; the second, in observing the forms and perspective ordering of objects we look at. here is repeated in a special way the threefold organization of man, for the seeing of colour depends on an organic process apart from the nerve processes and similar to that which takes place between heart and lungs, whilst the seeing of forms and spatial vision depend upon certain movements of the eyeball (quick traversing of the outline of the viewed object with the line of sight, alteration of the angle between the two axes of sight according to distance), in which the eye is active as a sort of outer limb of the body, an activity which enters our consciousness as little as does that of our limbs. it now becomes clear that no world-content obtained in such more or less unconscious ways could be made available for the building of a new scientific world-conception. only as much as man experiences through the sight of a single, colour-blind eye, could be used. * if we would understand the role of science in the present phase of human development, we must be ready to apply two entirely different and seemingly contradictory judgments to one and the same historical phenomenon. the fact that something has occurred out of historical necessity - that is, a necessity springing from the very laws of cosmic evolution - does not save it from having a character which, in view of its consequences, must needs be called tragic. in this era of advanced intellectualism, little understanding of the existence of true tragedy in human existence has survived. as a result, the word 'tragedy' itself has deteriorated in its meaning and is nowadays used mostly as a synonym for 'sad event', 'calamity' 'serious event', even 'crime' (oxford diet.). in its original meaning, however, springing from the dramatic poetry of ancient greece, the word combines the concept of calamity with that of inevitability; the author of the destructive action was not held to be personally responsible for it, since he was caught up in a nexus of circumstances which he could not change. this is not the place to discuss why tragedy in this sense forms part of man's existence. it suffices to acknowledge that it does and, where it occurs, to observe it with scientific objectivity. our considerations, starting from certain statements made by some leading scientific thinkers of our time, have helped us not only to confirm the truth inherent in these statements, but to recognize the facts stated by them as being the outcome of certain laws of evolution and thereby having an historic necessity. this, however, does not mean that man's scientific labours, carried out under the historically given restrictions, great and successful as these labours were and are, have not led to calamitous effects such as we found indicated by professor carrel. the sciences of matter have led man into a country that is not his, and the world which he has created by means of scientific research is not only one in which he is a stranger but one which threatens to-day to deprive him of his own existence. the reason is that this world is essentially a world of active forces, and the true nature of these is something which modern man, restricted to his onlooker-consciousness, is positively unable to conceive. we have taken a first step in diagnosing man's present spiritual condition. a few more steps are required to lead us to the point where we can conceive the therapy he needs. this address and another by the same author are published together under the common title, wandlungen in den grundlagen der naturwissenschaft ('changes in the foundations of natural science'). heisenberg's name has become known above all by his formulation of the so-called principle of indeterminacy. see, in this respect, faust's dispute with mephistopheles on the causes responsible for the geological changes of the earth. (faust ii, act ) see also eddington's more elaborate description of this fact in his new pathways in science. the above statement, like others of eddington's, has been contested from the side of professional philosophy as logically untenable. our own further discussion will show that it accords with the facts. both words, kinematics and kinetics, are derivatives of the greek word kinein, to move. the term 'kinematic' is used when motion is considered abstractly without reference to force or mass. kinetics is applied kinematics, or, as pointed out above, dynamics treated with kinematic concepts. these last statements will find further illustration in the next two chapters. first published in in his book von seelenrätseln. homer's men still think with the diaphragm (phrenes). similarly, the ancient practice of yoga, as a means of acquiring knowledge, shows that at the time when it flourished man's conceptual activity was felt to be seated elsewhere than in the head. this must not be confused with the fact that a smell may evoke other memories by way of association. for one who endeavours to observe historical facts in the manner here described, it is no mere play of chance that the father of scientific atomism, john dalton, was by nature colour blind. in fact, colour blindness was known, for a considerable time during the last century, as 'daltonism', since it was through the publication of dalton's self-observations that for the first time general attention was drawn to this phenomenon. chapter iii the onlooker's philosophic malady in his isolation as world spectator, the modern philosopher was bound to reach two completely opposite views regarding the objective value of human thought. one of these was given expression in descartes' famous words: cogito ergo sum ('i think, therefore i am'). descartes ( - ), rightly described as the inaugurator of modern philosophy, thus held the view that only in his own thought-activity does man find a guarantee of his own existence. in coming to this view, descartes took as his starting-point his experience that human consciousness contains only the thought pictures evoked by sense-perception, and yet knows nothing of the how and why of the things responsible for such impressions. he thus found himself compelled, in the first place, to doubt whether any of these things had any objective existence, at all. hence, there remained over for him only one indubitable item in the entire content of the universe - his own thinking; for were he to doubt even this, he could do so only by again making use of it. from the 'i doubt, therefore i am', he was led in this way to the 'i think, therefore i am'. the other conception of human thought reached by the onlooker-consciousness was diametrically opposed to that of descartes, and entirely cancelled its conceptual significance. it was put forward - not long afterwards - by robert hooke ( - ), the first scientist to make systematic use of the newly invented microscope by means of which he made the fundamental discovery of the cellular structure of plant tissues. it was, indeed, on the strength of his microscopic studies that he boldly undertook to determine the relationship of human thought to objective reality. he published his views in the introduction to his micrographia, the great work in which, with the lavish help of carefully executed copper engravings, he made his microscopic observations known to the world. hooke's line of thought is briefly as follows: in past ages men subscribed to the naive belief that what they have in their consciousness as thought pictures of the world, actually reproduces the real content of that world. the microscope now demonstrates, however, how much the familiar appearance of the world depends on the structure of our sense apparatus; for it reveals a realm just as real as that already known to us, but hitherto concealed from us because it is not accessible to the natural senses. accordingly, if the microscope can penetrate through the veil of illusion which normally hides a whole world of potentially visible phenomena, it may be that it can even teach us something about the ideas we have hitherto formed concerning the nature of things. perhaps it can bring us a step nearer the truth in the sphere of thought, as it so obviously has done in that of observation. of all the ideas that human reason can form, hooke considered the simplest and the most fundamental to be the geometrical concepts of point and straight line. undoubtedly we are able to think these, but the naïve consciousness takes for granted that it also perceives them as objective realities outside itself, so that thoughts and facts correspond to each other. we must now ask, however, if this belief is not due to an optical deception. let us turn to the microscope and see what point and line in the external world look like through it. for his investigation hooke chose the point of a needle and a knife-edge, as providing the best representatives among physical objects of point and straight line. in the sketches here reproduced we may see how hooke made clear to his readers how little these two things, when observed through the microscope, resemble what is seen by the unaided eye. this fact convinced hooke that the apparent agreement between the world of perception and the world of ideas rests on nothing more solid than an optical limitation (plate i). compared with the more refined methods of present-day thought, hooke's procedure may strike us as somewhat primitive. actually he did nothing more than has since been done times without number; for the scientist has become more and more willing to allow artificially evoked sense-perceptions to dictate the thoughts he uses in forming a scientific picture of the world. in the present context we are concerned with the historical import of hooke's procedure. this lies in the fact that, immediately after descartes had satisfied himself that in thinking man had the one sure guarantee of his own existence, hooke proved in a seemingly indubitable manner that thinking was entirely divorced from reality. it required only another century for philosophy to draw from this the unavoidable consequence. it appeared in the form of hume's philosophic system, the outcome of which was universal scepticism. as we shall see in due course, hume's mode of reasoning continues to rule scientific thought even to-day, quite irrespective of the fact that science itself claims to have its philosophical parent in kant, the very thinker who devoted his life's work to the refutation of hume. * on the basis of his investigations into human consciousness hume felt obliged to reason thus: my consciousness, as i know it, has no contact with the external world other than that of a mere outside onlooker. what it wins for its own content from the outer world is in the nature of single, mutually unrelated parts. whatever may unite these parts into an objective whole within the world itself can never enter my consciousness; and any such unifying factor entertained by my thought can be only a self-constructed, hypothetical picture. hume summed up his view in two axioms which he himself described as the alpha and omega of his whole philosophy. the first runs: 'all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences.' the other: 'the mind never perceives any real connexions between distinct existences.' (treatise of human nature.) if once we agree that we can know of nothing but unrelated thought pictures, because our consciousness is not in a position to relate these pictures to a unifying reality, then we have no right to ascribe, with descartes and his school, an objective reality to the self. even though the self may appear to us as the unifying agent among our thoughts, it must itself be a mental picture among mental pictures ; and man can have no knowledge of any permanent reality outside this fluctuating picture-realm. so, with hume, the onlooker-consciousness came to experience its own utter inability to achieve a knowledge of the objective existence either of a material world be - behind all external phenomena, or of a spiritual self behind all the details of its own internal content. accordingly, human consciousness found itself hurled into the abyss of universal scepticism. hume himself suffered unspeakably under the impact of what he considered inescapable ideas - rightly described from another side as the 'suicide of human intelligence' - and his philosophy often seemed to him like a malady, as he himself called it, against whose grip he could see no remedy. the only thing left to him, if he was to prevent philosophical suicide from ending in physical suicide, was to forget in daily life his own conclusions as far as possible. what hume experienced as his philosophical malady, however, was the result not of a mental abnormality peculiar to himself, but of that modern form of consciousness which still prevails in general today. this explains why, despite all attempts to disprove hume's philosophy, scientific thought has not broken away from its alpha and omega in the slightest degree. a proof of this is to be found, for example, in the principle of indeterminacy which has arisen in modern physics. * the conception of indeterminacy as an unavoidable consequence of the latest phase of physical research is due to professor w. heisenberg. originally this conception forced itself upon heisenberg as a result of experimental research. in the meantime the same idea has received its purely philosophical foundation. we shall here deal with both lines of approach. after the discovery by galileo of the parallelogram of forces, it became the object of classical physics - unexpressed, indeed, until newton wrote his principia - to bring the unchanging laws ruling nature into the light of human consciousness, and to give them conceptual expression in the language of mathematical formulae. since, however, science was obliged to restrict itself to what could be observed with a single, colour-blind eye, physics has taken as its main object of research the spatio-temporal relationships, and their changes, between discrete, ideally conceived, point-like particles. accordingly, the mathematically formulable laws holding sway in nature came to mean the laws according to which the smallest particles in the material foundation of the world change their position with regard to each other. a science of this kind could logically maintain that, if ever it succeeded in defining both the position and the state of motion, in one single moment, of the totality of particles composing the universe, it would have discovered the law on which universal existence depends. this necessarily rested on the presupposition that it really was the ultimate particles of the physical world which were under observation. in the search for these, guided chiefly by the study of electricity, the physicists tracked down ever smaller and smaller units; and along this path scientific research has arrived at the following peculiar situation. to observe any object in the sense world we need an appropriate medium of observation. for ordinary things, light provides this. in the sense in which light is understood to-day, this is possible because the spatial extension of the single light impulses, their so-called wavelength, is immeasurably smaller than the average magnitude of all microscopically visible objects. this ensures that they can be observed clearly by the human eye. much smaller objects, however, will require a correspondingly shorter wave-length in the medium of observation. now shorter wave-lengths than those of visible light have been found in ultra-violet light and in x-rays; and these, accordingly, are now often used for minute physical research. in this way, however, we are led by nature to a definite boundary; for we now find ourselves in a realm where the dimensions of the observation medium and the observed object are more or less the same. the result, unfortunately, is that when the 'light' meets the object, it changes the latter's condition of movement. on the other hand, if a 'light' is used whose wave-length is too big to have any influence on the object's condition of movement, it precludes any exact determination of the object's location. thus, having arrived at the very ground of the world - that is, where the cosmic laws might be expected to reveal themselves directly - the scientist finds himself in the remarkable situation of only being able to determine accurately either the position of an observed object and not its state of motion, or its state of motion and not its position. the law he seeks, however, requires that both should be known at the same time. nor is this situation due to the imperfection of the scientific apparatus employed, but to its very perfection, so that it appears to arise from the nature of the foundation of the world - in so far, at least, as modern science is bound to conceive it. if it is true that a valid scientific knowledge of nature is possible only in the sphere open to a single-eyed, colour-blind observation, and if it is true - as a science of this kind, at any rate, is obliged to believe - that all processes within the material foundation of the world depend on nothing but the movements of certain elementary particles of extremely small size, then the fact must be faced that the very nature of these processes rules out the discovery of any stable ordering of things in the sense of mathematically formulable laws. the discovery of such laws will then always be the last step but one in scientific investigation; the last will inevitably be the dissolution of such laws into chaos. for a consistent scientific thinking that goes this way, therefore, nothing is left but to recognize chaos as the only real basis of an apparently ordered world, a chaos on whose surface the laws that seem to hold sway are only the illusory picturings of the human mind. this, then, is the principle of indeterminacy as it has been encountered in the course of practical investigation into the electrical processes within physical matter. in the following way professor schrödinger, another leading thinker among modern theoretical physicists, explains the philosophical basis for the principle of indeterminacy, which scientists have established in the meantime: 'every quantitative observation, every observation making use of measurement, is by nature discontinuous. ... however far we go in the pursuit of accuracy we shall never get anything other than a finite series of discrete results. ... the raw material of our quantitative cognition of nature will always have this primitive and discontinuous character. ... it is possible that a physical system might be so simple that this meagre information would suffice to settle its fate; in that case nature would not be more complicated than a game of chess. to determine a position of a game of chess thirty-three facts suffice. ... if nature is more complicated than a game of chess, a belief to which one tends to incline, then a physical system cannot be determined by a finite number of observations. but in practice a finite number of observations is all that we could make.' classical physics, the author goes on to show, held that it was possible to gain a real insight into the laws of the universe, because in principle an infinite number of such discrete observations would enable us to fill in the gaps sufficiently to allow us to determine the system of the physical world. against this assumption modern physics must hold the view that an infinite number of observations cannot in any case be carried out in practice, and that nothing compels us to assume that even this would suffice to furnish us with the means for a complete determination, which alone would allow us to speak of 'law' in nature. 'this is the direction in which modern physics has led us without really intending it.' what we have previously said will make it clear enough that in these words of a modern physicist we meet once more the two fundamentals of hume's philosophy. it is just as obvious, however, that the very principle thus re-affirmed at the latest stage of modern physical science was already firmly established by hooke, when he sought to prove to his contemporaries the unreality of human ideas. let us recall hooke's motives and results. the human reason discovers that certain law-abiding forms of thought dwell within itself; these are the rules of mathematical thinking. the eye informs the reason that the same kind of law and order is present also in the outer world. the mind can think point and line; the eye reports that the same forms exist in nature outside. (hooke could just as well have taken as his examples the apex and edge of a crystal.) the reason mistrusts the eye, however, and with the help of the microscope 'improves' on it. what hitherto had been taken for a compact, regulated whole now collapses into a heap of unordered parts; behind the illusion of law a finer observation detects the reality of chaos! had science in its vehement career from discovery to discovery not forgotten its own beginnings so completely, it would not have needed its latest researches to bring out a principle which it had in fact been following from the outset - a principle which philosophy had already recognized, if not in quite the same formulation, in the eighteenth century. indeterminacy, as we have just seen it explained by schrödinger, is nothing but the exact continuation of humean scepticism. in his book, science and the human temperament (dublin, ). chapter iv the country that is not ours the last two chapters have served to show the impasse into which human perception and thinking have come - in so far as they have been used for scientific purposes - by virtue of the relationship to the world in which man's consciousness found itself when it awoke to itself at the beginning of modern times. now although the onlooker in man, especially in the earliest stage of our period, gave itself up to the conviction that a self-contained picture of the universe could be formed out of the kind of materials available to it, it nevertheless had a dim inkling that this picture, because it lacked all dynamic content, had no bearing on the real nature of the universe. unable to find this reality within himself, the world-onlooker set about searching in his own way for what was missing, and turned to the perceptible world outside man. here he came, all unexpectedly, upon ... electricity. scarcely was electricity discovered than it drew human scientific thinking irresistibly into its own realm. thereby man found himself, with a consciousness completely blind to dynamics, within a sphere of only too real dynamic forces. the following description will show what results this has had for man and his civilization. * first, let us recall how potent a role electricity has come to play in social life through the great discoveries which began at the end of the eighteenth century. to do this we need only compare the present relationship between production and consumption in the economic sphere with what it was before the power-machine, and especially the electrically driven machine, had been invented. consider some major public undertaking in former times - say the construction of a great mediaeval cathedral. almost all the work was done by human beings, with some help, of course, from domesticated animals. under these circumstances the entire source of productive power lay in the will-energies of living beings, whose bodies had to be supplied with food, clothing and housing; and to provide these, other productive powers of a similar kind were required near the same place. accordingly, since each of the power units employed in the work was simultaneously both producer and consumer, a certain natural limit was placed on the accumulation of productive forces in any one locality. this condition of natural balance between production and consumption was profoundly disturbed by the introduction of the steam engine; but even so there were still some limits, though of a quite different kind, to local concentrations of productive power. for steam engines require water and coal at the scene of action, and these take up space and need continual shifting and replenishing. owing to the very nature of physical matter, it cannot be heaped up where it is required in unlimited quantities. all this changed directly man succeeded in producing energy electro-magnetically by the mere rotation of material masses, and in using the water-power of the earth - itself ultimately derived from the cosmic energies of the sun - for driving his dynamos. not only is the source of energy thus tapped practically inexhaustible, but the machines produce it without consuming on their own account, apart from wear and tear, and so make possible the almost limitless accumulation of power in one place. for electricity is distinguished from all other power-supplying natural forces, living or otherwise, precisely in this, that it can be concentrated spatially with the aid of a physical carrier whose material bulk is insignificant compared with the energy supplied. through this property of electricity it has been possible for man to extend the range of his activity in all directions, far and near. so the balance between production and consumption, which in previous ages was more or less adequately maintained by natural conditions, has been entirely destroyed, and a major social-economic problem created. in yet another way, and through quite another of its properties, electricity plays an important part in modern life. not only does it compete with the human will; it also makes possible automatically intelligent operations quite beyond anything man can do on his own. there are innumerable examples of this in modern electrical technology; we need mention here only the photo-electric cell and the many devices into which it enters. to an ever-increasing, quite uncontrolled degree - for to the mind of present-day man it is only natural to translate every new discovery into practice as soon and as extensively as possible - electricity enters decisively into our modern existence. if we take all its activities into account, we see arising amongst humanity a vast realm of labour units, possessed in their own way not only of will but of the sharpest imaginable intelligence. although they are wholly remote from man's own nature, he more and more subdues his thoughts and actions to theirs, allowing them to take rank as guides and shapers of his civilization. turning to the sphere of scientific research, we find electricity playing a role in the development of modern thinking remarkably similar to its part as a labour-force in everyday life. we find it associated with phenomena which, in professor heisenberg's words, expose their mutual connexions to exact mathematical thinking more readily than do any other facts of nature; and yet the way in which these phenomena have become known has played fast and loose with mathematical thinking to an unparalleled degree. to recognize that in this sphere modern science owes its triumphs to a strange and often paradoxical mixture of outer accident and error in human thought, we need only review the history of the subject without prejudice. * the discovery of electricity has so far been accomplished in four clearly distinct stages. the first extends from the time when men first knew of electrical phenomena to the beginning of the natural scientific age; the second includes the seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth centuries; the third begins with galvani's discovery and closes with the first observations of radiant electricity; and the fourth brings us to our own day. we shall here concern ourselves with a few outstanding features of each phase, enough to characterize the strange path along which man has been led by the discovery of electricity. until the beginning of modern times, nothing more was known about electricity, or of its sister force, magnetism, than what we find in pliny's writings. there, without recognizing a qualitative distinction between them, he refers to the faculty of rubbed amber and of certain pieces of iron to attract other small pieces of matter. it required the awakening of that overruling interest in material nature, characteristic of our own age, for the essential difference between electric and magnetic attraction to be recognized. the first to give a proper description of this was queen elizabeth's doctor, gilbert. his discovery was soon followed by the construction of the first electrical machine by the german guericke (also known through his invention of the air pump) which opened the way for the discovery that electricity could be transmitted from one place to another. it was not, however, until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the crop of electrical discoveries began to increase considerably: among these was the recognition of the dual nature of electricity, by the frenchman, dufais, and the chance invention of the leyden jar (made simultaneously by the german, von kleist, and two dutchmen, musschenbroek and cunaeus). the leyden jar brought electrical effects of quite unexpected intensity within reach. stimulated by what could be done with electricity in this form, more and more people now busied themselves in experimenting with so fascinating a force of nature, until in the second third of the century a whole army of observers was at work, whether by way of profession or of hobby, finding out ever new manifestations of its powers. the mood that prevailed in those days among men engaged in electrical research is well reflected in a letter written by the englishman, walsh, after he had established the electric nature of the shocks given by certain fishes, to benjamin franklin, who shortly before had discovered the natural occurrence of electricity in the atmosphere: 'i rejoice in addressing these communications to you. he, who predicted and shewed that electricity wings the formidable bolt of the atmosphere, will hear with attention that in the deep it speeds a humbler bolt, silent and invisible; he, who analysed the electrical phial, will hear with pleasure that its laws prevail in animate phials; he, who by reason became an electrician, will hear with reverence of an instinctive electrician, gifted in his birth with a wonderful apparatus, and with the skill to use it.' (phil. trans. .) dare one believe that in electricity the soul of nature had been discovered? this was the question which at that time stirred the hearts of very many in europe. doctors had already sought to arouse new vitality in their patients by the use of strong electric shocks; attempts had even been made to bring the dead back to life by such means. . in a time like ours, when we are primarily concerned with the practical application of scientific discoveries, we are mostly accustomed to regard such flights of thought from a past age as nothing but the unessential accompaniment of youthful, immature science, and to smile at them accordingly as historical curiosities. this is a mistake, for we then overlook how within them was hidden an inkling of the truth, however wrongly conceived at the time, and we ignore the role which such apparently fantastic hopes have played in connexion with the entry of electricity into human civilization. (nor are such hopes confined to the eighteenth century; as we shall see, the same impulse urged crookes a hundred years later to that decisive discovery which was to usher in the latest phase in the history of science, a phase in which the investigating human spirit has been led to that boundary of the physical-material world where the transition takes place from inert matter into freely working energy.) if there was any doubt left as to whether in nature the same power was at work which, in animal and man, was hidden away within the soul, this doubt seemed finally to have been dispelled through galvani's discovery that animal limbs could be made to move electrically through being touched by two bits of different metals. no wonder that 'the storm which was loosed in the world of the physicists, the physiologists and the doctors through galvani's publication can only be compared with the one crossing the political horizon of europe at the same time. wherever there happened to be frogs and two pieces of different metals available, everyone sought proof with his own eyes that the severed limbs could be marvellously re-enlivened.' like many of his contemporaries, galvani was drawn by the fascinating behaviour of the new force of nature to carry on electrical experiments as a hobby alongside his professional work, anatomical research. for his experiments he used the room where his anatomical specimens were set out. so it happened that his electrical machine stood near some frogs' legs, prepared for dissection. by a further coincidence his assistant, while playing with the machine, released a few sparks just when some of the specimens were in such contact with the surface beneath them that they were bound to react to the sudden alteration of the electric field round the machine caused by its discharge. at each spark the frogs' legs twitched. what galvani saw with his own eyes seemed to be no less than the union of two phenomena, one observed by franklin in the heights of the atmosphere, the other by walsh in the depths of the sea. galvani, as he himself describes, proceeded with immense enthusiasm to investigate systematically what accident had thus put into his hands. he wanted first to see whether changes occurring naturally in the electrical condition of the atmosphere would call forth the same reaction in his specimens. for this purpose he fastened one end of an iron wire to a point high up outside his house; the lower end he connected with the nervous substance of a limb from one of his specimens, and to the foot of this he attached a second wire whose other end he submerged in a well. the specimen itself was either enclosed in a glass flask in order to insulate it, or simply left lying on a table near the well. and all this he did whenever a thunderstorm was threatening. as he himself reported: 'all took place as expected. whenever the lightning flashed, all the muscles simultaneously came into repeated and violent twitchings, so that the movements of the muscles, like the flash of the lightning, always preceded the thunder, and thus, as it were, heralded its coming.' we can have some idea of what went on in galvani's mind during these experiments if we picture vividly to ourselves the animal limbs twitching about every time the lightning flashed, as if a revitalizing force of will had suddenly taken possession of them. in the course of his investigations - he carried them on for a long time - galvani was astonished to observe that some of his specimens, which he had hung on to an iron railing by means of brass hooks, sometimes fell to twitching even when the sky was quite clear and there was no sign of thunder. his natural conclusion was that this must be due to hitherto unnoticed electrical changes in the atmosphere. observations maintained for hours every day, however, led to no conclusive result; when twitchings did occur it was only with some of the specimens, and even then there was no discoverable cause. then it happened one day that galvani, 'tired out with fruitless watching', took hold of one of the brass hooks by which the specimens were hung, and pressed it more strongly than usual against the iron railing. immediately a twitching took place. 'i was almost at the point of ascribing the occurrence to atmospheric electricity,' galvani tells us. all the same he took one of the specimens, a frog, into his laboratory and there subjected it to similar conditions by putting it on an iron plate, and pressing against this with the hook that was stuck through its spinal cord. immediately the twitching occurred again. he tried with other metals and, for checking purposes, with non-metals as well. with some ingenuity he fixed up an arrangement, rather like that of an electric bell, whereby the limbs in contracting broke contact and in relaxing restored it, and so he managed to keep the frog in continuous rhythmical movement. whereas galvani had been rightly convinced by his earlier observations that the movement in the specimens represented a reaction to an electric stimulus from outside, he now changed his mind. in the very moment of his really significant discovery he succumbed to the error that he had to do with an effect of animal electricity located somewhere in the dead creature itself, perhaps in the fashion of what had been observed in the electric fishes. he decided that the metal attachment served merely to set in motion the electricity within the animal. whilst galvani persisted in this mistake until his death, volta realized that the source of the electric force, as in the first of galvani's observations, must still be sought outside the specimens, and himself rightly attributed it to the contacting metals. guided by this hypothesis, volta started systematic research into the galvanic properties of metals, and presently succeeded in producing electricity once more from purely mineral substances, namely from two different metals in contact with a conductive liquid. this mode of producing electricity, however, differed from any previously known in allowing for the first time the production of continuous electrical effects. it is this quality of the cells and piles constructed by volta that laid open the road for electric force to assume that role in human civilization which we have already described. that volta himself was aware of this essentially new factor in the galvanic production of electricity is shown by his own report to the royal society: 'the chief of my results, and which comprehends nearly all the others, is the construction of an apparatus which resembles in its effects, viz. such as giving shocks to the arms, &c, the leyden phial, and still better electric batteries weakly charged; . . . but which infinitely surpasses the virtue and power of these same batteries; as it has no need, like them, of being charged beforehand, by means of a foreign electricity; and as it is capable of giving the usual commotion as often as ever it is properly touched.' whilst volta's success was based on avoiding galvani's error, his apparatus nevertheless turned out inadvertently to be a close counterpart of precisely that animal organ which galvani had in mind when misinterpreting his own discoveries! that volta himself realized this is clear from the concluding words in his letter: 'this apparatus, as it resembles more the natural organ of the torpedo, or of the electrical eel, than the leyden phial or the ordinary electric batteries, i may call an artificial electric organ.' this new method of producing continuous electrical effects had far-reaching results, one of which was the discovery of the magnetic properties of the electric current by the dane, oersted - once again a purely accidental discovery, moving directly counter to the assumptions of the discoverer himself. about to leave the lecture room where he had just been trying to prove the non-existence of such magnetic properties (an attempt seemingly crowned with success), oersted happened to glance once more at his demonstration bench. to his astonishment he noticed that one of his magnetic needles was out of alignment; evidently it was attracted by a magnetic field created by the current running through a wire he had just been using, which was still in circuit. thus what had escaped oersted throughout his planned researches - namely, that the magnetic force which accompanies an electric current must be sought in a direction at right angles to the current - a fortuitous event enabled him to detect. these repeated strokes of chance and frequently mistaken interpretations of the phenomenon thus detected show that men were exploring the electrical realm as it were in the dark; it was a realm foreign to their ordinary ideas and they had not developed the forms of thought necessary for understanding it. (and this, as our further survey will show, is still true, even to-day.) in our historical survey we come next to the researches of faraday and maxwell. faraday was convinced that if electrical processes are accompanied by magnetic forces, as oersted had shown, the reverse must also be true - magnetism must be accompanied by electricity. he was led to this correct conviction by his belief in the qualitative unity of all the forces of nature - a reflexion, as his biography shows, of his strongly monotheistic, old testament faith. precisely this view, however - which since faraday natural science has quite consciously adopted as a leading principle - will reveal itself to us as a fundamental error. it seems paradoxical to assert that the more consistently human thought has followed this error, the greater have been the results of the scientific investigation of electricity. precisely this paradox, however, is characteristic of the realm of nature to which electricity belongs; and anyone earnestly seeking to overcome the illusions of our age will have to face the fact that the immediate effectiveness of an idea in practice is no proof of its ultimate truth. another eloquent example of the strange destiny of human thought in connexion with electricity is to be found in the work of clark maxwell, who, starting from faraday's discoveries, gave the theory of electricity its mathematical basis. along his purely theoretical line of thought he was led to the recognition of the existence of a form of electrical activity hitherto undreamt of - electro-magnetic vibrations. stimulated by maxwell's mathematical conclusions, hertz and marconi were soon afterwards able to demonstrate those phenomena which have led on the one hand to the electro-magnetic theory of light, and on the other to the practical achievements of wireless communication. once again, there is the paradoxical fact that this outcome of maxwell's labours contradicts the very foundation on which he had built his theoretical edifice. for his starting-point had been to form a picture of the electro-magnetic field of force to which he could apply certain well-known formulae of mechanics. this he did by comparing the behaviour of the electrical force to the currents of an elastic fluid - that is, of a material substance. it is true that both he and his successors rightly emphasized that such a picture was not in any way meant as an explanation of electricity, but merely as an auxiliary concept in the form of a purely external analogy. nevertheless, it was in the guise of a material fluid that he thought of this force, and that he could submit it to mathematical calculation. yet the fact is that from this starting-point the strict logic of mathematics led him to the discovery that electricity is capable of behaviour which makes it appear qualitatively similar to ... light! whilst practical men were turning the work of faraday and maxwell to account by exploiting the mechanical working of electricity in power-production, and its similarity to light in the wireless communication of thought, a new field of research, with entirely new practical possibilities, was suddenly opened up in the last third of the nineteenth century through the discovery of how electricity behaves in rarefied air. this brings us to the discovery of cathode rays and the phenomena accompanying them, from which the latest stage in the history of electricity originated. and here once more, as in the history of galvani's discoveries, we encounter certain undercurrents of longing and expectation in the human soul which seemed to find an answer through this sudden, great advance in the knowledge of electricity - an advance which has again led to practical applications of the utmost significance for human society, though not at all in the way first hoped for. interest in the phenomena arising when electricity passes through gases with reduced pressure had simultaneously taken hold of several investigators in the seventies of the nineteenth century. but the decisive step in this sphere of research was taken by the english physicist, william crookes. he was led on by a line of thought which seems entirely irrelevant; yet it was this which first directed his interest to the peculiar phenomena accompanying cathode rays; and they proved to be the starting-point of the long train of inquiry which has now culminated in the release of atomic energy. in the midst of his many interests and activities, crookes was filled from his youth with a longing to find by empirical means the bridge leading from the world of physical effects to that of superphysical causes. he himself tells how this longing was awakened in him by the loss of a much-beloved brother. before the dead body he came to the question, which thereafter was never to leave him, whether there was a land where the human individuality continues after it has laid aside its bodily sheath, and how that land was to be found. seeing that scientific research was the instrument which modern man had forged to penetrate through the veil of external phenomena to the causes producing them, it was natural for crookes to turn to it in seeking the way from the one world into the other. it was after meeting with a man able to produce effects within the corporeal world by means of forces quite different from those familiar to science, that crookes decided to devote himself to this scientific quest. thus he first came into touch with that sphere of phenomena which is known as spiritualism, or perhaps more suitably, spiritism. crookes now found himself before a special order of happenings which seemed to testify to a world other than that open to our senses; physical matter here showed itself capable of movement in defiance of gravity, manifestations of light and sound appeared without a physical source to produce them. through becoming familiar with such things at seances arranged by his mediumistic acquaintance, he began to hope that he had found the way by which scientific research could overstep the limits of the physical world. accordingly, he threw himself eagerly into the systematic investigation of his new experiences, and so became the father of modern scientific spiritism. crookes had hoped that the scientists of his day would be positively interested in his researches. but his first paper in this field, 'on phenomena called spiritual', was at once and almost unanimously rejected by his colleagues, and as long as he concerned himself with such matters he suffered through their opposition. it passed his understanding as a scientist why anything should be regarded in advance as outside the scope of scientific research. after several years of fruitless struggle he broke off his investigations into spiritism, deeply disillusioned at his failure to interest official science in it. his own partiality for it continued, however (he served as president of the society for psychical research from - ), and he missed no opportunity of confessing himself a pioneer in the search for the boundary-land between the worlds of matter and spirit. through all his varied scientific work the longing persisted to know more of this land. just as crookes had once sought to investigate spiritism scientifically, so in his subsequent scientific inquiries he was always something of a spiritist. he admitted, indeed, that he felt specially attracted by the strange light effects arising when electricity passes through rarefied gases, because they reminded him of certain luminous phenomena he had observed during his spiritistic investigations. besides this, there was the fact that light here showed itself susceptible to the magnetic force in a way otherwise characteristic only of certain material substances. accordingly, everything combined to suggest to crookes that here, if anywhere, he was at the boundary between the physical and the superphysical worlds. no wonder that he threw himself into the study of these phenomena with enthusiasm. he soon succeeded in evoking striking effects - light and heat, and also mechanical - along the path of electricity passing invisibly through the tube later named after him. thus he proved for the first time visibly, so to say, the double nature - material and supermaterial - of electricity. what crookes himself thought about these discoveries in the realm of the cathode rays we may judge from the title, 'radiant matter', or 'the fourth state of matter', which he gave to his first publication about them. and so he was only being consistent when, in his lectures before the royal institution in london, and the british association in sheffield in , after showing to an amazed scientific audience the newly discovered properties of electricity, he came to the climax of his exposition by saying: 'we have seen that in some of its properties radiant matter is as material as this table, whilst in other properties it almost assumes the character of radiant energy. we have actually touched here the borderland where matter and force seem to merge into one another, the shadowy realm between known and unknown, which for me has always had peculiar temptations.' and in boldly prophetic words, which time has partly justified, he added, 'i venture to think that the greatest scientific problems of the future will find their solution in this borderland, and even beyond; here, it seems to me, lie ultimate realities, subtle, far-reaching, wonderful.' no one can read these words of crookes without hearing again, as an undertone, the question which had forced itself on him at the bedside of his dead brother, long before. all that is left of the human being whom death has taken is a heap of substances, deserted by the force which had used them as the instrument of its own activity. whither vanishes this force when it leaves the body, and is there any possibility of its revealing itself even without occupying such a body? stirred by this question, the young crookes set out to find a world of forces which differ from the usual mechanical ones exercised by matter on matter, in that they are autonomous, superior to matter in its inert conglomeration, yet capable of using matter, just as the soul makes use of the body so long as it dwells within it. his aim was to secure proof that such forces exist, or, at any rate, to penetrate into the realm where the transition from matter to pure, matter-free force takes place. and once again, as in galvani's day, electricity fascinated the eyes of a man who was seeking for the land of the soul. what spiritism denied, electricity seemed to grant. the aversion to spiritism which crookes met with in contemporary science was, from the standpoint of such a science, largely justified. science, in the form in which crookes himself conceived it, took for granted that the relationship of human consciousness to the world was that of external onlooking. accordingly, if the scientist remained within the limits thus prescribed for consciousness, it was only consistent to refuse to make anything beyond these limits an object of scientific research. on the other hand, it says much for the courage and open mindedness of crookes that he refused to be held back from what was for him the only possible way of extending the boundaries of science beyond the given physical world. moreover, it was only natural that in his search for a world of a higher order than the physical he should, as a man of his time, first turn his attention to spiritistic occurrences, for spiritism, as it had come over to europe from america in the middle of the nineteenth century, was nothing but an attempt by the onlooker-consciousness to learn something in its own way about the supersensible world. the spiritist expects the spirit to reveal itself in outwardly perceptible phenomena as if it were part of the physical world. towards the end of his life crookes confessed that if he were able to begin again he would prefer to study telepathic phenomena - the direct transference of thought from one person to another - rather than the purely mechanical, or so-called telekinetic, expressions of psychic forces. but although his interest was thus turning towards a more interior field of psychic investigation, he remained true to his times in still assuming that knowledge about the world, whatever it might be, could be won only by placing oneself as a mere onlooker outside the object of research. * the stream of new discoveries which followed crookes's work justified his conviction that in cathode ray phenomena we have to do with a frontier region of physical nature. still, the land that lies on the other side of this frontier is not the one crookes had been looking for throughout his life. for, instead of finding the way into the land whither man's soul disappears at death, crookes had inadvertently crossed the border into another land - a land which the twentieth-century scientist is impelled to call 'the country that is not ours'. the realm thrown open to science by crookes's observations, which human knowledge now entered as if taking it by storm, was that of the radioactive processes of the mineral stratum of the earth. many new and surprising properties of electricity were discovered there - yet the riddle of electricity itself, instead of coming nearer, withdrew into ever deeper obscurity. the very first step into this newly discovered territory made the riddle still more bewildering. as we have said, maxwell's use of a material analogy as a means of formulating mathematically the properties of electro-magnetic fields of force had led to results which brought electricity into close conjunction with light. in his own way crookes focused, to begin with, his attention entirely on the light-like character of electric effects in a vacuum. it was precisely these observations, however, as continued by lenard and others, which presently made it necessary to see in electricity nothing else than a special manifestation of inert mass. the developments leading up to this stage are recent and familiar enough to be briefly summarized. the first step was once more an accident, when röntgen (or rather one of his assistants) noticed that a bunch of keys, laid down by chance on top of an unopened box of photographic plates near a cathode tube, had produced an inexplicable shadow-image of itself on one of the plates. the cathode tube was apparently giving off some hitherto unknown type of radiation, capable of penetrating opaque substances. röntgen was an experimentalist, not a theorist; his pupils used to say privately that in publishing this discovery of x-rays he attempted a theoretical explanation for the first and only time in his life - and got it wrong! however, this accidental discovery had far-reaching consequences. it drew attention to the fluorescence of minerals placed in the cathode tube; this inspired becquerel to inquire whether naturally fluorescent substances gave off anything like x-rays, and eventually - yet again by accident - he came upon certain uranium compounds. these were found to give off a radiation similar to x-rays, and to give it off naturally and all the time. soon afterwards the curies succeeded in isolating the element, radium, an element which was found to be undergoing a continuous natural disintegration. the way was now clear for that long series of experiments on atomic disintegration which led finally to the splitting of the nucleus and the construction of the atomic bomb. * a typical modern paradox emerges from these results. by restricting his cognitive powers to a field of experience in which the concept of force as an objective reality was unthinkable, man has been led on a line of practical investigation the pursuit of which was bound to land him amongst the force-activities of the cosmos. for what distinguishes electric and sub-electric activities from all other forces of physical nature so far known to science, is that for their operation they have no need of the resistance offered by space-bound material bodies; they represent a world of pure dynamics into which spatial limitations do not enter. equally paradoxical is the situation of theoretical thinking in face of that realm of natural being which practical research has lately entered. we have seen that this thinking, by virtue of the consciousness on which it is founded, is impelled always to clothe its ideas in spatial form. wherever anything in the pure spatial adjacency of physical things remains inexplicable, resort is had to hypothetical pictures whose content consists once more of nothing but spatially extended and spatially adjacent items. in this way matter came to be seen as consisting of molecules, molecules of atoms, and atoms of electrons, protons, neutrons, and so forth. in so far as scientific thought has held to purely spatial conceptions, it has been obliged to concentrate on ever smaller and smaller spatial sizes, so that the spatially conceived atom-picture has finally to reckon with dimensions wherein the old concept of space loses validity. when once thinking had started in this direction, it was electricity which once more gave it the strongest impulse to go even further along the same lines. where we have arrived along this path is brought out in a passage in eddington's the nature of the physical world. there, after describing the modern picture of electrons dancing round the atomic nucleus, he says: 'this spectacle is so fascinating that we have perhaps forgotten that there was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. this question was never answered. no familiar conceptions can be woven round the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.' the only thing we can say about the electron, if we are not to deceive ourselves, eddington concludes, is: 'something unknown is doing we don't know what.' let us add a further detail from this picture of the atom, as given in eddington's philosophy of physical science. referring to the so-called positron, the positive particle regarded as the polar opposite of the negative electron, he remarks: 'a positron is a hole from which an electron has been removed; it is a bung-hole which would be evened up with its surroundings if an electron were inserted. ... you will see that the physicist allows himself even greater liberty than the sculptor. the sculptor removes material to obtain the form he desires. the physicist goes further and adds material if necessary - an operation which he describes as removing negative material. he fills up a bung-hole, saying he is removing a positron.' eddington thus shows to what paradoxical ideas the scientist is driven, when with his accustomed forms of thought he ventures into regions where the conditions necessary for such forms no longer exist; and he concludes his remarks with the following caution: 'once again i would remind you that objective truth is not the point at issue.' by this reminder eddington shows how far science has reconciled itself to the philosophic scepticism at which man's thinking had arrived in the days of hume. in so far as the above remark was intended to be a consolation for the bewildered student, it is poor comfort in the light of the actions which science has let loose with the help of those unknown entities. for it is just this resignation of human thought which renders it unable to cope with the flood of phenomena springing from the sub-material realm of nature, and has allowed scientific research to outrun scientific understanding. e. du bois-raymond: investigations into animal electricity ( ). galvani published his discovery when the french revolution had reached its zenith and napoleon was climbing to power. the above account follows a. j. von oettingen's edition of galvani's monograph, de viribus electricitatis in motu musculari. for what follows see the life of sir william crookes, by e. e. fournier d'albe (london, ). eddington's italics. see also, in this respect, professor white head's criticism of the hypothetical picture of the electron and its behaviour. part ii goetheanism - whence and whither? chapter v the adventure of reason in , a year before galvani's monograph, concerning the forces of electricity, appeared, goethe published his metamorphosis of plants, which represents the first step towards the practical overcoming of the limitations of the onlooker-consciousness in science. goethe's paper was not destined to raise such a storm as soon followed galvani's publication. and yet the fruit of goethe's endeavours is not less significant than galvani's discovery, for the progress of mankind. for in goethe's achievement lay the seed of that form of knowing which man requires, if in the age of the electrification of civilization he is to remain master of his existence. * among the essays in which goethe in later years gave out some of the results of his scientific observation in axiomatic form, is one called 'intuitive judgment' ('anschauende urteilskraft'), in which he maintains that he has achieved in practice what kant had declared to be for ever beyond the scope of the human mind. goethe refers to a passage in the critique of judgment, where kant defines the limits of human cognitional powers as he had observed them in his study of the peculiar nature of the human reason. we must first go briefly into kant's own exposition of the matter. kant distinguishes between two possible forms of reason, the intellectus archetypus and the intellectus ectypus. by the first he means a reason 'which being, not like ours, discursive, but intuitive, proceeds from the synthetic universal (the intuition of the whole as such) to the particular, that is, from the whole to the parts'. according to kant, such a reason lies outside human possibilities. in contrast to it, the intellectus ectypus peculiar to man is restricted to taking in through the senses the single details of the world as such; with these it can certainly construct pictures of their totalities, but these pictures never have more than a hypothetical character and can claim no reality for themselves. above all, it is not given to such a thinking to think 'wholes' in such a way that through an act of thought alone the single items contained in them can be conceived as parts springing from them by necessity. (to illustrate this, we may say that, according to kant, we can certainly comprehend the parts of an organism, say of a plant, and out of its components make a picture of the plant as a whole; but we are not in a position to think that 'whole' of the plant which conditions the existence of its organism and brings forth its parts by necessity.) kant expresses this in the following way: 'for external objects as phenomena an adequate ground related to purposes cannot be met with; this, although it lies in nature, must be sought only in the supersensible substrata of nature, from all possible insight into which we are cut off. our understanding has then this peculiarity as concerns the judgment, that in cognitive understanding the particular is not determined by the universal and cannot therefore be derived from it.' the attempt to prove whether or not another form of reason than this (the intellectus archetypus) is possible - even though declared to be beyond man - kant regarded as superfluous, because the fact was enough for him 'that we are led to the idea of it - which contains no contradiction - in contrast to our discursive understanding, which has need of images (intellectus ectypus), and to the contingency of its constitution'. kant here brings forward two reasons why it is permissible to conceive of the existence of an extra-human, archetypal reason. on the one hand he admits that the existence of our own reason in its present condition is of a contingent order, and thus does not exclude the possible existence of a reason differently constituted. on the other hand, he allows that we can think of a form of reason which in every respect is the opposite of our own, without meeting any logical inconsistency. from these definitions emerges a conception of the properties of man's cognitional powers which agrees exactly with those on which, as we have seen, hume built up his whole philosophy. both allow to the reason a knowledge-material consisting only of pictures - that is, of pictures evoked in consciousness through sense-perception, and received by it from the outer world in the form of disconnected units, whilst denying it all powers, as hume expressed it, ever 'to perceive any real connections between distinct existences'. this agreement between kant and hume must at first sight surprise us, when we recall that, as already mentioned, kant worked out his philosophy precisely to protect the cognizing being of man from the consequences of hume's thought. for, as he himself said, it was his becoming acquainted with hume's treatise that 'roused him out of his dogmatic slumber' and obliged him to reflect on the foundations of human knowing. we shall understand this apparent paradox, however, if we take it as a symptom of humanity's close imprisonment in recent centuries within the limits of its onlooker-consciousness. in his struggle against hume, kant was not concerned to challenge his opponent's definition of man's reasoning power. his sole object was to show that, if one accepted this definition, one must not go as far as hume in the application of this power. all that kant could aspire to do was to protect the ethical from attack by the intellectual part of man, and to do this by proving that the former belongs to a world into which the latter has no access. for with his will man belongs to a world of purposeful doing, whereas the reason, as our quotations have shown, is incapable even in observing external nature, of comprehending the wholes within nature which determine natural ends. still less can it do this in regard to man, a being who in his actions is integrated into higher purposes. kant's deed is significant in that it correctly drew attention to that polar division in human nature which, after all, was already established in kant's own time. kant demonstrated also that to win insight into the ethical nature of man with the aid of the isolated intellect alone implied a trespass beyond permissible limits. in order to give the doing part of the human being its necessary anchorage, however, kant assigned it to a moral world-order entirely external to man, to which it could be properly related only through obedient submission. in this way kant became the philosopher of that division between knowledge and faith which to this day is upheld in both the ecclesiastical and scientific spheres of our civilization. nevertheless, he did not succeed in safeguarding humanity from the consequences of hume's philosophy; for man cannot live indefinitely in the belief that with the two parts of his own being he is bound up with two mutually unrelated worlds. the time when this was feasible is already over, as may be seen from the fact that ever greater masses of men wish to determine their behaviour according to their own ideas, and as they see no alternative in the civilization around them but to form ideas by means of the discursive reason which inevitably leads to agnosticism, they determine their actions accordingly. meanwhile, the ethical life as viewed by kant accordingly shrinks ever further into a powerless, hole-and-corner existence. * it is goethe's merit to have first shown that there is a way out of this impasse. he had no need to argue theoretically with kant as to the justification of denying man any power of understanding apart from the discursive, and of leaving the faculty of intuitive knowledge to a divinity somewhere outside the world of man. for goethe was his own witness that kant was mistaken in regarding man's present condition as his lasting nature. let us hear how he expresses himself on this fact at the beginning of his essay written as an answer to kant's statement: 'it is true, the author here seems to be pointing to an intellect not human but divine. and yet, if in the moral sphere we are supposed to lift ourselves up to a higher region through faith in god, virtue and immortality, so drawing nearer to the primal being, why should it not be likewise in the intellectual? by contemplation (anschauen) of an ever-creative nature, may we not make ourselves worthy to be spiritual sharers in her productions? i at first, led by an inner urge that would not rest, had quite unconsciously been seeking for the realm of type and archetype, and my attempt had been rewarded: i had been able to build up a description, in conformity with nature herself. now therefore nothing more could hinder me from braving what the old man of the king's hill himself calls the adventure of reason.' goethe started from the conviction that our senses as well as our intellect are gifts of nature, and that, if at any given moment they prove incapable through their collaboration of solving a riddle of nature, we must ask her to help us to develop this collaboration adequately. thus there was no question for him of any restriction of sense-perception in order to bring the latter in line with the existing power of the intellect, but rather to learn to make an ever fuller use of the senses and to bring our intellect into line with what they tell. 'the senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives', is one of his basic utterances concerning their respective roles in our quest for knowledge and understanding. as to the senses themselves, he was sure that 'the human being is adequately equipped for all true earthly requirements if he trusts his senses, and so develops them as to make them worthy of trust'. there is no contradiction in the statement that we have to trust our senses, and that we have to develop them to make them trustworthy. for, 'nature speaks upwards to the known senses of man, downwards to unknown senses of his'. goethe's path was aimed at wakening faculties, both perceptual and conceptual, which lay dormant in himself. his experience showed him that 'every process in nature, rightly observed, wakens in us a new organ of cognition'. right observation, in this respect, consisted in a form of contemplating nature which he called a 're-creating (creating in the wake) of an ever-creative nature' (nachschaffen einer immer schaffenden natur). * we should do goethe an injustice if we measured the value of his scientific work by the amount of factual knowledge he contributed to one or other sphere of research. although goethe did bring many new things to light, as has been duly recognized in the scientific fields concerned, it cannot be gainsaid that other scientists in his own day, working along the usual lines, far exceeded his total of discoveries. nor can it be denied that, as critics have pointed out, he occasionally went astray in reporting his observations. these things, however, do not determine the value or otherwise of his scientific labours. his work draws its significance not so much from the 'what', to use a goethean expression, as from the 'how' of his observations, that is, from his way of investigating nature. having once developed this method in the field of plant observation, goethe was able, with its aid, to establish a new view of animal nature, to lay the basis for a new meteorology, and, by creating his theory of light and colour, to provide a model for a research in the field of physics, free from onlooker-restrictions. in the scientific work of goethe his botanical studies have a special place. as a living organism, the plant is involved in an endless process of becoming. it shares this characteristic, of course, with the higher creatures of nature, and yet between it and them there is an essential difference. whereas in animal and man a considerable part of the life-processes conceal themselves within the organism, in order to provide a basis for inner soul processes, the plant brings its inner life into direct and total outer manifestation. hence the plant, better than anything, could become goethe's first teacher in his exercise of re-creating nature. it is for the same reason that we shall here use the plant for introducing goethe's method. the following exposition, however, does not aim at rendering in detail goethe's own botanical researches, expounded by him in two extensive essays, morphology and the metamorphosis of plants, as well as in a series of smaller writings. there are several excellent translations of the chief paper, the metamorphosis, from which the english-speaking reader can derive sufficient insight into goethe's way of expressing his ideas; a pleasure as well as a profit which he should not deny himself. our own way of procedure will have to be such that goethe's method, and its fruitfulness for the general advance of science, come as clearly as possible into view. botanical details will be referred to only as far as seems necessary for this purpose. the data for observation, from which in goethe's own fashion we shall start, have been selected as best for our purpose, quite independently of the data used by goethe himself. our choice was determined by the material available when these pages were being written. the reader is free to supplement our studies by his own observation of other plants. * plates ii and iii show two series of leaves which are so arranged as to represent definite stages in the growth-process of the plant concerned. in each sequence shown the leaves have been taken from a single plant, in which each leaf-form was repeated, perhaps several times, before it passed over into the next stage. the leaves on plate ii come from a sidalcea (of the mallow family), those on plate iii from a delphinium. we will describe the forms in sequence, so that we may grasp as clearly as possible the transition from one to another as presented to the eye. starting with the right-hand leaf at the bottom of plate ii, we let our eye and mind be impressed by its characteristic form, seeking to take hold of the pattern after which it is shaped. its edge bears numerous incisions of varying depths which, however, do not disturb the roundness of the leaf as a whole. if we re-create in our imagination the 'becoming' of such a leaf, that is, its gradual growth in all directions, we receive an impression of these incisions as 'negative' forms, because, at the points where they occur, the multiplication of the cells resulting from the general growth has been retarded. we observe that this holding back follows a certain order. we now proceed to the next leaf on the same plate and observe that, whilst the initial plan is faithfully maintained, the ratio between the positive and negative forms has changed. a number of incisions, hardly yet indicated in the first leaf, have become quite conspicuous. the leaf begins to look as if it were breaking up into a number of subdivisions. in the next leaf we find this process still further advanced. the large incisions have almost reached the centre, while a number of smaller ones at the periphery have also grown deeper into the leaf. the basic plan of the total leaf is still maintained, but the negative forms have so far got the upper hand that the original roundness is no longer obvious. the last leaf shows the process in its extreme degree. as we glance back and along the whole series of development, we recognize that the form of the last leaf is already indicated in that of the first. it appears as if the form has gradually come to the fore through certain forces which have increasingly prevented the leaf from filling in the whole of its ground-plan with matter. in the last leaf the common plan is still visible in the distribution of the veins, but the fleshy part of the leaf has become restricted to narrow strips along these veins. the metamorphosis of the delphinium leaf (plate iii) is of a different character. here the plant begins with a highly elaborate form of the leaf, while in the end nothing remains but the barest indication of it. the impression received from this series of leaves is that of a gradual withdrawal of the magnificent form, revealed in its fullness only in the first leaf. a more intense impression of what these metamorphoses actually mean is achieved by altering our mode of contemplation in the following way. after repeated and careful observation of the different forms on either of the plates, we build up inwardly, as a memory picture, the shape of the first leaf, and then transform this mental image successively into the images of the ensuing forms until we reach the final stage. the same process can also be tried retrogressively, and so repeated forward and backward. this is how goethe studied the doing of the plant, and it is by this method that he discovered the spiritual principle of all plant life, and succeeded also in throwing a first light on the inner life-principle of animals. * we chose the transformation of leaf forms into one another as the starting-point of our observations, because the principle of metamorphosis appears here in a most conspicuous manner. this principle, however, is not confined to this part of the plant's organism. in fact, all the different organs which the plant produces within its life cycle - foliage, calyx, corolla, organs of fertilization, fruit and seed - are metamorphoses of one and the same organ. man has long learnt to make use of this law of metamorphosis in the plant for what is called doubling the flower of a certain species. such a flower crowds many additional petals within its original circle, and these petals are nothing but metamorphosed stamens; this, for instance, is the difference between the wild and the cultivated rose. the multitude of petals in the latter is obtained by the transformation of a number of the former's innumerable stamens. (note the intermediate stages between the two, often found inside the flower of such plants.) this falling back from the stage of an organ of fertilization to that of a petal shows that the plant is capable of regressive metamorphosis, and we may conclude from this that in the normal sequence the different organs are transformed from one another by way of progressive metamorphosis. it is evident that the regressive type occurs only as an abnormality, or as a result of artificial cultivation. plants once brought into this condition frequently show a general state of unrest, so that other organs also are inclined to fall back to a lower level. thus we may come across a rose, an outer petal of which appears in the form of a leaf of the calyx (sepal), or one of the sepals is found to have grown into an ordinary rose leaf. we now extend our mental exercise to the plant's whole organism. by a similar mental effort as applied to the leaf-formations we strive to build up a complete plant. we start with the seed, from which we first imagine the cotyledons unfolding, letting this be followed by the gradual development of the entire green part of the plant, its stem and leaves, until the final leaves change into the sepals of the calyx. these again we turn into the petals of the flower, until via pistil and stamens the fruit and seed are formed. by pursuing in this way the living doing of the plant from stage to stage we become aware of a significant rhythm in its total life cycle. this, when first discovered by goethe, gave him the key to an understanding of nature's general procedure in building living organisms, and in maintaining life in them. the plant clearly divides into three major parts: firstly, the one that extends from the cotyledons to the calyx, the green part of the plant, that is, where the life principle is most active; secondly, the one comprising the flower itself with the organs of fertilization, where the vitality of the plant gives way to other principles; and lastly, the fruit and seed, which are destined to be discharged from the mother organism. each of these three contains two kinds of organs: first, organs with the tendency to grow into width-leaf, flower and fruit; second, organs which are outwardly smaller and simpler, but have the function of preparing the decisive leaps in the plant's development: these are the calyx, the stamens, etc., and the seed. in this succession, goethe recognized a certain rhythm of expansion and contraction, and he found that the plant passes through it three times during any one cycle of its life. in the foliage the plant expands, in the calyx it contracts; it expands again in the flower and contracts in the pistil and stamens; finally, it expands in the fruit and contracts in the seed. the deeper meaning of this threefold rhythm will become clear when we consider it against the background of what we observed in the metamorphosis of the leaf. take the mallow leaf; its metamorphosis shows a step-wise progression from coarser to finer forms, whereby the characteristic plan of the leaf comes more and more into view, so that in the topmost leaf it reaches a certain stage of perfection. now we observe that in the calyx this stage is not improved on, but that the plant recurs to a much simpler formation. whilst in the case of the mallow the withdrawal from the stage of the leaf into that of the calyx occurs with a sudden leap, we observe that the delphinium performs this process by degrees. whilst the mallow reaches the highly elaborate form of the leaf only in the final stage, the delphinium leaps forth at the outset, as it were, with the fully accomplished leaf, and then protracts its withdrawal into the calyx over a number of steps, so that this process can be watched with our very eyes. in this type of metamorphosis the last leaf beneath the calyx shows a form that differs little from that of a calyx itself, with its simple sepals. only in its general geometrical arrangement does it still remind us of the original pattern. in a case like this, the stem-leaves, to use goethe's expression, 'softly steal into the calyx stage'. in the topmost leaf the plant has already achieved something which, along the other line of metamorphosis, is tackled only after the leaf plan itself has been gradually executed. in this case the calyx stage, we may say, is attained at one leap. whatever type of metamorphosis is followed by a plant (and there are others as well, so that we may even speak of metamorphoses between different types of metamorphosis!) they all obey the same basic rule, namely, that before proceeding to the next higher stage of the cycle, the plant sacrifices something already achieved in a preceding one. behind the inconspicuous sheath of the calyx we see the plant preparing itself for a new creation of an entirely different order. as successor to the leaf, the flower appears to us time and again as a miracle. nothing in the lower realm of the plant predicts the form, colour, scent and all the other properties of the new organ produced at this stage. the completed leaf, preceding the plant's withdrawal into the calyx, represents a triumph of structure over matter. now, in the flower, matter is overcome to a still higher degree. it is as if the material substance here becomes transparent, so that what is immaterial in the plant may shine through its outer surface. * in this 'climbing up the spiritual ladder' goethe learned to recognize one of nature's basic principles. he termed it steigerung (heightening). thus he saw the plant develop through metamorphosis and heightening towards its consummation. implicit in the second of these two principles, however, there is yet another natural principle for which goethe did not coin a specific term, although he shows through other utterances that he was well aware of it, and of its universal significance for all life. we propose to call it here the principle of renunciation. in the life of the plant this principle shows itself most conspicuously where the green leaf is heightened into the flower. while progressing from leaf to flower the plant undergoes a decisive ebb in its vitality. compared with the leaf, the flower is a dying organ. this dying, however, is of a kind we may aptly call a 'dying into being'. life in its mere vegetative form is here seen withdrawing in order that a higher manifestation of the spirit may take place. the same principle can be seen at work in the insect kingdom, when the caterpillar's tremendous vitality passes over into the short-lived beauty of the butterfly. in the human being it is responsible for that metamorphosis of organic processes which occurs on the path from the metabolic to the nervous system, and which we came to recognize as the precondition for the appearance of consciousness within the organism. what powerful forces must be at work in the plant organism at this point of transition from its green to its coloured parts! they enforce a complete halt upon the juices that rise up right into the calyx, so that these bring nothing of their life-bearing activity into the formation of the flower, but undergo a complete transmutation, not gradually, but with a sudden leap. after achieving its masterpiece in the flower, the plant once more goes through a process of withdrawal, this time into the tiny organs of fertilization. (we shall return later to this essential stage in the life cycle of the plant, and shall then clear up the misinterpretation put upon it ever since scientific biology began.) after fertilization, the fruit begins to swell; once more the plant produces an organ with a more or less conspicuous spatial extension. this is followed by a final and extreme contraction in the forming of the seed inside the fruit. in the seed the plant gives up all outer appearance to such a degree that nothing seems to remain but a small, insignificant speck of organized matter. yet this tiny, inconspicuous thing bears in it the power of bringing forth a whole new plant. in these three successive rhythms of expansion and contraction the plant reveals to us the basic rule of its existence. during each expansion, the active principle of the plant presses forth into visible appearance; during each contraction it withdraws from outer embodiment into what we may describe as a more or less pure state of being. we thus find the spiritual principle of the plant engaged in a kind of breathing rhythm, now appearing, now disappearing, now assuming power over matter, now withdrawing from it again. in the fully developed plant this rhythm repeats itself three times in succession and at ever higher levels, so that the plant, in climbing from stage to stage, each time goes through a process of withdrawal before appearing at the next. the greater the creative power required at a certain stage, the more nearly complete must be the withdrawal from outer appearance. this is why the most extreme withdrawal of the plant into the state of being takes place in the seed, when the plant prepares itself for its transition from one generation to another. even earlier, the flower stands towards the leaves as something like a new generation springing from the small organ of the calyx, as does the fruit to the flower when it arises from the tiny organs of reproduction. in the end, however, nothing appears outwardly so unlike the actual plant as the little seed which, at the expense of all appearance, has the power to renew the whole cycle. through studying the plant in this way goethe grew aware also of the significance of the nodes and eyes which the plant develops as points where its vital energy is specially concentrated; not only the seed, but the eye also, is capable of producing a new, complete plant. in each of these eyes, formed in the axils of the leaves, the power of the plant is present in its entirety, very much as in each single seed. in other ways, too, the plant shows its capacity to act as a whole at various places of its organism. otherwise, no plant could be propagated by cuttings; in any little twig cut from a parent plant, all the manifold forces operative in the gathering, transmuting, forming of matter, that are necessary for the production of root, leaf, flower, fruit, etc., are potentially present, ready to leap into action provided we give it suitable outer conditions. other plants, such as gloxinia and begonia, are known to have the power of bringing forth a new, complete plant from each of their leaves. from a small cut applied to a vein in a leaf, which is then embedded in earth, a root will soon be seen springing downward, and a stalk with leaves rising upward. a particular observation made by goethe in this respect is of interest for methodological reasons. in the introduction to his treatise metamorphosis of plants, when referring to the regressive metamorphosis of stamens into petals as an example of an irregular metamorphosis, he remarks that 'experiences of this kind of metamorphosis will enable us to disclose what is hidden from us in the regular way of development, and to see clearly and visibly what we should otherwise only be able to infer'. in this remark goethe expresses a truth that is valid in many spheres of life, both human and natural. it is frequently a pathological aberration in an organic entity that allows us to see in physical appearance things that do not come outwardly to the fore in the more balanced condition of normal development, although they are equally part of the regular organic process. an enlightening experience of this kind came to goethe's aid when one day he happened to see a 'proliferated' rose (durchgewachsene rose), that is, a rose from whose centre a whole new plant had sprung. instead of the contracted seed-pod, with the attached, equally contracted, organs of fertilization, there appeared a continuation of the stalk, half red and half green, bearing in succession a number of small reddish petals with traces of anthers. thorns could be seen appearing further up, petals half-turned into leaves, and even a number of fresh nodes from which little imperfect flowers were budding. the whole phenomenon, in all its irregularity, was one more proof for goethe that the plant in its totality is potentially present at each point of its organism. * goethe's observation of the single plant in statu agendi had trained him to recognize things of quite different outer appearance as identical in their inner nature. leaf, sepal, petal, etc., much as they differ outwardly, yet showed themselves to him as manifestations of one and the same spiritual archetype. his idea of metamorphosis enabled him to reduce what in outer appearance seems incompatibly different to its common formative principle. his next step was to observe the different appearances of one and the same species in different regions of the earth, and thus to watch the capacity of the species to respond in a completely flexible way to the various climatic conditions, yet without concealing its inner identity in the varying outer forms. his travels in switzerland and italy gave him opportunity for such observations, and in the alpine regions especially he was delighted at the variations in the species which he already knew so well from his home in weimar. he saw their proportions, the distances between the single parts, the degree of lignification, the intensity of colour, etc., varying with the varied conditions, yet never concealing the identity of the species. having once advanced in his investigations from metamorphosis in the parts of the single plant to metamorphosis among different representatives of single plant species, goethe had to take only one further, entirely decisive, step in order to recognize how every member of the plant kingdom is the manifestation of a single formative principle common to them all. he was thus faced with the momentous task of preparing his spirit to think an idea from which the plant world in its entire variety could be derived. goethe did not take such a step easily, for it was one of his scientific principles never to think out an idea prematurely. he was well aware that he who aspires to recognize and to express in idea the spirit which reveals itself through the phenomena of the sense-world must develop the art of waiting - of waiting, however, in a way intensely active, whereby one looks again and yet again, until what one looks at begins to speak and the day at last dawns when, through tireless 're-creation of an ever-creating nature', one has grown ripe to express her secrets openly. goethe was a master in this art of active waiting. * it was in the very year that galvani, through his chance discovery, opened the way to the overwhelming invasion of mankind by the purely physical forces of nature, that goethe came clearly to see that he had achieved the goal of his labours. we can form some picture of the decisive act in the drama of his seeking and finding from letters written during the years - . in the spring of he writes to a friend in a way that shows him fully aware of his new method of studying nature, which he recognized was a reading of her phenomena: 'i can't tell you how the book of nature is becoming readable to me. my long practice in spelling has helped me; it now suddenly works, and my quiet joy is inexpressible.' again in the summer of the following year: 'it is a growing aware of the form with which again and again nature plays, and, in playing, brings forth manifold life.' then goethe went on his famous journey to italy which was to bear such significant fruit for his inner life, both in art and in science. at michaelmas, , he reports from his visit to the botanical garden in padua that 'the thought becomes more and more living that it may be possible out of one form to develop all plant forms'. at this moment goethe felt so near to the basic conception of the plant for which he was seeking, that he already christened it with a special name. the term he coined for it is urpflanze, literally rendered archetypal plant, or ur-plant, as we propose quite simply to call it. it was the rich tropical and sub-tropical vegetation in the botanical gardens in palermo that helped goethe to his decisive observations. the peculiar nature of the warmer regions of the earth enables the spirit to reveal itself more intensively than is possible in the temperate zone. thus in tropical vegetation many things come before the eye which otherwise remain undisclosed, and then can be detected only through an effort of active thought. from this point of view, tropical vegetation is 'abnormal' in the same sense as was the proliferated rose which confirmed for goethe's physical perception that inner law of plant-growth which had already become clear to his mind. during his sojourn in palermo in the spring of goethe writes in his notebook: 'there must be one (ur-plant): how otherwise could we recognize this or that formation to be a plant unless they were all formed after one pattern?' soon after this, he writes in a letter to the poet herder, one of his friends in weimar: 'further, i must confide to you that i am quite close to the secret of plant creation, and that it is the simplest thing imaginable. the ur-plant will be the strangest creature in the world, for which nature herself should envy me. with this model and the key to it one will be able to invent plants ad infinitum; they would be consistent; that is to say, though non-existing, they would be capable of existing, being no shades or semblances of the painter or poet, but possessing truth and necessity. the same law will be capable of extension to all living things.' * to become more familiar with the conception of the ur-plant, let us bring the life-cycle of the plant before our inner eye once again. there, all the different organs of the plant-leaf, blossom, fruit, etc. - appear as the metamorphic revelations of the one, identical active principle, a principle which gradually manifests itself to us by way of successive heightening from the cotyledons to the perfected glory of the flower. amongst all the forms which thus appear in turn, that of the leaf has a special place; for the leaf is that organ of the plant in which the ground-plan of all plant existence comes most immediately to expression. not only do all the different leaf forms arise, through endless changing, out of each other, but the leaf, in accordance with the same principle, also changes itself into all the other organs which the plant produces in the course of its growth. it is by precisely the same principle that the ur-plant reveals itself in the plant kingdom as a whole. just as in the single plant organism the different parts are a graduated revelation of the ur-plant, so are the single kinds and species within the total plant world. as we let our glance range over all its ranks and stages (from the single-celled, almost formless alga to the rose and beyond to the tree), we are following, step by step, the revelation of the ur-plant. barely hinting at itself in the lowest vegetable species, it comes in the next higher stages into ever clearer view, finally streaming forth in full glory in the magnificence of the manifold blossoming plants. then, as its highest creation, it brings forth the tree, which, itself a veritable miniature earth, becomes the basis for innumerable single plant growths. it has struck biologists of goethe's own and later times that contrary to their method he did not build up his study of the plant by starting with its lowest form, and so the reproach has been levelled against him of having unduly neglected the latter. because of this, the views he had come to were regarded as scientifically unfounded. goethe's note-books prove that there is no justification for such a reproach. he was in actual fact deeply interested in the lower plants, but he realized that they could not contribute anything fundamental to the spiritual image of the plant as such which he was seeking to attain. to understand the plant he found himself obliged to pay special attention to examples in which it came to its most perfect expression. for what was hidden in the alga was made manifest in the rose. to demand of goethe that in accordance with ordinary science he should have explained nature 'from below upwards' is to misunderstand the methodological basis of all his investigations. seen with goethe's eyes, the plant kingdom as a whole appears to be a single mighty plant. in it the ur-plant, while pressing into appearance, is seen to observe the very rule which we have found governing its action in the single plant - that of repeated expansion and contraction. taking the tree in the sense already indicated, as the state of highest expansion along the ur-plant's way of entering into spatial manifestation, we note that tree-formation occurs successively at four different levels - as fern-tree (also the extinct tree-form of the horsetail) among the cryptogams, as coniferous tree among the gymnosperms, as palm-tree among the monocotyledons, and lastly in the form of the manifold species of the leaf-trees at the highest level of the plant kingdom, the dicotyledons. all these levels have come successively into existence, as geological research has shown; the ur-plant achieved these various tree-formations successively, thus giving up again its state of expansion each time after having reached it at a particular level. from the concept of the ur-plant goethe soon learned to develop another concept which was to express the spiritual principle working in a particular plant species, just as the ur-plant was the spiritual principle covering the plant kingdom as a whole. he called it the type. in the manifold types which are thus seen active in the plant world we meet offsprings, as it were, of the mother, the 'ur-plant', which in them assumes differentiated modes of action. the present part of our discussion may be concluded by the introduction of a concept which goethe formed for the organ of cognition attained through contemplating nature in the state of becoming, as the plant had taught him to do. let us look back once again on the way in which we first tried to build up the picture of leaf metamorphosis. there we made use, first of all, of exact sense-perceptions to which we applied the power of memory in its function as their keeper. we then endeavoured to transform within our mind the single memory pictures (leaf forms) into one another. by doing so we applied to them the activity of mobile fantasy. in this way we actually endowed, on the one hand, objective memory, which by nature is static, with the dynamic properties of fantasy, and, on the other hand, mobile fantasy, which by nature is subjective, with the objective character of memory. now, for the new organ of cognition arising from the union of these two polar faculties of the soul, goethe coined the significant expression, exact sensorial fantasy. in terms of our knowledge of man's psycho-physical make-up, acquired earlier, we can say that, just as the nervous system forms the basis for memory, and the blood the basis for fantasy, so the 'exact sensorial fantasy' is based on a newly created collaboration of the two. * our observations have reached a point where we may consider that stage in the life cycle of the single plant where, by means of the process of pollination, the seed acquires the capacity to produce out of itself a new example of the species. our discussion of this will bring home the fundamental difference in idea that arises when, instead of judging a process from the standpoint of the mere onlooker, we try to comprehend it through re-creating it inwardly. biological science of our day takes it for granted that the process uniting pollen with seed in the plant is an act of fertilization analogous to that which occurs among the higher organisms of nature. now it is not to be gainsaid that to external observation this comparison seems obvious, and that it is therefore only natural to speak of the pollen as the male, and of the ovule as the female, element, and of their union as entirely parallel to that between the sexes in the higher kingdoms of nature. goethe confesses that at first he himself 'had credulously put up with the ruling dogma of sexuality'. he was first made aware of the invalidity of this analogy by professor schelver who, as superintendent of the jena botanical institute, was working under goethe's direction and had trained himself in goethe's method of observing plants. this man had come to see that if one held strictly to the goethean practice of using nothing for the explanation of the plant but what one could read from the plant itself, one must not ascribe to it any sexual process. he was convinced that for a goethean kind of biology it must be possible to find, even for the process of pollination, an idea derived from nothing but the two principles of plant life: growth and formation. goethe immediately recognized the tightness of this thought, and set about the task of relating the pollination process to the picture of the plant which his investigations had already yielded. his way of reporting the result shows how fully conscious he was of its revolutionary nature. nor was he in any doubt as to the kind of reception it would be given by official biology. in observing the growth of the plant, goethe had perceived that this proceeds simultaneously according to two different principles. on the one hand the plant grows in an axial direction and thereby produces its main and side stems. to this growth principle goethe gave the name 'vertical tendency'. were the plant to follow this principle only, its lateral shoots would all stand vertically one above the other. but observation shows that the different plant species obey very different laws in this respect, as may be seen if one links up all the leaf buds along any plant stem; they form a line which winds spiral fashion around it. each plant family is distinguishable by its own characteristic spiral, which can be represented either geometrically by a diagram, or arithmetically by a fraction. if, for example, the leaves are so arranged in a plant that every fifth leaf recurs on the same side of the stem, while the spiral connecting the five successive leaf-buds winds twice round the stem, this is expressed in botany by the fraction / . to distinguish this principle of plant growth from the vertical tendency, goethe used the term 'spiral tendency'. to help towards a clear understanding of both tendencies, goethe describes an exercise which is characteristic of his way of schooling himself in what he called exact sensorial fantasy. he first looks out for a phenomenon in which the 'secret' of the spiral tendency is made 'open'. this he finds in such a plant as the convolvulus; in this kind of plant the vertical tendency is lacking, and the spiral principle comes obviously into outer view. accordingly, the convolvulus requires an external support, around which it can wind itself. goethe now suggests that after looking at a convolvulus as it grows upwards around its support, one should first make this clearly present to one's inner eye, and then again picture the plant's growth without the vertical support, allowing instead the upward-growing plant inwardly to produce a vertical support for itself. by way of inward re-creation (which the reader should not fail to carry out himself) goethe attained a clear experience of how, in all those plants which in growing upwards produce their leaves spiral-wise around the stem, the vertical and spiral tendencies work together. in following the two growth-principles, goethe saw that the vertical comes to a halt in the blossom; the straight line here shrinks together, so to say, into a point, surviving only in the ovary and pistil as continuations of the plant's stalk. the spiral tendency, on the other hand, is to be found in the circle of the stamens arranged around these; the process which in the leaves strove outwards in spiral succession around a straight line is now telescoped on to a single plane. in other words, the vertical-spiral growth of the plant here separates into its two components. and when a pollen grain lands on a pistil and joins with the ovule prepared in the ovary, the two components are united again. out of the now complete seed a new and complete plant can arise. goethe understood that he would be taught a correct conception of this process only by the plant itself. accordingly, he asked himself where else in the growing plant something like separation and reunion could be seen. this he found in the branching and reuniting of the veins in the leaves, known as anastomosis. in the dividing of the two growth-principles in the plant through the formation of carpel and pistil, on the one hand, and the pollen-bearing stamens on the other, and in their reunion through the coming together of the pollen with the seed, goethe recognized a metamorphosis of the process of anastomosis at a higher level. his vision of it caused him to term it 'spiritual anastomosis'. goethe held a lofty and comprehensive view of the significance of the male and female principles as spiritual opposites in the cosmos. among the various manifestations of this polarity in earthly nature he found one, but one only, in the duality of the sexes as characteristic of man and animal. nothing compelled him, therefore, to ascribe it in the same form to the plant. this enabled him to discover how the plant bore the same polarity in plant fashion. in the neighbourhood of weimar, goethe often watched a vine slinging its foliaged stem about the trunk and branches of an elm tree. in this impressive sight nature offered him a picture of 'the female and male, the one that needs and the one that gives, side by side in the vertical and spiral directions'. thus his artist's eye clearly detected in the upward striving of the plant a decisively masculine principle, and in its spiral winding an equally definite feminine principle. since in the normal plant both principles are inwardly connected, 'we can represent vegetation as a whole as being in a secret androgynous union from the root up. from this union, through the changes of growth, both systems break away into open polarity and so stand in decisive opposition to each other, only to unite again in a higher sense.' thus goethe found himself led to ideas regarding the male and female principles in the plant, which were the exact opposite of those one obtains if, in trying to explain the process of pollination, one does not keep to the plant itself but imports an analogy from another kingdom of nature. for in continuance of the vertical principle of the plant, the pistil and carpel represent the male aspect in the process of spiritual anastomosis, and the mobile, wind- or insect-borne pollen, in continuing the spiral principle, represents the female part. if the process of pollination is what the plant tells us it is, then the question arises as to the reason for the occurrence of such a process in the life cycle of the fully developed plant. goethe himself has not expressed himself explicitly on this subject. but his term 'spiritual anastomosis' shows that he had some definite idea about it. let us picture in our mind what happens physically in the plant as a result of pollination and then try to read from this picture, as from a hieroglyph, what act of the spiritual principle in the plant comes to expression through it. without pollination there is no ripening of the seed. ripening means for the seed its acquisition of the power to bring forth a new and independent plant organism through which the species continues its existence within nature. in the life cycle of the plant this event takes place after the organism has reached its highest degree of physical perfection. when we now read these facts in the light of the knowledge that they are deeds of the activity of the type, we may describe them as follows: stage by stage the type expends itself in ever more elaborate forms of appearance, until in the blossom a triumph of form over matter is reached. a mere continuation of this path could lead to nothing but a loss of all connexion between the plant's superphysical and physical component parts. thus, to guarantee for the species its continuation in a new generation, the formative power of the type must find a way of linking itself anew to some part of the plant's materiality. this is achieved by the plant's abandoning the union between its two polar growth-principles and re-establishing it again, which in the majority of cases takes place even in such a way that the bearers of the two principles originate from two different organisms. by picturing the process in this way we are brought face to face with a rule of nature which, once we have recognized it, proves to hold sway at all levels of organic nature. in general terms it may be expressed as follows: in order that spiritual continuity may be maintained within the coming and going multitude of nature's creations, the physical stream must suffer discontinuity at certain intervals. in the case of the plant this discontinuity is achieved by the breaking asunder of the male and female growth-principles. when they have reunited, the type begins to abandon either the entire old plant or at least part of it, according to whether the species is an annual or a perennial one, in order to concentrate on the tiny seed, setting, as it were, its living seal on it. this is as far as we can go in describing this mysterious process, at least at the present stage of our considerations. * our pursuit of goethe's way of observing the life of the plant has brought us to a point where it becomes possible to rectify a widespread error concerning his position as an evolutionary theorist. goethe has been honourably mentioned as a predecessor of darwin. the truth is, that the idea of evolution emerging from goethe's mode of regarding nature is the exact opposite of the one held by darwin and - in whatever modified form - by his followers. a brief consideration of the darwinian concepts of inheritance and adaptation will show this. goethe's approach to his conception of the type is clear evidence that he did not undervalue the factor of adaptation as a formative element in nature; we have seen that he became acquainted with it in studying the same plant species under different climatic conditions. in his view, however, adaptation appears not as the passive effect of a blindly working, external cause, but as the response of the spiritual type to the conditions meeting it from outside. the same applies to the concept of inheritance. through inheritance goethe saw single, accessory characteristics of a species being carried over from one generation to the next; but never could the reappearance of the basic features of the species itself be explained in this way. he was sufficiently initiated into nature's methods to know that she was not in need of a continuity of the stream of physical substance, in the sense of the theory of inheritance, to guarantee a continuance of the features of the species through successive generations, but that it was her craft to achieve such continuance by means of physical discontinuity. * goethe was not temperamentally given to reflecting deliberately about his own cognitional processes. moreover, the excess of reflexion going on around him in the intellectual life of his younger days inclined him to guard himself with a certain anxiety against philosophical cogitations. his words to a friend - 'dear friend, i have done it well, and never reflected about thinking' - bring this home to us. if in his later years goethe could become to some degree epistemologically conscious of his spiritual achievements, as, for instance, his essay on intuitive judgment shows, he owed this to his friendship with schiller, who became for him a kind of soul mirror, in which he could see the reflexion of his own processes of consciousness. indeed, at their first personal encounter, significant as it was for their whole later relationship, schiller - though all unconsciously - performed a decisive service of this kind for him. goethe himself speaks of the occasion in his essay happy encounter (gliickliches ereignis), written twelve years after schiller's death. the occasion was, outwardly regarded, fortuitous: both men were leaving a lecture on natural science at the university of jena, schiller having been present as professor of history in the university, and goethe as its patron and as a weimar minister of state. they met at the door of the lecture hall and went out into the street together. schiller, who had been wanting to come into closer contact with goethe for a long time, used the opportunity to begin a conversation. he opened with a comment on the lecture they had just heard, saying that such a piecemeal way of handling nature could not bring the layman any real satisfaction. goethe, to whom this remark was heartily welcome, replied that such a style of scientific observation 'was uncanny even for the initiated, and that there must certainly be another way altogether, which did not treat of nature as divided and in pieces, but presented her as working and alive, striving out of the whole into the parts'. schiller's interest was at once aroused by this remark, although as a thorough kantian he could not conceal his doubts whether the kind of thing indicated by goethe was within human capacity. goethe began to explain himself further, and so the discussion proceeded, until the speakers arrived at schiller's house. quite absorbed in his description of plant metamorphosis, goethe went in with schiller and climbed the stairs to the latter's study. once there, he seized pen and paper from schiller's writing desk, and to bring his conception of the ur-plant vividly before his companion's eyes he made 'a symbolic plant appear with many a characteristic stroke of the pen'. although schiller had listened up to this point 'with great interest and definite understanding', he shook his head as goethe finished, and said - kantian that he was at that time: 'that is no experience, that is an idea.' these words were very disappointing to goethe. at once his old antipathy towards schiller rose up, an antipathy caused by much in schiller's public utterances which he had found distasteful. once again he felt that schiller and he were 'spiritual antipodes, removed from each other by more than an earth diameter'. however, goethe restrained his rising annoyance, and answered schiller in a tranquil but determined manner: 'i am glad to have ideas without knowing it, and to see them with my very eyes.' although at this meeting goethe and schiller came to no real agreement, the personal relationship formed through it did not break off; both had become aware of the value of each to the other. for goethe his first meeting with schiller had the significant result of showing him that 'thinking about thought' could be fruitful. for schiller this significance consisted in his having met in goethe a human intellect which, simply by its existing properties, invalidated kant's philosophy. for him goethe's mind became an object of empirical study on which he based the beginnings of a new philosophy free from onlooker-restrictions. an essay, written by goethe about the same time as the one just quoted, shows how he came to think at a later date about the raising of human perception into the realm of ideas. in this essay, entitled discovery of an excellent predecessor, goethe comments on certain views of the botanist, k. f. wolff, regarding the relationships between the different plant organs, which seemed to be similar to his own, and at which wolff had arrived in his own way. wolff had risen up as an opponent of the so-called preformation theory, still widespread at that time, according to which the entire plant with all its different parts is already present in embryonic physical form in the seed, and simply grows out into space through physical enlargement. such a mode of thought seemed inadmissible to wolff, for it made use of an hypothesis 'resting on an extra-sensible conception, which was held to be thinkable, although it could never be demonstrated from the sense world. wolff laid it down as a fundamental principle of all research that 'nothing may be assumed, admitted or asserted that has not been actually seen and cannot be made similarly visible to others'. thus in wolff we meet with a phenomenologist who in his way tried to oppose certain trends of contemporary biological thinking. as such, wolff had made certain observations which caused him to ascribe to the plant features quite similar to those which goethe had grasped under the conception of progressive and regressive metamorphosis. in this way wolff had grown convinced that all plant organs are transformed leaves. true to his own principle, he had then turned to the microscope for his eyes to confirm what his mind had already recognized. the microscope gave him the confirmation he expected by showing that all the different organs of the plant develop out of identical embryonic beginnings. in his absolute reliance on physical observation, however, he tried to go further than this and to detect in this way the reason why the plant does not always bring forth the same organ. he saw that the vegetative strength in the plant diminishes in proportion as its organism enters upon its later stages. he therefore attributed the differentiated evolution of plant organs from identical beginnings to an ever weaker process of development in them. despite his joy in wolff as someone who in his own fashion had arrived at certain truths which he himself had also discovered, and despite his agreement with wolff's phenomenalistic principle, goethe could in no way accept his explanation of why metamorphosis took place in plants. he said: 'in plant metamorphosis wolff saw how the same organ continuously draws together, makes itself smaller; he did not see that this contraction alternates with an expansion. he saw that the organ diminishes in volume, but not that at the same time it ennobles itself, and so, against reason, he attributed decline to the path towards perfection.' what was it, then, which had prevented wolff from seeing things aright? 'however admirable may be wolff's method, through which he has achieved so much, the excellent man never thought that there may be a difference between seeing and seeing, that the eyes of the spirit have to work in perpetual living connection with those of the body, for one otherwise risks seeing and yet seeing past a thing (zu sehen und doch vorbeizusehen).' wolff's case was to goethe a symptom of the danger which he saw arising for science from the rapidly increasing use of the microscope (and similarly the telescope), if thinking was not developed correspondingly but left at the mercy of these instruments. his concern over the state of affairs speaks from his utterance: 'microscopes and telescopes, in actual fact, confuse man's innate clarity of mind.' when we follow goethe in this way he comes before us in characteristic contrast to robert hooke. we remember hooke's microscopic 'proof of the unrelatedness of human thought to outer reality (chapter iii). there can be no doubt how goethe, if the occasion had arisen, would have commented on hooke's procedure. he would have pointed out that there would be no such thing as a knife with its line-like edge unless man were able to think the concept 'line', nor a needle with its point-like end unless he were able to think the concept 'point'. in fact, knife and needle are products of a human action which is guided by these two concepts respectively. as such they are embodiments, though more or less imperfect ones, of these concepts. here too, therefore, just as goethe had discovered it through his way of observing the plant, we see ideas with our very eyes. what distinguishes objects of this kind from organic entities, such as the plant, is the different relationship between object and idea. whereas in the case of an organism the idea actively indwells the object, its relationship to a man-made thing (and similarly to nature's mineral entities) is a purely external one. hooke, so goethe would have argued, allowed the microscope to confuse his common sense. he would have seen in him an example confirming his verdict that he who fails to let the eye of the spirit work in union with the eye of the body 'risks seeing yet seeing past the thing'. * 'thus not through an extraordinary spiritual gift, not through momentary inspiration, unexpected and unique, but through consistent work did i eventually achieve such satisfactory results.' these words of goethe - they occur in his essay, history of my botanical studies, which he wrote in later life as an account of his labours in this field of science - show how anxious he was that it should be rightly understood that the faculty of reading in the book of nature, as he knew it, was the result of a systematic training of his mind. it is important for our further studies to make clear to ourselves at this point the nature of the change which man must bring to pass within himself in order to brave kant's 'adventure of reason'. goethe's concept for the newly acquired faculty of cognition, exact sensorial fantasy, can give us the lead. we remember that, to form this faculty, two existing functions of the soul, as such polarically opposite, had to be welded together - memory based on exact sense-perception and the freely working fantasy; one connected with the nervous system of the body, the other with the blood. we also know from earlier considerations (chapter ii) that in the little child there is not yet any such polarization, in body or soul, as there is in man's later life. thus we see that training on goethe's lines aims at nothing less than restoring within oneself a condition which is natural in early childhood. in saying this we touch on the very foundations of the new pathway to science discovered by goethe. we shall hear more of it in the following chapter. critique of judgment, ii, , . goethe chose the title of his essay so as to refute kant by its very wording. kant, through his inquiry into man's urteilskraft, arrived at the conclusion that man is denied the power of anschauung (intuition). against this, goethe puts his anschauende urteilskraft. 'der alte vom königsberge' - a play upon words with the name of kant's native town, königsberg. it is naturally to be expected that new light will also be thrown on the various realms of knowledge as such dealt with in these pages. delphinium, in particular, has the peculiarity (which it shares with a number of other species) that its calyx appears in the guise of a flower, whilst the actual flower is quite inconspicuous. goethe also describes a proliferated pink. the terms 'primeval' or 'primordial' sometimes suggested for rendering the prefix 'ur' are unsuitable in a case like this. 'primeval plant', for instance, used by some translators of goethe, raises the misunderstanding - to which goethe's concept has anyhow been subject from the side of scientific botany - that by his ur-plant he had in mind some primitive, prehistoric plant, the hypothetical ancestor in the darwinian sense of the present-day plant kingdom. the following observation is not one made by goethe himself. it is presented here by the author as an example of the heuristic value of goethe's method of pictorial-dynamic contemplation of the sense-world. 'exakte sinnliche phantasie.' entdeckung eines trefflichen vorarbeiters. chapter vi except we become ... in this chapter we shall concern ourselves with a number of personalities from the more or less recent past of the cultural life of britain, each of whom was a spiritual kinsman of goethe, and so a living illustration of the fact that the true source of knowledge in man must be sought, and can be found, outside the limits of his modern adult consciousness. whilst none of them was a match for goethe as regards universality and scientific lucidity, they are all characteristic of an immediacy of approach to certain essential truths, which in the sense we mean is not found in goethe. it enabled them to express one or the other of these truths in a form that makes them suitable as sign-posts on our own path of exploration. we shall find repeated opportunity in the later pages of this book to remember just what these men saw and thought. * * * the first is thomas reid ( - ), the scottish philosopher and advocate of common sense as the root of philosophy. after having served for some years as a minister in the church of scotland, reid became professor of philosophy at the university of aberdeen, whence he was called to glasgow as the successor of adam smith. through his birth in strachan, kincardine, he belonged to the same part of scotland from which kant's ancestors had come. two brief remarks of goethe show that he knew of the scotsman's philosophy, and that he appreciated his influence on contemporary philosophers. reid, like his contemporary kant, felt his philosophical conscience stirred by hume's treatise of human nature, and, like kant, set himself the task of opposing it. unlike kant, however, whose philosophic system was designed to arrest man's reason before the abyss into which hume threatened to cast it, reid contrives to detect the bridge that leads safely across this abyss. even though it was not granted to him actually to set foot on this bridge (this, in his time, only goethe managed to do), he was able to describe it in a manner especially helpful for our own purpose. the first of the three books in which reid set out the results of his labours appeared in under the title, inquiry into the human mind on the principles of common sense. the other two, essays on the intellectual powers of man and essays on the active powers of man, appeared twenty years later. in these books reid had in view a more all-embracing purpose than in his first work. the achievement of this purpose, however, required a greater spiritual power than was granted to him. comparing his later with his earlier work, reid's biographer, a. campbell fraser, says: 'reid's essays form, as it were, the inner court of the temple of which the aberdonian inquiry is the vestibule. but the vestibule is a more finished work of constructive skill than the inner court, for the aged architect appears at last as if embarrassed by accumulated material. the essays, greater in bulk, perhaps less deserve a place among modern philosophical classics than the inquiry, notwithstanding its narrower scope, confined as it is to man's perception of the extended world, as an object lesson on the method of appeal to common sense.' whilst the ideas of kant, by which he tried in his way to oppose hume's philosophy, have become within a short space of time the common possession of men's minds, it was the fate of reid's ideas to find favour among only a restricted circle of friends. moreover, they suffered decisive misunderstanding and distortion through the efforts of well-meaning disciples. this was because kant's work was a late fruit of an epoch of human development which had lasted for centuries and in his time began to draw to its close, while reid's work represents a seed of a new epoch yet to come. here lies the reason also for his failure to develop his philosophy beyond the achievements contained in his first work. it is on the latter, therefore, that we shall chiefly draw for presenting reid's thoughts. * the convincing nature of hume's argumentation, together with the absurdity of the conclusions to which it led, aroused in reid a suspicion that the premises on which hume's thoughts were built, and which he, in company with all his predecessors, had assumed quite uncritically, contained some fundamental error. for both as a christian, a philosopher, and a man in possession of common sense, reid had no doubt as to the absurdity and destructiveness of the conclusions to which hume's reasoning had led him. 'for my own satisfaction, i entered into a serious examination of the principles upon which this sceptical system is built; and was not a little surprised to find that it leans with its whole weight upon a hypothesis, which is ancient indeed, and hath been very generally received by philosophers, but of which i could find no solid proof. the hypothesis i mean is, that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind which perceives it: that we do not really perceive the things that are external, but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called impressions and ideas. 'if this be true, supposing certain impressions and ideas to exist presently in my mind, i cannot, from their existence, infer the existence of anything else; my impressions and ideas are the only existences of which i can have any knowledge or conception; and they are such fleeting and transitory beings, that they can have no existence at all, any longer than i am conscious of them. so that, upon this hypothesis, the whole universe about me, bodies and spirits, sun, moon, stars, and earth, friends and relations, all things without exception, which i imagined to have a permanent existence whether i thought of them or not vanish at once: 'and, like the baseless fabric of this vision ... leave not a rack behind. 'i thought it unreasonable, upon the authority of philosophers, to admit a hypothesis which, in my opinion, overturns all philosophy, all religion and virtue, and all common sense: and finding, that all the systems which i was acquainted with, were built upon this hypothesis, i resolved to enquire into this subject anew, without regard to any hypothesis.' the following passage from the first chapter of the inquiry reveals reid as a personality who was not dazzled to the same extent as were his contemporaries by the brilliance of the onlooker-consciousness: 'if it [the mind] is indeed what the treatise of human nature makes it, i find i have been only in an enchanted castle, imposed upon by spectres and apparitions. i blush inwardly to think how have been deluded; i am ashamed of my frame, and can hardly forbear expostulating with my destiny: is this thy pastime, o nature, to put such tricks upon a silly creature, and then to take off the mask, and show him how he hath been befooled? if this is the philosophy of human nature, my soul enter thou not into her secrets. it is surely the forbidden tree of knowledge; i no sooner taste it, than i perceive myself naked, and stript of all things - yea even of my very self. i see myself, and the whole frame of nature, shrink into fleeting ideas, which, like epicurus's atoms, dance about in emptiness. 'but what if these profound disquisitions into the first principles of human nature, do naturally and necessarily plunge a man into this abyss of scepticism? may we not reasonably judge from what hath happened? des cartes no sooner began to dig in this mine, than scepticism was ready to break in upon him. he did what he could to shut it out. malebranche and locke, who dug deeper, found the difficulty of keeping out this enemy still to increase; but they laboured honestly in the design. then berkeley, who carried on the work, despairing of securing all, bethought himself of an expedient: by giving up the material world, which he thought might be spared without loss, and even with advantage, he hoped by an impregnable partition to secure the world of spirits. but, alas! the treatise of human nature wantonly sapped the foundation of this partition and drowned all in one universal deluge.' (chapter i, sections vi-vii.) what reid so pertinently describes here as the 'enchanted castle' is nothing else than the human head, which knows of no occurrence beyond its boundaries, because it has forgotten that it is only the end-product of a living existence outside of, and beyond, itself. we see here that reid is gifted with the faculty of entering this castle without forfeiting his memory of the world outside; and so even from within its walls, he could recognize its true nature. to a high degree this helped him to keep free of those deceptions to which the majority of his contemporaries fell victim, and to which so many persons are still subject to-day. it is in this way that reid could make it one of the cardinal principles of his observations to test all that the head thinks by relating it to the rest of human nature and to allow nothing to stand, which does not survive this test. in this respect the argument he sets over against the cartesian, 'cogito ergo sum' is characteristic: ' "i am thinking," says he, "therefore i am": and is it not as good reasoning to say, i am sleeping, therefore i am? if a body moves, it must exist, no doubt; but if it is at rest, it must exist likewise.' the following summarizes the position to which reid is led when he includes the whole human being in his philosophical inquiries. reid admits that, when the consciousness that has become aware of itself surveys that which lies within its own horizon, it finds nothing else there but transient pictures. these pictures in themselves bring to the mind no experience of a lasting existence outside itself. there is no firm evidence of the existence of either an outer material world to which these pictures can be related, or of an inner spiritual entity which is responsible for them. to be able to speak of an existence in either realm is impossible for a philosophy which confines its attention solely to the mere picture-content of the waking consciousness. but man is not only a percipient being; he is also a being of will, and as such he comes into a relationship with the world which can be a source of rich experience. if one observes this relationship, one is bound to notice that it is based on the self-evident assumption that one possesses a lasting individuality, whose actions deal with a lasting material world. any other way of behaviour would contradict the common sense of man; where we meet with it we are faced with a lunatic. thus philosophy and common sense seem to stand in irreconcilable opposition to each other. but this opposition is only apparent. it exists so long as philosophy thinks it is able to come to valid conclusions without listening to the voice of common sense, believing itself to be too exalted to need to do so. philosophy, then, does not realize 'that it has no other root but the principles of common sense; it grows out of them, and draws its nourishment from them: severed from this root, its honours wither, its sap is dried up, it dies and rots.' (i, .) at the moment when the philosophical consciousness ceases to regard itself as the sole foundation of its existence and recognizes that it can say nothing about itself without considering the source from which it has evolved, it attains the possibility of seeing the content of its experience in a new light. for it is no longer satisfied with considering this content in the completed form in which it presents itself. rather does it feel impelled to investigate the process which gives rise to this content as an end-product (the 'impressions' and 'ideas' of hume and his predecessors). reid has faith in the fact - for his common sense assures him of it - that a lasting substantiality lies behind the world of the senses, even if for human consciousness it exists only so long as impressions of it are received via the bodily senses. similarly, he has faith in the fact that his consciousness, although existing but intermittently, has as its bearer a lasting self. instead of allowing this intuitively given knowledge to be shaken by a mere staring at fugitive pictures, behind which the real existence of self and world is hidden, he seeks instead in both directions for the origin of the pictures and will not rest until he has found the lasting causes of their transient appearances. in one direction reid finds himself led to the outer boundary of the body, where sense perception has its origin. this prompts him to investigate the perceptions of the five known senses: smelling, tasting, hearing, touching and seeing, which he discusses in this order. in the other direction he finds himself led - and here we meet with a special attribute of reid's whole philosophical outlook - to the realm of human speech. for speech depends upon an inner, intelligent human activity, which, once learnt, becomes a lasting part of man's being, quite outside the realm of his philosophizing consciousness, and yet forming an indispensable instrument for this consciousness. the simplest human reasoning, prompted only by common sense, and the subtlest philosophical thought, both need language for their expression. through his ability to speak, man lifts himself above an instinctive animal existence, and yet he develops this ability at an infantile stage, when, in so far as concerns the level of his consciousness and his relationship to the world, he hardly rises above the level of the animal. it requires a highly developed intelligence to probe the intricacies of language, yet complicated tongues were spoken in human history long before man awoke to his own individual intelligence. just as each man learns to think through speaking, so did humanity as a whole. thus speech can become a means for acquiring insight into the original form of human intelligence. for in speech the common sense of man, working unconsciously within him, meets the fully awakened philosophical consciousness. the way in which the two paths of observation have here been set out must not give rise to the expectation that they are discussed by reid in a similarly systematic form. for this, reid lacked the sufficient detachment from his own thoughts. as he presents his observations in the inquiry they seem to be nothing but a systematic description of the five senses, broken into continually by linguistic considerations of the kind indicated above. so, for example, many of his more important statements about language are found in his chapter on 'hearing'. our task will be to summarize reid's work, taking from his description, so often full of profound observations, only what is essential to illustrate his decisive discoveries. this requires that (keeping to mr. eraser's picture) we consider separately the two pillars supporting the roof of the temple's forecourt: speech and sense-impressions. we will start with speech. * reid notes as a fundamental characteristic of human language that it includes two distinct elements: first, the purely acoustic element, represented by the sheer succession of sounds, and secondly the variety of meanings represented by various groups of sounds, meanings which seem to have nothing to do with the sounds as such. this state of language, where the sound-value of the word and its value as a sign to denote a thing signified by it, have little or nothing to do with one another, is certainly not the primeval one. in the contemporary state of language, which reid calls artificial language, we must see a development from a former condition, which reid calls natural language. so long as this latter condition obtained, man expressed in the sound itself what he felt impelled to communicate to his fellows. in those days sound was not merely an abstract sign, but a gesture, which moreover was accompanied and supported by the gestures of the limbs. even to-day man, at the beginning of his life, still finds himself in that relationship to language which was natural to all men in former times. the little child acquires the ability to speak through the imitation of sounds, becoming aware of them long before it understands the meaning accorded to the various groups of sounds in the artificial state of contemporary adult speech. that the child's attention should be directed solely to the sound, and not to the abstract meaning of the individual words, is indeed the prerequisite of learning to speak. if, says reid, the child were to understand immediately the conceptual content of the words it hears, it would never learn to speak at all. when the adult of to-day uses language in its artificial state, words are only signs for things signified by them. as he speaks, his attention is directed exclusively towards this side of language; the pure sound of the words he uses remains outside the scope of his awareness. the little child, on the other hand, has no understanding of the meaning of words and therefore lives completely in the experience of pure sound. in the light of this, reid comes to the conclusion, so important for what follows, that with the emergence of a certain form of consciousness, in this case that of the intellectual content of words, another form submerges, a form in which the experience of the pure sound of words prevails. the adult, while in one respect ahead of the child, yet in another is inferior, for the effect of this change is a definite impoverishment in soul-experience. reid puts this as follows: 'it is by natural signs chiefly that we give force and energy to language; and the less language has of them, it is the less expressive and persuasive. ... artificial signs signify, but they do not express; they speak to the understanding, as algebraic characters may do, but the passions and the affections and the will hear them not: these continue dormant and inactive, till we speak to them in the language of nature, to which they are all attention and obedience.' we have followed reid so far in his study of language, because it is along this way that he came to form the concepts that were to serve him as a key for his all-important findings in the realm of sense-experience. these are the concepts which bear on the connexion between the sign and the thing signified; the distinction between the artificial and the natural state of language; and the disappearance of certain primeval human capacities for experience, of which reid says that they are brought by the child into the world, but fade as his intellectual capacities develop. * as soon as one begins to study reid's observations in the realm of sense-experience, one meets with a certain difficulty, noticeable earlier but not so strikingly. the source of it is that reid was obliged to relate the results of his observations only to the five senses known in his day, whereas in fact his observations embrace a far greater field of human sense-perception. thus a certain disharmony creeps into his descriptions and makes his statements less convincing, especially for someone who does not penetrate to its real cause. however this may be, it need not concern us here; what matter to us are reid's actual observations. for these led him to the important distinction between two factors in our act of acquiring knowledge of the outer world, each of which holds an entirely different place in ordinary consciousness. reid distinguishes them as 'sensation' and 'perception'. it is through the latter that we become aware of the object as such. but we are mistaken if we regard the content of this perception as identical with the sum total of the sensations which are caused in our consciousness by the particular object. for these sensations are qualitatively something quite different, and, although without them no perception of the object is possible, they do not by themselves convey a knowledge of the thing perceived. only, because our attention is so predominantly engaged by the object under perception, we pay no heed to the content of our sensation. to take an example, the impressions of roundness, angularity, smoothness, roughness, colour, etc., of a table contain, all told, nothing that could assure us of the existence of the object 'table' as the real content of an external world. how, then, do we receive the conviction of the latter's existence? reid's answer is, by entering into an immediate intuitive relationship with it. it is true that to establish this relationship we need the stimuli coming from the impressions which our mind receives through the various senses. yet this must not induce us to confuse the two. when nature speaks to man through his senses, something occurs exactly analogous to the process when man communicates with man through the spoken word. in both cases the perception, that is, the result of the process of perception, is something quite other than the sum of sensations underlying it. per-ceiving by means of the senses is none other than a re-ceiving of nature's language; and this language, just like human language, bears two entirely different elements within it. according as one or the other element prevails in man's intercourse with nature, this intercourse will be either 'natural' or 'artificial' - to use the terms by which reid distinguished the two stages of human speech. just as every human being must once have listened only to the pure sound of the spoken word on a wholly sentient level in order to acquire the faculty of speaking, so also, in order to learn nature's language, the soul must once have been totally surrendered to the pure impressions of the senses. and just as with time the spoken word becomes a symbol for that which is signified by it, the consciousness turning to the latter and neglecting the actual sound-content of the word, so also in its intercourse with nature the soul, with its growing interest in the thing signified, turns its attention more and more away from the actual experiences of the senses. from this it follows that a philosophy which seeks to do justice to man's whole being must not be satisfied with examining the given content of human consciousness, but must strive to observe the actual process to which this content owes its emergence. in practice this means that a philosopher who understands his task aright must strive to reawaken in himself a mode of experience which is naturally given to man in his early childhood. reid expresses this in the inquiry in the following way: 'when one is learning a language, he attends to the sounds, but when he is master of it, he attends only to the sense of what he would express. if this is the case, we must become as little children again, if we will be philosophers: we must overcome habits which have been gathering strength ever since we began to think; habits, the usefulness of which atones for the difficulty it creates for the philosopher in discovering the first principles of the human mind.' 'we must become as little children again, if we will be philosophers!' the phrase appears here almost in passing, and reid never came back to it again. and yet in it is contained the open sesame which gives access to the hidden spirit-treasures of the world. in this unawareness of reid's of the importance of what he thus had found we must see the reason for his incapacity to develop his philosophy beyond its first beginnings. this handicap arose from the fact that in all his thinking he was guided by a picture of the being of man which - as a child of his time, dominated by the contemporary religious outlook - he could never realize distinctly. yet without a clear conception of this picture no justice can be done to reid's concept of common sense. our next task, therefore, must be to evoke this picture as clearly as we can * * * the following passage in reid's inquiry provides a key for the understanding of his difficulty in conceiving an adequate picture of man's being. in this passage reid maintains that all art is based on man's experience of the natural language of things, and that in every human being there lives an inborn artist who is more or less crippled by man's growing accustomed to the state of artificial language in his intercourse with the world. in continuation of the passage quoted on page reid says: 'it were easy to show, that the fine arts of the musician, the painter, the actor, and the orator, so far as they are expressive; although the knowledge of them requires in us a delicate taste, a nice judgment, and much study and practice; yet they are nothing else but the language of nature, which we brought into the world with us, but have unlearned by disuse and so find the greatest difficulty in recovering it. 'abolish the use of articulate sounds and writing among mankind for a century, and every man would be a painter, an actor, and an orator. we mean not to affirm that such an expedient is practicable; or if it were, that the advantage would counterbalance the loss; but that, as men are led by nature and necessity to converse together they will use every means in their power to make themselves understood; and where they cannot do this by artificial signs, they will do it as far as possible by natural ones: and he that understands perfectly the use of natural signs, must be the best judge in all expressive arts.' when reid says that there are certain characteristics - and these just of the kind whose development truly ennobles human life - which the soul brings with it into the world, a picture of man is evoked in us in which the supersensible part of his being appears as an entity whose existence reaches further back than the moment of birth and even the first beginnings of the body. now such a conception of man is in no way foreign to humanity, in more ancient times it was universally prevalent, and it still lives on to-day, if merely traditionally, in the eastern part of the world. it is only in the west that from a certain period it ceased to be held. this was the result of a change which entered into human memory in historical times, just as the re-dawning of the old knowledge of man's pre-existence, of which reid is a symptom, is a result of another corresponding alteration in the memory-powers of man in modern times. for men of old it was characteristic that alongside the impressions they received in earthly life through the senses (which in any case were far less intense than they are to-day), they remembered experiences of a purely supersensible kind, which gave them assurance that before the soul was knit together with a physical body it had existed in a cosmic state purely spiritual in nature. the moment in history when this kind of memory disappeared is that of the transition from the philosophy of plato to that of aristotle. whereas plato was convinced by clear knowledge that the soul possesses characteristics implanted in it before conception, aristotle recognized a bodiless state of the soul only in the life after death. for him the beginning of the soul's existence was identical with that of the body. the picture of man, taught for the first time by aristotle, still required about twice four hundred years - from the fourth pre-christian to the fourth post-christian century - before it became so far the common possession of men that the church father augustine ( - ) could base his teaching on it - a teaching which moulded man's outlook on himself for the coming centuries right up to our own time. the following passage from augustine's confessions shows clearly how he was compelled to think about the nature of the little child: 'this age, whereof i have no remembrance, which i take on others' words, and guess from other infants that i have passed, true though the guess be, i am yet loath to count in this life of mine which i live in this world. for no less than that which i lived in my mother's womb, is it hid from me in the shadows of forgetfulness. but if i was shapen in iniquity and in sin my mother did conceive me, where, i beseech thee, o my god, where, lord, or when, was i thy servant guiltless? but lo! that period i pass by; and what have i to do with that of which i can recall no vestige?' on the grounds of such experience, augustine was unable to picture man's being in any other way than by seeing him, from the first moment of his life, as subject to the condition of the human race which resulted from the fall. thus he exclaims in his confessions: 'before thee, o god, no-one is free from sin, not even the child which has lived but a single day on the earth.' in so far as there was any question of the soul's arising from this fallen state, it was deemed unable to attain this by any effort of its own, but to depend on the gifts of grace which the church was able to dispense through the sacraments. compare with this the present-day scientific conception of human nature, as it dominates the thought of specialist and layman alike. here man appears, both in body and soul, as a sum of inherited characteristics, of characteristics, that is to say, which have been passed on by way of sexual propagation and gradually emerge into full manifestation as the individual grows up. apart from this inherited predestination the soul is held to present itself, in locke's classical phrase, as a tabula rasa upon which are stamped all manner of external impressions. the similarity between this modern picture of man and the earlier theological one is striking. in both cases the central assumption is that human development from child to man consists in the unfolding of certain inherited characteristics which are capable of further specific modification under influences proceeding from outside. the only difference between the two pictures is that in the modern one the concepts of heredity and adaptation have been formed without special application to the ethical characteristics of the soul. it is clear that from both augustine's and the modern scientific viewpoint there is no sense in requiring - as reid did - those who seek the truth about themselves and the world to recover a condition which had been theirs as children. nor from this point of view is there any justification to call on a common sense, innate in man, to sit in judgment on the philosophical efforts of the adult reason. * that even in the days of augustine the original conception of human nature had not disappeared entirely, is shown by the appearance of augustine's opponent pelagius, called the 'arch-heretic'. to consider him at this point in our discussion will prove helpful for our understanding of reid's historic position in the modern age. what interests us here in pelagius's doctrine (leaving aside all questions concerning the meaning of the sacraments, etc.), is the picture of man which must have lived in him for him to teach as he did. leaving his irish-scottish homeland and arriving about the year in rome, where on account of the unusual purity of his being he soon came to be held in the highest esteem, pelagius found himself obliged to come out publicly against augustine, for he felt that augustine's teachings denied all free will to man. in the purely passive surrender of man to the will of god, as augustine taught it, he could not but see danger for the future development of christian humanity. how radically he diverged from augustine in his view of man we may see from such of his leading thoughts as follow: 'each man begins his life in the same condition as adam.' 'all good or evil for which in life we are deserving of praise or blame is done by ourselves and is not born with us.' 'before the personal will of man comes into action there is nothing in him but what god has placed there.' 'it is therefore left to the free will of man whether he falls into sin, as also whether through following christ he raises himself out of it again.' pelagius could think in this way because he came from a part of europe where the older form of human memory, already at that time almost extinct in the south, was in some degree still active. for him it was therefore a matter of direct experience that the development of man from childhood onwards was connected with a diminution of certain original capacities of the soul. yet he was so far a child of his age as to be no longer capable of seeing whence these capacities originated. to provide the necessary corrective to augustine's doctrine of inheritance, pelagius would have had to be able to see in the first years of life both a beginning of the earthly and a termination of the pre-earthly existence of the soul. the imperfections of his picture of man, however, led him to underestimate, even to deny, the significance of heredity and so of original sin in human life. for an age which no longer had any direct experience of the soul's pre-natal life, the doctrines of augustine were undoubtedly more appropriate than those of pelagius; augustine was in fact the more modern of the two. and now, if we move forward a dozen centuries and compare thomas reid and immanuel kant from this same point of view, we find the same conception of man again triumphant. but there is an essential difference: kant carried all before him because he based himself on an age-old view of human nature, whereas reid, uncomprehended up to our own day, pointed to a picture of man only just then dawning on the horizon of the future. just as through pelagius there sounded something like a last call to european humanity not to forget the cosmic nature of the soul, so through reid the memory of this nature announced its first faint renewal. it is common to both that their voices lacked the clarity to make themselves heard among the other voices of their times; and with both the reason was the same: neither could perceive in fullness - the one no longer, the other not yet - the picture of man which ensouled their ideas. the certainty of reid's philosophical instinct, if such an expression be allowed, and at the same time his tragic limitations, due to an inability fully to understand the origin of this instinct, come out clearly in the battle he waged against the 'idea' as his immediate predecessors understood it. we know that plato introduced this word into the philosophical language of mankind. in greek ιδέα (from ιδε�ν, to see) means something of which one knows that it exists, because one sees it. it was therefore possible to use the word 'to see' as plato did, because in his day it covered both sensible and supersensible perception. for plato, knowing consisted in the soul's raising itself to perceiving the objective, world-forming ideas, and this action comprised at the same time a recollection of what the soul had seen while it lived, as an idea among ideas, before its appearance on earth. as long as plato's philosophy continued to shape their thought, men went on speaking more or less traditionally of ideas as real supersensible beings. when, however, the aristotelian mode of thinking superseded the platonic, the term 'idea' ceased to be used in its original sense; so much so that, when locke and other modern philosophers resorted to it in order to describe the content of the mind, they did so in complete obliviousness of its first significance. it is thus that in modern philosophy, and finally in ordinary modern usage, 'idea' came to be a word with many meanings. sometimes it signifies a sense-impression, sometimes a mental representation, sometimes the thought, concept or essential nature of a thing. the only thing common to these various meanings is an underlying implication that an idea is a purely subjective item in human consciousness, without any assured correspondence to anything outside. it was against this view of the idea that reid took the field, going so far as to label the philosophy holding it the 'ideal system'. he failed to see, however, that in attacking the abstract use of the term he was actually in a position to restore to it its original, genuine meaning. if, instead of simply throwing the word overboard, he had been able to make use of it in its real meaning, he would have expressed himself with far greater exactitude and consistency. he was prevented from doing this by his apparent ignorance of the earlier greek philosophers, plato included. all he seems to have known of their teachings came from inferior, second-hand reports of a later and already decadent period. * * * there are two historic personalities, both in england, who witness to the fact that the emergence of reid's philosophy on the stage of history was by no means an accidental event but that it represents a symptom of a general reappearance of the long-forgotten picture of man, in which birth no more than death sets up an absolute limit to human existence. they are thomas traherne ( - ) and william wordsworth ( - ). wordsworth's work and character are so well known that there is no need to speak of them here in detail. for our purpose we shall pay special attention only to his ode on intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood, where he shows himself in possession of a memory (at any rate at the time when he wrote the poem) of the pre-natal origin of the soul, and of a capacity for experiencing, at certain moments, the frontier which the soul crosses at birth. if, despite the widespread familiarity of the ode, we here quote certain passages from it, we do so because, like many similar things, it has fallen a victim to the intellectualism of our time in being regarded merely as a piece of poetic fantasy. we shall take the poet's words as literally as he himself uttered them. we read: 'our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: the soul that rises with us, our life's star, hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar: not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from god who is our home: heaven lies about us in our infancy! shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy. but he beholds the light, and whence it flows, he sees it in his joy; the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is nature's priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended." and later: 'hence in a season of calm weather though inland far we be, our souls have sight of that immortal sea which brought us hither, can in a moment travel thither, and see the children sport upon the shore, and hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.'' the fact that wordsworth in his later years gave no further indication of such experiences need not prevent us from taking quite literally what he says here. the truth is that an original faculty faded away with increasing age, somewhat as happened with reid when he could no longer continue his philosophical work along its original lines. wordsworth's ode is the testament of the childhood forces still persisting but already declining within him; it is significant that he set it down in about the same year of life (his thirty-sixth) as that in which traherne died and in which goethe, seeking renewal of his being, took flight to italy. * of traherne, too, we shall say here only as much as our present consideration and the further aims of this book require. we cannot concern ourselves with the remarkable events which led, half a century ago, to the discovery and identification of his long-lost writings by bertram dobell. nor can we deal with the details of the eventful life and remarkable spiritual development of this contemporary of the civil war. these matters are dealt with in dobell's introduction to his edition of traherne's poems, as also by gladys i. wade in her work, thomas traherne. our gratitude for the labours of these two writers by which they have provided mankind with the knowledge of the character and the work of this unique personality cannot hinder us, however, from stating that both were prevented by the premises of their own view of the world from rightly estimating that side of traherne which is important for us in this book, and with which we shall specially concern ourselves in the following pages. later in this chapter we shall discuss dobell's philosophical misinterpretation of traherne, to which he fell victim because he maintained his accustomed spectator standpoint in regard to his object of study. miss wade has, indeed, been able to pay the right tribute to traherne, the mystic, whose inner (and also outer) biography she was able to detect by taking seriously traherne's indications concerning his mystical development. her mind, however, was too rigidly focused on this side of traherne's life - his self-training by an iron inner discipline and his toilsome ascent from the experience of nothingness to a state of beatific vision. this fact, combined with her disinclination to overcome the augustinian picture of man in herself, prevented her from taking traherne equally seriously where he speaks as one who is endowed with a never interrupted memory of his primeval cosmic consciousness - notwithstanding the fact that traherne himself has pointed to this side of his nature as the most significant for his fellow-men. of the two works of traherne which dobell rescued from oblivion, on both of which we shall draw for our exposition, one contains his poems, the other his prose writings. the title of the latter is centuries of meditations. the title page of one of the two manuscripts containing the collection of the poetical writings introduces these as poems of felicity, containing divine reflections on the native objects of an infant-eye. as regards the title 'centuries of meditations' we are ignorant of the meaning traherne may have attached to it, and what he meant by calling the four parts of the book, 'first', 'second', etc., century. the book itself represents a manual of devotion for meditative study by the reader. let our first quotation be one from the opening paragraph of the third 'century' in which traherne introduces himself as the bearer of certain uncommon powers of memory and, arising from these powers, a particular mission as a teacher: 'those pure and virgin apprehensions i had from the womb, and that divine light wherewith i was born are the best unto this day, wherein i can see the universe. by the gift of god they attended me into the world, and by his special favour i remember them till now. verily they seem the greatest gifts his wisdom could bestow, for without them all other gifts had been dead and vain. they are unattainable by books, and therefore i will teach them by experience.' (ill, .) the picture thus remaining with him of his nature of soul in his earliest years on earth he describes as follows: 'certainly adam in paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than i when i was a child. all appeared new, and strange at first, inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful. i was a little stranger, which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys. my knowledge was divine. i knew by intuition those things which since my apostacy, i collected again by the highest reason. i was entertained like an angel with the works of god in their splendour and glory, i saw all in the peace of eden; heaven and earth did sing my creator's praises, and could not make more melody to adam, than to me. all time was eternity, and a perpetual sabbath. is it not strange, that an infant should be the heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?' (ill, , .) in a different form the same experience comes to expression in the opening lines of traherne's poem, wonder: 'how like an angel came i down! how bright are all things here i when first among his works i did appear o how their glory did me crown! the world resembled his eternitie, in which my soul did walk; and evry thing that i did see did with me talk.' the picture of man thus sketched by traherne is as close to reid's as it is remote from augustine's. this remoteness comes plainly to expression in the way traherne and augustine regard the summons of christ to his disciples to become as little children, a summons to which reid was led, as we have seen, on purely philosophical grounds. let us first of all recall the words of christ as recorded by matthew in his th and th chapters: 'and jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said: verily i say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.' (xviii, - .) 'suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' (xix, .) augustine refers to these words when he concludes that examination of his childhood memories which he undertook in order to prove the depravity of the soul from its first day on earth. he says: 'in the littleness of children didst thou, our king, give us a symbol of humility when thou didst say: of such is the kingdom of heaven.' if we glance back from what augustine says here to the original passages in the gospel just quoted, we see what a remarkable alteration he makes. of the first passage only the last sentence is taken, and this in augustine's mind is fused into one with the second passage. thereby the admonition of christ through one's own effort to become as one once was as a child disappears completely. the whole passage thus takes on a meaning corresponding to that passive attitude to the divine will inculcated by augustine and opposed by pelagius, and it is in this sense that the words of christ have sunk into the consciousness of western christianity and are usually taken to-day. we may see how differently this injunction of christ lived in traherne's consciousness from the following passage out of his centuries: 'our saviour's meaning, when he said, ye must be born again and become a little child that will enter into the kingdom of heaven, is deeper far than is generally believed. it is not only in a careless reliance upon divine providence, that we are to become little children, or in the feebleness and shortness of our anger and simplicity of our passions, but in the peace and purity of all our soul. which purity also is a deeper thing than is commonly apprehended.' (ill, .) with traherne also the passage in question has been fused together with another utterance of christ, from john's account of christ's conversation with nicodemus: 'verily, verily i say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of god.' (john iii, .) what conception of the infant condition of man must have existed in a soul for it to unite these two passages from the gospels in this way? whereas for augustine it is because of its small stature and helplessness that the child becomes a symbol for the spiritual smallness and helplessness of man as such, compared with the overwhelming power of the divine king, for traherne it is the child's nearness to god which is most present to him, and which must be regained by the man who strives for inner perfection. traherne could bear in himself such a picture of man's infancy because, as he himself emphasizes, he was in possession of an unbroken memory of the experiences which the soul enjoys before it awakens to earthly sense-perception. the following passage from the poem, my spirit, gives a detailed picture of the early state in which the soul has experiences and perceptions quite different from those of its later life. (we may recall reid's indication of how the child receives the natural language of things.) 'an object, if it were before mine ey, was by dame nature's law within my soul: her store was all at once within me; all her treasures were my immediat and internal pleasures; substantial joys, which did inform my mind. '... i could not tell whether the things did there themselvs appear, which in my spirit truly seem'd to dwell: or whether my conforming mind were not ev'n all that therein shin'd.' further detail is added to this picture by the description, given in the poem the praeparative, of the soul's non-experience of the body at that early stage. the description is unmistakably one of an experience during the time between conception and birth. 'my body being dead, my limbs unknown; before i skill'd to prize those living stars, mine eys; before or tongue or cheeks i call'd mine own, before i knew these hands were mine, or that my sinews did my members join; when neither nostril, foot, nor ear, as yet could be discerned or did appear; i was within a house i knew not; newly cloath'd with skin. then was my soul my only all to me, a living endless ey, scarce bounded with the sky, whose power, and act, and essence was to see; i was an inward sphere of light, or an interminable orb of sight, exceeding that which makes the days, a vital sun that shed abroad its rays: all life, all sense, a naked, simple, pure intelligence.'' in the stanza following upon this, traherne makes a statement which is of particular importance in the context of our present discussion. after some additional description of the absence of all bodily needs he says: 'without disturbance then i did receiv the tru ideas of all things' the manuscript of this poem shows a small alteration in traherne's hand in the second of these two lines. where we now read 'true ideas', there originally stood 'fair ideas'. 'fair' described traherne's experience as he immediately remembered it; the later alteration to 'true' shows how well aware he was that his contemporaries might miss what he meant by 'idea', through taking it in the sense that had already become customary in his time, namely, as a mere product of man's own mental activity. this precaution, however, has not saved traherne from being misinterpreted in our own day in precisely the way he feared - indeed, by no less a person than his own discoverer, dobell. it is the symptomatic character of this misinterpretation which prompts us to deal with it here. * in his attempt to classify the philosophical mode of thought behind traherne's writings, dobell, to his own amazement, comes to the conclusion that traherne had anticipated bishop berkeley ( - ). they seemed to him so alike that he does not hesitate to call traherne a 'berkeleyan before berkeley was born'. in proof of this he refers to the poems, the praeparative and my spirit, citing from the latter the passage given above (page ), and drawing special attention to its two concluding lines. regarding this he says: 'i am much mistaken if the theory of non-existence of independent matter, which is the essence of berkeley's system, is not to be found in this poem. the thought that the whole exterior universe is not really a thing apart from and independent of man's consciousness of it, but something which exists only as it is perceived, is undeniably found in my spirit: the reader who has followed our exposition in the earlier parts of this chapter can be in no doubt that, to find a philosophy similar to traherne's, he must look for it in reid and not in berkeley. reid himself rightly placed berkeley amongst the representatives of the 'ideal system' of thought. for berkeley's philosophy represents an effort of the onlooker-consciousness, unable as it was to arrive at certainty regarding the objective existence of a material world outside itself, to secure recognition for an objective self behind the flux of mental phenomena. berkeley hoped to do this by supposing that the world, including god, consists of nothing but 'idea'-creating minds, operating like the human mind as man himself perceives it. his world picture, based (as is well known) entirely on optical experiences, is the perfect example of a philosophy contrived by the one-eyed, colourblind world-spectator. we shall understand what in traherne's descriptions reminded dobell of berkeley, if we take into account the connexion of the soul with the body at the time when, according to traherne, it still enjoys the untroubled perception of the true, the light-filled, ideas of things. in this condition the soul has only a dim and undifferentiated awareness of its connexion with a spatially limited body ('i was within a house i knew not, newly clothed with skin') and it certainly knows nothing at all of the body as an instrument, through which the will can be exercised in an earthly-spatial way ('my body being dead, my limbs unknown'). instead of this, the soul experiences itself simply as a supersensible sense-organ and as such united with the far spaces of the universe ('before i skilled to prize those living stars, mine eyes. ... then was my soul my only all to me, a living endless eye, scarce bounded with the sky'). at the time when the soul has experiences of the kind described by traherne, it is in a condition in which, as yet, no active contact has been established between itself and the physical matter of the body and thereby with gravity. hence there is truth in the picture which traherne thus sketches from actual memory. the same cannot be said of berkeley's world-picture. the fact that both resemble each other in certain features need not surprise us, seeing that berkeley's picture is, in its own way, a pure 'eye-picture' of the world. as such, however, it is an illusion - for it is intended for a state of man for which it is not suited, namely for adult man going upright on the earth, directing his deeds within its material realm, and in this way fashioning his own destiny. indeed, compared with berkeley's eye-picture of the world, that of reid is in every respect a 'limb-picture'. for where he seeks for the origin of our naïve assurance that a real material world exists, there he reverts - guided by his common sense - to the experiences available to the soul through the fact that the limbs of the body meet with the resistant matter of the world. and whenever he turns to the various senses in his search, it is always the will-activity of the soul within the sense he is investigating - and so the limb-nature within it - to which he first turns his attention. because, unlike berkeley, he takes into account the experiences undergone by the soul when it leaves behind its primal condition, reid does not fall into illusion, but discovers a fundamental truth concerning the nature of the world-picture experienced by man in his adult age. this, in turn, enables him to discover the nature of man's world picture in early childhood and to recognize the importance of recovering it in later life as a foundation for a true philosophy. assuredly, the philosopher who discovered that we must become as little children again if we would be philosophers, is the one to whom we may relate traherne, but not berkeley. and if we wish to speak of traherne, as dobell tried to do, we speak correctly only if we call him a 'reidean before reid was born'. * * * a little more than a hundred years after thomas traherne taught his fellow-men 'from experience' that there is an original condition of man's soul, before it is yet able to prize 'those living stars, mine eyes', in which it is endowed with the faculty to see 'the true (fair) ideas of all things', goethe was led to the realization that he had achieved the possibility of 'seeing ideas with the very eyes'. although he was himself not aware of it, the conception of the idea was at this moment restored through him to its true and original platonic significance. the present chapter has shown us how this conception of the idea is bound up with the view that is held of the relationship between human nature in early childhood and human nature in later life. we have seen that, when plato introduced the term idea as an expression for spiritual entities having a real and independent existence, men were still in possession of some recollection of their own pre-earthly existence. we then found traherne saying from his recollections that in the original form of man's consciousness his soul is endowed with the faculty of seeing 'true' ideas, and we found reid on similar grounds fighting the significance which the term 'idea' had assumed under his predecessors. by their side we see goethe as one in whom the faculty of seeing ideas appears for the first time in adult man as a result of a systematic training of observation and thought. if our view of the interdependence of the platonic conception of the idea with the picture man has of himself is seen rightly, then goethe must have been the bearer of such a picture. our expectation is shown to be right by the following two passages from goethe's autobiography, truth and fiction. in that part of his life story where goethe concludes the report of the first period of his childhood (book ii), he writes: 'who is able to speak worthily of the fullness of childhood? we cannot behold the little creatures which flit about before us otherwise than with delight, nay, with admiration; for they generally promise more than they perform and it seems that nature, among the other roguish tricks that she plays us, here also especially designs to make sport of us. the first organs she bestows upon children coming into the world, are adapted to the nearest immediate condition of the creature, which, unassuming and artless, makes use of them in the readiest way for its present purposes. the child, considered in and for itself, with its equals, and in relations suited to its powers, seems so intelligent and rational, and at the same time so easy, cheerful and clever, that one can hardly wish it further cultivation. if children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.' we find further evidence in goethe's account of an event in his seventh year, which shows how deeply his soul was filled at that time with the knowledge of its kinship with the realm from which nature herself receives its existence. this knowledge led him to approach the 'great god of nature' through an act of ritual conceived by himself. the boy took a four-sectioned music stand and arranged on it all kinds of natural specimens, minerals and the like, until the whole formed a kind of pyramidal altar. on the top of this pyramid he placed some fumigating candles, the burning of which was to represent the 'upward yearning of the soul for its god'. in order to give nature herself an active part in the ritual, he contrived to kindle the candles by focusing upon them through a magnifying-glass the light of the rising sun. before this symbol of the unity of the soul with the divine in nature the boy then paid his devotions. 'unity of the soul with the divine in nature' - this was what lived vividly as a conviction in the seven-year-old boy, impelling him to act as 'nature's priest' (wordsworth). the same impulse, in a metamorphosed form, impelled the adult to go out in quest of an understanding of nature which, as traherne put it, was to bring back through highest reason what once had been his by way of primeval intuition. the present writer's interest in reid was first aroused by a remark of rudolf steiner, in his book a theory of 'knowledge according to goethe's world conception. in a comment on a letter carlyle had written to him, and in a note dealing with the contemporary philosophy in germany. this observation of reid's shows that the origin of language is very different from what the evolutionists since darwin have imagined it to be. confessions, book i, chapter . as we have seen, the word had better luck with goethe. wordsworth, with all his limitations, had a real affinity with goethe in his view of nature. mr. norman lacey gives some indication of this in his recent book, wordsworth's view of nature. this same period of life played a decisive part in the spiritual evolution of rudolf steiner, as may be seen in his autobiography, the story of my life. the difference in spelling between the prose and poetry excerpts arises from the fact that whereas we can draw on miss wade's new edition of the poems for traherne's original spelling, we have as yet only dobell's edition of the centuries, in which the spelling is modernized. oxenford's translation. chapter vii 'always stand by form' immediacy of approach to certain essentials of nature as a result of their religious or artistic experience of the sense-world, is the characteristic of two more representatives of british cultural life. they are luke howard ( - ) and john ruskin ( - ), both true readers in the book of nature. like those discussed in the previous chapter they can be of especial help to us in our attempt to establish an up-to-date method of apprehending nature's phenomena through reading them. at the same time we shall find ourselves led into another sphere of goethe's scientific work. for we cannot properly discuss howard without recognizing the importance of his findings for goethe's meteorological studies or without referring to the personal connexion between the two men arising out of their common interest and similar approach to nature. we shall thus come as a matter of course to speak of goethe's thoughts about meteorology, and this again will give opportunity to introduce a leading concept of goethean science in addition to those brought forward already. of ruskin only so much will appear in the present chapter as is necessary to show him as an exemplary reader in the book of nature. he will then be a more or less permanent companion in our investigations. the following words of ruskin from the queen of the air reveal him at once as a true reader in the book of nature: 'over the entire surface of the earth and its waters, as influenced by the power of the air under solar light, there is developed a series of changing forms, in clouds, plants and animals, all of which have reference in their action, or nature, to the human intelligence that perceives them.' (ii, .) here ruskin in an entirely goethean way points to form in nature as the element in her that speaks to human intelligence - meaning by form, as other utterances of his show, all those qualities through which the natural object under observation reveals itself to our senses as a whole. by virtue of his pictorial-dynamic way of regarding nature, ruskin was quite clear that the scientists' one-sided seeking after external forces and the mathematically calculable interplay between them can never lead to a comprehension of life in nature. for in such a search man loses sight of the real signature of life: form as a dynamic element. accordingly, in his ethics of the dust, ruskin does not answer the question: 'what is life?' with a scientific explanation, but with the laconic injunction: 'always stand by form against force.' this he later enlarges pictorially in the words: 'discern the moulding hand of the potter commanding the clay from the merely beating foot as it turns the wheel.' (lect. x.) in thus opposing form and force to each other, ruskin is actually referring to two kinds of forces. there exist those forces which resemble the potter's foot in producing mere numerically regulated movements (so that this part of the potter's activity can be replaced by a power-machine), and others, which like the potter's hand, strive for a certain end and so in the process create definite forms. ruskin goes a step further still in the queen of the air, where he speaks of selective order as a mark of the spirit: 'it does not merely crystallize indefinite masses, but it gives to limited portions of matter the power of gathering, selectively, other elements proper to them, and binding these elements into their own peculiar and adopted form. ... 'for the mere force of junction is not spirit, but the power that catches out of chaos, charcoal, water, lime and what not, and fastens them into given form, is properly called "spirit"; and we shall not diminish, but strengthen our cognition of this creative energy by recognizing its presence in lower states of matter than our own.' (ii, .) when ruskin wrote this passage, he could count on a certain measure of agreement from his contemporaries that the essence of man himself is spirit, though certainly without any very exact notion being implied. this persuaded him to fight on behalf of the spirit, lest its activity on the lower levels of nature should not be duly acknowledged. to-day, when the purely physical conception of nature has laid hold of the entire man, ruskin might have given his thought the following turn: '... and we shall certainly attain to no real insight into this creative force (of the spirit) at the level of man, unless we win the capacity to recognize its activity in lower states of matter.' what ruskin is really pointing towards is the very thing for which goethe formed the concept 'type'. and just as ruskin, like goethe, recognized the signature of the spirit in the material processes which work towards a goal, so he counted as another such signature what goethe called steigerung, though certainly without forming such a universally valid idea of it: 'the spirit in the plant - that is to say, its power of gathering dead matter out of the wreck round it, and shaping it into its own chosen shape - is of course strongest in the moment of flowering, for it then not only gathers, but forms, with the greatest energy.' it is characteristic of ruskin's conception of the relationship between man's mind and nature that he added: 'and where this life is in it at full power, its form becomes invested with aspects that are chiefly delightful to our own senses.' (ii, .) obviously, a mind capable of looking at nature in this way could not accept such a picture of evolution as was put forward by ruskin's contemporary, darwin. so we find ruskin, in the queen of the air, opposing the darwinistic conception of the preservation of the species as the driving factor in the life of nature: 'with respect to plants as animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the object of life were only the bequeathing of itself. the flower is the end and proper object of the seeds, not the seed of the flower. the reason for the seed is that flowers may be, not the reason of flowers that seeds may be. the flower itself is the creature which the spirit makes; only, in connection with its perfectedness, is placed the giving birth to its successor.' (ii, .) for ruskin the true meaning of life in all its stages lay not in the maintenance of physical continuity from generation to generation, but in the ever-renewed, ever more enhanced revelation of the spirit. he was never for a moment in doubt regarding the inevitable effect of such an evolutionary theory as darwin's on the general social attitude of humanity. men would be led, he realized, to see themselves as the accidental products of an animal nature based on the struggle for existence and the preservation of the species. enough has been said to stamp ruskin as a reader in the book of nature, capable of deciphering the signature of the spirit in the phenomena of the sense-world. * outwardly different from ruskin's and yet spiritually comparable, is the contribution made by his older contemporary, luke howard, to the foundation of a science of nature based on intuition. whereas ruskin throws out a multitude of aphoristic utterances about many different aspects of nature, which will provide us with further starting-points for our own observation and thought, howard is concerned with a single sphere of phenomena, that of cloud formation. on the other hand, his contribution consists of a definite discovery which he himself methodically and consciously achieved, and it is the content of this discovery, together with the method of research leading to it, which will supply us ever and again with a model for our own procedure. at the same time, as we have indicated, he will help us to become familiar with another side of goethe, and to widen our knowledge of the basic scientific concepts formed by him. anyone interested to-day in weather phenomena is acquainted with the terms used in cloud classification - cirrus, cumulus, stratus, and nimbus. these have come so far into general use that it is not easy to realize that, until howard's paper, on the modification of clouds, appeared in , no names for classifying clouds were available. superficially, it may seem that howard had done nothing more than science has so often done in grouping and classifying and naming the contents of nature. in fact, however, he did something essentially different. in the introduction to his essay, howard describes the motives which led him to devote himself to a study of meteorological phenomena: 'it is the frequent observation of the countenance of the sky, and of its connexion with the present and ensuing phenomena, that constitutes the ancient and popular meteorology. the want of this branch of knowledge renders the prediction of the philosopher (who in attending his instruments may be said to examine the pulse of the atmosphere), less generally successful than those of the weather-wise mariners and husbandmen.' when he thus speaks of studying 'the countenance of the sky', howard is not using a mere form of speech; he is exactly describing his own procedure, as he shows when he proceeds to justify it as a means to scientific knowledge. the clouds with their ever-moving, ever-changing forms are not, he says, to be regarded as the mere 'sport of the winds', nor is their existence 'the mere result of the condensation of vapour in the masses of the atmosphere which they occupy'. what comes to view in them is identical, in its own realm, with what the changing expression of the human face reveals of 'a person's state of mind or body'. it would hardly be possible to represent oneself more clearly as a genuine reader in the book of nature than by such words. what is it but ruskin's 'stand by form against force' that howard is here saying in his own way? * before entering into a further description of howard's system, we must make clear why we disregard the fact that modern meteorology has developed the scale of cloud-formation far beyond howard, and why we shall keep to his own fourfold scale. it is characteristic of goethe that, on becoming acquainted with howard's work, he at once gave a warning against subdividing his scale without limit. goethe foresaw that the attempt to insert too many transitory forms between howard's chief types would result only in obscuring that view of the essentials which howard's original classification had opened up. obviously, for a science based on mere onlooking there is no objection to breaking up an established system into ever more subdivisions in order to keep it in line with an increasingly detailed outer observation. this, indeed, modern meteorology has done with howard's system, with the result that, to-day, the total scale is made up of ten different stages of cloud-formation. valuable as this tenfold scale may be for certain practical purposes, it must be ignored by one who realizes that through howard's fourfold scale nature herself speaks to man's intuitive judgment. let us, therefore, turn to howard's discovery, undisturbed by the extension to which modern meteorology has subjected it. luke howard, a chemist by profession, knew well how to value the results of scientific knowledge above traditional folk-knowledge. he saw the superiority of scientifically acquired knowledge in the fact that it was universally communicable, whereas folk-wisdom is bound up with the personality of its bearer, his individual observations and his memory of them. nevertheless, the increasing mathematizing of science, including his own branch of it, gave him great concern, for he could not regard it as helpful in the true progress of man's understanding of nature. accordingly, he sought for a method of observation in which the practice of 'the weatherwise mariner and husbandman' could be raised to the level of scientific procedure. to this end he studied the changing phenomena of the sky for many years, until he was able so to read its play of features that it disclosed to him the archetypal forms of cloud-formation underlying all change. to these he gave the now well-known names (in latin, so that they might be internationally comprehensible): cirrus: parallel, flexuous or divergent fibres extensible in any and all directions. cumulus: convex or conical heaps, increasing upwards from a horizontal base. stratus: a widely extended, continuous, horizontal sheet, increasing from below. nimbus: the rain cloud. let us, on the background of howard's brief definitions, try to form a more exact picture of the atmospheric dynamics at work in each of the stages he describes. among the three formations of cirrus, cumulus and stratus, the cumulus has a special place as representing in the most actual sense what is meant by the term 'cloud'. the reason is that both cirrus and stratus have characteristics which in one or the other direction tend away from the pure realm of atmospheric cloud-formation. in the stratus, the atmospheric vapour is gathered into a horizontal, relatively arched layer around the earth, and so anticipates the actual water covering below which extends spherically around the earth's centre. thus the stratus arranges itself in a direction which is already conditioned by the earth's field of gravity. in the language of physics, the stratus forms an equipotential surface in the gravitational field permeating the earth's atmosphere. as the exact opposite of this we have the cirrus. if in the stratus the form ceases to consist of distinct particulars, because the entire cloud-mass runs together into a single layer, in the cirrus the form begins to vanish before our eyes, because it dissolves into the surrounding atmospheric space. in the cirrus there is present a tendency to expand; in the stratus to contract. between the two, the cumulus, even viewed simply as a form-type, represents an exact mean. in how densely mounded a shape does the majestically towering cumulus appear before us, and yet how buoyantly it hovers aloft in the heights! if one ever comes into the midst of a cumulus cloud in the mountains, one sees how its myriads of single particles are in ceaseless movement. and yet the whole remains stationary, on windless days preserving its form unchanged for hours. more recent meteorological research has established that in many cumulus forms the entire mass is in constant rotation, although seen from outside, it appears as a stable, unvarying shape. nowhere in nature may the supremacy of form over matter be so vividly observed as in the cumulus cloud. and the forms of the cumuli themselves tell us in manifold metamorphoses of a state of equilibrium between expansive and contractive tendencies within the atmosphere. our description of the three cloud-types of cirrus, cumulus and stratus, makes it clear that we have to do with a self-contained symmetrical system of forms, within which the two outer, dynamically regarded, represent the extreme tendencies of expansion and contraction, whilst in the middle forms these are held more or less in balance. by adding howard's nimbus formation to this system, we destroy its symmetry. actually, in the nimbus we have cloud in such a condition that it ceases to be an atmospheric phenomenon in any real sense of the word; for it now breaks up into single drops of water, each of which, under the pull of gravity, makes its own independent way to the earth. (the symmetry is restored as soon as we realize that the nimbus, as a frontier stage below the stratus, has a counterpart in a corresponding frontier stage above the cirrus. to provide insight into this upper frontier stage, of which neither howard nor goethe was at that time in a position to develop a clear enough conception to deal with it scientifically, is one of the aims of this book.) * in order to understand what prompted goethe to accept, as he did, howard's classification and terminology at first glance, and what persuaded him to make himself its eloquent herald, we must note from what point goethe's labours for a natural understanding of nature had originated. in his history of my botanical studies goethe mentions, besides shakespeare and spinoza, linnaeus as one who had most influenced his own development. concerning linnaeus, however, this is to be understood in a negative sense. for when goethe, himself searching for a way of bringing the confusing multiplicity of plant phenomena into a comprehensive system, met with the linnaean system, he was, despite his admiration for the thoroughness and ingenuity of linnaeus's work, repelled by his method. thus by way of reaction, his thought was brought into its own creative movement: 'as i sought to take in his acute, ingenious analysis, his apt, appropriate, though often arbitrary laws, a cleft was set up in my inner nature: what he sought to hold forcibly apart could not but strive for union according to the inmost need of my own being.' linnaeus's system agonized goethe because it demanded from him 'to memorize a ready-made terminology, to hold in readiness a certain number of nouns and adjectives, so as to be able, whenever any form was in question, to employ them in apt and skilful selection, and so to give it its characteristic designation and appropriate position.' such a procedure appeared to goethe as a kind of mosaic, in which one ready-made piece is set next to another in order to produce out of a thousand details the semblance of a picture; and this was 'in a certain way repugnant' to him. what goethe awoke to when he met linnaeus's attempt at systematizing the plant kingdom was the old problem of whether the study of nature should proceed from the parts to the whole or from the whole to the parts. seeing, therefore, how it became a question for goethe, at the very beginning of his scientific studies, whether a natural classification of nature's phenomena could be achieved, we can understand why he was so overjoyed when, towards the end of his life, in a field of observation which had meanwhile caught much of his interest, he met with a classification which showed, down to the single names employed, that it had been read off from reality. * the following is a comprehensive description of goethe's meteorological views, which he gave a few years before his death in one of his conversations with his secretary, eckermann: 'i compare the earth and her hygrosphere to a great living being perpetually inhaling and exhaling. if she inhales, she draws the hygrosphere to her, so that, coming near her surface, it is condensed to clouds and rain. this state i call water-affirmative (wasserbejahung). should it continue for an indefinite period, the earth would be drowned. this the earth does not allow, but exhales again, and sends the watery vapours upwards, when they are dissipated through the whole space of the higher atmosphere. these become so rarefied that not only does the sun penetrate them with its brilliancy, but the eternal darkness of infinite space is seen through them as a fresh blue. this state of the atmosphere i call water-negative (wasserverneinung). for just as, under the contrary influence, not only does water come profusely from above, but also the moisture of the earth cannot be dried and dissipated - so, on the contrary, in this state not only does no moisture come from above, but the damp of the earth itself flies upwards; so that, if this should continue for an indefinite period, the earth, even if the sun did not shine, would be in danger of drying up.' (llth april .) goethe's notes of the results of his meteorological observations show how in them, too, he followed his principle of keeping strictly to the phenomenon. his first concern is to bring the recorded measurements of weather phenomena into their proper order of significance. to this end he compares measurements of atmospheric temperature and local density with barometric measurements. he finds that the first two, being of a more local and accidental nature, have the value of 'derived' phenomena, whereas the variations in the atmosphere revealed by the barometer are the same over wide areas and therefore point to fundamental changes in the general conditions of the earth. measurements made regularly over long periods of time finally lead him to recognize in the barometric variations of atmospheric pressure the basic meteorological phenomenon. in all this we find goethe carefully guarding himself against 'explaining' these atmospheric changes by assuming some kind of purely mechanical cause, such as the accumulation of air-masses over a certain area or the like. just as little would he permit himself lightly to assume influences of an extra-terrestrial nature, such as those of the moon. not that he would have had anything against such things, if they had rested on genuine observation. but his own observations, as far as he was able to carry them, told him simply that the atmosphere presses with greater or lesser intensity on the earth in more or less regular rhythms. he was not abandoning the phenomenal sphere, however, when he said that these changes are results of the activity of earthly gravity, or when he concluded from this that barometric variations were caused by variations in the intensity of the field of terrestrial gravity, whereby the earth sometimes drew the atmosphere to it with a stronger, and sometimes with a weaker, pull. he was again not departing from the realm of the phenomenal when he looked round for other indications in nature of such an alternation of drawing in and letting forth of air, and found them in the respiratory processes of animated beings. (to regard the earth as a merely physical structure was impossible for goethe, for he could have done this only by leaving out of account the life visibly bound up with it.) accordingly, barometric measurements became for him the sign of a breathing process carried out by the earth. alongside the alternating phases of contraction and expansion within the atmosphere, goethe placed the fact that atmospheric density decreases with height. observation of differences in cloud formation at different levels, of the boundary of snow formation, etc., led him to speak of different 'atmospheres', or of atmospheric circles or spheres, which when undisturbed are arranged concentrically round the earth. here also he saw, in space, phases of contraction alternating with phases of expansion. * at this point in our discussion it is necessary to introduce another leading concept of goethean nature-observation, which was for him - as it will be for us - of particular significance for carrying over the goethean method of research from the organic into the inorganic realm of nature. this is the concept of the ur-phenomenon (urphänomen). in this latter realm, nature no longer brings forth related phenomena in the ordering proper to them; hence we are obliged to acquire the capacity of penetrating to this ordering by means of our own realistically trained observation and thought. from among the various utterances of goethe regarding his general conception of the ur-phenomenon, we here select a passage from that part of the historical section of his theory of colour where he discusses the method of investigation introduced into science by bacon. he says: 'in the range of phenomena all had equal value in bacon's eyes. for although he himself always points out that one should collect the particulars only to select from them and to arrange them, in order finally to attain to universals, yet too much privilege is granted to the single facts; and before it becomes possible to attain to simplification and conclusion by means of induction (the very way he recommends), life vanishes and forces get exhausted. he who cannot realize that one instance is often worth a thousand, bearing all within itself; he who proves unable to comprehend and esteem what we called ur-phenomena, will never be in a position to advance anything, either to his own or to others' joy and profit.' what goethe says here calls for the following comparison. we can say that nature seen through bacon's eyes appears as if painted on a two-dimensional surface, so that all its facts are seen alongside each other at exactly the same distance from the observer. goethe, on the other hand, ascribed to the human spirit the power of seeing the phenomenal world in all its three-dimensional multiplicity; that is, of seeing it in perspective and distinguishing between foreground and background. things in the foreground he called ur-phenomena. here the idea creatively determining the relevant field of facts comes to its purest expression. the sole task of the investigator of nature, he considered, was to seek for the ur-phenomena and to bring all other phenomena into relation with them; and in the fulfilment of this task he saw the means of fully satisfying the human mind's need to theorize. he expressed this in the words, 'every fact is itself already theory'. in goethe's meteorological studies we have a lucid example of how he sought and found the relevant ur-phenomenon. it is the breathing-process of the earth as shown by the variations of barometric pressure. * once again we find thomas reid, along his line of intuitively guided observation, coming quite close to goethe where he deals with the question of the apprehension of natural law by the human mind. he, too, was an opponent of the method of 'explaining' phenomena by means of abstract theories spun out of sheer thinking, and more than once in his writings he inveighs against it in his downright, humorous way. his conviction that human thinking ought to remain within the realm of directly experienced observation is shown in the following words: 'in the solution of natural phenomena, all the length that the human faculties can carry us is only this, that from particular phenomena, we may, by induction, trace out general phenomena, of which all the particular ones are necessary consequences.' as an example of this he takes gravity, leading the reader from one phenomenon to the next without ever abandoning them, and concluding the journey by saying: 'the most general phenomena we can reach are what we call laws of nature. so that the laws of nature are nothing else but the most general facts relating to the operations of nature, which include a great many particular facts under them.' * it was while on his way with the grand duke of weimar to visit a newly erected meteorological observatory that goethe, in the course of informing his companion of his own meteorological ideas, first heard of howard's writings about the formation of clouds. the duke had read a report of them in a german scientific periodical, and it seemed to him that howard's cloud system corresponded with what he now heard of goethe's thoughts about the force relationships working in the different atmospheric levels. he had made no mistake. goethe, who immediately obtained howard's essay, recognized at first glance in howard's cloud scale the law of atmospheric changes which he himself had discovered. he found here, what he had always missed in the customary practice of merely tabulating the results of scientific measurements. and so he took hold of the howard system with delight, for it 'provided him with a thread which had hitherto been lacking'. moreover, in the names which howard had chosen for designating the basic cloud forms, goethe saw the dynamic element in each of them coming to immediate expression in human speech. he therefore always spoke of howard's system as a 'welcome terminology'. all this inspired goethe to celebrate howard's personality and his work in a number of verses in which he gave a description of these dynamic elements and a paraphrase of the names, moulding them together into an artistic unity. in a few accompanying verses he honoured howard as the first to 'distinguish and suitably name' the clouds. the reason why goethe laid so much stress on howard's terminology was because he was very much aware of the power of names to help or hinder men in their quest for knowledge. he himself usually waited a long time before deciding on a name for a natural phenomenon or a connexion between phenomena which he had discovered. the idea which his spiritual eye had observed had first to appear so clearly before him that he could clothe it in a thought-form proper to it. seeing in the act of name - giving an essential function of man (we are reminded of what in this respect the biblical story of creation says of adam), goethe called man 'the first conversation which nature conducts with god'. it is characteristic of goethe that he did not content himself with knowing the truth which someone had brought forward in a field of knowledge in which he himself was interested, but that he felt his acquaintance with this truth to be complete only when he also knew something about the personality of the man himself. so he introduces his account of his endeavours to know more about howard, the man, with the following words: 'increasingly convinced that everything occurring through man should be regarded in an ethical sense, and that moral value is to be estimated only from a man's way of life, i asked a friend in london to find out if possible something about howard's life, if only the simplest facts.' goethe was uncertain whether the englishman was still alive, so his delight and surprise were considerable when from howard himself he received an answer in the form of a short autobiographical sketch, which fully confirmed his expectations regarding howard's ethical personality. howard's account of himself is known to us, as goethe included a translation of it in the collection of his own meteorological studies. howard in a modest yet dignified way describes his christian faith, his guide through all his relationships, whether to other men or to nature. a man comes before us who, untroubled by the prevailing philosophy of his day, was able to advance to the knowledge of an objective truth in nature, because he had the ability to carry religious experience even into his observation of the sense-world. * in view of all this, it is perhaps not too much to say that in the meeting between howard and goethe by way of the spiritual bridge of the clouds, something happened that was more than a mere event in the personal history of these two men. these words should be weighed with the fact in mind that they were written at the time when crookes was intent on finding the unknown land of the spirit by means of just such 'a mere force of junction'. see also goethe's sketch of the basic cloud forms on plate iv. goethe's dunstkreis - meaning the humidity contained in the air and, as such, spherically surrounding the earth. i had to make up the word 'hygrosphere' (after hygrometer, etc.) to keep clear the distinction from both atmosphere and hydrosphere. except for this term in the first two sentences, the above follows oxenford's translation (who, following the dictionaries, has rendered goethe's term inadequately by 'atmosphere'). we may here recall eddington's statement concerning the restriction of scientific observation to 'non-stereoscopic vision'. an example of this is reid's commentary on existing theories about sight as a mere activity of the optic nerve. (inq., vi, .) see inq., vi, . this is precisely what kant had declared to be outside human possibility. stratus means layer, cumulus - heap, cirrus - curl. there exists no adequate translation of these verses. genesis ii, , . a fact which howard did not mention, and which presumably remained unknown to goethe, was the work he had done as chairman of a relief committee for the parts of germany devastated by the napoleonic wars. for this work howard received a series of public honours. chapter viii dynamics versus kinetics at the present time the human mind is in danger of confusing the realm of dynamic events, into which modern atomic research has penetrated, with the world of the spirit; that is, the world whence nature is endowed with intelligent design, and of which human thinking is an expression in terms of consciousness. if a view of nature as a manifestation of spirit, such as goethe and kindred minds conceived it, is to be of any significance in our time, it must include a conception of matter which shows as one of its attributes its capacity to serve form (in the sense in which ruskin spoke of it in opposition to mere force) as a means of manifestation. the present part of this book, comprising chapters viii-xi, will be devoted to working out such a conception of matter. an example will thereby be given of how goethe's method of acquiring understanding of natural phenomena through reading the phenomena themselves may be carried beyond his own field of observation. there are, however, certain theoretical obstacles, erected by the onlooker-consciousness, which require to be removed before we can actually set foot on the new path. the present chapter will in particular serve this purpose. * science, since galileo, has been rooted in the conviction that the logic of mathematics is a means of expressing the behaviour of natural events. the material for the mathematical treatment of sense data is obtained through measurement. the actual thing, therefore, in which the scientific observer is interested in each case, is the position of some kind of pointer. in fact, physical science is essentially, as professor eddington put it, a 'pointer-reading science'. looking at this fact in our way we can say that all pointer instruments which man has constructed ever since the beginning of science, have as their model man himself, restricted to colourless, non-stereoscopic observation. for all that is left to him in this condition is to focus points in space and register changes of their positions. indeed, the perfect scientific observer is himself the arch-pointer-instrument. the birth of the method of pointer-reading is marked by galileo's construction of the first thermometer (actually, a thermoscope). the conviction of the applicability of mathematical concepts to the description of natural events is grounded in his discovery of the so-called parallelogram of forces. it is with these two innovations that we shall concern ourselves in this chapter. let it be said at once that our investigations will lead to the unveiling of certain illusions which the spectator-consciousness has woven round these two gifts of galileo. this does not mean that their significance as fundamentals of science will be questioned. nor will the practical uses to which they have been put with so much success be criticized in any way. but there are certain deceptive ideas which became connected with them, and the result is that to-day, when man is in need of finding new epistemological ground under his feet, he is entangled in a network of conceptual illusions which prevent him from using his reason with the required freedom. a special word is necessary at this point regarding the term illusion, as it is used here and elsewhere. in respect of this, it will be well to remember what was pointed out earlier in connexion with the term 'tragedy' (chapter ii). in speaking of 'illusion', we neither intend to cast any blame on some person or another who took part in weaving the illusion, nor to suggest that the emergence of it should be thought of as an avoidable calamity. rather should illusion be thought of as something which man has been allowed to weave because only by his own active overcoming of it can he fulfil his destiny as the bearer of truth in freedom. illusion, in the sense used here, belongs to those things in man's existence which are truly to be called tragic. it loses this quality, and assumes a quite different one, only when man, once the time has come for overcoming an illusion, insists on clinging to it. as our further studies will show, the criticism to be applied here does not only leave the validity of measurement and the mathematical treatment of the data thus obtained fully intact, but by giving them their appropriate place in a wider conception of nature it opens the way to an ever more firmly grounded and, at the same time, enhanced application of both. * our primary knowledge of the existence of something we call 'warmth' or 'heat' is due to a particular sense of warmth which modern research has recognized as a clearly definable sense. naturally, seen from the spectator-standpoint, the experiences of this sense appear to be of purely subjective value and therefore useless for obtaining an objective insight into the nature of warmth and its effects in the physical world. in order to learn about these, resort is had to certain instruments which, through the change of the spatial position of a point, allow the onlooker-observer to register changes in the thermal condition of a physical object. an instrument of this kind is the thermometer. in the following way an indubitable proof seems to be given of the correctness of the view concerning the subjectivity of the impressions obtained through the sense of warmth, and of the objectivity of thermometrical measurement. a description of it is frequently given in physical textbooks as an introduction to the chapter on heat. to begin with, the well-known fact is cited that if one plunges one's hands first into two different bowls, one filled with hot water and the other with cold, and then plunges them together into a bowl of tepid water, this will feel cold to the hand coming from the hot water and warm to the hand coming from the cold. next, it is pointed out that two thermometers which are put through the same procedure will register an equal degree of temperature for the tepid water. in this way the student is given a lasting impression of the superiority of the 'objective' recording of the instrument over the 'subjective' character of the experiences mediated by his sense of warmth. let us now test this procedure by carrying out the same experiment with the help of thermometrical instruments in their original form, that is, the form in which galileo first applied them. by doing so we proceed in a truly goethean manner, because we divest the experiment of all accessories which prevent the phenomenon from appearing in its primary form. to turn a modern thermometer into a thermoscope we need only remove the figures from its scale. if we make the experiment with two such thermoscopes we at once become aware of something which usually escapes us, our attention being fixed on the figures recorded by the two instruments. for we now notice that the two instruments, when transferred from the hot and cold water into the tepid water, behave quite differently. in one the column will fall, in the other it will rise. it is important to note that by this treatment of the two instruments we have not changed the way in which they usually indicate temperature. for thermometrical measurement is in actual fact never anything else than a recording of the movement of the indicator from one level to another. we choose merely to take a certain temperature level - that of melting ice or something else - as a fixed point of reference and mark it once for all on the instrument. because we find this mark clearly distinguished on our thermometers, and the scales numbered accordingly, we fail to notice what lies ideally behind this use of the same zero for every new operation we undertake. what the zero signifies becomes clear directly we start to work with thermometers not marked with scales. for in order to be used in this form as real thermometers, they must be exposed on each occasion first of all to some zero level of temperature, say, that of melting ice. if we then take them into the region of temperature we want to measure, we shall discern the difference of levels through the corresponding movement of the column. the final position of the column tells us nothing in itself. it is always the change from one level to another that the thermometer registers - precisely as does the sense of warmth in our hands in the experiment just described. hence we see that in the ordinary operation with the thermometers, and when we use our hands in the prescribed manner, we are dealing with the zero level in two quite different ways. while in the/two instruments the zero level is the same, in accordance with the whole idea of thermometric measurement, we make a special arrangement so as to expose our hands to two different levels. so we need not be surprised if these two ways yield different results. if, after placing two thermometers without scales in hot and cold water, we were to assign to each its own zero in accordance with the respective height of its column, and then graduate them from this reference point, they would necessarily record different levels when exposed to the tepid water, in just the same way as the hands do. our two hands, moreover, will receive the same sense-impression from the tepid water, if we keep them in it long enough. seen in this light, the original experiment, designed to show the subjective character of the impressions gained through the sense of warmth, reveals itself as a piece of self-deception by the onlooker-consciousness. the truth of the matter is that, in so far as there is any subjective element in the experience and measurement of heat, it does not lie on the side of our sense of warmth, but in our judgment of the significance of thermometrical readings. in fact, our test of the alleged proof of the absolute superiority of pointer-readings over the impressions gained by our senses gives us proof of the correctness of goethe's statement, quoted earlier, that the senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives. let it be repeated here that what we have found in this way does not lead to any depreciation of the method of pointer-reading. for the direct findings of the senses cannot be compared quantitatively. the point is that the idea of the absolute superiority of physical measurement as a means of scientific knowledge, in all circumstances, must be abandoned as false. * we now turn to galileo's discovery known as the theorem of the parallelogram of forces. the illusion which has been woven round this theorem expresses itself in the way it is described as being connected ideally with another theorem, outwardly similar in character, known as the theorem of the parallelogram of movements (or velocities), by stating that the former follows logically from the latter. this statement is to be found in every textbook on physics at the outset of the chapter on dynamics (kinetics), where it serves to establish the right to treat the dynamic occurrences in nature in a purely kinematic fashion, true to the requirements of the onlooker-consciousness. the following description will show that, directly we free ourselves from the onlooker-limitations of our consciousness in the way shown by goethe - and, in respect of the present problem, in particular also by reid - the ideal relationship between the two theorems is seen to be precisely the opposite to the one expressed in the above statement. the reason why we take pains to show this at the present point of our discussion is that only through replacing the fallacious conception by the correct one, do we open the way for forming a concrete concept of force and thereby for establishing a truly dynamic conception of nature. * let us begin by describing briefly the content of the two theorems in question. in fig. , a diagrammatical representation is given of the parallelogram of movements. it sets out to show that when a point moves with a certain velocity in the direction indicated by the arrow a, so that in a certain time it passes from p to a, and when it simultaneously moves with a second velocity in the direction indicated by b, through which alone it would pass to b in the same time, its actual movement is indicated by c, the diagonal in the parallelogram formed by a and b. an example of the way in which this theorem is practically applied is the well-known case of a rower who sets out from p in order to cross at right angles a river indicated by the parallel lines. he has to overcome the velocity a of the water of the river flowing to the right by steering obliquely left towards b in order to arrive finally at c. it is essential to observe that the content of this theorem does not need the confirmation of any outer experience for its discovery, or to establish its truth. even though the recognition of the fact which it expresses may have first come to men through practical observation, yet the content of this theorem can be discovered and proved by purely logical means. in this respect it resembles any purely geometrical statement such as, that the sum of the angles of a triangle is two right angles ( °). even though this too may have first been learnt through outer observation, yet it remains true that for the discovery of the fact expressed by it - valid for all plane triangles - no outer experience is needed. in both cases we find ourselves in the domain of pure geometric conceptions (length and direction of straight lines, movement of a point along these), whose reciprocal relationships are ordered by the laws of pure geometric logic. so in the theorem of the parallelogram of velocities we have a strictly geometrical theorem, whose content is in the narrowest sense kinematic. in fact, it is the basic theorem of kinematics. we now turn to the second theorem which speaks of an outwardly similar relationship between forces. as is well nown, this states that two forces of different magnitude and direction, when they apply at the same point, act together in the manner of a single force whose magnitude and direction may be represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram whose sides express in extent and direction the first two forces. thus in fig. , r exercises upon p the same effect as f and f together. expressed in another way, a force of this magnitude working in the reverse direction (r') will establish an equilibrium with the other two forces. in technical practice, as is well known, this theorem is used for countless calculations, in both statics and dynamics, and indeed more frequently not in the form given here but in the converse manner, when a single known force is resolved into two component forces. (distribution of a pressure along frameworks, of air pressure along moving surfaces, etc.) it will now be our task to examine the logical link which is believed to connect one theorem with the other. this link is found in the well-known definition of physical force as a product of 'mass' and 'acceleration' - in algebraic symbols f=ma. we will discuss the implications of this definition in more detail later on. let us first see how it is used as a foundation for the above assertion. the conception of 'force' as the product of 'mass' and 'acceleration' is based on the fact - easily experienced by anyone who cycles along a level road - that it is not velocity itself which requires the exertion of force, but the change of velocity - that is, acceleration or retardation ('negative acceleration' in the sense of mathematical physics); also that in the case of equal accelerations, the force depends upon the mass of the accelerated object. the more massive the object, the greater will be the force necessary for accelerating it. this mass, in turn, reveals itself in the resistance a particular object offers to any change of its state of motion. where different accelerations and the same mass are considered, the factor m in the above formula remains constant, and force and acceleration are directly proportional to each other. thus in the acceleration is discovered a measure for the magnitude of the force which thereby acts. now it is logically evident that the theorem of the parallelogram of velocities is equally valid for movements with constant or variable velocities. even though it is somewhat more difficult to perceive mentally the movement of a point in two different directions with two differently accelerated motions, and to form an inner conception of the resulting movement, we are nevertheless still within a domain which may be fully embraced by thought. thus accelerated movements and movements under constant velocity can be resolved and combined according to the law of the parallelogram of movements, a law which is fully attainable by means of logical thought. with the help of the definition of force as the product of mass and acceleration it seems possible, indeed, to derive the parallelogram of forces from that of accelerations in a purely logical manner. for it is necessary only to extend all sides of an a parallelogram by means of the same factor m in order to turn it into an f parallelogram. a single geometrical figure on paper can represent both cases, since only the scale needs to be altered in order that the same geometrical length should represent at one time the magnitude a and on another occasion ma. it is in this way that present-day scientific thought keeps itself convinced that the parallelogram of forces follows with logical evidence from the parallelogram of accelerations, and that the discovery of the former is therefore due to a purely mental process. since the parallelogram of forces is the prototype of each further mathematical representation of physical force-relationships in nature, the conceptual link thus forged between it and the basic theorem of kinematics has led to the conviction that the fact that natural events can be expressed in terms of mathematics could be, and actually has been, discovered through pure logical reasoning, and thus by the brain-bound, day-waking consciousness 'of the world-spectator. justification thereby seemed to be given for the building of a valid scientific world-picture, purely kinematic in character. * the line of consideration we shall now have to enter upon for carrying out our own examination of what is believed to be the link between the two theorems may seem to the scientifically trained reader to be of an all too elementary kind compared with the complexities of thought in which he is used to engage in order to settle a scientific problem. it is therefore necessary to state here that anyone who wishes to help to overcome the tangle of modern theoretical science must not be shy in applying thoughts and observations of seemingly so simple a nature as those used both here and on other occasions. some readiness, in fact, is required to play where necessary the part of the child in hans andersen's fairy-story of the emperor's new clothes, where all the people are loud in praise of the magnificent robes of the emperor, who is actually passing through the streets with no clothes on at all, and a single child's voice exclaims the truth that 'the emperor has nothing on'. there will repeatedly be occasion to adopt the role of this child in the course of our own studies. * in the scientific definition of force given above force appears as the result of a multiplication of two other magnitudes. now as is well known, it is essential for the operation of multiplication that of the two factors forming the product at least one should exhibit the properties of a pure number. for two pure numbers may be multiplied together - e.g. and - and a number of concrete things can be multiplied by a pure number - e. g. apples and the number - but no sense can be attached to the multiplication of apples by apples, let alone by pears! the result of multiplication is therefore always either itself a pure number, when both factors have this property; or when one of the two factors is of the nature of a concrete object, the result is of the same quality as the latter. an apple will always remain an apple after multiplication, and what distinguishes the final product (apples) from the original factor (apples) is only a pure number. if we take seriously what this simple consideration tells us of the nature of multiplication, and if we do not allow ourselves to deviate from it for whatever purpose we make use of this algebraic operation, then the various concepts we connect with the basic measurements in physics undergo a considerable change of meaning. let us test, in this respect, the well-known formula which, in the conceptual language of physics, connects 'distance' (s), 'time' (t), and 'velocity' (c). it is written c = s / t, or s = ct. in this formula, s has most definitely the meaning of a 'thing', for it represents measured spatial distance. of the two factors on the other side of the second equation, one must needs have the same quality as s: this is c. thus for the other factor, t, there remains the property of a pure number. we are, therefore, under an illusion if we assume the factor c to represent anything of what velocity implies in outer cosmic reality. the truth is that c represents a spatial distance just as s does, with the difference only that it is a certain unit-distance. just as little does real time enter into this formula - nor does it into any other formula of mathematical physics. 'time', in physics, is always a pure number without any cosmic quality. indeed, how could it be otherwise for a purely kinematic world-observation? we now submit the formula f=ma to the same scrutiny. if we attach to the factor a on the right side of the equation a definite quality, namely an observable acceleration, the other factor in the product is permitted to have only the properties of a pure number; f, therefore, can be only of the same nature as a and must itself be an acceleration. were it otherwise, then the equation f=ma could certainly not serve as a logical link between the velocity and force parallelograms. our present investigation has done no more than grant us an insight into the process of thought whereby the consciousness limited to a purely kinematic experience has deprived the concept of force of any real content. let us look at the equation f=ma as a means of splitting of the magnitude f into two components m and a. the equation then tells us that f is reduced to the nature of pure acceleration, for that which resides in the force as a factor not observable by kinematic vision has been split away from it as the factor m. for this factor, however, as we have seen, nothing remains over but the property of a pure number. let us note here that the first thinker to concern himself with a comprehensive world-picture in which the non-existence of a real concept of force is taken in earnest-namely, albert einstein - was also the first to consider mass as a form of energy and even to predict correctly, as was proved later, the amount of energy represented by the unit of mass, thereby encouraging decisively the new branch of experimental research which has led to the freeing of the so-called atomic energy. is it then possible that pure numbers can effect what took place above and within nagasaki, hiroshima, etc.? here we are standing once again before one of the paradoxes of modern science which we have found to play so considerable a part in its development. to find an interpretation of the formula f=ma, which is free from illusion, we must turn our attention first of all to the concepts 'force' and 'mass' themselves. the fact that men have these two words in their languages shows that the concepts expressed by them must be based on some experience that has been man's long before he was capable of any scientific reflexion. let us ask what kind of experience this is and by what part of his being he gathers it. the answer is, as simple self-observation will show, that we know of the existence of force through the fact that we ourselves must exert it in order to move our own body. thus it is the resistance of our body against any alteration of its state of motion, as a result of its being composed of inert matter, which gives us the experience of force both as a possession of our own and as a property of the outer world. all other references to force, in places where it cannot be immediately experienced, arise by way of analogy based on the similarity of the content of our observation to that which springs from the exertion of force in our own bodies. as we see, in this experience of force that of mass is at once implied. still, we can strengthen the latter by experimenting with some outer physical object. take a fairly heavy object in your hand, stretch out your arm lightly and move it slowly up and down, watching intently the sensation this operation rouses in you. evidently the experience of mass outside ourselves, as with that of our own body, comes to us through the experience of the force which we ourselves must exert in order to overcome some resisting force occasioned by the mass. already this simple observation - as such made by means of the sense of movement and therefore outside the frontiers of the onlooker-consciousness - tells us that mass is nothing but a particular manifestation of force. seen in the light of this experience, the equation f=ma requires to be interpreted in a manner quite different from that to which scientific logic has submitted it. for if we have to ascribe to f and m the same quality, then the rule of multiplication allows us to ascribe to a nothing but the character of a pure number. this implies that there is no such thing as acceleration as a self-contained entity, merely attached to mass in an external way. what we designate as acceleration, and measure as such, is nothing else than a numerical factor comparing two different conditions of force within the physical-material world. only when we give the three factors in our equation this meaning, does it express some concrete outer reality. at the same time it forbids the use of this equation for a logical derivation of the parallelogram of forces from that of pure velocities. * the same method which has enabled us to restore its true meaning to the formula connecting mass and force will serve to find the true source of man's knowledge of the parallelogram of forces. accordingly, our procedure will be as follows. we shall engage two other persons, together with whom we shall try to discover by means of our respective experiences of force the law under which three forces applying at a common point may hold themselves in equilibrium. our first step will consist in grasping each other by the hand and in applying various efforts of our wills to draw one another in different directions, seeing to it that we do this in such a way that the three joined hands remain undisturbed at the same place. by this means we can get as far as to establish that, when two persons maintain a steady direction and strength of pull, the third must alter his applied force with every change in his own direction in order to hold the two others in equilibrium. he will find that in some instances he must increase his pull and in other instances decrease it. this, however, is all that can be learnt in this way. no possibility arises at this stage of our investigation of establishing any exact quantitative comparison. for the forces which we have brought forth (and this is valid for forces in general, no matter of what kind they are) represent pure intensities, outwardly neither visible nor directly measurable. we can certainly tell whether we are intensifying or diminishing the application of our will, but a numerical comparison between different exertions of will is not possible. in order to make such a comparison, a further step is necessary. we must convey our effort to some pointer-instrument - for instance, a spiral spring which will respond to an exerted pressure or pull by a change in its spatial extension. (principle of the spring balance.) in this way, by making use of a certain property of matter - elasticity - the purely intensive magnitudes of the forces which we exert become extensively visible and can be presented geometrically. we shall therefore continue our investigation with the aid of three spring balances, which we hook together at one end while exposing them to the three pulls at the other. to mark the results of our repeated pulls of varying intensities and directions, we draw on the floor on which we stand three chalk lines outward from the point underneath the common point of the three instruments, each in the direction taken up by one of the three persons. along these lines we mark the extensions corresponding to those of the springs of the instruments. by way of this procedure we shall arrive at a sequence of figures such as is shown in fig. . this is all we can discover empirically regarding the mutual relationships of three forces engaging at a point. let us now heed the fact that nothing in this group of figures reveals that in each one of these trios of lines there resides a definite and identical geometrical order; nor do they convey anything that would turn our thoughts to the parallelogram of velocities with the effect of leading us to expect, by way of analogy, a similar order in these figures. and this result, we note, is quite independent of our particular way of procedure, whether we use, right from the start, a measuring instrument, or whether we proceed as described above. * having in this way removed the fallacious idea that the parallelogram of forces can, and therefore ever has been, conceived by way of logical derivation from the parallelogram of velocities, we must then ask ourselves what it was, if not any act of logical reason, that led galileo to discover it. history relates that on making the discovery he exclaimed: 'la natura è scritta in lingua matematica!' ('nature is recorded in the language of mathematics.') these words reveal his surprise when he realized the implication of his discovery. still, intuitively he must have known that using geometrical lengths to symbolize the measured magnitudes of forces would yield some valid result. whence came this intuition, as well as the other which led him to recognize from the figures thus obtained that in a parallelogram made up of any two of the three lines, the remaining line came in as its diagonal? and, quite apart from the particular event of the discovery, how can we account for the very fact that nature - at least on a certain level of her existence - exhibits rules of action expressible in terms of logical principles immanent in the human mind? * to find the answer to these questions we must revert to certain facts connected with man's psycho-physical make-up of which the considerations of chapter ii have already made us aware. let us, therefore, transpose ourselves once more into the condition of the child who is still entirely volition, and thus experiences himself as one with the world. let us consider, from the point of view of this condition, the process of lifting the body into the vertical position and the acquisition of the faculty of maintaining it in this position; and let us ask what the soul, though with no consciousness of itself, experiences in all this. it is the child's will which wrestles in this act with the dynamic structure of external space, and what his will experiences is accompanied by corresponding perceptions through the sense of movement and other related bodily senses. in this way the parallelogram of forces becomes an inner experience of our organism at the beginning of our earthly life. what we thus carry in the body's will-region in the form of experienced geometry - this, together with the freeing and crystallizing of part of our will-substance into our conceptual capacity, is transformed into our faculty of forming geometrical concepts, and among them the concept of the parallelogram of movements. looked at in this way, the true relationship between the two parallelogram-theorems is seen to be the very opposite of the one held with conviction by scientific thinking up to now. instead of the parallelogram of forces following from the parallelogram of movements, and the entire science of dynamics from that of kinematics, our very faculty of thinking in kinematic concepts is the evolutionary product of our previously acquired intuitive experience of the dynamic order of the world. if this is the truth concerning the origin of our knowledge of force and its behaviour on the one hand, and our capacity to conceive mathematical concepts in a purely ideal way on the other, what is it then that causes man to dwell in such illusion as regards the relationship between the two? from our account it follows that no illusion of this kind could arise if we were able to remember throughout life our experiences in early childhood. now we know from our considerations in chapter vi that in former times man had such a memory. in those times, therefore, he was under no illusion as to the reality of force in the world. in the working of outer forces he saw a manifestation of spiritual beings, just as in himself he experienced force as a manifestation of his own spiritual being. we have seen also that this form of memory had to fade away to enable man to find himself as a self-conscious personality between birth and death. as such a personality, galileo was able to think the parallelogram of forces, but he was unable to comprehend the origin of his faculty of mathematical thinking, or of his intuitive knowledge of the mathematical behaviour of nature in that realm of hers where she sets physical forces into action. deep below in galileo's soul there lived, as it does in every human being, the intuitive knowledge, acquired in early childhood, that part of nature's order is recordable in the conceptual language of mathematics. in order that this intuition should rise sufficiently far into his conscious mind to guide him, as it did, in his observations, the veil of oblivion which otherwise separates our waking consciousness from the experiences of earliest childhood must have been momentarily lightened. unaware of all this, galileo was duly surprised when in the onlooker-part of his being the truth of his intuition was confirmed in a way accessible to it, namely through outer experiment. yet with the veil immediately darkening again the onlooker soon became subject to the illusion that for his recognition of mathematics as a means of describing nature he was in need of nothing but what was accessible to him on the near side of the veil. thus it became man's fate in the first phase of science, which fills the period from galileo and his contemporaries up to the present time, that the very faculty which man needed for creating this science prevented him from recognizing its true foundations. restricted as he was to the building of a purely kinematic world-picture, he had to persuade himself that the order of interdependence of the two parallelogram-theorems was the opposite of the one which it really is. * the result of the considerations of this chapter is of twofold significance for our further studies. on the one hand, we have seen that there is a way out of the impasse into which modern scientific theory has got itself as a result of the lack of a justifiable concept of force, and that this way is the one shown by reid and travelled by goethe. 'we must become as little children again, if we will be philosophers', is as true for science as it is for philosophy. on the other hand, our investigation of the event which led galileo to the discovery that nature is recorded in the language of mathematics, has shown us that this discovery would not have been possible unless galileo had in a sense become, albeit unconsciously, a little child again. thus the event that gave science its first foundations is an occurrence in man himself of precisely the same character as the one which we have learnt to regard as necessary for building science's new foundations. the only difference is that we are trying to turn into a deliberate and consciously handled method something which once in the past happened to a man without his noticing it. need we wonder that we are challenged to do so in our day, when mankind is several centuries older than it was in the time of galileo? as to the terms 'kinetic' and 'kinematic', see chapter ii, page , footnote. for the sake of our later studies it is essential that the reader does not content himself with merely following the above description mentally, but that he carries out the experiment himself. chapter ix pro levitate (a) alertness contra inertness in the preceding chapter we gained a new insight into the relationship between mass and force. we have come to see that our concept of force is grounded on empirical observation in no less a degree than is usually assumed for our concept of number, or size, or position, provided we do not confine ourselves to non-stereoscopic, colourless vision for the forming of our scientific world-picture, but allow other senses to contribute to it. as to the concept mass, our discussion of the formula f=ma showed that force and mass, as they occur in it, are of identical nature, both having the quality of force. the factors f and m signify force in a different relationship to space (represented by the factor a). this latter fact now requires some further elucidation. in a science based on the goethean method of contemplating the world of the senses, concepts such as 'mass in rest' and 'mass in motion' lack any scientific meaning (though for another reason than in the theory of relativity). for in a science of this kind the universe - in the sense propounded lately by professor whitehead and others - appears as one integrated whole, whose parts must never be considered as independent entities unrelated to the whole. seen thus, there is no mass in the universe of which one could say with truth that it is ever in a state of rest. nor is there any condition of movement which could be rightly characterized by the attributes 'uniform' and 'straight line' in the sense of newton's first law. this does not mean that such conditions never occur in our field of observation. but as such they have significance only in relation to our immediate surroundings as a system of reference. even within such limits these conditions are not of a kind that would allow us to consider them as the basis of a scientific world-picture. for as such they occur naturally only as ultimate, never as primeval conditions. all masses are originally in a state of curvilinear movement whose rates change continuously. to picture a mass as being in a state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line, as the result of no force acting on it, and to picture it undergoing a change in the rate and direction of its motion as the result of some outer force working on it, is a sheer abstraction. in so far as mass appears in our field of observation as being in relative rest or motion of the kind described, this is always the effect of some secondary dynamic cause. if we wish to think with the course of the universe and not against it, we must not start our considerations with the state of (relative) rest or uniform motion in a straight line and derive our definition of force from the assumption that there is a primary 'force-free' state which is altered under the action of some force, but we must arrange our definitions in such a way that they end up with this state. thus newton's first law, for instance, would have to be restated somewhat as follows: no physical body is ever in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless its natural condition is interfered with by the particular action of some force. seen dynamically, and from the aspect of the universe as an interrelated whole, all aggregations of mass are the manifestation of certain dynamic conditions within the universe, and what appears to us as a change of the state of motion of such a mass is nothing but a change in the dynamic relationship between this particular aggregation and the rest of the world. let us now see what causes of such a change occur within the field of our observation. * in modern textbooks the nature of the cause of physical movement is usually defined as follows: 'any change in the state of movement of a portion of matter is the result of the action on it of another portion of matter.' this represents a truth if it is taken to describe a certain kind of causation. in the axiomatic form in which it is given it is a fallacy. the kind of causation it describes is, indeed, the only one which has been taken into consideration by the scientific mind of man. we are wont to call it 'mechanical' causation. obviously, man's onlooker-consciousness is unable to conceive of any other kind of causation. for this consciousness is by its very nature confined to the contemplation of spatially apparent entities which for this reason can be considered only as existing spatially side by side. for the one-eyed, colour-blind spectator, therefore, any change in the state of movement of a spatially confined entity could be attributed only to the action of another such entity outside itself. such a world-outlook was bound to be a mechanistic one. we cannot rest content with this state of affairs if we are sincerely searching for an understanding of how spirit moves, forms, and transforms matter. we must learn to admit non-mechanical causes of physical effects, where such causes actually present themselves to our observation. in this respect our own body is again a particularly instructive object of study. for here mechanical and non-mechanical causation can be seen working side by side in closest conjunction. let us therefore ask what happens when we move, say, one of our limbs or a part of it. the movement of any part of our body is always effected in some way by the movement of the corresponding part of the skeleton. this in turn is set in motion by certain lengthenings and contractions of the appropriate part of the muscular system. now the way in which the muscles cause the bones to move falls clearly under the category of mechanical causation. certain portions of matter are caused to move by the movement of adjacent portions of matter. the picture changes when we look for the cause to which the muscles owe their movements. for the motion of the muscles is not the effect of any cause external to them, but is effected by the purely spiritual energy of our volition working directly into the physical substance of the muscles. what scientific measuring instruments have been able to register in the form of physical, chemical, electrical, etc., changes of the muscular substance is itself an effect of this interaction. to mark the fact that this type of causation is clearly distinguished from the type called mechanical, it will be well to give it a name of its own. if we look for a suitable term, the word 'magical' suggests itself. the fact that this word has gathered all sorts of doubtful associations must not hinder us from adopting it into the terminology of a science which aspires to understand the working of the supersensible in the world of the senses. the falling into disrepute of this word is characteristic of the onlooker-age. the way in which we suggest it should be used is in accord with its true and original meaning, the syllable 'mag' signifying power or might (sanskrit maha, greek megas, latin magnus, english might, much, also master). henceforth we shall distinguish between 'mechanical' and 'magical' causation, the latter being a characteristic of the majority of happenings in the human, animal and plant organisms. * our next step in building up a truly dynamic picture of matter must be to try to obtain a direct experience of the condition of matter when it is under the sway of magical causation. let us first remember what is the outstanding attribute with which matter responds to mechanical causation. this is known to be inertia. by this term we designate the tendency of physical matter to resist any outwardly impressed change of its existing state of movement. this property is closely linked up with another one, weight. the coincidence of the two has of late become a puzzle to science, and it was albert einstein who tried to solve it by establishing his general theory of relativity. the need to seek such solutions falls away in a science which extends scientific understanding to conditions of matter in which weight and inertia are no longer dominant characteristics. what becomes of inertia when matter is subject to magical causation can be brought to our immediate experience in the following way. (the reader, even if he is already familiar with this experiment, is again asked to carry it out for himself.) take a position close to a smooth wall, so that one arm and hand, which are left hanging down alongside the body, are pressed over their entire length between body and wall. try now to move the arm upward, pressing it against the wall as if you wanted to shift the latter. apply all possible effort to this attempt, and maintain the effort for about one minute. then step away quickly from the wall by more than the length of the arm, while keeping the arm hanging down by the side of the body in a state of complete relaxation. provided all conditions are properly fulfilled, the arm will be found rising by itself in accordance with the aim of the earlier effort, until it reaches the horizontal. if the arm is then lowered again and left to itself, it will at once rise again, though not quite so high as before. this can be repeated several times until the last vestige of the automatic movement has faded away. having thus ascertained by direct experience that there is a state of matter in which inertia is, to say the least, greatly diminished, we find ourselves in need of giving this state (which is present throughout nature wherever material changes are brought into existence magically) a name of its own, as we did with the two types of causation. a word suggests itself which, apart from expressing adequately the peculiar self-mobility which we have just brought to our experience, goes well alongside the word 'inert' by forming a kind of rhyme with it. this is the term 'alert'. with its help we shall henceforth distinguish between matter in the inert and alert conditions. we shall call the latter state 'alertness', and in order to have on the other side a word as similar as possible in outer form to alertness, we suggest replacing the usual term inertia by 'inertness'. thus we shall speak of matter as showing the attribute of 'inertness', when it is subject to mechanical causation, of 'alertness', when it is subject to magical causation. anyone who watches attentively the sensation produced by the rising arm in the above experiment will be duly impressed by the experience of the alertness prevailing in the arm as a result of the will's magical intervention. * in our endeavour to find a modern way of overcoming the conception of matter developed and held by science in the age of the onlooker-consciousness, we shall be helped by noticing how this conception first arose historically. of momentous significance in this respect is the discovery of the gaseous state of matter by the flemish physician and experimenter, joh. baptist van helmont ( - ). the fact that the existence of this state of ponderable matter was quite unknown up to such a relatively recent date has been completely forgotten to-day. moreover, it is so remote from current notions that anyone who now calls attention to van helmont's discovery is quite likely to be met with incredulity. as a result, there is no account of the event that puts it in its true setting. in what follows pains are taken to present the facts in the form in which one comes to know them through van helmont's own account, given in his ortus medicinae. for reasons which need not be described here, van helmont studied with particular interest the various modifications in which carbon is capable of occurring in nature - among them carbon's combustion product, carbon dioxide. it was his observations of carbon dioxide which made him aware of a condition of matter whose properties caused him the greatest surprise. for he found it to be, at the same time, 'much finer than vapour and much denser than air'. it appeared to him as a complete 'paradox', because it seemed to unite in itself two contradictory qualities, one appertaining to the realm of 'uncreated things', the other to the realm of 'created things'. unable to rank it with either 'vapour' or 'air' (we shall see presently what these terms meant in van helmont's terminology), he found himself in need of a special word to distinguish this new state from the other known states, both below and above it. since he could not expect any existing language to possess a suitable word, he felt he must create one. he therefore took, and changed slightly, a word signifying a particular cosmic condition which seemed to be imaged in the new condition he had just discovered. the word was chaos. by shortening it a little, he derived from it the new word gas. his own words explaining his choice are: 'halitum ilium gas vocavi non longe a chaos veterum secretum.' ('i have called this mist gas, owing to its resemblance to the chaos of the ancients.') van helmont's account brings us face to face with a number of riddles. certainly, there is nothing strange to us in his describing carbon dioxide gas as being 'finer than vapour and denser than air'; but why did he call this a 'paradox'? what prevented him from ranking it side by side with air? as to air itself, why should he describe it as belonging to the realm of the 'uncreated things'? what reason was there for giving 'vapour' the rank of a particular condition of matter? and last but not least, what was the ancient conception of chaos which led van helmont to choose this name as an archetype for the new word he needed? to appreciate van helmont's astonishment and his further procedure, we must first call to mind the meaning which, in accordance with the prevailing tradition, he attached to the term air. for van helmont, air was one of the four 'elements', earth, water, air, and fire. of these, the first two were held to constitute the realm of the 'created things', the other two that of the 'uncreated things'. a brief study of the old doctrine of the four elements is necessary at this point in order to understand the meaning of these concepts. * the first systematic teaching about the four elementary constituents of nature, as they were experienced by man of old, was given by empedocles in the fifth century b.c. it was elaborated by aristotle. in this form it was handed down and served to guide natural observation through more than a thousand years up to the time of van helmont. from our earlier descriptions of the changes in man's consciousness it is clear that the four terms, 'earth', 'water', 'air', 'fire', must have meant something different in former times. so 'water' did not signify merely the physical substance which modern chemistry defines by the formula h o; nor was 'air' the mixture of gases characteristic of the earth's atmosphere. man in those days, on account of his particular relationship with nature, was impressed in the first place by the various dynamic conditions, four in number, which he found prevailing both in his natural surroundings and in his own organism. with his elementary concepts he tried to express, therefore, the four basic conditions which he thus experienced. he saw physical substances as being carried up and down between these conditions. at first sight some relationship seems to exist between the concept 'element' in this older sense and the modern view of the different states of material aggregation, solid, liquid, aeriform. there is, however, nothing in this modern view that would correspond to the element fire. for heat in the sense of physical science is an immaterial energy which creates certain conditions in the three material states, but from these three to heat there is no transition corresponding to the transitions between themselves. heat, therefore, does not rank as a fourth condition by the side of the solid, liquid and aeriform states, in the way that fire ranks in the older conception by the side of earth, water and air. if we were to use the old terms for designating the three states of aggregation plus heat, as we know them to-day, we should say that there is a border-line dividing fire from the three lower elements. such a border-line existed in the older conception of the elements as well. only its position was seen to be elsewhere - between earth and water on the one hand, air and fire on the other. this was expressed by saying that the elements below this line constituted the realm of the 'created things', those above it that of the 'uncreated things'. another way of expressing this was by characterizing earth and water with the quality cold; air and fire with the quality warm. the two pairs of elements were thus seen as polar opposites of one another. the terms 'cold' and 'warm' must also be understood to have expressed certain qualitative experiences in which there was no distinction as yet between what is purely physical and what is purely spiritual. expressions such as 'a cold heart', 'a warm heart', to 'show someone the cold shoulder', etc., still witness to this way of experiencing the two polar qualities, cold and warm. quite generally we can say that, wherever man experienced some process of contraction, whether physical or non-physical, he designated it by the term 'cold', and where he experienced expansion, he called it 'warm'. in this sense he felt contractedness to be the predominant characteristic of earth and water, expansiveness that of air and fire. with the help of these qualitative concepts we are now in a position to determine more clearly still the difference between the older and the modern conceptions: in particular the difference between the aeriform condition of matter, as we conceive of it to-day, and the element air. contractedness manifests as material density, or the specific weight of a particular substance. we know that this characteristic of matter diminishes gradually with its transition from the solid to the liquid and aeriform states. we know also that this last state is characterized by a high degree of expansiveness, which is also the outstanding property of heat. thus there is reason to describe also from the modern point of view the solid and liquid states as essentially 'cold', and the aeriform state as 'warm'. but aeriform matter still has density and weight, and this means that matter in this state combines the two opposing qualities. contrary to this, air, as the second highest element in the old sense, is characterized by the pure quality, warm. thus, when man of old spoke of 'air', he had in mind something entirely free from material density and weight. by comparing in this way the older and newer conceptions of 'air', we come to realize that ancient man must have had a conception of gravity essentially different from ours. if we take gravity in the modern scientist's sense, as a 'descriptive law of behaviour', then this behaviour is designated in the older doctrine by the quality 'cold'. if, however, we look within the system of modern science for a law of behaviour that would correspond to the quality 'warm', we do so in vain. polarity concepts are certainly not foreign to the scientific mind, as the physics of electricity and magnetism show. yet there is no opposite pole to gravity, as there is negative opposite to positive electricity, etc. in the older conception, however, the gravitational behaviour 'cold' was seen to be counteracted by an autonomous anti-gravitational behaviour 'warm'. experience still supported the conviction that as a polar opposite to the world subject to gravity, there was another world subject to levity. we refrain at this point from discussing how far a science which aspires to a spiritual understanding of nature, including material processes, needs a revival - in modern form - of the old conception of levity. in our present context it suffices to realize that we understand man's earlier view of nature, and with it the one still held by van helmont, only by admitting levity equally with gravity into his world-picture. for the four elements, in particular, this meant that the two upper ones were regarded as representing levity, the two lower ones gravity. in close connexion with this polar conception of the two pairs of elements, there stands their differentiation into one realm of created, another of uncreated, things. to understand what these terms imply, we must turn to the ancient concept, chaos, borrowed by van helmont. to-day we take the word chaos to mean a condition of mere absence of order, mostly resulting from a destruction of existing forms, whether by nature or by the action of man. in its original sense the word meant the exact opposite. when in ancient times people spoke of chaos, they meant the womb of all being, the exalted realm of uncreated things, where indeed forms such as are evident to the eye in the created world are not to be found, but in place of them are the archetypes of all visible forms, as though nurtured in a spiritual seed-condition. it is the state which in the biblical narration of the creation of the world is described as 'without form and void'. from this chaos all the four elements are born, one by one, with the two upper ones retaining chaos's essential characteristic in that they are 'without form' and tend to be omnipresent, whilst the two lower ones constitute a realm in which things appear in more or less clearly outlined space-bound forms. this is what the terms 'uncreated' and 'created' imply. how strictly these two realms were distinguished can be seen by the occurrence of the concept 'vapour'. when with the increasing interest in the realm of created things - characteristic of the spectator-consciousness which, in view of our earlier description of it, we recognize as being itself a 'created thing' - the need arose for progressive differentiation within this realm, the simple division of it into 'earth' and 'water' was no longer felt to be satisfactory. after all, above the liquid state of matter there was another state, less dense than water and yet presenting itself through more or less clearly distinguishable space-bound objects, such as the mists arising from and spreading over ponds and meadows, and the clouds hovering in the sky. for this state of matter the term 'vapour' had become customary, and it was used by van helmont in this sense. by its very properties, vapour belonged to the realm of the created things, whereas air did not. it was the intermediary position of the newly discovered state of matter between vapour and air, that is, between the created and the uncreated world, which caused van helmont to call it a paradox; and it was its strange resemblance, despite its ponderable nature, to chaos, which prompted him to name it - gas. * since it could not have been the gaseous state of matter in the form discovered by van helmont, what particular condition of nature was it to which the ancients pointed when using the term air? let us see how the scriptures of past human cultures speak of air. in all older languages, the words used to designate the element bound up with breathing, or the act of breathing, served at the same time to express the relationship of man to the divine, or even the divine itself. one need think only of the words brahma and atma of the ancient indians, the pneuma of the greeks, the spiritus of the romans. the hebrews expressed the same idea when they said that jehovah had breathed the breath of life into man and that man in this way became a living soul. what lies behind all these words is the feeling familiar to man in those times, that breathing was not only a means of keeping the body alive, but that a spiritual essence streamed in with the breath. so long as this condition prevailed, people could expect that by changing their manner of breathing they had a means of bringing the soul into stronger relationship with spiritual powers, as is attempted in eastern yoga. remembering the picture of man's spiritual-physical evolution which we have gained from earlier chapters, we are not astonished to find how different this early experience of the breathing process was from our own. yet, together with the recognition of this difference there arises another question. even if we admit that man of old was so organized that the experience of his own breathing process was an overwhelmingly spiritual one, it was, after all, the gaseous substance of the earth's atmosphere which he inhaled, and exhaled again in a transformed condition. what then was it that prevented men - apparently right up to the time of van helmont - from gaining the slightest inkling of the materiality of this substance? to find an answer to this question, let us resort once more to our method of observing things genetically, combined with the principle of not considering parts without considering the whole to which they organically belong. in modern science the earth is regarded as a mineral body whereon the manifold forms of nature appear as mere additions, arising more or less by chance; one can very well imagine them absent without this having any essential influence on the earth's status in the universe. the truth is quite different. for the earth, with everything that exists on it, forms a single whole, just as each separate organism is in its own way a whole. this shows that we have no right to imagine the earth without men, and to suppose that its cosmic conditions of being would then remain unaltered - any more than we can imagine a human being deprived of some essential-organ and remaining human. mankind, and all the other kingdoms of nature, are bound up organically with the earth from the start of its existence. moreover, just as the highest plants, seen with goethe's eyes, are the spiritual originators of the whole realm of plants - the creative idea determining their evolution - so we see man, the highest product of earth evolution, standing behind this evolution as its idea from the first, and determining its course. the evolutionary changes which we observe in the earth and in man are in fact a single process, working through a variety of manifested forms. from this conception of the parallel evolution of earth and man light falls also on the historic event represented by van helmont's discovery. besides being a symptom of a revolution in man's way of experiencing the atmosphere, it speaks to us of some corresponding change in the spiritual-physical condition of the atmosphere itself. it was then that men not only came to think differently about air, but inhaled and exhaled an air that actually was different. to find out what kind of change this was, let us turn once more to man's own organism and see what it has to say concerning the condition under which matter is capable of being influenced by mechanical and magical causation respectively, in the sense already described. what is it in the nature of the bones that makes them accessible to mechanical causation only, and what is it in the muscles that allows our will to rouse them magically? bones and muscles stand in a definite genetic relationship to each other, the bones being, in relation to the muscles, a late product of organic development. this holds good equally for everything which in the body of living nature takes the form of mineralized deposits or coverings. every kind of organism consists in its early stages entirely of living substance; in the course of time a part of the organism separates off" and passes over into a more or less mineralized condition. seen in this light, the distinction between bones and muscles is that the bones have evolved out of a condition in which the muscles persist, though to a gradually waning degree, throughout the life-time of the body. the substance of the muscles, remaining more or less 'young', stands at the opposite pole from the 'aged' substance of the bones. hence it depends on the 'age' of a piece of matter whether it responds to magical or mechanical causation. let us state here at once, that this temporal distinction has an essential bearing on our understanding of evolutionary processes in general. for if mineral matter is a late product of evolution - and nothing in nature indicates the contrary - then to explain the origins of the world (as scientific theories have always done) with the aid of events similar in character to those which now occur in the mineral realm, means explaining them against nature's own evidence. to find pictures of past conditions of the earth in present-day nature, we must look in the regions where matter, because it is still 'youthful', is played through by the magical working of purposefully active spiritual forces. thus, instead of seeing in them the chance results of blind volcanic and similar forces, we must recognize in the formation and layout of land and sea an outcome of events more closely resembling those which occur during the embryonic development of a living organism. what, then, does van helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter tell us, if we regard it in the light of our newly acquired insight into the trend of evolution both within and without man? when, in the course of its growing older, mankind had reached the stage which is expressed by the emergence of the spectator-consciousness-consciousness, that is, based on a nervous system which has grown more or less independent of the life forces of the organism - the outer elements had, in their way, arrived at such a state that man began to inhale an air whose spiritual-physical constitution corresponded exactly to that of his nervous system: on either side, spirit and matter, in accordance with the necessities of cosmic evolution had lost their primeval union. * our extension of the concept of evolution to the very elements of nature, whether these are of material or non-material kind, and our recognition of this evolution as leading in general from a more alert to a more inert condition, at once open the possibility of including in our scientific world-picture certain facts which have hitherto resisted any inclusion. we mean those manifold events of 'miraculous' nature, of which the scriptures and the oral traditions of old are full. what is modern man to make of them? the doubts which have arisen concerning events of this kind have their roots on the one hand in the apparent absence of such occurrences in our day, on the other in the fact that the laws of nature derived by science from the present condition of the world seem to rule them out. in the light of the concept of the world's 'ageing' which we have tried to develop here, not only do the relevant reports become plausible, but it also becomes understandable why, if such events have taken place in the past, they fail to do so in our own time. to illustrate this, let us take a few instances which are symptomatic of the higher degree of youthfulness which was characteristic in former times in particular of the element of fire. the role which fire was capable of playing in man's life at a time when even this element, in itself the most youthful of all, was more susceptible to magic interference than of late, is shown by the manifold fire-rites of old. in those days, when no easy means of fire-lighting were available, it was usual for the needs of daily life to keen a fire burning all the time and to kindle other fires from it. only in cases of necessity was a new fire lit, and then the only way was by the tedious rubbing together of two pieces of dry wood. then both the maintenance of fires, and the deliberate kindling of a new fire, played quite a special role in the ceremonial ordering of human society. historically, much the best known is the roman usage in the temple of vesta. on the one hand, the unintentional extinction of the fire was regarded as a national calamity and as the gravest possible transgression on the part of the consecrated priestess charged with maintaining the fire. on the other hand, it was thought essential for this 'everlasting' fire to be newly kindled once a year. this took place with a special ritual at the beginning of the roman year ( st march). the conception behind such a ritual of fire-kindling will become clear if we compare with it certain other fire-rites which were practised in the northern parts of europe, especially in the british isles, until far on in the christian era. for example, if sickness broke out among the cattle, a widespread practice was to extinguish all the hearth-fires in the district and then to kindle with certain rites a new fire, from which all the local people lit their own fires once more. heavy penalties were prescribed for anyone who failed to extinguish his own fire - a failure usually indicated by the non-manifestation of the expected healing influence. in anglo-saxon speaking countries, fires of this kind were known as 'needfires'. the spiritual significance of these fires cannot be expressed better than by the meaning of the very term 'needfire'. this word does not derive, as was formerly believed, from the word 'need', meaning a 'fire kindled in a state of need', but, as recent etymological research has shown, from a root which appears in the german word nieten - to clinch or rivet. 'needfire' therefore means nothing less than a fire which was kindled for 'clinching' anew the bond between earthly life and the primal spiritual order at times when for one reason or another there was a call for this. this explanation of the 'needfire' throws light also on the roman custom of re-kindling annually the sacred fire in the temple of vesta. for the romans this was a means of reaffirming year by year the connexion of the nation with its spiritual leadership; accordingly, they chose the time when the sun in its yearly course restores - 're-clinches' - the union of the world-spirit with earthly nature, for the rebirth of the fire which throughout the rest of the year was carefully guarded against extinction. just as men saw in this fire-kindling a way of bringing humanity into active relation with spiritual powers, so on the other hand were these powers held to use the fire element in outer nature for the purpose of making themselves actively known to mankind. hence we find in the records of all ancient peoples a unanimous recognition of lightning and thunder on the one hand, and volcanic phenomena on the other, as means to which the deity resorts for intervening in human destiny. a well-known example is the account in the bible of the meeting of moses with god on mount sinai. as occurrence in the early history of the hebrews it gives evidence that even in historical times the fire element of the earth was sufficiently 'young' to serve the higher spiritual powers as an instrument for the direct expression of their will. * * * (b) levity contra gravity we said earlier in this chapter that a science which aspires to a spiritual understanding of the physical happenings in nature must give up the idea that inertness and weight are absolute properties of matter. we were able at once to tackle the question of inertness by bringing to our immediate observation matter in the state of diminished inertness, or, as we proposed to say, of alertness. we are now in a position to go into the other question, that of weight or gravity. just as we found inertness to have its counterpart in alertness, both being existing conditions of matter, so we shall now find in addition to the force of gravity another force which is the exact opposite of it, and to which therefore we can give no better name than 'levity'. * already, indeed, the picture of nature which we gained from following goethe's studies both of the plant and of meteorological happenings has brought us face to face with certain aspects of levity. for when goethe speaks of systole and diastole, as the plant first taught him to see them and as later he found them forming the basic factors of weather-formation, he is really speaking of the ancient concepts, 'cold' and 'warm'. goethe's way of observing nature is, in fact, a first step beyond the limits of a science which kept itself ignorant of levity as a cosmic counterpart to terrestrial gravity. to recognize the historical significance of this step, let us turn our glance to the moment when the human mind became aware that to lay a proper foundation for the science it was about to build, it had to exclude any idea of levity as something with a real existence. many a conception which is taken for granted by modern man, and is therefore assumed to have been always obvious, was in fact established quite deliberately at a definite historical moment. we have seen how this applies to our knowledge of the gaseous state of matter; it applies also to the idea of the uniqueness of gravity. about half a century after van helmont's discovery a treatise called contra levitatem was published in florence by the accademia del cimento. it declares that a science firmly based on observation has no right to speak of levity as something claiming equal rank with, and opposite to, gravity. this attitude was in accord with the state into which human consciousness had entered at that time. for a consciousness which is itself of the quality 'cold', because it is based on the contracting forces of the body, is naturally not in a position to take into consideration its very opposite. therefore, to speak of a force of levity as one felt able to speak of gravity was indeed without meaning. just as there was historical necessity in this banishing of levity from science at the beginning of the age of the spectator-consciousness, so was there historical necessity in a renewed awareness of it arising when the time came for man to overcome the limitations of his spectator - relationship to the world. we find this in goethe's impulse to search for the action of polarities in nature. as we shall see later, it comes to its clearest expression in goethe's optical conceptions. another witness to this fact is ruskin, through a remark which bears in more than one sense on our present subject. it occurs in his essay, the storm-cloud of the ninteenth century. in its context it is meant to warn the reader against treating science, which ruskin praises as a fact-finding instrument, as an interpreter of natural facts. ruskin takes newton's conception of gravity as the all-moving cause of the universe, and turns against it in the following words: 'take the very top and centre of scientific interpretation by the greatest of its masters: newton explained to you - or at least was once supposed to explain, why an apple fell; but he never thought of explaining the exact correlative but infinitely more difficult question, how the apple got up there.' this remark shows ruskin once again as a true reader in nature's book. looking with childlike openness and intensity of participation into the world of the senses, he allows nature's phenomena to impress themselves upon his mind without giving any preconceived preference to one kind or another. this enables him not to be led by the phenomenon of falling bodies to overlook the polarically opposite phenomenon of the upward movement of physical matter in the living plant. ruskin's remark points directly to the new world-conception which must be striven for to-day - the conception in which death is recognized as a secondary form of existence preceded by life; in which levity is given its rightful place as a force polar to gravity; and in which, because life is bound up with levity as death is with gravity, levity is recognized as being of more ancient rank than gravity. * in proceeding now to a study of levity we shall not start, as might be expected, with plants or other living forms. we are not yet equipped to understand the part played by levity in bringing about the processes of life; we shall come to this later. for our present purpose we shall look at certain macrotelluric events - events in which large areas of the earth are engaged - taking our examples from meteorology on the one hand and from seismic (volcanic) processes on the other. in pursuing this course we follow a method which belongs to the fundamentals of a goetheanistic science. a few words about this method may not be out of place. when we strive to read the book of nature as a script of the spirit we find ourselves drawn repeatedly towards two realms of natural phenomena. they are widely different in character, but studied together they render legible much that refuses to be deciphered in either realm alone. these realms are, on the one hand, the inner being of man, and, on the other, the phenomena of macrotelluric and cosmic character. the fruitfulness of linking together these two will become clear if we reflect on the following. the field of the inner life of man allows us, as nothing else does, to penetrate it with our own intuitive experience. for we ourselves are always in some sense the cause of the events that take place there. in order to make observations in this region, however, we need to bring about a certain awakening in a part of our being which - so long as we rely on the purely natural forces of our body - remains sunk in more or less profound unconsciousness. if this realm of events is more intimately related than any other to our intuitive experience, it has also the characteristic of remaining closed to any research by external means. much of what lies beyond the scope of external observation, however, reveals itself all the more clearly in the realms where nature is active on the widest scale. certainly, we must school ourselves to read aright the phenomena which come to light in those realms. and once more we must look to the way of introspection, previously mentioned, for aid in investing our gaze with the necessary intuitive force. if we succeed in this, then the heavens will become for us a text wherein secrets of human nature, hidden from mere introspection, can be read; while at the same time the introspective way enables us to experience things which we cannot uncover simply by observing the outer universe. apart from these methodological considerations, there is a further reason for our choice. among the instances mentioned earlier in this chapter as symptoms of a greater 'youthfulness' prevailing in nature, and particularly in the element fire, at a comparatively recent date, were the manifestations of the divine-spiritual world to man reported in the bible as the event on mount sinai. there, thunder and lightning from above and volcanic action from below form the setting for the intercourse of jehovah with moses. to-day the function of these types of phenomena, though metamorphosed by the altered conditions of the earth, is not essentially different. here, more than in any other sphere of her activities, nature manifests that side of her which we are seeking to penetrate with understanding. * let us start with an observation known to the present writer from a visit to the solfatara, a volcanic region near naples. the solfatara itself is a trough surrounded by hilly mounds; its smooth, saucepan-like bottom, covered with whitish pumice-sand, is pitted with craters containing violently boiling and fuming mud - the so-called fango, famous for its healing properties. all around sulphurous fumes issue from crevices in the rocks, and in one special place the solfatara reveals its subterranean activity by the emergence of fine, many-coloured sand, which oozes up like boiling liquid from the depths below. the whole region gives the impression of being in a state of labile balance. how true this is becomes apparent if one drops pieces of burning paper here and there on the ground: immediately a cloud of smoke and steam rises. the effect is even more intense if a burning torch is moved about over one of the boiling fango holes. then the deep answers instantly with an extraordinary intensification of the boiling process. the hot mud seems to be thrown into violent turmoil, emitting thick clouds of steam, which soon entirely envelop the spectator near the edge. the scientific mind is at first inclined to see in this phenomenon the mechanical effect of reduced air-pressure, due to the higher temperatures above the surface of the boiling mud, though doubts are raised by the unusual intensity of the reaction. the feeling that the physical explanation is inadequate is strengthened when the vapours have thinned out and one is surprised to see that every crack and cranny in the solfatara, right up to the top of the trough, shows signs of increased activity. certainly, this cannot be accounted for by a cause-and-effect nexus of the kind found in the realm of mechanical causation, where an effect is propagated from point to point and the total effect is the sum of a number of partial effects. it looks rather as if the impulse applied in one spot had called for a major impulse which was now acting on the solfatara as a whole. as observers who are trying to understand natural phenomena by recognizing their significance as letters in nature's script, we must look now for other phenomena which can be joined with this one to form the relevant 'word' we have set out to decipher. all scientific theories concerning the causes of seismic occurrences, both volcanic and tectonic, have been conceived as if the spatial motion of mineral matter were the only happening that had to be accounted for. no wonder that none of these theories has proved really satisfactory even to mechanistically orientated thinking. actually there are phenomena of a quite different kind connected with the earth's seismic activities, and these need to be taken into equal account. there is, for instance, the fact that animals often show a premonition of volcanic or tectonic disturbances. they become restive and hide, or, if domestic, seek the protection of man. apparently, they react in this way to changes in nature which precede the mechanical events by which man registers the seismic occurrence. another such phenomenon is the so-called earthquake-sky, which the present writer has had several occasions to witness. it consists of a peculiar, almost terrifying, intense discoloration of the sky, and, to those acquainted with it, is a sure sign of an imminent or actual earthquake somewhere in the corresponding region of the earth. this phenomenon teaches us that the change in the earth's condition which results in a violent movement of her crust, involves a region of her organism far greater than the subterranean layers where the cause of the purely mechanical events is usually believed to reside. that man himself is not excluded from experiencing directly the super-spatial nature of seismic disturbances is shown by an event in goethe's life, reported by his secretary eckermann, who himself learnt the story from an old man who had been goethe's valet at the time. this is what the old man, whom eckermann met by accident one day near weimar, told him: 'once goethe rang in the middle of the night and when i entered his room i found he had rolled his iron bed to the window and was lying there, gazing at the heavens. "have you seen nothing in the sky?" asked he, and when i answered "no", he begged me to run across to the sentry and inquire of the man on duty if he had seen nothing. he had not noticed anything and when i returned i found the master still in the same position, gazing at the sky. "listen," he said, "this is an important moment; there is now an earthquake or one is just going to take place." then he made me sit down on the bed and showed me by what signs he knew this.' when asked about the weather conditions, the old man said: 'it was very cloudy, very still and sultry.' to believe implicitly in goethe was for him a matter of course, 'for things always happened as he said they would'. when next day goethe related his observations at court, the women tittered: 'goethe dreams' ('goethe schwärmt'), but the duke and the other men present believed him. a few weeks later the news reached weimar that on that night ( th april, ) part of messina had been destroyed by an earthquake. there is no record by goethe himself of the nature of the phenomenon perceived by him during that night, except for a brief remark in a letter to mme de stein, written the following day, in which he claims to have seen a 'northern light in the south-east' the extraordinary character of which made him fear that an earthquake had taken place somewhere. the valet's report makes us inclined to think that there had been no outwardly perceptible phenomenon at all, but that what goethe believed he was seeing with his bodily eyes was the projection of a purely supersensible, but not for that reason any less objective, experience. in a picture of the seismic activities of the earth which is to comprise phenomena of this kind, the volcanic or tectonic effects cannot be attributed to purely local causes. for why, then, should the whole meteorological sphere be involved, and why should living beings react in the way described? clearly, we must look for the origin of the total disturbance not in the interior of the earth but in the expanse of surrounding space. indeed, the very phenomenon of the solfatara, if seen in this light, can reveal to us that at least the volcanic movements of the earth's crust are not caused by pressure from within, but by suction from without - that is, by an exceptional action of levity. we recall the fact that the whole solfatara phenomenon had its origin in a flame being swayed over one of the fango holes. although it remains true that the suction arising from the diminished air pressure over the hole cannot account for the intense increase of ebullition in the hole itself, not to speak of the participation of the entire region in this increase, there is the fact that the whole event starts with a suctional effect. as we shall see in the next chapter, any local production of heat interferes with the gravity conditions at that spot by shifting the balance to the side of levity. that the response in a place like the solfatara is what we have seen it to be, is the result of an extraordinary lability of the equilibrium between gravity and levity, a characteristic appertaining to the earth's volcanism in general. for the people living near the solfatara it is indeed common knowledge that there are times when this lability is so great that the slightest local disturbance of the kind we have described can provoke destructive eruptions of great masses of subterranean mud. (at such times access to the solfatara is prohibited.) we shall understand such an eruption rightly if we picture it as the counter-pole of an avalanche. the latter may be brought about by a fragment of matter on a snow-covered mountain, perhaps a little stone, breaking loose and in its descent bringing ever-accumulating masses of snow down with it. the levity-process polar to this demonstration of gravity is the production of a mightily growing 'negative avalanche' by comparatively weak local suction, caused by a small flame. * earlier in this chapter (page ) we said that if we want to understand how spirit moves, forms and transforms matter, we must recognize the existence of non-mechanical (magical) causes of physical effects. we have now found that the appearance of such effects in nature is due to the operations of a particular force, levity, polar to gravity. observation of a number of natural happenings has helped us to become familiar in a preliminary way with the character of this force. although these happenings were all physical in appearance, they showed certain definitely non-physical features, particularly through their peculiar relationship to three-dimensional space. more characteristics of this kind will appear in the following pages. in this way it will become increasingly clear that in levity we have to do with something which, despite its manifesting characteristics of a 'force' not unlike gravity and thereby resembling the latter, differs essentially from anything purely physical. it is only by its interactions with gravity that levity brings about events in the physical world-events, however, which are themselves partly of a physical, partly of a superphysical kind. seeing things in this aspect, we are naturally prompted to ask what causes there are in the world which make gravity and levity interact at all. this question will find its answer in due course. first, we must make ourselves more fully acquainted with the various appearances of the gravity-levity interplay in nature. in this sense ruskin's description of the working of the spirit in the plant as one that 'catches from chaos water, etc., etc., and fastens them into a given form' points to magical action. for van helmont, owing to the flemish pronunciation of the letter g, the two words sounded more alike than their spelling suggests. in a later chapter we shall have opportunity to determine what distinguishes air from fire, on the one hand, and water from earth on the other. it is this apparent uni-polarity of gravity which has given professor einstein so much trouble in his endeavour to create a purely gravitational world-picture with bipolar electricity and magnetism fitting into it mathematically. see the 'bishop barnes' controversy of recent date. to the same category belong the mighty thunderstorms which in some parts of the world are known to occur in conjunction with earthquakes. see goethe's conversations with eckermann (translated by j. oxenford), th november, . chapter x the fourth state of matter when william crookes chose as one of the titles of his paper on the newly discovered properties of electricity, 'the fourth state of matter', it was to express his belief that he had found a state of matter, additional to the three known ones, which represented 'the borderland where matter and force seem to merge into one another, the shadowy realm between known and unknown' for which his soul had been longing ever since the death of his beloved brother. all that has followed from his discovery, down to the transformation of matter itself into freely working energy, shows that he was right in thinking he had reached some borderland of nature. but the character of the forces which are thus liberated makes it equally clear that this is not the borderland he was looking for. nature - by which we mean physical nature - has in fact two borders, one touching the realm of the intramaterial energies which are liberated by disrupting the structure of atomic nuclei, the other leading over into creative chaos, the fountain-head of all that appears in nature as intelligent design. it was crookes's fate to open the road which has brought man to nature's lower border and even across it, although he himself was in search of her upper border. what he was denied, we are in a position to achieve to-day, provided we do not expect to succeed by methods similar to those of atomic physics, and do not look for similar results. to show that there is a fourth state of matter, rightly so called, which represents in actual fact the upper border of nature, and to point the way that leads to it and across it, is the purpose of this chapter. * from our previous comparison of the older conception of the four elementary conditions of nature with that now held of the three states of ponderable matter, we may expect that the fourth state will have something in common with heat. heat is indeed the energy which transforms matter by carrying it from the solid to the liquid and gaseous states. not so obvious is the fact that heat, apart from being an agent working at matter in this way, is the very essence underlying all material existence, out of which matter in its three ponderable states comes into being and into which it is capable of returning again. such a conception of matter was naturally absent from the age of the contra-levitatem orientation of the human mind. to create this conception, a new pro-levitate orientation is required. apart from producing liquefaction and vaporization, heat has also the property of acting on physical matter so that its volume increases. both facts are linked together by science through the thermodynamic conception of heat. as this conception firmly blocks the road to the recognition of the role of heat as the fourth state of matter, our first task will be to determine our own standpoint with regard to it. further obstacles on our way are the so-called laws of conservation, which state that no matter and no energy - which for present-day science have become one and the same thing - can ever disappear into 'nothing' or come into being out of 'nothing'. this idea, also, will therefore require our early attention. * in the light of our previous studies we shall not find it difficult to test the reality-value of the thermodynamic conception of heat. as we know of mass through a definite sense-perception, so we know of heat. in the latter case we rely on the sense of warmth. in chapter viii we took the opportunity to test the objectivity of the information received through this sense. still, one-eyed, colour-blind observation is naturally unable to take account of these sense-messages. to this kind of observation nothing is accessible, we know, except spatial displacements of single point-like entities. hence we find bacon and hooke already attributing the sensation of warmth to minute fast-moving particles of matter impinging on the skin. some time later we find locke taking up the same picture. we see from this how little the mechanical theory of heat owes to empirical facts. for even in locke's time the connexion between heat and mechanical action, as recognized to-day, was completely unknown. with this idea firmly rooted in his mind, modern man had no difficulty in using it to explain both thermal expansion and the effect of heat on the different states of matter, and so, finally, these states themselves. thermal expansion was thus attributed to an increase in the average distance between the assumed minute particles, caused by an increase in their rate of movement; the liquid state was held to differ from the solid, and similarly the gaseous from the liquid, by the interspaces between the particles becoming relatively so great that the gravitational pull between them became too weak to hold them together. tested from a view-point outside the onlooker-consciousness, this whole picture of the interaction between matter and heat appears to run counter to the cosmic order of things in a way typical of other spectator-theories. ancient man, if confronted with this picture, would have said that it means explaining the element fire by the quality cold. for each of those minute particles, in its solidity and state of spatial separation from the others, represents an effigy of the earth and thereby the element earth itself. he would be unable to understand why phenomena of the 'warm' element fire should be explained by its very opposite. moreover, fire forms part of the ever 'youthful' realm of the world, whereas anything which exists as a spatially discernible entity, capable of being moved about mechanically, must have grown cosmically 'old'. that ruskin was as much on the alert in regard to this theory as he was in regard to newton's theory of gravitation, is shown by the following utterance from his the queen of the air. obviously stirred by tyndall's newly published treatise, heat as a mode of motion, ruskin felt the need to criticize the endeavour of contemporary science 'to simplify the various forms of energy more and more into modes of one force, or finally into mere motion, communicable in various states, but not destructible', by declaring that he would himself 'like better in order of thought to consider motion as a mode of heat than heat as a mode of motion'. these words of ruskin touch also on the law of conservation of energy, of which we said that it also called for a preliminary examination. what we now have to find out is the factual basis on which this law rests. * the conception of the law of conservation of energy arose from the discovery of the constant numerical relation between heat and mechanical work, known as the mechanical equivalent of heat. this discovery was made at about the same time by joule in england and j. r. mayer in germany, although by entirely different routes. joule, a brewer, was a man of practical bent. trained by dalton, the founder of the atomic theory, in experimental research, he continued rumford's and davy's researches which they had undertaken to prove that heat is not, as it was for a time believed to be, a ponderable substance, but an imponderable agent. as a starting-point he took the heating effect of electric currents. the fact that these could be generated by turning a machine, that is, by the expenditure of mechanical energy, gave him the idea of determining the amount of work done by the machine and then comparing this with the amount of heat generated by the current. a number of ingenious experiments enabled him to determine with increasing exactitude the numerical relation between work and heat, as well as to establish the absolute constancy of the relation. this he regarded as proof of the mechanical theory of heat, which he had taken from rumford and davy. what simpler explanation could there be for the constant numerical relation between work and heat than the conception that transformation of one form of energy into another was simply a transmission of motion from one object to another? from the quantitative equality of expended and generated energy was it not natural to argue the qualitative similarity of the two forms of energy, which only externally seemed different? it was by quite a different path that the heilbronn doctor, mayer, arrived at his results. to escape from the narrowness of his south german home town, he went, while still a youth, as doctor to a dutch ship sailing to java. when in the tropics he treated a number of sailors by blood-letting, he observed that the venous blood was much nearer in colour to the paler arterial blood than was usual at home. this change in the colour he attributed to the diminished intensity of bodily combustion, due, he believed, to the higher temperature of the tropics. scarcely had this thought passed through his mind than it induced another - that of a universal interrelationship between all possible forms of energy. this last idea so took possession of him that during the return voyage, as he himself related, he could scarcely think of anything but how to prove the correctness of his idea and what the consequences would be for the general view of nature. from the moment of his return he devoted his life to practical research into the connexion between the various manifestations of energy. it was in this way that he was led to the determination of the so-called mechanical equivalent of heat, shortly before the same discovery was made in a quite different manner by joule. if one considers how slender a connexion there was between mayer's observation on the sailors in java and the idea of the quantitative equilibrium of all physical nature-forces, and if one contrasts this with the fanaticism he showed during the rest of his life in proving against all obstacles the correctness of his idea, one must feel that the origin of the thought in mayer's mind lay elsewhere than in mere physical observations and logical deductions. confirmation of this may be found in what mayer himself declared to be his view concerning the actual grounds for the existence of a constant numerical association between the various manifestations of natural energy. so far as science allowed mayer any credit for his work, this was based on the opinion that through his discovery he had provided the final vindication of the mechanical theory of heat. this judgment, however, was only piling one wrong upon another. mayer's destiny was truly tragic. when he began to publicize his conviction of the numerical equilibrium between spent and created energy, he met with so much scepticism, even derision, that from sheer despair his mind at times became clouded. when at last toward the end of his life he received the recognition his discovery deserved (not before being dragged through a painful priority dispute which joule forced upon him and lost), the scientists had begun to use his idea for bolstering up a hypothesis directly counter to the idea which had led him to his discovery, and for the sake of which he had accepted so much suffering. mayer's spiritual kin are not to be found among the heat-theorists of his time, such as helmholtz and others, but among thinkers of the stamp of goethe, howard and ruskin. his basic idea of the inner connexion between all forms of energy in nature corresponds entirely with goethe's idea of metamorphosis. just as goethe saw in the ur-plant the idea common to all plant-forms or, in the various plant-organs, the metamorphosis of one and the same ur-organ, so was mayer convinced of the existence of an ur-force which expressed itself in varying guises in the separate energy-forms of nature. in the picture of the physical universe which hovered before him, the transformation of one form of energy into another - such as mechanical energy into electrical, this into chemical and so on - was somewhat similar to goethe's picture of the organic life of the earth, in which the metamorphosis of one living form into another constantly occurred. 'there is in nature', said mayer, 'a specific dimension of immaterial constitution which preserves its value in all changes taking place among the objects observed, whereas its form of appearance alters in the most manifold ways.' for the physicist, accustomed to a purely quantitative observation of nature, it is difficult to comprehend that mayer could have arrived at the thought of a constant quantitative relation between the various manifestations of natural energy, without deriving from it the conviction of their qualitative indentity - i.e., without concluding from the existence of the mechanical heat - equivalent that heat is itself nothing else than a certain form of spatial movement. mayer actually had a picture directly contrary to the mechanistic conception. for him, the arising of heat represented a disappearance of mechanical energy. if this, then, was mayer's belief, what was it that convinced him of the existence of a numerical balance between appearing and vanishing energy, even before he had any experimental proof? later in this book there will be occasion to introduce a concept of number in tune with our qualitative world-outlook. what led mayer to look upon number as an expression of existing spiritual associations in nature will then become clear. let this much be said here, that number in the universe has quite different functions from that of serving merely as an expression for a total of calculable items, or as a means of comparing spatial distances. it is in the nature of the onlooker-consciousness that it is unable to interpret numerical equality between natural phenomena save as indicating the presence of an equal number of calculable objects or of spatial movements of equal magnitude. it was therefore consistent for such a consciousness to regard the discovery by mayer of the mechanical heat-equivalent as a confirmation of the existing mechanical conception of heat. for mayer such an interpretation was not necessary. his conviction of the existence of an ur-force, manifesting through metamorphosis in all natural forces, led him to expect a constant numerical relation amongst these, without requiring him to deny the objective existence of qualitative differences, as these displayed themselves in the field of phenomena. he was spiritually akin to goethe, also, in that he guarded himself strictly against substituting for the contents of our perception conveyed by nature purely hypothetical entities which, while fashioned after the world of the senses, are, in principle, imperceptible. mayer sought after a truly empirically founded concept of force, and his method was that of reading from all the various manifestations of force which were open to sense observation. one such manifestation, capable of empirical determination, was the balance between appearing and disappearing energy. science treated mayer in the same way as it treated howard. it took from him what it wanted for its purpose without concerning itself with the epistemological principle which had led him to his discovery. thus it was that mayer's discovery led to most important consequences for the development of modern technical devices, whereas it was the fate of his guiding idea to be first derided, then misunderstood and finally forgotten. the consequence was that the knowledge of the numerical equilibrium between created and expended energy in the economy of nature has widened more and more the abyss separating spirit and matter in human life, instead of leading, as indeed it might have done, to a bridging of the abyss. the thought, therefore, regarding the appearing and disappearing of measurable cosmic substance, to which we are led when following goethe's method of observing nature, stands in no sort of contradiction to what mayer himself conceived as the relation of the various forms of energy to one another, and the maintenance of the numerical balance between them. * having thus determined our standpoint with regard to the thermodynamic theory of heat and the law of conservation, we may proceed to the study, first of the phenomenon of thermal expansion, and then of the effect of heat on the various states of physical matter, by applying to them, unimpeded by any preconceived mechanistic idea, what we have learnt through our previous studies. we must start by developing a proper picture of the dynamic condition of matter in the solid state. in a solid body the material substance is centred on an inner point, the so-called centre of gravity - a characteristic which such a body shares with the earth as a whole. likewise, two such bodies exert on one another the same influence that the earth exerts on each of them: they try to assume the shortest possible distance from each other. since the days of faraday science has been accustomed to ascribe these phenomena to the existence of certain fields of force, connected with each body and working on one another through the intermediary space. it is to this concept of the field of force that we must now give special attention. for the field-concept, in the form introduced by faraday into scientific thinking, is one of the few scientific concepts which have been obtained by being 'read' from the corresponding phenomena themselves, and which therefore retain their validity in a science which is based on the method of reading. according to the field-concept, terrestrial manifestations of gravity are due to the earth's being the bearer of a gravitational field centred within the globe, and extending thence in all directions through space, across and beyond the earth's body. every point in space, both inside and outside the earth, is characterized by a definite intensity of this field, the so-called gravitational potential. this is subject to variations due to the presence of other physical masses, which carry their own fields of gravity. what happens between such masses and that of the earth, as well as mutually between such masses themselves, is brought about by the particular conditions in space resulting from the interpenetration of the various fields. it is essential to realize that all fields dealt with by physical science, the gravitational, electric, magnetic - however much they differ otherwise - have this one characteristic in common, that they have a centre where the field is at its highest intensity, diminishing as the distance from the centre increases. motion in such a field naturally takes place from regions of lower to those of higher intensity - in other words, it follows the rising potential of the field. this accounts for the tendency of physical masses to arrive at the shortest possible distance between them. it was natural for the modern mind to picture a dynamic condition of the kind just described, that is, one in which the centre and source, as it were, is a point round which the dynamic condition spreads with steadily diminishing strength as the distance from the point grows. for such is the condition of man's head-bound consciousness. the locus from which modern man watches the world is a point within the field of this consciousness, and the intensity with which the world acts on it diminishes with increasing spatial distance from this point. this is the reason why levity was banished from scientific inquiry, and why, when the field-concept was created by the genius of faraday, it did not occur to anyone that with it the way was opened to comprehend field-types other than the centric one characteristic of gravity and kindred forces. to make use of the field-concept in this other way is one of the tasks we have to undertake if we are to overcome the impasse in which present-day scientific cognition finds itself. to develop a picture of the type of field represented by levity, let us recall certain results from the observations of the last chapter. there the volcanic phenomenon, when taken in its wider implications, made us realize that the upward movement of physical masses, in itself part of the total phenomenon, is due to a dynamic cause which we had to describe, in contrast to centripetally working pressure, as peripherally working suction. of this concept of suction we must now observe that we may apply it with justification only if we realize that suction can be caused in two different ways. in the sense in which we are wont to use the term, suction is the result of a difference of pressure in adjacent parts of space, the action taking place in the direction of the minor pressure. apart from this, however, suction can occur also as a result of the outward-bound increase of the strength of a levity-field. it is in this sense that we may speak of the seismic movements of the earth as being caused by suction acting from without. in the same sense we may say that the upward movement of the saps in the plant (to which ruskin pointed as being responsible for the apple appearing at the top of the tree) and with it the entire growth-phenomenon in the plant world, is due to peripheral suction. considerations of this kind lead one to a picture in which the earth is seen to be surrounded and penetrated by a field of force which is in every respect the polar opposite of the earth's gravitational field. as the latter has its greatest intensity at its centre, which is identical with the centre of the earth's globe, so has the levitational field its greatest intensity at its circumference which is somewhere in the width of the universe. (later considerations will enable us to locate its position more precisely.) as the gravity-field decreases in strength with increasing distance from the centre of the field, that is, in the outward direction, so does the levity-field decrease in strength with increasing distance from its periphery, or in the inward direction. in both fields the direction of movement is from regions of lower to those of higher intensity. this is why things 'fall' under the influence of gravity and 'rise' under the influence of levity. * how does thermal expansion read as a letter in nature's script when seen in the light of the two contrasting field-concepts? let us, for simplicity's sake, imagine a spherically shaped metallic body, say, a ball of copper, which we expose to the influence of heat. as we have seen, it is the centrically orientated gravity-field which gives the ball its permanency of shape. consequently, the dynamic orientation of the material constituting its body is directed towards the interior of the body itself. now, the moment we bring heat to bear on the body we find its surface moving in the outward direction. the whole mass is clearly under the influence of some suction which is directed on to the body from outside. just as the plants grow in the anti-gravitational direction as a result of the suctional effect of levity (other factors which account for its growing into a particular shape, etc., being left out of consideration), so our copper ball grows in volume by being sucked away from its centre of gravity. it is the action of heat which has changed the ratio between gravity and levity at this spot in such a way as to allow levity to produce this effect. what we have thus found to be the true nature of the event perceived as a body's growth in volume under the influence of heat has a definite effect on our conception of spatially extended matter as such. for a physical body is always in some thermal state which may be regarded as higher than another, and it may therefore be regarded as being at all times thermally expanded to some extent. hence, it is all the time under the sway of both gravitational pressure and anti-gravitational suction. in fact, we may say ideally that, if there were no field working inwards from the cosmic periphery, the entire material content of the earthly realm would be reduced by gravitation to a spaceless point; just as under the sole influence of the peripheral field of levity it would dissipate into the universe. to ordinary scientific thinking this may sound paradoxical, but in reality it is not. observation of the nature of solid matter has led atomistic thought to regard a physical body as a heap of molecules so far apart that by far the greater part of the volume occupied by the body is just 'empty' space. in the scientific picture of molecules constituting a physical body, of atoms constituting the molecules, of electrons, protons, etc., constituting the atoms, all separated by spaces far exceeding the size of the elementary particles themselves, we find reflected, in a form comprehensible to the onlooker-consciousness, the fact that matter, even in the solid state, is kept in spatial extension by a field of force relating it to the cosmic periphery. * with this picture of solid matter as being held in spatial extension by its subjection to gravity and levity alike, we proceed to a study of the liquid and gaseous states of matter, while taking into account the role of heat in bringing these states about. following out our method of seeking to gain knowledge of a phenomenon by regarding it as part of a greater whole, let us ask what sort of change a portion of physical substance undergoes in its relation to the earth as a whole when, for instance, through the influence of heat, it passes from a solid to a liquid state. here we must keep in mind that it is part of the nature of a liquid to have no form of its own. the only natural boundary of a liquid substance is its upper surface. since this surface always lies parallel with the surface of the earth it forms part of a sphere, the centre point of which is identical with that of the gravitational centre of the earth. the passage of a portion of matter from solid to liquid thus signifies that it ceases to possess a centre of gravity of its own and is now merely obedient to the general gravity-field of the earth. we can thus speak of a transition of matter from the individual to the planetary condition. this is what heat brings about when a solid body melts. a large part of the heat used in melting is known to be absorbed by the substance during the process of melting. this is indicated by the thermometer remaining at the temperature of the melting-point once this has been reached, until the whole of the melting substance has liquefied. physics here speaks of 'free' heat becoming 'latent'. from the goethean point of view we see heat passing through a metamorphosis. whereas, previously, heat was perceptible to our sense of warmth, it now manifests as a gravity-denying property of matter. in order to obtain an idea of the liquid state of matter corresponding to reality, we must take into account yet another of its characteristics. when the heat becomes latent, it goes even further in contradicting gravity than by robbing matter of its own point of gravity and relating it to the earth's centre of gravity. this effect is shown in the well-known urge of all liquids to evaporate. hence we must say that even where matter in a liquid state preserves its own surface, this does not by any means represent an absolute boundary. above the surface there proceeds a continuous transition of substance into the next higher condition through evaporation. we see here the activity of heat going beyond the mere denial of gravity to a positive affirmation of levity. with the help of this conception of the integration of the liquid state within the polarity of gravity and levity, we are now able to draw a picture of the earth which, once obtained, answers many a question left unanswered by current scientific notions, among them the question why the earth's volcanic activity is confined to maritime regions. regarding the distribution of land and water on the earth's surface, we may say that to an observer in cosmic space the earth would not look at all like a solid body. rather would it appear as a gigantic 'drop' of water, its surface interspersed with solid formations, the continents and other land masses. moreover, the evidence assembled ever since professor a. wegener's first researches suggests that the continents are clod-like formations which 'float' on an underlying viscous substance and are able to move (very slowly) in both the vertical and horizontal directions. the oceanic waters are in fact separated from the viscous substratum by no more than a thin layer of solid earth, a mere skin in comparison with the size of the planet. further, this 'drop' of liquid which represents the earth is in constant communication with its environment through the perpetual evaporation from the ocean, as well as from every other body of water. this picture of the earth shows it lying under the twofold influence of the compressive force of gravity and the sucking force of levity. wherever land meets sea, there levity tends to prevail over gravity. it is in maritime regions, accordingly, that the inner strata of the earth succumb most readily to those sudden changes in the gravity-levity tension wherein we have recognized the origin of seismic occurrences. * turning to the gaseous condition, we realize that although even here matter retains traces of a connexion with terrestrial gravity, levity is now the dominant factor. there are three characteristics of the gaseous condition which bring this out. one is the extreme readiness of gases to expand when heated; we see here how much easier than with solid substances it is for heat to overcome the influence of gravity. the second characteristic is the property of gases, peculiar to them, of expanding spontaneously, even when not heated. here we find gaseous matter displaying a dynamic behaviour which at lower stages occurs only under the stimulus of heat. the third characteristic is shown by the fact that all gases, unlike solids or liquids, respond with the same increase of volume to a given rise of temperature, however diverse their other qualities may be. once gases are mixed, therefore, they cannot be separated merely by raising or lowering the temperature. here we find the unifying effect of the cosmic periphery prevailing over the differentiating effect of terrestrial gravity. at this point we may recall goethe's reply to the botanist, wolff, who had ascribed the metamorphosis of plant-organs from root to blossom to a gradual stunting or atrophy of their vegetative force, whereas it was clear to goethe that simultaneously with a physical retrogression, there is a spiritual progress in the development of the plant. the fact that all wolff's efforts to see clearly did not save him from 'seeing past the thing' seemed to goethe an inevitable result of wolff's failure to associate with the eyes of the body those of the spirit. exactly the same thing holds good for the sequence of physical states of matter which we are considering here. observation of this sequence with the bodily eyes alone will show nothing but a reduction of the specific gravity of the material concerned. he who is at pains to observe also with the eye of the spirit, however, is aware of a positive increase of lightness going hand in hand with a decrease of heaviness. regarded thus, the three ponderable conditions form what goethe would have called a 'spiritual ladder'. as 'rungs' of such a ladder they clearly point to a fourth rung - that is, a fourth state in which levity so far prevails over gravity that the substance no longer has any weight at all. this picture of the fourfold transformation of matter calls for an inquiry into the transition between the third and fourth states, corresponding to the well-known transitions between the three ponderable states. * our observations have led us to a concept of heat essentially different from that held by modern science. science looks on heat simply as a condition of ponderable matter. we, on the contrary, are led to recognize in heat a fourth condition into which matter may pass on leaving the three ponderable conditions, and out of which it may emerge on the way to ponderability. before showing that such transitions are actually known in nature, it may be well to discuss here an objection which the customary way of thinking might plausibly advance against our whole method. it could be said that to assume a continuation of the sequence of the three ponderable conditions in the manner suggested is justified only if, as solids can be turned into liquids and these into gases, so gases could be transformed into a fourth condition and, conversely, be produced from the latter. in reply it can be said that the fact of our not being able at present to change gases artificially into pure heat does not justify the conclusion that this is in principle impossible. we know from previous considerations that the earth has reached an evolutionary stage at which all elements, including fire, have in certain degree grown 'old'. this applies in quite a special degree to the manipulations to which man, led by his death-bound consciousness, has learnt to submit matter in his laboratories. to decide what is possible or not possible in nature, therefore, can by no means be left to the judgment of laboratory research. as is shown by the following instance, taken from the realm of vegetable life, a case of the creation of matter 'out of nothing' is already known to biology - though biology, bound in its concepts to the law of conservation, shows some natural reluctance to recognize the true significance of the phenomenon. the plant which performs this strange feat is the tillandsia usneoides, indigenous to tropical america, and generally known as 'spanish moss'. its peculiarity is that it grows and flourishes without taking from its support any material whatsoever for the building up of its substance. its natural habitat is the dry bark of virgin forest trees. since civilization invaded its home it has acquired the habit of growing even on telegraph wires, which has given it the popular name of 'telegraph tresses'. chemical analysis of this plant shows the presence of an average of per cent iron, per cent silicic acid and · per cent phosphoric acid. this applies to samples taken from districts where the rainwater - the only source from which the plant could extract these substances in physical form - contains at most · per cent iron, · per cent silicic acid and no phosphoric acid at all. the tillandsia phenomenon is to a certain extent reminiscent of another well-known plant activity. this is the process of assimilation of carbon from the carbon dioxide of the air. if we leave aside the change in the chemical combination which the carbon undergoes, there remains the picture of the plant drawing this matter to itself from its environment and at the same time subjecting it to a spatial condensation. a similar but even more far-reaching process is exhibited by the tillandsia as regards the three substances referred to above. from the conditions given, it follows that the plant cannot possibly get these substances elsewhere than out of the surrounding atmosphere, and that in drawing upon them it submits them to a high degree of condensation. a special role, however, is played by the phosphorus, which shows that the assimilative power of the plant is sufficient to transform phosphorus from a physically not traceable state into one of spatially bounded materiality. following goethe in his coining of the concept of 'spiritual anastomosis' for the pollinating process of plants, we can here speak of 'spiritual assimilation'. in this respect tillandsia provides an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all within itself. for what nature here unmistakably demonstrates serves as an eye-opener to a universal fact of the plant kingdom and of nature in general. the problem of the so-called trace-elements may serve as an illustration of this. modern agricultural chemistry has found of a number of chemical elements that their presence in the soil in scarcely traceable amounts is necessary in order to enable the plant to unfold healthily its latent characteristics. all sorts of deficiencies in cultivated plants have led to a recognition that the soil is impoverished of certain elements by intensive modern cultivation, and that it is to the lack of these elements that the deficiencies are due. much work has meanwhile been done in classifying the various deficiencies and in devising ways of giving the soil chemical substitutes for what is lacking. a large part of the work here involved could be saved were it only to be acknowledged that the soil owes the natural occurrence of the proper elements to a process which the plants themselves bring about in the soil, if men refrain from hindering them by cleverly thought-out methods of cultivation which fail to reckon with the nature of a living organism. let us be clear what it is that occurs when a plant exhibits any of the observed abnormalities. expressed in a goethean manner, these are the consequence of an insufficient direction of the organic processes in the plant body by the spiritual plant-type underlying it. that which ruskin called the 'spirit' of the plant, and to which he drew attention in his aphorism 'stand by form against force' (by 'form' all the peculiar qualities of the plant are to be understood), is unable to express itself in full measure. now we know that, in order to unfold its activities on the physical plane, spirit requires 'young' matter - that is, matter which is either in, or has just emerged from, a purely dynamic state. normally a definite spiritual type co-ordinates the dynamic functions present in the superphysical sphere of nature in the manner required to give the plant-organism its appropriate form. as, through the action of the type, these functions are brought down from the sphere of levity into that of gravity, they condense to the corresponding material elements and thus reach the soil in material form via the physical organism of the plant. the pattern as usually seen is now reversed; the presence of the various elements in the soil no longer appears as the origin of one or another function in the building up of the plant-body, but quite the reverse. the functions appear now as the cause, and the soil-elements as the effect. we may thus recognize the value of the latter as symptoms from which we can read the existence of a healthy connexion between the plant and the corresponding form-creating functions working on it from its surroundings. with this reversal of the relationship between cause and effect it is not, however, intended to represent the commonly accepted order of things as entirely incorrect. in the realm of life, cause and effect are not so onesidedly fixed as in the realm of mechanical forces. we may therefore admit that a reverse effect of the soil-elements upon the plant does take place. this is plainly demonstrable in the case of phosphorus which, however, by reason of its appearance in the soil in proportions hardly to be called a mere 'trace', represents a borderline case. what may apply within limits to phosphorus is wholly valid for the trace-elements - namely, that they are playing their essential role while they are themselves about to assume ponderable form. it thus becomes clear how mistaken it is to attempt to cure deficiencies in plants by adding to the soil chemical substitutes for the trace-elements. in the condition in which this material is offered to the plant, it is truly 'old' material. in order to be able to use it functionally, the plant has first to convert it into the 'young' condition. this indeed happens whilst the material is rising in the plant combined with the juices drawn by the plant from the soil under the influence of levity-force. only when this has occurred are the chemical elements able to serve the plant functionally. thus, by trying to give help to the plant in this way, we injure it at the same time. for by forcing it to perform the operation described, its general life-forces are diminished. a seeming success brought about in this manner, therefore, will not last long. there is, nevertheless, a way of helping the plant by adding to the soil certain material substances, provided these are first brought into a purely dynamic condition. that this can be done is a fact long since known, even if not recognized in its true significance. so far then, as serves the purpose of this book, we shall deal with it here. * the method in question is associated with the school of medicine known as homoeopathy, founded by the german doctor, hahnemann. the word 'homoeopathy' means 'healing through like'; the basic principle is to treat disease symptoms with highly diluted substances which produce similar symptoms if ingested in normal quantity. experience has in fact shown that the physiological effect of a substance taken from external nature is reversed when the substance is highly diluted. the method of diluting, or 'potentizing', is as follows: a given volume of the material to be diluted is dissolved in nine times its volume of distilled water. the degree of dilution thus arrived at is : , usually symbolized as ix. a tenth part of this solution is again mixed with nine times its bulk of water. the degree of dilution is now : , or x. this process is continued as far as is found necessary for a given purpose. insoluble substances can be dealt with in the same manner by first grinding them together with corresponding quantities of a neutral powder, generally sugar of milk. after a certain number of stages the powder can be dissolved in water; the solution may then be diluted further in the manner described. here we have to do with transfer of the quality of a substance, itself insoluble, to the dissolving medium, and then with the further treatment of the latter as if it were the original bearer of the quality concerned. this fact alone shows that potentization leads into a realm of material effects at variance with the ordinary scientific conception of matter. moreover, we can carry the dilutions as far as we please without destroying the capacity of the substance to produce physiological reactions. on the contrary, as soon as its original capacity is reduced to a minimum by dilution, further dilution gives it the power to cause actually stronger reactions, of a different and usually opposite kind. this second capacity rises through stages to a variable maximum as dilution proceeds. a simple calculation shows - if we accept the ordinary scientific view as to the size of a molecule - that not a single molecule of the original substance will remain in the solution after a certain degree of dilution has been reached. yet the biological and other reactions continue long after this, and are even enhanced. what this potentizing process shows is that, by repeated expansions in space, a substance can be carried beyond the ponderable conditions of matter into the realm of pure functional effect. the potentizing of physical substances thus gains a significance far wider than that of its medical use. there opens up, for example, the possibility of stimulating deficient functions in the plant by giving it the corresponding elements in homoeopathic doses. by this means the plant is brought into direct connexion with the relevant spiritual energy, and then left to carry out for itself the necessary process of materialization, instead of being forced by mere chemical additions to the soil first to potentize the substance itself. the same principle holds good for man and beast. they also need 'young material' for their nourishment, so that the type active in them - which in animals is the group-soul of the species and in man is the single individual - can express its true form and character. (we saw earlier that the will requires 'young' material in order to penetrate into the material layers of the muscles, as happens when the limbs are set in motion). in this respect, the difference between ensouled creatures and plants is that, what is harmful to plants is natural for men and animals: when taking nourishment the latter are able to bring about quickly and purposefully a transformation of matter into the purely dynamic state. their metabolic system is designed to enable them to take alien material from outer nature and to transform it through the forces of the various digestive enzymes; in the course of this process the material passes through a condition of complete 'chaos'. * having in this way established the existence of certain processes of materialization and dematerialization in single organisms within the earth's vegetable and other kingdoms, we shall now turn to the earth as a whole to find out where - organic being that she herself is - she manipulates corresponding processes on a macrotelluric scale. in an age following van helmont's discovery of the gaseous state of matter and the statement of the contra levitatem maxim, men were bound to think that the circulation of atmospheric moisture was limited to the three stages of liquid, vaporous (peculiar to the clouds, etc.) and the invisible aeriform condition. yet the role played by clouds in the myths of early peoples shows that they were once given a quite different status, between the 'created' and 'uncreated' worlds. our observations lead to a corresponding conception, but along the path of knowledge, guided by sense-perception, as befits our own age. in discussing howard's discovery of the stages of cloud-formation we found something lacking, for it was clear that the three stages of cloud proper - stratus, cumulus and cirrus - have a symmetry which is disturbed by the addition of a fourth stage, represented by the nimbus. this showed that there was need for a fifth stage, at the top of the series, to establish a balanced polarity. we can now clear up this question of a fifth stage, as follows. in the three actual cloud-forms, gravity and levity are more or less in equilibrium, but in the nimbus gravity predominates, and the atmospheric vapour condenses accordingly into separate liquid bodies, the drops of rain. the polar opposite of this process must therefore be one in which cloud-vapour, under the dominating influence of levity, passes up through a transitional condition into a state of pure heat. such a conception by no means contradicts the findings of external research. for meteorology has come to know of a heat-mantle surrounding the earth's atmosphere for which various hypothetical explanations have been advanced. naturally, none of them envisages the possibility of atmospheric substance changing into the heat-condition and back again. but if we learn to look on the chain of cloud-forms as a 'spiritual ladder', then we must expect the chain to conclude with a stage of pure heat, lying above the cirrus-sphere. the line of consideration pursued in the last part of this chapter has led us from certain observations in the plant kingdom, concerning the coming into being of ponderable matter from 'nothing', to a corresponding picture of the earth's meteorological sphere. when discussing the plant in this respect we found as an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all within itself the case of tillandsia and more particularly the surprising appearance of phosphorus in it. now, in the meteorological realm it is once more phosphorus which gives us an instance of this kind. for there is the well-known fact of the presence of phosphorus in conspicuous quantities in snow without a source being traceable in the atmosphere whence this substance can have originated in ponderable condition. the phosphorus appearing in snow, therefore, brings before our very eyes the fact that the heights of the atmosphere are a realm of procreation of matter. (in our next chapter we shall learn what it is in phosphorus that makes it play this particular role in both fields of nature. what interests us in the present context is the fact itself.) * the knowledge we have now gained concerning the disappearance and appearance of physical water in the heights of the atmosphere will enable us to shake off one of the most characteristic errors to which the onlooker-consciousness has succumbed in its estimation of nature. this is the interpretation of thunderstorms, and particularly of lightning, which has held sway since the days of benjamin franklin. before developing our own picture of a thunderstorm let us recognize that science has found it necessary to reverse the explanation so long in vogue. whereas it was formerly taken for granted - and the assumption was supposed to rest upon experimental proof - that the condensing of atmospheric vapour which accompanied lightning was the consequence of a release of electrical tension by the lightning, the view now held is that the electrical tension responsible for the occurrence of lightning is itself the effect of a sudden condensing process of atmospheric moisture. the reason for this uncertainty is that the physical conditions in the sphere where lightning occurs, according to other experiences of electric phenomena, actually exclude the formation of such high tensions as are necessary for the occurrence of discharges on the scale of lightning. if we look at this fact without scientific bias we are once again reminded of the hans andersen child. we cannot help wondering how this child would behave in a physics class if the teacher, after vainly trying to produce a lightning-flash in miniature with the help of an electrical machine, explained that the moisture prevalent in the air was responsible for the failure of the experiment, and that he would have to postpone it to a day when the air was drier. it would scarcely escape the hans andersen child that the conditions announced by the teacher as unfavourable to the production of an electric spark by the machine, prevail in a much higher degree exactly where lightning, as a supposed electric spark, actually does occur. to conclude from the presence of electric tensions in the earth's atmosphere as an accompaniment of lightning, in the way first observed by franklin, that lightning itself is an electrical process, is to be under the same kind of illusion that led men to attribute electrical characteristics to the human soul because its activity in the body was found to be accompanied by electrical processes in the latter. the identification of lightning with the electric spark is a case of a confusion between the upper and lower boundaries of nature, characteristic of the onlooker-consciousness. as such, it has stood in the way of a real understanding both of non-electrical natural phenomena and of electricity itself. what we observe in lightning is really an instantaneous execution of a process which runs its course continually in the atmosphere, quietly and unnoticed. it is the process by which water reverts from the imponderable to the ponderable condition, after having been converted to the former through levity set in action by the sun (as usually happens in a high degree just before a thunderstorm). we form a true picture of the course of a storm if we say that nature enables us to witness a sublime display of the sudden bringing to birth of matter in earthbound form. what falls to the ground as rain (or hail) is substantially identical with what was perceptible to the eye, a moment before, as a majestic light-phenomenon. the accompanying electrical occurrence is the appropriate counter-event at nature's lower boundary. since the two form part of a larger whole they necessarily occur together; but the electrical occurrence must not be identified with the event in the heavens. the reason for their conjunction will become clear later, when we shall show how electrical polarity arises from the polarity between gravity and levity. if one learns to view a thunderstorm in this way, its spiritual connexion with the earth's volcanic processes becomes manifest; there is in fact a polar relationship between them. for just as in volcanic activity heavy matter is suddenly and swiftly driven heavenwards under the influence of levity, so in a storm does light matter stream earthwards under the influence of gravity. it is this combination of kinship and polar opposition which led people of old to regard both lightning in the heights and seismic disturbances in the depths as signs of direct intervention by higher powers in the affairs of men. a trace of this old feeling lingers in the greek word θειον (theion), divine, which was used to denote both lightning and sulphur. influenced by the same conception, the romans regarded as holy a spot where lightning had struck the earth; they even fenced it off to protect it from human contact. note in this respect also the biblical report of the event on mount sinai, mentioned before, telling of an interplay of volcanic and meteorological phenomena as a sign of the direct intervention of the godhead. see chapter iv. the other title of the paper, 'radiant matter', will gain significance for us in a later context. since the above was written, certain conclusions drawn from modern subatomic research have led some astro-physicists to the idea that hydrogen is continuously created in the cosmos 'out of nothing'. this does not affect the considerations of the present chapter. note the expression! for a vivid description of the interplay of both types of force in nature, see e. carpenter's account of his experience of a tree in his pagan and christian creeds. note how this picture of thermal expansion fits in with the one obtained for the solfatara phenomenon when we took into account all that is implicit in the latter, this throws light also on the problem of the use of chemicals as artificial fertilizers. see l. kolisko: wirksamkeit kleinster entitäten ('effects of smallest entities'), stuttgart, , an account of a series of experiments undertaken by the author at the biological institute of the goetheanum following suggestions by rudolf steiner. her aim was to examine the behaviour of matter on the way to and beyond the boundary of its ponderable existence. instead of using the trace-elements in mineral form, it is still better to use parts of certain plants with a strong 'functional tendency', specially prepared. this is done in the so-called bio-dynamic method of farming and gardening, according to rudolf steiner's indications. note, in this respect, the close of goethe's poem dedicated to the cirrus-formation and the poem inspired by his sight of a waterfall in the bernese alps as indications of the fact that he was himself aware of the water-rejuvenating process in the higher reaches of the atmosphere. chapter xi matter as part of nature's alphabet in the preceding chapter we drew attention to the fact that any spatially extended mass is under the sway of both gravity and levity. we then saw that with the transition of matter from the solid via the liquid to the gaseous state, not only does the specific gravity of the substance decrease, but at the same time an increase takes place of what we might call 'specific levity'. in the gaseous state, therefore, we find gravity-bound matter becoming so far levity-bound that it assumes the property of actively expanding in space. having once adopted the goethean way of thinking-in-polarities, we may feel sure that there is somewhere in nature a phenomenon which represents the polar opposite of the levity-gravity relationship peculiar to the gaseous state. in this latter state we find ponderable matter so far brought under the sway of levity that its behaviour is of a kind which van helmont, when he first observed it, could not help describing as 'paradoxical'. where, we must now ask, do we find imponderable essence so much under the sway of gravity that it shows the correspondingly paradoxical features? in other words, where does nature show levity concentrated in a limited part of space - that is, in a condition characteristic of ponderable matter? such concentrations of levity do indeed exist in varied forms. one is the 'warmth-body' represented by the blood-heat of the higher animals and man. there is, however, an occurrence of this kind also on the purely mineral level of nature, and it is this which has particular significance for our present study of matter. we meet it in all physical substances which have the peculiarity of being combustible. our next task is to study certain fundamentals in regard to the different ways in which levity and gravity are found to be intertwined in combustible substances, manifesting through the difference of their relation to the process of combustion - that is, the process by which levity is restored to its original condition. it is the aim of the present chapter to show that by doing justice to the imponderable aspect of combustion, the way is opened to a view of the 'elements', as scientific chemistry understands them, which will be in line with our dynamic conception of matter. there is nothing surprising in the fact that a new conception of the chemical element can arise from a re-study of the process of combustion, if we remember that it was the picture of combustion, characteristic of the spectator-consciousness, which determined the conception of the chemical element as it prevails in modern science. let us see how this conception came to pass historically in order to find where we stand to-day. * with the establishment of the knowledge of a state of physical matter which, as the definition ran, 'neither results from a combination of other physical substances nor is resolvable into such', the conviction arose that man's searching mind had reached 'rock-bottom'. this conviction, however, was shaken when, with the discovery of radium, an element became known whose property it is to disintegrate into two other elements, helium and lead. although this did not force science to abandon the element-concept altogether, it became necessary to find a new definition for it. this definition was established by professor w. ostwald at the beginning of the present century, when he stated that the chemical element represents a condition of physical matter in which 'any chemical change results in an increase of weight'. in this way, the chemical concept of the element achieved a meaning which had actually been implicit in it from its first conception. for its very formation had been the outcome of the contra-levitatem maxim. the following glance over the history of chemistry will show this. the birth of chemistry as a science, in the modern sense, is closely connected with a revolutionary change in the conception of what can be called the chemical arch-process-combustion, or, to use a more scientific term, oxidation. this change arose out of the contra-levitatem maxim and the new conception of heat which this maxim required. in the old doctrine of the four elements, heat had been conceived as a manifestation of the element of fire, and so, together with air, as belonging to the realm of the 'uncreated things'. hence the release of heat from created substance was always felt to be a sacred act, as is shown by the fire rites of old. modern man's conception of the same process is revealed in the answer one invariably receives from both layman and scientist when they are asked what they understand by combustion. it is described as a process through which oxygen combines with the combustible substance. and yet this side of combustion, first observed by j. priestley ( ), is neither the one for the sake of which man produces combustion in the service of his everyday life, nor is it at all observed by ordinary sense-perception. nevertheless, to describe the obvious fact, that combustion is liberation of heat from the combustible substance, will hardly occur to anyone to-day. this shows to what extent even the scientifically untrained consciousness in our time turns instinctively to the tangible or weighable side of nature, so that some effort is required to confess simply to what the eye and the other senses perceive. during the first hundred years after the establishment of the contra-levitatem maxim, man's situation was in a certain sense the opposite of this. then, people were struggling hard to get away from the old concept which saw in combustion nothing but the liberation of a super-terrestrial element from earthly fetters. this struggle found expression in a theory of heat which at that time greatly occupied scientific thinking. it is the so-called phlogiston-theory first proposed by the chemist stahl ( - ). this theory reveals the great uncertainty into which man's thinking about the world of the senses had arrived at that time. clinging to ideas inherited from antiquity, man's consciousness was already so far restricted to the forming of pure matter-bound concepts that he was tempted to conceive heat as a material element. to this heat-substance the name 'phlogiston' was given. at the same time, under the contra-levitatem maxim, it was impossible to conceive of substance except as ponderable substance. this led to the conviction that whenever heat appears as a result of some treatment of matter (combustion or friction), the material substance subject to this treatment must lose weight. the experiments of lavoisier ( - ), which he undertook following priestley's discovery of the role of oxygen in combustion, put an end to this theory. these experiments are rightly regarded as the actual beginning of modern chemistry. in lavoisier we find an observer of nature who was predominantly interested in what the scales could tell about changes in substances. it was from this aspect that he investigated the process of oxidation. what had already been observed by a few others, though without being taken seriously by them, he found confirmed - that, contrary to the phlogiston - theory, matter does not lose weight through oxidation but gains weight. further experiments proved beyond doubt that in all chemical reactions the total weight of the components remained constant. however much the substance resulting from the chemical reaction of others might differ from these, its weight always proved to be the same as their total weight. what else could be concluded from the apparent unchangeability of weight throughout all the chemical happenings in nature than that the ponderable world-content was of eternal duration? we see here how much modern chemistry and its concept of the chemical element has been ruled right from the start by the one-sided gravity concept of the onlooker-consciousness. together with the overcoming of the fallacy that heat is a ponderable substance (full certainty was indeed established only some time later through the investigations of davy and rumford into heat generated by friction) - human thinking was led into a one-sided conception of combustion which was merely the opposite of the one held earlier. whereas formerly man's mind was pre-eminently occupied by the liberation of the imponderable element through combustion, it now turned entirely to what goes on in the ponderable realm. as we have seen, one outcome of this one-sided view of combustion was the modern concept of the chemical element. to-day our task is to overcome this concept by taking a step corresponding to the one that led to it, that is, by a study of combustibility which does justice to both sides of the process involved. * as objects of our observation we choose three chemical elements all of which have the property of combustibility: sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon. as will become clear, our choice of these three is determined by the fact that together they represent an instance 'worth a thousand, bearing all within itself. we begin by comparing sulphur and phosphorus. in their elementary state they have in common the fact that any chemical change is bound up with an increase in their weight. in this state both are combustible. apart from this similarity, there is a great difference between them, as the way of storing them illustrates. for while elementary sulphur needs only an ordinary container, phosphorus has to be kept under cover of water in order to prevent the atmospheric oxygen from touching it. the reason is that the combustible state is natural for sulphur, but not for phosphorus, the latter's natural state being the oxidized one. this different relationship of sulphur and phosphorus to the oxidizable (reduced) and the oxidized state manifests itself in all their chemical reactions. to object here that the different reactions of the two substances are due only to the difference of their respective temperatures of ignition, and that above these temperatures the difference will more or less disappear (all combustible substances at a sufficiently high temperature becoming more or less similar to phosphorus), would not meet the argument. for what matters here is just how the particular substance behaves at that level of temperature on which the earth unfolds her normal planetary activity. to ignore this would be to violate one of the principles we have adopted from goethe, which is never to derive fundamental concepts of nature from observations obtained under artificial conditions. sulphur and phosphorus are thus seen to represent two polarically opposite tendencies with regard to the levity-gravity coherence which breaks up when combustion occurs. in the case of sulphur, the ponderable and imponderable entities appear to cling together; in the case of phosphorus, they seem to be anxious to part. these two different tendencies - which are characteristic of many other substances and represent a basic factor in the chemical happenings of the earth - are in their own way a pair of opposites. since each of them represents in itself a relationship between two poles of a polarity-gravity and levity - so in their mutual relationship they represent a 'polarity of polarities'. in fig. an attempt has been made to represent this fact by a symbolic diagram. in this figure the shaded part represents the imponderable, the black part the ponderable entity. in the left-hand symbol both are shown in a relationship corresponding to the one characteristic of sulphur; in the right-hand figure the relationship is characteristic of phosphorus. here we have an instance of a kind of polarity which belongs to the fundamentals of nature as much as does the levity-gravity polarity itself. wherever two poles of a polarity meet, they have the possibility of being connected in two ways which in themselves are again polarically opposite. our further studies will bring up various other instances of this kind, and will show us that part of the epistemological trouble in which science finds itself to-day results from the fact that the scientific mind has been unable to distinguish between the two kinds of polarity - that is, as we shall say henceforth, between polarities of the first order (primary polarities) and polarities of the second order (secondary polarities). in actual fact, the distinction between the two orders of polarity has been implicit in the descriptions given in this book right from the start. remember, in this respect, how the picture of the threefold psycho-physical structure of man, which has proved a master-key for unlocking the most varied scientific problems, was first built up. there, 'body' and 'soul' represented a polarity which is obviously one of the first order. by our observation of the human organism, in relation both to the different functions of the soul and to the different main organic systems, we further recognized the fact that the ways in which body and soul are interrelated are polarically opposite in the region of the brain and nerves and in the region of the metabolic processes, which again results in two polarically opposite activities of the soul, mental on the one hand, and volitional on the other. in what we called the pole-of-consciousness and the pole-of-life we therefore have a clear polarity of the second order, and so in everything that is connected with these two, as our further discussions will show. remembering that our first occasion to concern ourselves overtly with the concept of polarity was in connexion with the four elements, we may now ask whether the old doctrine did not embrace some conception of secondary polarity as well as of primary polarity, and if so, whether this might not prove as helpful in clarifying our own conceptions as was the primary polarity, cold-warm. that this is indeed so, the following description will show. beside the two qualities cold and warm the doctrine of the four elements pointed to two further qualities forming in themselves a pair of opposites, namely, dry and moist. just as the four elements were seen as grouping themselves in two pairs, fire-air on the one hand, water-earth on the other, the first being characterized by the quality warm, the second by cold, so were they seen to form two opposing groups, fire-earth and air-water, of which one was characterized by the quality dry, the other by the quality moist. fig. shows how the four elements in their totality were seen to arise out of the various combinations of the four qualities. in this diagram the element earth appears as a combination of the qualities dry and cold; water of cold and moist; air of moist and warm; fire of warm and dry. as a result, earth and fire, besides representing opposite poles, are also neighbours in the diagram. here we encounter a picture characteristic of all earlier ways of looking at the world: the members of a system of phenomena, when ranked in due order of succession, were seen to turn back on themselves circle-wise - or, more precisely, spiral-wise. in what way do the qualities dry and moist form a polarity of the second order, and how do they represent the chemical polarity characteristic of sulphur and phosphorus as well as all the other secondary polarities dealt with in this book? to understand this we must submit the couple dry-moist to the same scrutiny as we applied to cold and warm in our earlier discussion of the four elements. it lies in the nature of things that we instinctively associate these qualities with the solid and liquid states of matter respectively. this certainly agrees with the diagram given above, where the elements earth and water are distinguished precisely by their connexion with these two characteristics. yet, in addition to this, the qualities dry and moist are found to be characteristic also of fire and air respectively, though with the difference that they are linked not with the quality cold, as in the case of the lower elements, but with the quality warm. so we see that the concepts dry and moist, as they lived in the old picturing of them, mean a good deal more than we understand by them to-day. that these two respective attributes do not belong exclusively to the solid and the liquid states of matter can be seen at once by observing the different reactions of certain liquids to a solid surface which they touch. one need only recall the difference between water and quicksilver. if water runs over a surface it leaves a trail; quicksilver does not. water clings to the side of a vessel; again, quicksilver does not. a well-known consequence of this difference is that in a narrow tube the surface of the liquid - the so-called meniscus - stands higher at the circumference than at the centre in the case of water; with quicksilver it is just the reverse. in the sense of the two qualities, dry and moist, water is a 'moist' liquid; quicksilver a 'dry' one. on the other hand, the quality of moistness in a solid substance appears in the adhesive power of glue. let us now see how, in accordance with the scheme given in fig. , the four qualities in their respective combinations constitute the four elements. from the description we shall give here it will be realized how little such ancient schemes were based on abstract thoughts, and how much they were read from the facts of the world. moreover, a comparison with our description of the four stages of matter, given in the previous chapter, would show how far the conceptual content of the old doctrine covers the corresponding facts when they are read by the eye of the modern reader in nature, notwithstanding the changes nature has undergone in the meantime. the element fire reveals its attributes of warm and dry in a behaviour which combines a tendency to dynamic expansion with a disinclination to enter into lasting combination with the other elements. correspondingly, the behaviour of the element earth unites a tendency to contraction with an inclination to fall out of conjunction with the other elements. thus the attribute, dry, belongs equally to pure flame and sheer dust, though for opposite reasons. distinct from both these elements are the middle elements water and air; with them the attribute, moist, comes to expression in their tendency both to interpenetrate mutually and to absorb their neighbours - the liquid element absorbing solid matter and the aeriform element taking up heat. what distinguishes them is that water has a 'cold' nature, from which it gains its density; while air has a 'warm' nature, to which it owes its tendency to expand. in the most general sense, the quality 'moist' applies wherever two different entities are drawn into some kind of intimate relationship with one another; 'dry' applies where no such relationship prevails. seen thus, they reveal themselves as a true polarity of the second order, for they describe the relationship between two entities which already exists, and, in the case of the four elements, are themselves a polarity. as such, they characterize precisely those polar relationships of the second order on which the threefold structure of man, we found, is based. for from the physical, as much as from the superphysical aspect the nerve-system represents the 'dry' part, and the metabolic system the 'moist' part of man's being. the same is true of the relationship between the soul and the surrounding world at both poles. here we have the antithesis between the 'dry' onlooker-relationship of the intellect to the world, conceived as a mere picture whose essence remains outside the boundaries of the soul, and the 'moist' intermingling of the will-force with the actual forces of the world. * it needs no further explanation to realize that sulphur and phosphorus, by the way in which levity and gravity are interlinked in each of them, are representatives of these very qualities 'moist' and 'dry'. as such they are universally active bearers of these qualities in every realm of nature's varied activities, as their physical presence in such cases confirms. consequently, sulphur is found in the protein-substances of the human body wherever they are bearers of metabolic processes, while the presence of phosphorus is characteristic of the nerves and bones. (although its full significance will become clear to us only later, the fact may here be mentioned that the composition of the bone-material in the different parts of man's skeleton, as scientific analysis has shown, is such that the content of phosphate of calcium in proportion to carbonate of calcium is higher in all those parts which are spherically shaped, such as the upper parts of the skull and the upper ends of the limb-bones.) in particular the plant reveals clearly the functional significance of phosphorus as the bearer of the quality 'dry'. for its healthy growth the plant needs the quality 'dry' in two places: at the root, where it unites with the element earth, and in the flower, where it opens itself to the fire element. root and flower as distinct from the middle parts of the plant are both 'dry' formations. in a still higher degree this applies to the seed, which must separate itself from the mother plant to produce a separate new organism. all these are functions in the plant which, as was mentioned in the last chapter, require phosphorus for their healthy performance. our examination of phosphorus and sulphur from the functional point of view throws light also on their effect on the alternating conditions of waking and sleeping, necessary for the life of the higher organisms. this rhythmic change, which affects especially the nervous system, is an alternation between the qualities dry and moist. disturbance of this alternation in one direction or the other makes it difficult for the organism to react in full wakefulness or normal sleep. it follows that treatment with phosphorus or sulphur in suitable preparations, according to the nature of the disturbance, can be beneficial. if we study the functional properties of such substances we see that they can teach us a rational understanding of therapeutic practices, which otherwise must remain mere results of trial and error. the same applies to phosphorus and sulphur treatment in cases where in the functionally 'dry' bone system or in the functionally 'moist' metabolic system of the organism the wrong quality predominates. if the bones remain too 'moist' there is a tendency to rickets; against this, certain fish-oils are a well-known remedy on account of their highly phosphoric nature. conversely, the application of sulphur can help where weakness of the metabolic forces produces rheumatic or gouty sediments in parts of the body whose function is to serve by their mobility the activities of the will. in this case the abnormal predominance of the quality 'dry' can be counteracted by the medical application of sulphur. * having observed the action of sulphur and phosphorus in the laboratory and in living organisms, we will now turn to phenomena of a macrotelluric nature which reveal the participation of sulphur and phosphorus. there, sulphur points unmistakably to the earth's volcanism. it is a fact that, wherever mineral sulphur occurs in the earth, there we find a spot of former or present volcanic activity. similarly, there is no such spot on the earth without sulphur being present in one form or another. hence the name solfatara for the fumarole described in chapter ix. once again it is the solfatara which offers us a phenomenon, this time in connexion with the special role sulphur plays in its activities, which, regarded with the eye of the spirit, assumes the significance of an instance 'worth a thousand'. in spite of the very high temperature of the sulphurous fumes emitted from various crevices on the edge of the solfatara, it is possible, thanks to the complete dryness of the fumes, to crawl a little way into the interior of these crevices. not far away from the opening of the crevice, where the hot fumes touch the cooler rock surface, one is met by a very beautiful spectacle - namely, the continual forming, out of nothing as it seems, of glittering yellow sulphur crystals, suspended in delicate chains from the ceiling. in this transformation of sulphurous substance from a higher material state, nearer to levity, to that of the solid crystal, we may behold an image of the generation of matter. for every physical substance and, therefore, every chemical element, exists originally as a pure function in the dynamic processes of the universe. wherever, as a result of the action of gravity, such a function congeals materially, there we meet it in the form of a physical-material substance. in the same sense, sulphur and phosphorus, in their real being, are pure functions, and where they occur as physical substances, there we meet these functions in their congealed state. one of the characteristics of the volcanic regions of the earth is the healing effect of substances found there. fango-mud, for instance, which was mentioned in the last chapter, is a much-used remedy against rheumatism. this is typical of functional sulphur. we may truly characterize the earth's volcanism as being qualitatively sulphurous. it is the sulphur-function coming to expression through a higher degree of 'moistness' in the relationship between gravity and levity which distinguishes volcanic regions from the rest of the otherwise 'dry' earth's crust. * to develop a corresponding picture of the function of phosphorus, we must try to find the macrotelluric sphere where this function operates similarly to that of sulphur in volcanism. from what has been said in the last chapter it will be evident that we must look to the atmosphere, as the site of snow-formation. it is this process which we must now examine more closely. in the atmosphere, to begin with, we find water in a state of vapour, in which the influence of the terrestrial gravity-field is comparatively weak. floating in this state, the vapour condenses and crystallization proceeds. obeying the pull of gravity, more and more crystals unite in their descent and gradually form flakes of varying sizes. the nearer they come to earth, the closer they fall, until at last on the ground they form an unbroken, more or less spherical, cover. imagine a snow-covered field glistening in the sun on a clear, quiet winter's day. as far as we can see, there is no sign of life, no movement. here water, which is normally fluid and, in its liquid state, serves the ever-changing life-processes, covers the earth in the form of millions of separate crystals shaped with mathematical exactitude, each of which breaks and reflects in a million rays the light from the sun (plate v). a contrast, indeed, between this quiet emergence of forms from levity into gravity, and the form-denying volcanism surging up out of gravity into levity, as shown by the ever-restless activity of the solfatara. as we found volcanism to be a macrotelluric manifestation of functional sulphur, we find in the process of snow-formation a corresponding manifestation of functional phosphorus. in the formation of snow, nature shows us in statu agendi a process which we otherwise meet in the earth only in its finished results, crystallization. we may, therefore, rightly look upon snow-formation as an ur-phenomenon in this sphere of nature's activities. as such it allows us to learn something concerning the origin in general of the crystalline realm of the earth; and, vice versa, our insight into the 'becoming' of this realm will enable us to see more clearly the universal function of which phosphorus is the main representative among the physical substances of the earth. it has puzzled many an observer that crystals occur in the earth with directions of their main axes entirely independent of the direction of the earthly pull of gravity. plate vi shows the photograph of a cluster of calcite crystals as an example of this phenomenon. it tells us that gravity can have no effect on the formation of the crystal itself. this riddle is solved by the phenomenon of snow-formation provided we allow it to speak to us as an ur-phenomenon. for it then tells us that matter must be in a state of transition from lightness into heaviness if it is to appear in crystalline form. the crystals in the earth, therefore, must have originated at a time when the relation between levity and gravity on the earth was different from what it is, in this sphere, to-day. the same language is spoken by the property of transparency which is so predominant among crystals. one of the fundamental characteristics of heavy solid matter is to resist light - in other words, to be opaque. exposed to heat, however, physical substance loses this feature to the extent that at the border of its ponderability all matter becomes pervious to light. now, in the transparent crystal matter retains this kinship to light even in its solid state. a similar message comes from the, often so mysterious, colouring of the crystals. here again nature offers us an instance which, 'worth a thousand', reveals a secret that would otherwise remain veiled. we refer to the pink crystals of tourmaline, whose colour comes from a small admixture of lithium. this element, which belongs to the group of the alkaline metals, does not form coloured salts (a property only shown by the heavier metals). if exposed to a flame, however, it endows it with a definite colour which is the same as that of the lithium-coloured tourmaline. read as a letter in nature's script, this fact tells us that precious stones with their flame-like colours are characterized by having kept something of the nature that was theirs before they coalesced into ponderable existence. in fact, they are 'frozen flames'. it is this fact, known from ancient intuitive experience, which prompted man of old to attribute particular spiritual significance to the various precious stones of the earth and to use them correspondingly in his rituals. crystallization, seen thus in its cosmic aspect, shows a dynamic orientation which is polarically opposite to that of the earth's seismic activities. just as in the latter we observe levity taking hold of ponderable matter and moving it in a direction opposite to the pull of gravity, so in crystallization we see imponderable matter passing over from levity into gravity. and just as we found in volcanism and related processes a field of activity of 'functional sulphur', so we found in snow-formation and related processes a field of activity of 'functional phosphorus'. both fields are characterized by an interaction between gravity and levity, this interaction being of opposite nature in each of them. here, again, sulphur and phosphorus appear as bearers of a polarity of the second order which springs from the two polarically opposite ways of interaction between the poles of the polarity of the first order: levity-gravity. * as in man there is a third system, mediating between the two polar systems of his organism, so between sulphur and phosphorus there is a third element which in all its characteristics holds a middle place between them and is the bearer of a corresponding function. this element is carbon. to see this we need only take into consideration carbon's relationship to oxidation and reduction respectively. as it is natural for sulphur to be in the reduced state, and for phosphorus to be in the oxidized state, so it is in the nature of carbon to be related to both states and therefore to oscillate between them. by its readiness to change over from the oxidized to the reduced state, it can serve the plant in the assimilation of light, while by its readiness to make the reverse change it serves man and animal in the breathing process. we breathe in oxygen from the air; the oxygen circulates through the blood-stream and passes out again in conjunction with carbon, as carbon dioxide, when we exhale. in the process whereby the plants reduce the carbon dioxide exhaled by man and animal, while the latter again absorb with their food the carbon produced in the form of organic matter by the plant, we see carbon moving to and fro between the oxidized and the reduced conditions. within the plant itself, too, carbon acts as functionary of the alternation between oxidation and reduction. during the first half of the year, when vegetation is unfolding, there is a great reduction process of oxidized carbon, while in the second half of the year, when the withering process prevails, a great deal of the previously reduced carbon passes into the oxidized condition. as this is connected with exhaling and inhaling of oxygen through carbon, carbon can be regarded as having the function of the lung-organ of the earth. logically enough, we find carbon playing the same role in the middle part of the threefold human organism. another indication of the midway position of carbon is its ability to combine as readily with hydrogen as with oxygen, and, in these polar combinations, even to combine with itself. in this latter form it provides the basis of the innumerable organic substances in nature, and serves as the 'building stones' of the body-substances of living organisms. among these, the carbohydrates produced by the plants show clearly the double function of carbon in the way it alternates between the states of starch and sugar. when the plant absorbs through its leaves carbonic acid from the air and condenses it into the multiple grains of starch with their peculiar structure characteristic for each plant species, we have a biological event which corresponds to the formation of snow in the meteorological realm. here we see carbon at work in a manner functionally akin to that of phosphorus. sugar, on the other hand, has its place in the saps of the plants which rise through the stems and carry up with them the mineral substances of the earth. here we find carbon acting in a way akin to the function of sulphur. this twofold nature of carbon makes itself noticeable down to the very mineral sphere of the earth. there we find it in the fact that carbon occurs both in the form of the diamond, the hardest of all mineral substances, and also in the form of the softest, graphite. here also, in the diamond's brilliant transparency, and in the dense blackness of graphite, carbon reveals its twofold relation to light. in fig. an attempt has been made to represent diagrammatically the function of carbon in a way corresponding to the previous representation of the functions of sulphur and phosphorus. * by adding carbon to our observations on the polarity of sulphur and phosphorus we have been led to a triad of functions each of which expresses a specific interplay of levity and gravity. that we encounter three such functions is not accidental or arbitrary. rather is it based on the fact that the interaction of forces emanating from a polarity of the first order, produces a polarity of the second order, whose poles establish between them a sphere of balance. through our study of levity and gravity in the matter-processes of the earth, a perspective thus opens up into a structural principle of nature which is actually not new to us. we encountered it at the very beginning of this book when we discussed the threefold psycho-physical order of man's being. in the days of an older intuitive nature-wisdom man knew of a basic triad of functions as well as he knew of the four elementary qualities. we hear a last echo of this in the middle ages, when people striving for a deeper understanding of nature spoke of the trinity of salt, mercury and sulphur. what the true alchemists, as these seekers of knowledge called themselves, meant by this was precisely the same as the conception we have here reached through our own way of studying matter ('salt' standing for 'functional phosphorus', 'mercury' for 'functional carbon'). only the alchemist's way was a different one. this is not the place to enter into a full examination of the meaning and value of alchemy in its original legitimate sense (which must not be confused with activities that later on paraded under the same name). only this we will say - that genuine alchemy owes its origin to an impulse which, at a time when the onlooker-consciousness first arose, led to the foundation of a school for the development of an intuitive relationship of the soul with the world of the senses. this was to enable man to resist the effects of the division which evolution was about to set up in his soul-life - the division which was to give him, on the one hand, an abstract experience of his own self, divorced from the outer world, and on the other a mere onlooker's experience of that outer world. as a result of these endeavours, concepts were formed which in their literal meaning seemed to apply merely to outwardly perceptible substances, while in truth they stood for the spiritual functions represented by those substances, both within and outside the human organism. thus the alchemist who used these concepts thought of them first as referring to his own soul, and to the inner organic processes corresponding to the various activities of his soul. when speaking of salt he meant the regulated formative activity of his thinking, based on the salt-forming process in his nervous system. when he spoke of mercury he meant the quickly changing emotional life of the soul and the corresponding activities of the rhythmic processes of the body. lastly, sulphur meant the will activities of his soul and the corresponding metabolic processes of the body. only through studying these functions within himself, and through re-establishing the harmony between them which had been theirs in the beginning, and from which, he felt, man had deviated in the course of time, did the alchemist hope to come to an understanding of their counterparts in the external cosmos. older alchemical writings, therefore, can be understood only if prescriptions which seem to signify certain chemical manipulations are read as instructions for certain exercises of the soul, or as advices for the redirection of corresponding processes in the body. for instance, if an alchemist gave directions for a certain treatment of sulphur, mercury and salt, with the assertion that by carrying out these directions properly, one would obtain aurum (gold), he really spoke of a method to direct the thinking, feeling and willing activities of the soul in such a way as to gain true wisdom. * as in the case of the concepts constituting the doctrine of the four elements, we have represented here the basic alchemical concepts not only because of their historical significance, but because, as ingredients of a still functional conception of nature, they assume new significance in a science which seeks to develop, though from different starting-points, a similar conception. as will be seen in our further studies, these concepts prove a welcome enrichment of the language in which we must try to express our readings in nature. roger bacon in the thirteenth, and berthold schwartz in the fourteenth century, are reputed to have carried out experiments by mixing physical salt (in the form of the chemically labile saltpetre) with physical sulphur and - after some initial attempts with various metals - with charcoal, and then exposing the mixture to the heat of physical fire. the outcome of this purely materialistic interpretation of the three alchemical concepts was not the acquisition of wisdom, or, as schwartz certainly had hoped, of gold, but of ... gunpowder! chapter xii space and counter-space with the introduction, in chapter x, of the peripheral type of force-field which appertains to levity as the usual central one does to gravity, we are compelled to revise our conception of space. for in a space of a kind we are accustomed to conceive, that is, the three-dimensional, euclidean space, the existence of such a field with its characteristic of increasing in strength in the outward direction is a paradox, contrary to mathematical logic. this task, which in view of our further observations of the actions of the levity-gravity polarity in nature we must now tackle, is, however, by no means insoluble. for in modern mathematics thought-forms are already present which make it possible to develop a space-concept adequate to levity. as referred to in chapter i, it was rudolf steiner who first pointed to the significance in this respect of the branch of modern mathematics known as projective geometry. he showed that projective geometry, if rightly used, carries over the mind from the customary abstract to a new concrete treatment of mathematical concepts. the following example will serve to explain, to start with, what we mean by saying that mathematics has hitherto been used abstractly. one of the reasons why the world-picture developed by einstein in his theory of relativity deserves to be acknowledged as a step forward in comparison with the picture drawn by classical physics, lies in the fact that the old conception of three-dimensional space as a kind of 'cosmic container', extending in all directions into infinity and filled, as it were, with the content of the physical universe, is replaced by a conception in which the structure of space results from the laws interrelating this content. our further discussion will show that this indeed is the way along which, to-day, mathematical thought must move in order to cope with universal reality. however, for reasons discussed earlier, einstein was forced to conceive all events in the universe after the model of gravity as observable on the earth. in this way he arrived at a space-structure which possesses neither the three-dimensionality nor the rectilinear character of so-called euclidean space - a space-picture which, though mathematically consistent, is incomprehensible by the human mind. for nothing exists in our mind that could enable us to experience as a reality a space-time continuum of three dimensions which is curved within a further dimension. this outcome of einstein's endeavours results from the fact that he tried by means of gravity-bound thought to comprehend universal happenings of which the true causes are non-gravitational. a thinking that has learnt to acknowledge the existence of levity must indeed pursue precisely the opposite direction. instead of freezing time down into spatial dimension, in order to make it fit into a world ruled by nothing but gravity, we must develop a conception of space sufficiently fluid to let true time have its place therein. we shall see how such a procedure will lead us to a space-concept thoroughly conceivable by human common sense, provided we are prepared to overcome the onlooker-standpoint in mathematics also. einstein owed the possibility of establishing his space-picture to a certain achievement of mathematical thinking in modern times. as we have seen, one of the peculiarities of the onlooker-consciousness consists in its being devoid of all connexion with reality. the process of thinking thereby gained a degree of freedom which did not exist in former ages. in consequence, mathematicians were enabled in the course of the nineteenth century to conceive the most varied space-systems which were all mathematically consistent and yet lacked all relation to external existence. a considerable number of space-systems have thus become established among which there is the system that served einstein to derive his space-time concept. some of them have been more or less fully worked out, while in certain instances all that has been done is to show that they are mathematically conceivable. among these there is one which in all its characteristics is polarically opposite to the euclidean system, and which is destined for this reason to become the space-system of levity. it is symptomatic of the remoteness from reality of mathematical thinking in the onlooker-age that precisely this system has so far received no special attention. for the purpose of this book it is not necessary to expound in detail why modern mathematical thinking has been led to look for thought-forms other than those of classical geometry. it is enough to remark that for quite a long time there had been an awareness of the fact that the consistency of euclid's definitions and proofs fails as soon as one has no longer to do with finite geometrical entities, but with figures which extend into infinity, as for instance when the properties of parallel straight lines come into question. for the concept of infinity was foreign to classical geometrical thinking. problems of the kind which had defeated euclidean thinking became soluble directly human thinking was able to handle the concept of infinity. we shall now indicate some of the lines of geometrical thought which follow from this. * let us consider a straight line extending without limits in either direction. projective geometry is able to state that a point moving along this line in one direction will eventually return from the other. to see this, we imagine two straight lines a and b intersecting at p. one of these lines is fixed (a); the other (b) rotates uniformly about c. fig. indicates the rotation of b by showing it in a number of positions with the respective positions of its point of intersection with a (p , p . . .). we observe this point moving along a, as a result of the rotation of b, until, when both lines are parallel, it reaches infinity. as a result of the continued rotation of b, however, p does not remain in infinity, but returns along a from the other side. we find here two forms of movement linked together - the rotational movement of a line (b) on a point (c), and the progressive movement of a point (p) along a line (a). the first movement is continuous, and observable throughout within finite space. therefore the second movement must be continuous as well, even though it partly escapes our observation. hence, when p disappears into infinity on one side of our own point of observation, it is at the same time in infinity on the other side. in order words, an unlimited straight line has only one point at infinity. it is clear that, in order to become familiar with this aspect of geometry, one must grow together in inward activity with the happening which is contained in the above description. what we therefore intend by giving such a description is to provide an opportunity for a particular mental exercise, just as when we introduced goethe's botany by describing a number of successive leaf-formations. here, as much as there, it is the act of 're-creating' that matters. the following exercise will help us towards further clarity concerning the nature of geometrical infinity. we imagine ourselves in the centre of a sphere which we allow to expand uniformly on all sides. whilst the inner wall of this sphere withdraws from us into ever greater distances, it grows flatter and flatter until, on reaching infinite distance, it turns into a plane. we thus find ourselves surrounded everywhere by a surface which, in the strict mathematical sense, is a plane, and is yet one and the same surface on all sides. this leads us to the conception of the plane at infinity as a self-contained entity although it expands infinitely in all directions. this property of a plane at infinity, however, is really a property of any plane. to realize this, we must widen our conception of infinity by freeing it from a certain one-sidedness still connected with it. this we do by transferring ourselves into the infinite plane and envisaging, not the plane from the point, but the point from the plane. this operation, however, implies something which is not obvious to a mind accustomed to the ordinary ways of mathematical reasoning. it therefore requires special explanation. in the sense of euclidean geometry, a plane is the sum-total of innumerable single points. to take up a position in a plane, therefore, means to imagine oneself at one point of the plane, with the latter extending around in all directions to infinity. hence the journey from any point in space to a plane is along a straight line from one point to another. in the case of the plane being at infinity, it would be a journey along a radius of the infinitely large sphere from its centre to a point at its circumference. in projective geometry the operation is of a different character. just as we arrived at the infinitely large sphere by letting a finite sphere grow, so must we consider any finite sphere as having grown from a sphere with infinitely small extension; that is, from a point. to travel from the point to the infinitely distant plane in the sense of projective geometry, therefore, means that we have first to identify ourselves with the point and 'become' the plane by a process of uniform expansion in all directions. as a result of this we do not arrive at one point in the plane, with the latter extending round us on all sides, but we are present in the plane as a whole everywhere. no point in it can be characterized as having any distance, whether finite or infinite, from us. nor is there any sense in speaking of the plane itself as being at infinity. for any plane will allow us to identify ourselves with it in this way. and any such plane can be given the character of a plane at infinity by relating it to a point infinitely far away from it (i.e. from us). having thus dropped the one-sided conception of infinity, we must look for another characterization of the relationship between a point and a plane which are infinitely distant from one another. this requires, first of all, a proper characterization of point and plane in themselves. conceived dynamically, as projective geometry requires, point and plane represent a pair of opposites, the point standing for utmost contraction, the plane for utmost expansion. as such, they form a polarity of the first order. both together constitute space. which sort of space this is, depends on the relationship in which they are envisaged. by positing the point as the unit from which to start, and deriving our conception of the plane from the point, we constitute euclidean space. by starting in the manner described above, with the plane as the unit, and conceiving the point from it, we constitute polar-euclidean space. the realization of the reversibility of the relationship between point and plane leads to a conception of space still free from any specific character. by g. adams this space has been appositely called archetypal space, or ur-space. both euclidean and polar-euclidean space are particular manifestations of it, their mutual relationship being one of metamorphosis in the goethean sense. through conceiving euclidean and polar-euclidean space in this manner it becomes clear that they are nothing else than the geometrical expression of the relationship between gravity and levity. for gravity, through its field spreading outward from an inner centre, establishes a point-to-point relation between all things under its sway; whereas levity draws all things within its domain into common plane-relations by establishing field-conditions wherein action takes place from the periphery towards the centre. what distinguishes in both cases the plane at infinity from all other planes may be best described by calling it the all-embracing plane; correspondingly the point at infinity may be best described as the all-relating point. in outer nature the all-embracing plane is as much the 'centre' of the earth's field of levity as the all-relating point is the centre of her field of gravity. all actions of dynamic entities, such as that of the ur-plant and its subordinate types, start from this plane. seeds, eye-formations, etc., are nothing but individual all-relating points in respect of this plane. all that springs from such points does so because of the point's relation to the all-embracing plane. this may suffice to show how realistic are the mathematical concepts which we have here tried to build up. * when we set out earlier in this book (chapter viii) to discover the source of galileo's intuition, by which he had been enabled to find the theorem of the parallelogram of forces, we were led to certain experiences through which all men go in early childhood by erecting their body and learning to walk. we were thereby led to realize that man's general capacity for thinking mathematically is the outcome of early experiences of this kind. it is evident that geometrical concepts arising in man's mind in this way must be those of euclidean geometry. for they are acquired by the will's struggle with gravity. the dynamic law discovered in this way by galileo was therefore bound to apply to the behaviour of mechanical forces - that is, of forces acting from points outward. in a similar way we can now seek to find the source of our capacity to form polar-euclidean concepts. as we were formerly led to experiences of man's early life on earth, so we are now led to his embryonic and even pre-embryonic existence. before man's supersensible part enters into a physical body there is no means of conveying to it experiences other than those of levity, and this condition prevails right through embryonic development. for while the body floats in the mother's foetal fluid it is virtually exempt from the influence of the earth's field of gravity. history has given us a source of information from these early periods of man's existence in traherne's recollections of the time when his soul was still in the state of cosmic consciousness. among his descriptions we may therefore expect to find a picture of levity-space which will confirm through immediate experience what we have arrived at along the lines of realistic mathematical reasoning. among poems quoted earlier, his the praeparative and my spirit do indeed convey this picture in the clearest possible way. the following are relevant passages from these two poems. in the first we read: 'then was my soul my only all to me, a living endless ey, scarce bounded with the sky whose power, and act, and essence was to see: i was an inward sphere of light, or an interminable orb of sight, exceeding that which makes the days . . .' in the second poem the same experience is expressed in richer detail. there he says of his own soul that it - ... being simple, like the deity, in its own centre is a sphere, not limited but everywhere. it acts not from a centre to its object, as remote; but present is, where it doth go to view the being it doth note ... a strange extended orb of joy proceeding from within, which did on ev'ry side display its force; and being nigh of kin to god, did ev'ry way dilate its self ev'n instantaneously, yet an indivisible centre stay, in it surrounding all eternity. 'twas not a sphere; yet did appear one infinite: 'twas somewhat everywhere.' observe the distinct description of how the relation between circumference and centre is inverted by the former becoming itself an 'indivisible centre'. in a space of this kind there is no here and there, as in euclidean space, for the consciousness is always and immediately at one with the whole space. motion is thus quite different from what it is in euclidean space. traherne himself italicized the word 'instantaneous', so important did he find this fact. (the quality of instantaneousness - equal from the physical point of view to a velocity of the value � - will occupy us more closely as a characteristic of the realm of levity when we come to discuss the apparent velocity of light in connexion with our optical studies.) by thus realizing the source in man of the polar-euclidean thought-forms, we see the discovery of projective geometry in a new light. for it now assumes the significance of yet another historical symptom of the modern re-awakening of man's capacity to remember his prenatal existence. * we know from our previous studies that the concept of polarity is not exhausted by conceiving the world as being constituted by polarities of one order only. besides primary polarities, there are secondary ones, the outcome of interaction between the primary poles. having conceived of point and plane as a geometrical polarity of the first order, we have therefore to ask what formative elements there are in geometry which represent the corresponding polarity of the second order. the following considerations will show that these are the radius, which arises from the point becoming related to the plane, and the spherically bent surface (for which we have no other name than that again of the sphere), arising from the plane becoming related to the point. in euclidean geometry the sphere is defined as 'the locus of all points which are equidistant from a given point'. to define the sphere in this way is in accord with our post-natal, gravity-bound consciousness. for in this state our mind can do no more than envisage the surface of the sphere point by point from its centre and recognize the equal distance of all these points from the centre. seen thus, the sphere arises as the sum-total of the end-points of all the straight lines of equal length which emerge from the centre-point in all directions. fig. indicates this schematically. here the radius, a straight line, is clearly the determining factor. we now move to the other pole of the primary polarity, that is to the plane, and let the sphere arise by imagining the plane approaching an infinitely distant point evenly from all sides. we view the process realistically only by imagining ourselves in the plane, so that we surround the point from all sides, with the distance between us and the point diminishing gradually. since we remain all the time on the surface, we have no reason to conceive any change in its original position; that is, we continue to think of it as an all-embracing plane with regard to the chosen point. the only way of representing the sphere diagrammatically, as a unit bearing in itself the character of the plane whence it sprang, is as shown in fig. , where a number of planes, functioning as tangential planes, are so related that together they form a surface which possesses everywhere the same distance from the all-relating point. since point and plane represent in the realm of geometrical concepts what in outer nature we find in the form of the gravity-levity polarity, we may expect to meet radius and sphere as actual formative elements in nature, wherever gravity and levity interact in one way or another. a few observations may suffice to give the necessary evidence. further confirmation will be furnished by the ensuing chapters. the radius-sphere antithesis appears most obviously in the human body, the radial element being represented by the limbs, the spherical by the skull. the limbs thus become the hieroglyph of a dynamic directed from the point to the plane, and the skull of the opposite. this indeed is in accord with the distribution in the organism of the sulphur-salt polarity, as we learnt from our physiological and psychological studies. inner processes and outer form thus reveal the same distribution of poles. in the plant the same polarity appears in stalk and leaf. obviously the stalk represents the radial pole. the connexion between leaf and sphere is not so clear: in order to recognize it we must appreciate that the single plant is not a self-contained entity to the same degree as is the human being. the equivalent of the single man is the entire vegetable covering of the earth. in man there is an individual centre round which the bones of his skull are curved; in the plant world the equivalent is the centre of the earth. it is in relation to this that we must conceive of the single leaves as parts of a greater sphere. in the plant, just as in man, the morphological polarity coincides with the biological. there is, on the one hand, the process of assimilation (photosynthesis), so characteristic of the leaf. through this process matter passes over from the aeriform condition into that of numerous separate, characteristically structured solid bodies - the starch grains. besides this kind of assimilation we have learnt to recognize a higher form which we called 'spiritual assimilation'. here, a transition of substance from the domain of levity to that of gravity takes place even more strikingly than in ordinary (physical) assimilation (chapter x). the corresponding process in the linear stalk is one which we may call 'sublimation' - again with its extension into 'spiritual sublimation'. through this process matter is carried in the upward direction towards ever less ponderable conditions, and finally into the formless state of pure 'chaos'. by this means the seed is prepared (as we have seen) with the help of the fire-bearing pollen, so that after it has fallen to the ground, it may serve as an all-relating point to which the plant's type can direct its activity from the universal circumference. in order to find the corresponding morphological polarity in the animal kingdom, we must realize that the animal, by having the main axis of its body in the horizontal direction, has a relationship to the gravity-levity fields of the earth different from those of both man and plant. as a result, the single animal body shows the sphere-radius polarity much less sharply. if we compare the different groups of the animal kingdom, however, we find that the animals, too, bear this polarity as a formative element. the birds represent the spherical (dry, saline) pole; the ruminants the linear (moist, sulphurous) pole. the carnivorous quadrupeds form the intermediary (mercurial) group. as ur-phenomenal types we may name among the birds the eagle, clothed in its dry, silicic plumage, hovering with far-spread wings in the heights of the atmosphere, united with the expanses of space through its far-reaching sight; among the ruminants, the cow, lying heavily on the ground of the earth, given over entirely to the immensely elaborated sulphurous process of its own digestion. between them comes the lion - the most characteristic animal for the preponderance of heart-and-lung activities in the body, with all the attributes resulting from that. within the scope of this book it can only be intimated briefly, but should not be left unmentioned for the sake of those interested in a further pursuit of these lines of thought, that the morphological mean between radius and sphere (corresponding to mercurius in the alchemical triad) is represented by a geometrical figure known as the 'lemniscate', a particular modification of the so-called cassinian curves. for further details, see the writings of g. adams and l. locher-ernst who, each in his own way, have made a beginning with applying projective geometry on the lines indicated by rudolf steiner. professor locher-ernst was the first to apply the term 'polar-euclidean' to the space-system corresponding to levity. for particulars of the lemniscate as the building plan of the middle part of man's skeleton, see k. könig, m.d.: beitrage zu einer reinen anatomic des menschlichen knochenskeletts in the periodical natura (dornach, - ). some projective-geometrical considerations concerning the lemniscate are to be found in the previously mentioned writings of g. adams and l. locher-ernst. chapter xiii 'radiant matter' when man in the state of world-onlooker undertook to form a dynamic picture of the nature of matter, it was inevitable that of all the qualities which belong to its existence he should be able to envisage only those pertaining to gravity and electricity. because his consciousness, at this stage of its evolution, was closely bound up with the force of gravity inherent in the human body, he was unable to form any conception of levity as a force opposite to gravity. yet, nature is built bipolarically, and polarity-concepts are therefore indispensable for developing a true understanding of her actions. this accounts for the fact that the unipolar concept of gravity had eventually to be supplemented by some kind of bipolar concept. now, the only sphere of nature-phenomena with a bipolar character accessible to the onlooker-consciousness 'was that of electricity. it was thus that man in this state of consciousness was compelled to picture the foundation of the physical universe as being made up of gravity and electricity, as we meet them in the modern picture of the atom, with its heavy electro-positive nucleus and the virtually weightless electro-negative electrons moving round it. once scientific observation and thought are freed from the limitations of the onlooker-consciousness, both gravity and electricity appear in a new perspective, though the change is different for each of them. gravity, while it becomes one pole of a polarity, with levity as the opposite pole, still retains its character as a fundamental force of the physical universe, the gravity-levity polarity being one of the first order. not so electricity. for, as the following discussion will show, the electrical polarity is one of the second order; moreover, instead of constituting matter as is usually believed, electricity turns out to be in reality a product of matter. * we follow goethe's line when, in order to answer the question, 'what is electricity?' we first ask, 'how does electricity arise?' instead of starting with phenomena produced by electricity when it is already in action, and deriving from them a hypothetical picture, we begin by observing the processes to which electricity owes its appearance. since there is significance in the historical order in which facts of nature have come to man's knowledge in the past, we choose as our starting-point, among the various modes of generating electricity, the one through which the existence of an electric force first became known. this is the rousing of the electric state in a body by rubbing it with another body of different material composition. originally, amber was rubbed with wool or fur. by picturing this process in our mind we become aware of a certain kinship of electricity with fire, since for ages the only known way of kindling fire was through friction. we notice that in both cases man had to resort to the will-power invested in his limbs for setting in motion two pieces of matter, so that, by overcoming their resistance to this motion, he released from them a certain force which he could utilize as a supplement to his own will. the similarity of the two processes may be taken as a sign that heat and electricity are related to each other in a certain way, the one being in some sense a metamorphosis of the other. our first task, therefore, will be to try to understand how it is that friction causes heat to appear in manifest form. there is no friction unless the surfaces of the rubbed bodies have a structure that is in some way interfered with by the rubbing, while at the same time they offer a certain resistance to the disturbance. this resistance is due to a characteristic of matter, commonly called cohesion. now we know that the inner coherence of a physical body is due to its point-relationship, that is to the gravitational force bound up with it. indeed, cohesion increases as we pass from the gaseous, through the liquid, to the solid state of matter. whilst a body's cohesion is due to gravity, its spatial extendedness is, as we have seen, due to levity. if we reduce the volume of a piece of physical matter by means of pressure, we therefore release levity-forces previously bound up in it, and these, as always happens in such cases, appear in the form of free heat. figuratively speaking, we may say that by applying pressure to matter, latent levity is pressed out of it, somewhat like water out of a wet sponge. the generation of free heat by friction rests on quite similar grounds. obviously, friction always requires a certain pressure. this alone, however, would not account for the amount of heat easily produced by friction. to the pressure there is in this case added a certain measure of encroachment upon the unity of the material substance. in the case of friction between two solid bodies, this may go so far that particles of matter are completely detached from the cohesive whole. the result is an increase in the number of single mass-centres on the earth, as against the all-embracing cosmic periphery. this diminishes the hold of levity on the total amount of physical matter present on the earth. again, the levity thus becoming free appears as external heat. (in the reverse case when, for instance through melting, a number of single physical bodies become one, free heat becomes latent.) both the diminishing of spatial extension and the breaking up of a whole into parts entail an increase in the quality 'dry'. this applies not only in the sense that the parts which have become independent units are 'dry' in relation to each other - formerly coherent matter being turned into dust - but also in the other sense, and one valid in both cases, that levity and gravity are losing part of their previous inter-connexion. if this twofold process of 'becoming dry' reaches a certain intensity, the substances concerned, provided they are inflammable, begin to burn, with the result that dry heat escapes and dry ash is formed. we note that in each case we are dealing with a change in the relationship between the poles of a polarity of the first order. we will now apply this picture of the process of friction to the instance when, as a result of this action, electricity appears. originally the evoking of the electric condition was ascribed solely to the nature of amber, the only substance known to possess this property. to-day we know that not the amber alone, but its coming together with another substance of different nature, in this instance an animal substance of the nature of hair or silk, is required. whatever substances we use for friction, they must always be different in nature, so as to allow both kinds of electricity to appear at once. which of the two kinds imposes its presence the more strongly upon the observer depends on purely extraneous conditions which have nothing to do with the process itself. obviously, if we wish to understand the qualitative difference between the two kinds of electricity, we must investigate the qualitative difference in the material substances, which give rise to electricity when they are rubbed together. we shall again follow the historical line by examining the two substances which first taught man the polar nature of electricity. they are glass and resin, after which, as we mentioned, the two electricities were even named in the beginning. our functional conception of matter, developed earlier (chapter xi), allows us to recognize in these two substances representatives of the salt-sulphur polarity. indeed, glass as a mineral substance, which actually owes its specific character to the presence of silicon in it, clearly stands on the phosphoric-crystalline side, while resin, being itself a sort of 'gum', on the sulphurous-volcanic side. in fact, sulphur itself was soon found to be a particularly suitable substance for producing 'resin'-electricity. now the usual way of producing one kind of electricity is by rubbing resin (or sulphur, or ebonite) with wool or fur, and the other by rubbing glass with leather. at first sight, it does not seem as if the two counter-substances represent the required alchemic counter-poles to resin and glass. for both hair and leather are animal products and therefore seem to be of like nature. closer inspection, however, shows that they do obey the rule. for hair, like all horny substances, is a dead product of external secretion by the animal organism. an ur-phenomenal example of it, showing its kinship to glass-like substances, is the transparent cornea of the eye, close to the crystal-lens. leather, on the other hand, is a product of the hypodermic part of the body and, as such, belongs to those parts of the organism which are filled with blood, and, therefore, permeated with life. (note as a characteristic of leather that it requires a special treatment, tanning, to make it as immune from decay as hair is by nature.) hair and leather, therefore, represent in themselves a salt-sulphur polarity, and thus fulfil the corresponding function when brought together with resin or glass respectively. what is true for the particular substances which originally led man to discover the dual nature of electricity, holds good equally for any pair of substances capable of assuming the electric state when rubbed against each other. if we examine from this point of view the series of such substances, as usually given in the textbooks on electricity, we shall always find a substance of extreme salt-character at the one end, and one of extreme sulphur-character at the other, the substances as a whole forming a gradual transition from one extreme to the other. which kind of electricity appears on each, when submitted to friction, depends on whether the counter-substance stands on its right or left, in the series. it is the particular relation between the two which makes them behave in one way or the other. there are cases which seem to elude this law, and investigation has shown that other characteristics of the rubbed bodies, such as surface quality, can have a modifying influence. for lack of a guiding idea they are treated in the textbooks as 'irregularities'. observation led by a true polarity concept shows that in these cases also the rule is not violated. in this respect, interesting information can be gained from the observations of j. w. ritter ( - ), an ingenious naturphilosoph from the circle round goethe, but to whom, also, physical science is indebted for his discovery of the ultra-violet part of the spectrum and of galvanic polarization. among his writings there is a treatise on electricity, giving many generally unknown instances of frictional electricity which are in good accord with our picture and well worth investigating. according to ritter, even two crystalline substances of different hardness, such as calcite and quartz, become electric when rubbed together, the softer playing the part of 'resin' and the harder that of 'glass'. these few facts connected with the generation of frictional electricity are enough to allow us to form a picture of the nature of the polarity represented by the two kinds of electricity. we remember that in the case of the generation of heat through friction, as a result of an encroachment upon the cohesion of the material body involved, the relationship between levity and gravity in it changes from 'moist' to 'dry' and that the effect of this is the appearance of 'fire' and 'dust' as poles of a primary polarity. this process, however, is altered when the bodies subjected to friction are opposed to each other in the sense of a salt-sulphur polarity. the effect then is that the liberated levity, under the influence of the peculiar tension between the two bodies, remains bound in the realm of substance and becomes itself split up polarically. clearly, then, in the case of electrical polarity we encounter a certain form of gravity-bound levity, and this in a twofold way. owing to the contrasting nature of the two bodies involved in the process, the coupling of gravity and levity is a polar one on both sides. the electrical polarity thus turns out to be itself of the nature of a secondary polarity. two more recently discovered means of evoking the electric condition in a piece of matter confirm this picture. they are the so-called piezo-electricity and pyro-electricity. both signify the occurrence of the electrical polarity at the two ends of an asymmetrically built (hemimorphous) crystal, as the result of changing the crystal's spatial condition. in piezo-electricity the change consists in a diminution of the crystal's volume through pressure; in pyro-electricity, in an increase of the crystal volume by raising its temperature. the asymmetry of the crystal, due to a one-sided working of the forces of crystallization, plays the same role here as does the alchemic opposition between the two bodies used for the production of frictional electricity. * it is typical of the scientist of the past that he was dependent on phenomena brought about by a highly developed experimental technique for becoming aware of certain properties of the electrical force, whereas for the realistic observer these properties are revealed at once by the most primitive electric phenomena. we remember eddington's description of the positron as 'negative material', and his subsequent remarks, which show the paradoxical nature of this concept if applied to the hypothetical interior of the atom (chapter iv). the quite primitive phenomenon of electrical repulsion and attraction shows us the same thing in a manner of which it is not difficult to form a conception. modern physics itself, with the help of faraday's field-concept, describes these phenomena as caused by pressure - resulting from the meeting in space of two similar electrical fields - and suction - resulting from the meeting of two dissimilar fields. in the first case the space between the two electrically charged bodies assumes a degree of density, as if it were filled with some elastic material. in the second instance the density of the space where the two fields intermingle is lower than that of its surroundings. here, clearly, we have a state of negative density which acts on the electrically charged bodies just as a lowering of pressure acts on a gas: in both cases movement occurs in the direction leading from the higher to the lower density. electricity thus shows itself capable of producing both gravity and levity effects, thereby once more confirming our picture of it. * our next task will be to examine the galvanic form of generating electricity, in order to gain further light on our picture of the electrical polarity. galvanism, as it became established through volta's work, rests on certain properties of the metallic substances of the earth. compared with the substances which may be used for producing electricity through friction, the metals hold a mid-position. they are all essentially mercurial substances. (in quicksilver, which for this reason was given the name 'mercury' by the alchemists, this fact comes to an ur-phenomenal appearance.) among the many facts proving the mercurial nature of the metals, there is one of particular interest to us. this is their peculiar relationship to the processes of oxidation and reduction. metals, in their metallic state, are bearers of latent levity, which can be set free either through combustion or through corrosion. they differ from one another by their relative degree of eagerness to enter into and remain in the metallic, that is, the reduced state, or to assume and keep the state of the oxide (in which form they are found in the various metallic oxides and salts). there are metals such as gold, silver, etc., for which the reduced state is more or less natural; others, such as potassium, sodium, etc., find the oxidized state natural and can be brought into and kept in the reduced state only by artificial means. between these extremes there are all possible degrees of transition, some metals more nearly resembling the 'noble', others more nearly the 'corrosive', metals. we remember that it was the different relationship of sulphur and phosphorus to reduction and oxidation which led us to envisage them as ur-phenomenal representatives of the alchemic polarity. we may therefore say that there are metals which from the alchemic point of view more nearly resemble sulphur, others more nearly phosphorus, whilst others again hold an intermediary position between the extremes. it is on these differences among the various metals that their galvanic properties are based. let us from this point of view contemplate the following series of chemical elements, which is a representation of the so-called voltaic series: graphite, platinum, gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, zinc, aluminium, magnesium, sodium, potassium. any two of these metals constitute a voltaic cell. its electromotive force is determined by the distance in the series between the metals used. just as in the case of frictional electricity, the kind of electricity which is supplied by a certain metal depends on whether the other metal with which it is coupled stands to the right or to the left of it in the series. let us now see what happens in a galvanic cell when the two different metals are simultaneously exposed to the chemical action of the connecting fluid. each metal by itself would undergo oxidation with greater or less intensity, and the calorific energy hidden in it would become free in the form of heat. this process suffers a certain alteration through the presence of the second metal, which sets up an alchemic tension between the two. instead of a proper segregation of the primary polarity, heat-dust (in this case, heat-oxide), the heat remains matter-bound and appears on the surface of the two metals in a secondarily split form as positive and negative electricity. the similarity between this process and the frictional generation of electricity is evident. * our observations have shown that the emergence of the electric state, whether it be caused by friction or galvanically, depends on matter entering into a condition in which its cohesion is loosened - or, as we also put it, on its being turned into 'dust' - and this in such a way that the escaping levity remains dust-bound. this picture of electricity now enables us to give a realistic interpretation of certain phenomena which, in the interpretation which the physicist of the past was bound to give them, have contributed much to the tightening of the net of scientific illusion. some sixty years after dalton had established, purely hypothetically, the theory of the atomistic structure of matter, scientific research was led to the observation of actual atomistic phenomena. crookes found electricity appearing in his tubes in the form of discrete particles, with properties hitherto known only as appertaining to mass. what could be more natural than to take this as evidence that the method of thought developed during the past era of science was on the right course? the same phenomena appear in quite a different light when we view them against the background of the picture of electricity to which our observations have led. knowing that the appearance of electricity depends on a process of atomization of some sort, we shall expect that where electricity becomes freely observable, it will yield phenomena of an atomistic kind. the observations of electricity in a vacuum, therefore, yield no confirmation whatsoever of the atomistic view of matter. the same is true of the phenomena bound up with radioactivity, which were discovered in direct consequence of crookes's work. we know that the naturally radioactive elements are all in the group of those with the highest atomic weight. this fact, seen together with the characteristics of radioactivity, tells us that in such elements gravity has so far got the upper hand of levity that the physical substance is unable to persist as a spatially extended, coherent unit. it therefore falls asunder, with the liberated levity drawn into the process of dispersion. seen thus, radioactivity becomes a symptom of the earth's old age. * before entering into a discussion of the question, which naturally arises at this point, as to how levity and gravity by their two possible ways of interaction - 'sulphurous' or 'saline' - determine the properties of so-called positive and negative electricity, we shall first study the third mode of generating electricity, namely, by electromagnetic induction. along this way we shall arrive at a picture of the magnetic force which corresponds to the one already obtained of electricity. this will then lead us to a joint study of the nature of electric polarity and magnetic polarity. the discovery of the phenomena we call electromagnetic depended on the possibility of producing continuous electrical processes. this arose with volta's invention. when it became necessary to find a concept for the process which takes place in an electric conductor between the poles of a galvanic cell, the concept of the 'current', borrowed from hydrodynamics, suggested itself. ever since then it has been the rule to speak of the existence of a current within an electric circuit; its strength or intensity is measured in terms of a unit named in honour of ampere. this concept of the current has had a fate typical of the whole relation of human thought to the facts connected with electricity. long after it had been coined to cover phenomena which in themselves betray no movement of any kind between the electrical poles, other phenomena which do in fact show such movements became known through crookes's observations. just as in the case of atomism, they seemed to prove the validity of the preconceived idea of the current. soon, however, radiant electricity showed properties which contradicted the picture of something flowing from one pole to the other. the cathode rays, for instance, were found to shoot forth into space perpendicularly from the surface of the cathode, without regard to the position of the anode. at the same time maxwell's hydrodynamic analogy (as our historical survey has shown) led to a view of the nature of electricity by which this very analogy was put out of court. by predicting certain properties of electricity which come to the fore when its poles alternate rapidly, he seemed to bring electricity into close kinship with light. mathematical treatment then made it necessary to regard the essential energy process as occurring, not from one pole to the other, but at right angles to a line joining the poles (poynting's vector). this picture, however, satisfactory though it was in the realm of high frequency, failed as a means of describing so-called direct-current processes. as a result of all this the theory of electricity has fallen apart into several conceptual realms lying, as it were, alongside one another, each consistent in itself but lacking any logical connexion with the others. although the old concept of the electric current has long lost its validity, scientific thought (not to speak of the layman's) has not managed to discard it. to do this must therefore be our first task, if we want to attain to a realistic picture of electromagnetism. * while keeping strictly to the historical order of things, we shall try first to form a picture of what happens when we connect two electrically charged bodies by a conductor. we know that we rightly describe the change of the dynamic properties of the part of space, in which the two bodies are present, by saying that a certain electric field prevails in it. this field possesses different 'potentials' at its various points and so there exists a certain potential difference between the two electric charges. what then happens when a so-called 'conductor' is brought into such a field? from the point of view of the field-concept, conductivity consists in the property of a body not to allow any change of potential along its surface. such a surface, therefore, is always an equipotential. in the language of alchemy, conductivity is a mercurial property. in the presence of such a body, therefore, no salt-sulphur contrasts can obtain. in view of what we found above as the mean position of the metals in the alchemic triad, it is significant that they, precisely, should play so outstanding a role as electrical conductors. if we keep to pure observation, the only statement we can make concerning the effect produced by the introduction of such a body into the electric field is that this field suddenly disappears. we shall see later in which direction this vanishing occurs. for the present it is sufficient to have formed the picture of the disappearance of the electrical condition of space as a result of the presence of a body with certain mercurial properties. nothing else, indeed, happens when we make the process continuous by using a galvanic source of electricity. all that distinguishes a galvanic cell from the sources of electricity used before the time of volta is its faculty of immediately re-establishing the field which prevails between its poles, whenever this field becomes extinguished by the presence of a conductor. volta himself saw this quite correctly. in his first account of the new apparatus he describes it as 'leyden jars with a continuously re-established charge'. every enduring electrical process, indeed, consists in nothing but a vanishing and re-establishment of the electrical field with such rapidity that the whole process appears continuous. here, also, pure observation of the effect of a conductor in an electric field tells us that its action consists in the annihilation of the field. there is no phenomenon which allows us to state that this process takes place along the axis of the conductor. if we wish to obtain a picture of the true direction, we must consider the condition of space which arises in place of the electric condition that has disappeared. with the possibility of turning the cancellation of the electrical condition of space into a continuous process, it became possible to observe that the neutralization of electric charges entails the appearance of heat and magnetism. we must now ask which are the qualities of electricity on the one hand, and of heat and magnetism on the other, which account for the fact that where electricity disappears, the two latter forces are bound to appear. since magnetism is the still unknown entity among the three, we must now deal with it. * unlike electricity, magnetism was first known in the form of its natural occurrence, namely as a property of certain minerals. if we follow the same course which led us to start our study of electricity with the primitive process of generating it, we shall turn now to the basic phenomenon produced by a magnetic field already in existence. (only when we have learnt all we can from this, shall we proceed to ask how magnetism comes into being.) obviously, we shall find this basic phenomenon in the effect of a magnet on a heap of iron filings. let us, to begin with, compare a mass of solid iron with the same quantity of it in powdered form. the difference is that the powder lacks the binding force which holds the solid piece together. now lei us expose the powdered iron to the influence of a magnet. at once a certain ordering principle takes hold of the single particles. they no longer lie at random and unrelated, apart from the inconspicuous gravitational effect they exert on one another, but are drawn into a coherent whole, thus acquiring properties resembling those of an ordinary piece of solid matter. read thus, the phenomenon tells us that a part of space occupied by a magnetic field has qualities which are otherwise found only where a coherent solid mass is present. a magnetic piece of solid iron, therefore, differs from a non-magnetic piece by giving rise in its surroundings to dynamic conditions which would otherwise exist only in its interior. this picture of the relatedness of magnetism to solidity is confirmed by the fact that both are cancelled by heat, and increased by cold. by its magnetic properties iron thus reveals itself as a substance capable of assuming the condition of solid matter to a degree surpassing ordinary solidity. as an exceptional kind of metal it forms the counter-pole to mercury, in which the solid-fluid condition characteristic of all metallic matter is as much shifted towards the fluid as in iron it is to the solid. (note in this respect the peculiar resistance of iron to the liquefying effect which mercury has on the other metals.) this picture of magnetism enables us to understand at once why it must occur together with heat at the place where an electric polarity has been cancelled by the presence of a conductor. we have seen that electricity is levity coupled in a peculiar way with gravity; it is polarized levity (accompanied by a corresponding polarization of gravity). an electric field, therefore, always has both qualities, those of levity and of gravity. we saw a symptom of this in electrical attraction and repulsion, so called; the attraction, we found, was due to negative density, the repulsion to positive density, imparted to space by the electrical fields present there. now we see that when, through the presence of a conductor, the electrical field round the two opposing poles vanishes, in its place two other fields, a thermal and a magnetic, appear. clearly, one of them represents the levity-part, the other the gravity-part, of the vanished electric field. the whole process reminds one of combustion through which the ponderable and imponderable parts, combined in the combustible substance, fall apart and appear on the one hand as heat, and on the other as oxidized substance ('ash'). yet, between these two manifestations of heat there is an essential qualitative difference. although, from our view-point, magnetism represents only one 'half of a phenomenon, the other half of which is heat, we must not forget that it is itself a bipolar force. thus, despite its apparent relation to gravity it does not represent, as gravity does, one pole of a primary polarity, with heat as the other pole. rather must it carry certain qualities of levity which, together with those of gravity, appear in a polarically opposite manner at its two poles. (details of this will be shown later when we come to investigate the individual qualities of the two poles of magnetism and electricity.) hence the heat that forms the counterpart to magnetism cannot be pure levity either. as the result of a certain coupling with gravity, it too has somehow remained polarically split. this can easily be seen by considering the following. unlike the levity-gravity polarity, in which one pole is peripheral and the other point-centred, both doles of the electrical polarity are point-centred; both are located in physical space, and thereby determine a definite direction within this space. it is this direction which remains a characteristic of both the magnetic and the thermal fields. the direction of the thermal field as much as that of the magnetic is determined by its having as its axis the conductor joining the poles of the antecedent electrical field. both fields supplement each other in that the thermal radiation forms the radii which belong to the circular magnetic lines-of-force surrounding the conductor. our picture of the process which is commonly called an electric current is now sufficiently complete to allow us to make a positive statement concerning the direction in which it takes place. let us once more sum up: in order that this process may occur, there must be present in an electrically excited part of space a body which does not suffer the particular polarization of space bound up with such a field. as a result, the electrical field disappears, and in place of it appear a thermal field and a magnetic field, both having as their axis the line connecting the two poles. each of them spreads out in a direction at right angles to this fine. obviously, therefore, it is in this radial direction that the transformation of the electrical into the thermo-magnetic condition of space must take place. this picture of the electro-thermo-magnetic happening, as regards its direction, is in complete accord with the result obtained (as indicated earlier) by the mathematical treatment of high-frequency phenomena. once more we see that quite primitive observations, when properly read, lead to findings for which scientific thought had to wait until they were forced on it by the progress of experimental technique - as even then science was left without a uniformly valid picture of the dynamic behaviour of electricity. further, we can now see that when we apply electricity to practical purposes, we are in fact seldom using electricity itself, but other forces (that is, other combinations of gravity and levity) which we make effective by making electricity disappear. the same is true of most of the methods of measuring electricity. as a rule, the force which sets the instrument in motion is not electricity but another force (magnetism, heat, etc.) which appears in the place of the vanishing electricity. thus the so-called intensity of an electric current is actually the intensity with which the electricity in question disappears! electricity serves us in our machines in the same way that food serves a living organism: it gets itself digested, and what matters is the resulting secondary product. just as alterations in the electrical condition of space give rise to the appearance of a magnetic field, any alteration of the magnetic state of space gives rise to the appearance of an electrical field. this process is called electromagnetic induction. with its discovery, the generation of electricity through friction and in the galvanic way was supplemented by a third way. by this means the practical use of electricity on a large scale became possible for the first time. if our picture of the two earlier processes of generating electricity is correct, then this third way must also fit into the picture, although in this case we have no longer to do with any direct atomization of physical matter. our picture of magnetism will indeed enable us to recognize in electromagnetic induction the same principle on which we found the two other processes to rest. magnetism is polarized gravity. hence it has the same characteristic of tending always to maintain an existent condition. in bodies subject to gravity, this tendency reveals itself as their inertia. it is the inertia inherent in magnetism which we employ when using it to generate electricity. the simplest example is when, by interrupting a 'primary current', we induce a 'secondary current' in a neighbouring circuit. by the sudden alteration of the electric condition on the primary side, the magnetic condition of the surrounding space is exposed to a sudden corresponding change. against this the magnetic field 'puts up' a resistance by calling forth, on the secondary side, an electrical process of such direction and strength that the entire magnetic condition remains first unaltered and then, instead of changing suddenly, undergoes a gradual transformation which ideally needs an infinite time for its accomplishment (asymptotic course of the exponential curve). this principle rules every process of electromagnetic induction, whatever the cause and direction of the change of the magnetic field. we know that electromagnetic induction takes place also when a conductor is moved across a magnetic field in such a way that, as the technical term goes, it 'cuts' the field's lines of force. whereas the process discussed above is employed in the transformer, this latter process is used in generation of electricity by dynamo. we have seen that a magnetic field imparts to the relevant part of space qualities of density which otherwise prevail only in the interior of solid masses. we remember further that the appearance of electricity, in the two other modes of generating it, is caused by the loosening of the coherence of the material substance. a similar loosening of the coherence of the magnetic field takes place when its field-lines are cut by the movement of the conductor across it. just as heat occurs when we move a solid object through a liquid, electricity occurs when we move a conductor across a magnetic field. in each case we interfere with an existing levity-gravity relationship. * having established thus far the picture of both electricity and magnetism which shows each as an outcome of certain levity-gravity interactions, we now ask how, in particular, negative and positive electricity on the one hand and north and south magnetism on the other are determined by these interactions. let us again begin with electricity. we remember that galvani was led to his observations by the results of walsh's study of the electric fishes. while galvani clung to the view that in his own experiments the source of the electrical force lay within the animal bodies, volta saw the fallacy of that. he then conceived the idea of imitating with purely inorganic substances the set-up which galvani had come upon by accident. the paradoxical result - as he himself noticed with surprise - was that his apparatus turned out to be a close replica of the peculiar organ with which the electric fishes are endowed by nature. we must now take a closer view of this organ. the electric organ of such a fish consists of many thousands of little piles, each made up of a very great number of plates of two different kinds, arranged in alternating layers. the two kinds differ in substance: in one case the plate is made from a material similar to that present in the nervous system of animals; in the other the resemblance is to a substance present in the muscular system, though only when the muscles are in a state of decay. in this way the two opposing systems of the animal body' seem to be brought here into direct contact, repeated many thousands of times. in the electric fishes, accordingly, sensation and will are brought into a peculiar interrelation. for the will-pole is related to its bodily foundation in a manner which otherwise obtains only between the nervous system and the psychological processes co-ordinated with it. these fishes then have the capacity to send out force-currents which produce in other animals and in man 'concussion of the limbs', or in extreme cases paralysis and even death. through describing the process in this way we realize that electricity appears here as metamorphosed animal will, which takes this peculiar form because part of the animal's volitional system is assimilated to its sensory system in an exceptional manner. it is known to-day that what nature reveals so strikingly in the case of the electric fish, is nothing but the manifestation of a principle at work in the bodies of all beings endowed with sensation and volition - in corporeal terms, with the duality of a nervous and a muscular system - and therefore at work also in the human body. observation has shown that the activities of these two systems in man and animal are accompanied by the occurrence of different electric potentials in different parts of the body. plate a, fig. iii, shows the distribution of the two polar electric forces in the human body. the bent lines in the diagram stand for curves of equal electric potential. the straight line between them is the neutral zone. as might be expected, this line runs through the heart. what seems less obvious is its slanting position. here the asymmetry, characteristic of the human body, comes to expression. if we remember that the nervous system represents the salt-pole, and the metabolic system the sulphur-pole, of the human organism, and if we take into account the relationship between levity and gravity at the two poles, we can see from the distribution of the two electricities that the coupling of levity and gravity at the negative pole of the electrical polarity is such that levity descends into gravity, while at the positive pole gravity rises into levity. negative electricity therefore must have somehow a 'spherical' character, and positive electricity a 'radial'. this finding is fully confirmed by electrical phenomena in the realm of nature most remote from man (though it was an effort to solve the enigma of man which led to the discovery of this realm). since crookes's observations of the behaviour of electricity in a vacuum it is common knowledge that only the negative kind of electricity occurs as a freely radiating force (though it retains some properties of inertia), whereas positive electricity seems to be much more closely bound to minute particles of ponderable matter. here again we find gravity-laden levity on the negative side, levity-raised gravity on the positive. the same language is spoken by the forms in which the luminous phenomena appear at the two poles of a crookes tube. fig. i on plate a represents the whole phenomenon as far as such a diagram allows. here we see on the positive side radial forms appear, on the negative side planar-spherical forms. as symbols of nature's script, these forms tell us that cosmic periphery and earthly centre stand in a polar relation to each other at the two ends of the tube. (our optical studies will later show that the colours which appear at the anode and cathode are also in complete accord with this.) at this point in our discussion it is possible to raise, without risk of confusing the issue, the question of the distribution of the two electric forces over the pairs of substances concerned in the generation of electricity both by friction and in the galvanic way. this distribution seems to contradict the picture to which the foregoing observations have led us, for in both instances the 'sulphurous' substances (resin in one, the nobler metals in the other) become bearers of negative electricity; while the 'saline' substances (glass and the corrosive metals) carry positive electricity. such a criss-crossing of the poles-surprising as it seems at first sight - is not new to us. we have met it in the distribution of function of the plant's organs of propagation, and we shall meet a further instance of it when studying the function of the human eye. future investigation will have to find the principle common to all instances in nature where such an interchange of the poles prevails. while the electric field arising round an electrified piece of matter does not allow any recognition of the absolute characteristics of the two opposing electrical forces, we do find them revealed by the distribution of electricity in the human body. something similar holds good for magnetism. only, to find the phenomena from which to read the absolute characteristics of the two sides of the magnetic polarity, we must not turn to the body of man but to that of the earth, one of whose characteristics it is to be as much the bearer of a magnetic field as of gravitational and levitational fields. there is significance in the fact that even to-day, when the tendency prevails to look for causes of natural phenomena not in the macrocosmic expanse, but in the microscopic confines of space, the two poles of magnetism are named after the magnetic poles of the earth. it indicates the degree to which man's feeling instinctively relates magnetism to the earth as a whole. in our newly developed terminology we may say that magnetism, as a polarity of the second order, represents a field of force both of whose poles are situated within finite space, and that in the macro-telluric mother-field this situation is such that the axis of this field coincides more or less with the axis of the earth's physical body. thus the magnetic polarization of the earth as a letter in nature's script bids us rank it alongside other phenomena which in their way are an expression of the earth's being polarized in the north-south direction. the austrian geographer, e. suess, in his great work the countenance of the earth, first drew attention to the fact that an observer approaching the earth from outer space would be struck by the onesided distribution and formation of the earth's continents. he would notice that most of the dry land is in the northern hemisphere, leaving the southern hemisphere covered mainly with water. in terms of the basic elementary qualities, this means that the earth is predominantly 'dry' in its northern half, and 'moist' in its southern. in this fact we have a symbol which tells us that the earth represents a polarity of the second order, with its 'salt'-pole in the north and its 'sulphur'-pole in the south. hence the magnetism called 'north' must be of saline and therefore spherical nature, corresponding to the negative pole in the realm of electricity, while 'south' magnetism must be of sulphurous - i.e. radial-nature, corresponding to positive electricity. moreover, this must hold good equally for the fields of magnetic force generated by naturally magnetic or artificially magnetized pieces of iron. for the circumstance that makes a piece of matter into a magnet is simply that part of the general magnetic field of the earth has been drawn into it. of especial interest in this respect is the well-known dependence of the direction of an electrically produced magnetic field on the position of the poles of the electric field. * the insight we have now gained into the nature of electricity has led us to the realization that with every act of setting electromagnetic energies in motion we interfere with the entire levity-gravity balance of our planet by turning part of the earth's coherent substance into cosmic 'dust'. remembering our picture of radioactivity, in which we recognized a sign of the earth's old age, we may say that whenever we generate electricity we speed up the earth's process of cosmic ageing. obviously this is tremendously enhanced by the creation of artificial radioactivity along the lines recently discovered, whereby it has now become possible to transmute chemical elements into one another, or even to cancel altogether their gravity-bound existence. to see things in this light is to realize that with our having become able to rouse electricity and magnetism from their dormant state and make them work for us, a gigantic responsibility has devolved upon mankind. it was man's fate to remain unaware of this fact during the first phase of the electrification of his civilization; to continue now in this state of unawareness would spell peril to the human race. the fact that modern science has long ceased to be a 'natural' science is something which has begun to dawn upon the modern scientific researcher himself. what has thus come to him as a question finds a definite answer in the picture of electricity we have been able to develop. it is again eddington who has drawn attention particularly to this question: see the chapter, 'discovery or manufacture?' in his philosophy of physical science. it will be appropriate at this point to recall his remarks, for they bear not only on the outcome of our own present discussion, but also, as the next chapter will show, on the further course of our studies. eddington starts by asking: 'when lord rutherford showed us the atomic nucleus, did he find it or did he make it?' whichever answer we give, eddington goes on to say, makes no difference to our admiration for rutherford himself. but it makes all the difference to our ideas on the structure of the physical universe. to make clear where the modern physicist stands in this respect, eddington uses a striking comparison. if a sculptor were to point in our presence to a raw block of marble saying that the form of a human head was lying hidden in the block, 'all our rational instinct would be roused against such an anthropomorphic speculation'. for it is inconceivable to us that nature should have placed such a form inside the block. roused by our objection, the artist proceeds to verify his theory experimentally - 'with quite rudimentary apparatus, too: merely using a chisel to separate the form for our inspection, he triumphantly proves his theory.' 'was it in this way', eddington asks, 'that rutherford rendered concrete the nucleus which his scientific imagination had created?' one thing is certain: 'in every physical laboratory we see ingeniously devised tools for executing the work of sculpture, according to the designs of the theoretical physicist. sometimes the tool slips and carves off an odd-shaped form which he had not expected. then we have a new experimental discovery,' to this analogy eddington adds the following even more drastic one: 'procrustes, you will remember,' he says, 'stretched or chopped down his guests to fit the bed he constructed. but perhaps you have not heard the rest of the story. he measured them up before they left the next morning, and wrote a learned paper on the uniformity of stature of travellers for the anthropological society of attica.' * besides yielding a definite answer to the question of how far the seemingly discovered facts of science are manufactured facts, our newly won insight into the nature of the electric and magnetic polarties throws light also on the possibility of so handling both that their application will lead no longer to a cancellation, but to a true continuation, of nature's own creative deeds. an example of this will appear in the next part of our studies, devoted to observations in the field of optics. note that the series starts on the left with graphite, i.e. with carbon. this substance appears here as a metal among metals, and indeed as the most 'noble' of all. electricity in this way reveals a secret of carbon well known to the mediaeval alchemist and still known in our day to people in the orient. there is even a gas which assumes magnetic properties when exposed to extreme cold-oxygen in the solid state. by watering plants with water that had been exposed to heat from different sources, e. pfeiffer has shown in the chemical laboratory of the goetheanum that heat engendered by means of electricity is 'dead' heat. it follows that it is not the same for human health whether the heat used for cooking or heating purposes is obtained by burning wood or coal, or by means of electricity. chapter xiv colours as 'deeds and sufferings of light' 'as for what i have done as a poet, i take no pride in it whatever. excellent poets have lived at the same time as myself; poets more excellent have lived before me, and others will come after me. but that in my century i am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colours - of that, i say, i am not a little proud, and here i have a consciousness of a superiority to many.' in these words spoken to his secretary, eckermann, in , a few years before his death, goethe gave his opinion on the significance of his scientific researches in the field of optical phenomena. he knew that the path he had opened up had led him to truths which belong to the original truths of mankind. he expressed this by remarking that his theory of colour was 'as old as the world'. if in this book we come somewhat late to a discussion of goethe's colour-theory, in spite of the part it played in his own scientific work, and in spite of its significance for the founding of a physics based on his method, the reasons are these. when goethe undertook his studies in this field he had not to reckon with the forms of thought which have become customary since the development of mechanistic and above all - to put it concisely - of 'electricalistic' thinking. before a hearing can be gained in our age for a physics of light and colour as conceived by goethe, certain hindrances must first be cleared away. so a picture on the one hand of matter, and on the other of electricity, such as is given when they are studied by goethean methods, had first to be built up; only then is the ground provided for an unprejudiced judgment of goethe's observations and the deductions that can be made from them to-day. as professor heisenberg, in his lecture quoted earlier (chapter ii), rightly remarks, goethe strove directly with newton only in the realms of colour-theory and optics. nevertheless his campaign was not merely against newton's opinions in this field. he was guided throughout by the conviction that the fundamental principles of the whole newtonian outlook were at stake. it was for this reason that his polemics against newton were so strongly expressed, although he had no fondness for such controversies. in looking back on that part of the farbenlehre which he had himself called 'polemical' in the title, he said to eckermann: 'i by no means disavow my severe dissections of the newtonian statements; it was necessary at the time and will also have its value hereafter; but at bottom all polemical action is repugnant to my nature, and i can take but little pleasure in it.' the reason why goethe chose optics as the field of conflict, and devoted to it more than twenty years of research and reflexion, amidst all the other labours of his rich life, lay certainly in his individual temperament - 'zum sehen geboren, zum schauen bestellt'. at the same time one must see here a definite guidance of humanity. since the hour had struck for mankind to take the first step towards overcoming the world-conception of the one-eyed, colour-blind onlooker, what step could have been more appropriate than this of goethe's, when he raised the eye's capacity for seeing colours to the rank of an instrument of scientific cognition? in point of fact, the essential difference between goethe's theory of colour and the theory which has prevailed in science (despite all modifications) since newton's day, lies in this: while the theory of newton and his successors was based on excluding the colour-seeing faculty of the eye, goethe founded his theory on the eye's experience of colour. * in view of the present scientific conception of the effect which a prismatic piece of a transparent medium has on light passing through it, goethe's objection to newton's interpretation and the conclusions drawn from it seems by no means as heretical as it did in goethe's own time and for a hundred years afterwards. for, as lord rayleigh and others have shown, the facts responsible for the coming into being of the spectral colours, when these are produced by a diffraction grating, invalidate newton's idea that the optical apparatus serves to reveal colours which are inherent in the original light. today it is known that these colours are an outcome of the interference of the apparatus (whether prism or grating) with the light. thus we find professor r. w. wood, in the opening chapter of his physical optics, after having described the historical significance of newton's conception of the relation between light and colour, saying: 'curiously enough, this discovery, which we are taking as marking the beginning of a definite knowledge about light, is one which we shall demolish in the last chapter of this book, for our present ideas regarding the action of the prism more nearly resemble the idea held previous to newton's classical experiments. we now believe that the prism actually manufactures the coloured light.' we find ourselves faced here with an instance of the problem, 'discovery or manufacture?' dealt with by eddington in the manner described in our previous chapter. this very instance is indeed used by eddington himself as a case in which the answer is definitely in favour of 'manufacture'. nevertheless, eddington complains, experts, in spite of knowing better, keep to the traditional way of speaking about the spectral colours as being originally contained in the light. 'such is the glamour of a historical experiment.' it is for the same reason that goethe's discovery continues to be unrecognized by the majority of scientists, who prefer, instead of examining the question for themselves, to join in the traditional assertion that 'goethe never understood newton'. * as goethe relates at the conclusion of the 'historical' part of his farbenlehre, he was drawn to study colour by his wish to gain some knowledge of the objective laws of aesthetics. he felt too close to poetry to be able to study it with sufficient detachment, so he turned to painting - an art with which he felt sufficiently familiar without being connected with it creatively - hoping that if he could discover the laws of one art they would prove applicable to others. his visit to italy, a land rich both in natural colour and in works of art, gave him a welcome opportunity to pursue this inquiry, but for a long time he made no headway. the paintings he saw suggested no inherent law in their arrangement of colours, nor could the painters he questioned tell him of one. the only qualitative distinction they seemed to recognize was between 'cold' and 'warm' colours. his own observations led him to a definite experience of the quality of the colour blue, for which he coined the phrase 'feebleness of blue' ('ohnmacht des blau'). in some way this colour seemed to him to be related to black. in order to rouse his artist friends and to stimulate their reflexions, he liked to indulge in paradoxes, as when he asserted that blue was not a colour at all. he found, however, as time went on, that in this way he came no nearer his goal. although the splendour of colour in the italian sky and the italian landscape made a powerful impression on goethe, he found not enough opportunity for systematic study to allow him to arrive at more than a dim surmise of some law underlying the occurrence of colour in nature. still, there was one thing he took home with him as a result of his labours. he had grown convinced that 'the first approach to colours as physical phenomena had to be sought from the side of their occurrence in nature, if one would gain an understanding of them in relation to art'. back at home, he strove to recollect the theory of newton as it was being taught in schools and universities - namely, that 'colours in their totality are contained in light'. hitherto he had had no occasion to doubt the correctness of this theory. like everyone else, he had heard it expounded in lectures as an incontestable result of empirical observation, though without this ever having been shown to him by way of experiment. he convinced himself by consulting a manual that his recollection was correct, but at the same time he found that the theory there set forth gave no help in answering his questions. so he decided to examine the phenomena for himself. for this purpose he borrowed a set of prisms from a friend living in near-by jena, the physicist, büttner. since, however, he had at that time no opportunity of arranging a dark chamber on newton's lines, where the necessary ray of light from a tiny hole in the window-covering was sent through a prism, he postponed the whole thing, until in the midst of all his many other interests and duties it was forgotten. in vain büttner pressed many times for the return of the prisms; at last he sent a mutual acquaintance with the injunction not to return without them. goethe then searched for the long-neglected apparatus and determined to take a rapid glance through one of the prisms before he gave them back. he recalled dimly his pleasure as a boy at the vision of the world given him through a bit of similarly shaped glass. 'i well remember that everything looked coloured, but in what manner i could no longer recollect. i was just then in a room completely white; remembering the newtonian theory, i expected, as i put the prism to my eye, to find the whole white wall coloured in different hues and to see the light reflected thence into the eye, split into as many coloured lights. 'but how astonished was i when the white wall seen through the prism remained white after as before. only where something dark came against it a more or less decided colour was shown, and at last the window-bars appeared most vividly coloured, while on the light-grey sky outside no trace of colouring was to be seen. it did not need any long consideration for me to recognize that a boundary or edge is necessary to call forth the colours, and i immediately said aloud, as though by instinct, that the newtonian doctrine is false.' for goethe, there could be no more thought of sending back the prisms, and he persuaded büttner to leave them with him for some time longer. goethe adds a short account of the progress of the experiments he now undertook as well as of his efforts to interest others in his discovery. he makes grateful reference to those who had brought him understanding, and who had been helpful to him through the exchange of thoughts. among these, apart from schiller, whom goethe especially mentions, we find a number of leading anatomists, chemists, writers and philosophers of his time, but not a single one of the physicists then active in teaching or research. the 'guild' took up an attitude of complete disapproval or indifference, and so have things remained till a hundred years after his death, as goethe himself prophesied. one of the first systematic pieces of work which goethe undertook in order to trace the cause of the newtonian error was to go through book i of newton's optics, sentence by sentence, recapitulate newton's experiments and rearrange them in the order which seemed to him essential. in so doing he gained an insight which was fundamental for all future work, and often proved very beneficial in the perfecting of his own methods. his examination of the newtonian procedure showed him that the whole mistake rested on the fact that 'a complicated phenomenon should have been taken as a basis, and the simpler explained from the complex'. nevertheless, it still needed 'much time and application in order to wander through all the labyrinths with which newton had been pleased to confuse his successors'. * it seems a small thing, and yet it is a great one, which goethe, as the above description shows, discovered almost by chance. this is shown by the conclusions to which he was led in the systematic prosecutions of his discovery. an account of them is given in his beiträge zur optik, published in , the year in which galvani came before the public with his observations in the sphere of electricity. goethe describes in this book the basic phenomena of the creation of the prismatic colours, with particulars of a number of experiments so arranged that the truth he had discovered, contrary to newton's view, comes to light through the very phenomena themselves. only much later, in the year , and after he had brought to a certain conclusion four years previously the researches which he had pursued most carefully the whole time, did he make public the actual masterpiece, entwurf einer farbenlehre. (an english translation of the didactic part appeared about ten years after goethe's death.) while leaving a more detailed description of the composition of goethe's entwurf for our next chapter, we shall here deal at once with some of the essential conclusions to which the reader is led in this book. as already mentioned, goethe's first inspection of the colour-phenomenon produced by the prism had shown him that the phenomenon depended on the presence of a boundary between light and darkness. newton's attempt to explain the spectrum out of light alone appeared to him, therefore, as an inadmissible setting aside of one of the two necessary conditions. colours, so goethe gleaned directly from the prismatic phenomenon, are caused by both light and its counterpart, darkness. hence, to arrive at an idea of the nature of colour, which was in accord with its actual appearance, he saw himself committed to an investigation of the extent to which the qualitative differences in our experience of colours rests upon their differing proportions of light and darkness. it is characteristic of goethe's whole mode of procedure that he at once changed the question, 'what is colour?' into the question, 'how does colour arise?' it was equally characteristic that he did not, as newton did, shut himself into a darkened room, so as to get hold of the colour-phenomenon by means of an artificially set-up apparatus. instead, he turned first of all to nature, to let her give him the answer to the questions she had raised. it was clear to goethe that to trace the law of the genesis of colour in nature by reading her phenomena, he must keep a look-out for occurrences of colours which satisfied the conditions of the ur-phänomen, as he had learned to know it. this meant that he must ask of nature where she let colours arise out of light and darkness in such a way that no other conditions contributed to the effect. he saw that such an effect was presented to his eye when he turned his gaze on the one hand to the blue sky, and on the other to the yellowish luminous sun. where we see the blue of the heavens, there, spread out before our eyes, is universal space, which as such is dark. why it does not appear dark by day as well as by night is because we see it through the sun-illumined atmosphere. the opposite role is played by the atmosphere when we look through it to the sun. in the first instance it acts as a lightening, in the second as a darkening, medium. accordingly, when the optical density of the air changes as a result of its varying content of moisture, the colour-phenomenon undergoes an opposite change in each of the two cases. whilst with increasing density of the air the blue of the sky brightens up and gradually passes over into white, the yellow of the sun gradually darkens and finally gives way to complete absence of light. the ur-phenomenon having once been discovered in the heavens, could then easily be found elsewhere in nature on a large or small scale-as, for instance, in the blue of distant hills when the air is sufficiently opaque, or in the colour of the colourless, slightly milky opal which looks a deep blue when one sees it against a dark background, and a reddish yellow when one holds it against the light. the same phenomenon may be produced artificially through the clouding of glass with suitable substances, as one finds in various glass handicraft objects. the aesthetic effect is due to the treated glass being so fashioned as to present continually changing angles to the light, when both colour-poles and all the intermediate phases appear simultaneously. it is also possible to produce the ur-phenomenon experimentally by placing a glass jug filled with water before a black background, illuminating the jug from the side, and gradually clouding the water by the admixture of suitable substances. whilst the brightness appearing in the direction of the light goes over from yellow and orange to an increasingly red shade, the darkness of the black background brightens to blue, which increases and passes over to a milky white. it had already become clear to goethe in italy that all colour-experience is based on a polarity, which he found expressed by painters as the contrast between 'cold' and 'warm' colours. now that the coming-into-being of the blue of the sky and of the yellow of the sun had shown themselves to him as two processes of opposite character, he recognized in them the objective reason why both colours are subjectively experienced by us as opposites. 'blue is illumined darkness - yellow is darkened light' - thus could he assert the urphenomenon, while he expressed the relation to light of colours in their totality by saying: 'colours are deeds and sufferings of light.' with this, goethe had taken the first decisive step towards his goal - the tracing of man's aesthetic experience to objective facts of nature. if we use the expressions of preceding chapters, we can say that goethe, in observing the coloured ur-phenomenon, had succeeded in finding how from the primary polarity, light-dark, the opposition of the yellow and blue colours arises as a secondary polarity. for such an interplay of light and darkness, the existence of the air was seen to be a necessary condition, representing in the one case a lightening, in the other, a darkening element. that it was able to play this double role arose from its being on the one hand pervious to light, while yet possessing a certain substantial density. for a medium of such a nature goethe coined the expression trübes medium. there seems to be no suitable word in english for rendering the term trübe in the sense in which goethe used it to denote the optical resistance of a more or less transparent medium. the following remarks of goethe's, reported by his secretary riemer, will give the reader a picture of what goethe meant by this term, clear enough to allow us to use the german word. goethe's explanation certainly shows how inadequate it is to translate trübe by 'cloudy' or 'semi-opaque' as commentators have done. 'light and dark have a common field, a space, a vacuum in which they are seen to appear. this space is the realm of the transparent. just as the different colours are related to light and dark as their creative causes, so is their corporeal part, their medium, trübe, related to the transparent. the first diminution of the transparent, i.e. the first slightest filling of space, the first disposition, as it were, to the corporeal, i.e. the non-transparent - this is trübe.' after goethe had once determined from the macrotelluric phenomenon that an interplay of light and darkness within trübe was necessary for the appearance of colour in space, he had no doubt that the prismatic colours, too, could be understood only through the coming together of all these three elements. it was now his task to examine in what way the prism, by its being trübe, brings light and darkness, or, as he also expressed it, light and shadow, into interplay, when they meet at a boundary. we must remember that on first looking through the prism goethe had immediately recognized that the appearance of colour is always dependent on the existence of a boundary between light and darkness - in other words, that it is a border phenomenon. what colours appear on such a border depends on the position of light and darkness in relation to the base of the prism. if the lighter part is nearer to the base, then blue and violet tints are seen at the border, and with the reverse position tints of yellow and red (plate b, fig. i). along this path of study goethe found no reason for regarding the spectrum-phenomenon as complete only when both kinds of border-phenomena appear simultaneously (let alone when - as a result of the smallness of the aperture through which the light meets the prism - the two edges lie so close that a continuous band of colour arises). hence we find goethe - unlike newton - treating the two ends of the spectrum as two separate phenomena. in this way, the spectrum phenomenon gave goethe confirmation that he had succeeded in expressing in a generally valid form the law of the origin of the blue and the yellow colours, as he had read it from the heavens. for in the spectrum, too, where the colour blue appears, there he saw darkness being lightened by a shifting of the image of the border between light and dark in the direction of darkness; where yellow appears, he saw light being darkened by a shifting of the image in the direction of light. (see the arrow in fig. i.) in the colours adjoining these - indigo and violet on the blue side, orange and red on the yellow side - goethe recognized 'heightened' modifications of blue and yellow. thus he had learnt from the macro-telluric realm that with decreasing density of the corporeal medium, the blue sky takes on ever deeper tones, while with increasing density of the medium, the yellow of the sunlight passes over into orange and finally red. prismatic phenomenon and macrotelluric phenomenon were seen to correspond in this direction, too. faithful to his question, 'how does colour arise?' goethe now proceeded to investigate under what conditions two borders, when placed opposite each other, provide a continuous band of colour - that is, a colour-band where, in place of the region of uncoloured light, green appears. this, he observed, came about if one brought one's eye, or the screen intercepting the light, to that distance from the prism where the steadily widening yellow-red and the blue-violet colour-cones merge (fig. ii). obviously, this distance can be altered by altering the distance between the two borders. in the case of an extremely narrow light-space, the blue and yellow edges will immediately overlap. yet the emergence of the green colour will always be due to a union of the blue and yellow colours which spread from the two edges. this convinced goethe that it is inadmissible to place the green in the spectrum in line with the other colours, as is customary in the explanation of the spectrum since newton's time. this insight into the relation of the central colour of the continuous spectrum to its other colours still further strengthened goethe's conviction that in the way man experiences nature in his soul, objective laws of nature come to expression. for just as we experience the colours on the blue side of the spectrum as cold colours, and those on the yellow side as warm colours, so does green give man the impression of a neutral colour, influencing us in neither direction. and just as the experience of the two polar colour-ranges is an expression of the objective natural law behind them, so too is the experience of green, the objective conditions of whose origin give it a neutral position between the two. with this it also became clear why the vegetative part of the plant organism, the region of leaf and stem formation, where the light of the sun enters into a living union with the density of earthly substance, must appear in a garment of green. * having in this way found the clue to the true genesis of the spectrum, goethe could not fail to notice that it called for another - a 'negative' spectrum, its polar opposite - to make the half into a whole. for he who has once learnt that light and darkness are two equally essential factors in the birth of colour, and that the opposing of two borders of darkness so as to enclose a light is a 'derived' (abgeleitet) experimental arrangement, is naturally free to alter the arrangement and to supplement it by reversing the order of the two borders, thus letting two lights enclose a darkness between them. if one exposes an arrangement like this to the action of the prism, whose position has remained unchanged, colours appear on each of the two edges, as before, but in reverse order (fig. iii). the spectral phenomenon now begins at one side with light blue and passes into indigo and violet, with uncoloured darkness in the centre. from this darkness it emerges through red and passes through orange to yellow at the other end. again, where the two interior colour-cones merge, there an additional colour appears. like green, it is of a neutral character, but at the same time its quality is opposite to that of green. in newtonian optics, which assumes colour to be derived from light only, this colour has naturally no existence. yet in an optics which has learnt to reckon with both darkness and light as generators of colour, the complete spectrum phenomenon includes this colour equally with green. for lack of an existing proper name for it, goethe termed it 'pure red' (since it was free from both the blue tinge of the mauve, and the yellow tinge of the red end of the ordinary spectrum), or 'peach-blossom' (pfirsichblüt), or 'purple' (as being nearest to the dye-stuff so called by the ancients after the mollusc from which it was obtained). it needs only a glance through the prism into the sunlit world to make one convinced of the natural appearing of this delicate and at the same time powerfully luminous colour. for a narrow dark object on a light field is a much commoner occurrence in nature than the enclosing by two broad objects of a narrow space of light, the condition necessary for the emergence of a continuous colour-band with green in the middle. in fact, the spectrum which science since the time of newton regards as the only one, appears much more rarely among natural conditions than does goethe's counter-spectrum. with the peach-blossom a fresh proof is supplied that what man experiences in his soul is in harmony with the objective facts of nature. as with green, we experience peach-blossom as a colour that leaves us in equilibrium. with peach-blossom, however, the equilibrium is of a different kind, owing to the fact that it arises from the union of the colour-poles, not at their original stage but in their 'heightened' form. and so green, the colour of the plant-world harmony given by nature, stands over against 'purple', the colour of the human being striving towards harmony. by virtue of this quality, purple served from antiquity for the vesture of those who have reached the highest stage of human development for their time. this characteristic of the middle colours of the two spectra was expressed by goethe when he called green 'real totality', and peach-blossom 'ideal totality'. from this standpoint goethe was able to smile at the newtonians. he could say that if they persisted in asserting that the colourless, so-called 'white' light is composed of the seven colours of the ordinary spectrum - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet - then they were in duty bound to maintain also that the colourless, 'black' darkness is composed of the seven colours of the inverted spectrum - yellow, orange, red, purple, violet, indigo, blue. despite the convincing force of this argument, the voice of the hans andersen child speaking through goethe failed to gain a hearing among the crowd of newtonian faithful. so has it been up to the present day - regardless of the fact that, as we have shown, modern physics has reached results which make a contradiction of the newtonian concept of the mutual relation of light and colour no longer appear so heretical as it was in goethe's time. * when we compare the way in which goethe, on the one hand, and the physical scientist, on the other, have arrived at the truth that what newton held to be 'discovery' was in actual fact 'manufacture', we find ourselves faced with another instance of a fact which we have encountered before in our study of electricity. it is the fact that a truth, which reveals itself to the spectator-scientist only as the result of a highly advanced experimental research, can be recognized through quite simple observation when this observation is carried out with the intention of letting the phenomena themselves speak for their 'theory'. furthermore, there is a corresponding difference in the effect the knowledge of such truth has on the human mind. in the field of electricity we saw that together with the scientist's recognition of the absolute qualities of the two polar forms of electricity a false semblance of reality was lent to the hypothesis of the atomic structure of matter. something similar has occurred in the field of optics. here, after having been forced to recognize the fallacy of newton's theory, the spectator's mind has been driven to form a concept of the nature of light which is further than ever from the truth. for what then remains of light is - in eddington's words - a 'quite irregular disturbance, with no tendency to periodicity', which means that to light is assigned the quality of an undefined chaos (in the negative sense of this word) sprung from pure chance. moreover, as eddington shows, the question whether the optical contrivance 'sorts out' from the chaotic light a particular periodicity, or whether it 'impresses' this on the light, becomes just 'a matter of expression'. so here, too, the modern investigator is driven to a resigned acknowledgment of the principle of indeterminacy. no such conclusions are forced upon the one who studies the spectrum phenomenon with the eyes of goethe. like the modern experimenter, he, too, is faced with the question 'discovery or manufacture?' and he, too, finds the answer to be 'manufacture'. but to him nature can disclose herself as the real manufacturer, showing him how she goes to work in bringing about the colours, because in following goethe he is careful to arrange his observations in such a way that they do not veil nature's deeds. 'to see is my dower, to look my employ.' words of the tower-watcher in faust, ii, , through which goethe echoes his own relation to the world. the last chapter but two in the edition of . for the drastic and as such very enlightening way in which eddington presents the problem, the reader is referred to eddington's own description. konfession des verfassers. colour as quality being no essential factor in the scientific explanation of the spectrum. contributions to optics. outline of a theory of colour. see rudolf steiner's edition of goethe's farbenlehre under paralipomena zur chromatik, no. . goethe's own representation of the phenomenon. (the diagram is simplified by omitting one colour on each side.) this is not to be confused with the meaning of 'purple' in modern english usage. this follows from the application of fourier's theorem, according to which every vibration of any kind is divisible into a sum of periodic partial vibrations, and therefore is regarded as compounded of these. chapter xv seeing as 'deed' - i having made ourselves so far acquainted with the fundamentals of goethe's approach to the outer phenomena of colour involved in the spectrum, we will leave this for a while to follow goethe along another no less essential line of inquiry. it leads us to the study of our own process of sight, by means of which we grow aware of the optical facts in outer space. * the importance which goethe himself saw in this aspect of the optical problem is shown by the place he gave it in the didactic part of his farbenlehre. the first three chapters, after the introduction, are called 'physiological colours', 'physical colours', and 'chemical colours'. in the first chapter, goethe summarizes a group of phenomena which science calls 'subjective' colours, since their origin is traced to events within the organ of sight. the next chapter deals with an actual physics of colour - that is, with the appearance of colours in external space as a result of the refraction, diffraction and polarization of light. the third chapter treats of material colours in relation to chemical and other influences. after two chapters which need not concern us here comes the sixth and last chapter, entitled 'physical-moral effect of colour' ('sinnlich-sittliche wirkung der farben'), which crowns the whole. there, for the first time in the history of modern science, a bridge is built between physics, aesthetics and ethics. we remember it was with this aim in view that goethe had embarked upon his search for the solution of the problem of colour. in this chapter the experiencing of the various colours and their interplay through the human soul is treated in many aspects, and goethe is able to show that what arises in man's consciousness as qualitative colour-experience is nothing but a direct 'becoming-inward' of what is manifested to the 'reader's' eye and mind as the objective nature of colours. so, in one realm of the sense-world, goethe succeeded in closing the abyss which divides existence and consciousness, so long as the latter is restricted to a mere onlooker-relationship towards the sense-world. if we ask what induced goethe to treat the physiological colours before the physical colours, thus deviating so radically from the order customary in science, we shall find the answer in a passage from the introduction to his entwurf. goethe, in giving his views on the connexion between light and the eye, says: 'the eye owes its existence to light. out of indifferent auxiliary animal organs the light calls forth an organ for itself, similar to its own nature; thus the eye is formed by the light, for the light, so that the inner light can meet the outer.' in a verse, which reproduces in poetic form a thought originally expressed by plotinus, goethe sums up his idea of the creative connexion between eye and light as follows: ' unless our eyes had something of the sun, how could we ever look upon the light? unless there lived within us god's own might, how could the godlike give us ecstasy? (trans. stawell-dickinson) by expressing himself in this way in the introduction to his farbenlehre, goethe makes it clear from the outset that when he speaks of 'light' as the source of colour-phenomena, he has in mind an idea of light very different from that held by modern physics. for in dealing with optics, physical science turns at once to phenomena of light found outside man - in fact to phenomena in that physical realm from which, as the lowest of the kingdoms of nature, the observations of natural science are bound to start. along this path one is driven, as we have seen, to conceive of light as a mere 'disturbance' in the universe, a kind of irregular chaos. in contrast to this, goethe sees that to gain an explanation of natural physical phenomena which will be in accord with nature, we must approach them on the path by which nature brings them into being. in the field of light this path is one which leads from light as creative agent to light as mere phenomenon. the highest form of manifestation of creative light most directly resembling its idea is within man. it is there that light creates for itself the organ through which, as manifest light, it eventually enters into human consciousness. to goethe it was therefore clear that a theory of light, which is to proceed in accord with nature, should begin with a study of the eye: its properties, its ways of acting when it brings us information of its deeds and sufferings in external nature. the eye with its affinity to light comes into being in the apparently dark space of the mother's womb. this points to the possession by the human organism of an 'inner' light which first forms the eye from within, in order that it may afterwards meet the light outside. it is this inner light that goethe makes the starting-point of his investigations, and it is for this reason that he treats physiological colours before physical colours. * of fundamental significance as regards method is the way in which goethe goes on from the passage quoted above to speak of the activity of the inner light: 'this immediate affinity between light and the eye will be denied by none; to consider them identical in substance is less easy to comprehend. it will be more intelligible to assert that a dormant light resides in the eye, and that this light can be excited by the slightest cause from within or from without. in darkness we can, by an effort of imagination, call up the brightest images; in dreams, objects appear to us as in broad daylight; if we are awake, the slightest external action of light is perceptible, and if the organ suffers a mechanical impact light and colours spring forth.' what goethe does here is nothing less than to follow the development of sight to where it has its true origin. let us remember that a general source of illusion in the modern scientific picture of the world lies in the fact that the onlooker-consciousness accepts itself as a self-contained ready-made entity, instead of tracing itself genetically to the states of consciousness from which it has developed in the course of evolution. in reality, the consciousness kindled by outer sense-perception was preceded by a dreaming consciousness, and this by a sleeping consciousness, both for the individual and for humanity as a whole. so, too, outer vision by means of the physical apparatus of the eye was preceded by an inner vision. in dreams we still experience this inner vision; we use it in the activity of our picture-forming imagination; and it plays continuously upon the process of external sight. why we fail to notice this when using our eye in the ordinary way, is because of that dazzling process mentioned earlier in this book. goethe's constant endeavour was not to become the victim of this blindness - that is, not to be led by day-time experience to forget the night-side of human life. the passage quoted from the introduction to his farbenlehre shows how, in all that he strove for, he kept this goal in view. how inevitably a way of thinking that seeks an intuitive understanding of nature is led to views like those of goethe is shown by the following quotations from reid and ruskin, expressing their view of the relationship between the eye, or the act of seeing, and external optical phenomena. in his inquiry, at the beginning of his review of visual perceptions, reid says: 'the structure of the eye, and of all its appurtenances, the admirable contrivances of nature for performing all its various external and internal motions and the variety in the eyes of different animals, suited to their several natures and ways of life, clearly demonstrate this organ to be a masterpiece of nature's work. and he must be very ignorant of what hath been discovered about it, or have a very strange cast of understanding, who can seriously doubt, whether or not the rays of light and the eye were made for one another with consummate wisdom, and perfect skill in optics.'' the following passage from ruskin's ethics of the dust (lecture x) brings out his criticism of the scientific way of treating of optical phenomena: 'with regard to the most interesting of all their [the philosophers'] modes of force-light; they never consider how far the existence of it depends on the putting of certain vitreous and nervous substances into the formal arrangement which we call an eye. the german philosophers began the attack, long ago, on the other side, by telling us there was no such thing as light at all, unless we choose to see it. now, german and english, both, have reversed their engines, and insist that light would be exactly the same light that it is, though nobody could ever see it. the fact being that the force must be there, and the eye there, and 'light' means the effect of the one on the other - and perhaps, also - (plato saw farther into that mystery than anyone has since, that i know of) - on something a little way within the eyes.' remarks like these, and the further quotation given below, make it seem particularly tragic that ruskin apparently had no knowledge of goethe's farbenlehre. this is the more remarkable in view of the significance which turner, with whom ruskin stood in such close connexion, ascribed to it from the standpoint of the artist. for the way in which ruskin in his modern painters speaks of the effect of the modern scientific concept of colours upon the ethical-religious feeling of man, shows that he deplores the lack of just what goethe had long since achieved in his farbenlehre where, starting with purely physical observations, he had been able to develop from them a 'physical-moral' theory of colour. ruskin's alertness to the effect on ethical life of a scientific world-picture empty of all qualitative values led him to write: 'it is in raising us from the first state of inactive reverie to the second of useful thought, that scientific pursuits are to be chiefly praised. but in restraining us at this second stage, and checking the impulses towards higher contemplation, they are to be feared or blamed. they may in certain minds be consistent with such contemplation, but only by an effort; in their nature they are always adverse to it, having a tendency to chill and subdue the feelings, and to resolve all things into atoms and numbers. for most men, an ignorant enjoyment is better than an informed one, it is better to conceive the sky as a blue dome than a dark cavity, and the cloud as a golden throne than a sleety mist. i much question whether anyone who knows optics, however religious he may be, can feel in equal degree the pleasure and reverence an unlettered peasant may feel at the sight of a rainbow.' what ruskin did not guess was that the rudiments of the 'moral theory of light' for which he craved, as this passage indicates, had been established by goethe long before. * in the section of his farbenlehre dealing with 'physiological colours', goethe devotes by far the most space to the so-called 'afterimages' which appear in the eye as the result of stimulation by external light, and persist for some little time. to create such an afterimage in a simple way, one need only gaze at a brightly lit window and then at a faintly lit wall of the room. the picture of the window appears there, but with the light-values reversed: the dark cross-bar appears as light, and the bright panes as dark. in describing this phenomenon goethe first gives the usual explanation, that the part of the retina which was exposed to the light from the window-panes gets tired, and is therefore blunted for further impressions, whereas the part on which the image of the dark frame fell is rested, and so is more sensitive to the uniform impression of the wall. goethe, however, at once adds that although this explanation may seem adequate for this special instance, there are other phenomena which can be accounted for only if they are held to derive from a 'higher source'. goethe means experiences with coloured after-images. this will be confirmed by our own discussion of the subject. what we first need, however, is a closer insight into the physiological process in the eye which causes the after-images as such. wherever goethe speaks of a simple activity of the retina, we are in fact concerned with a co-operation of the retina with other parts of our organ of sight. in order to make this clear, let us consider how the eye adapts itself to varying conditions of light and darkness. it is well known that if the eye has become adjusted to darkness it is dazzled if suddenly exposed to light, even though the light be of no more than quite ordinary brightness. here we enter a border region where the seeing process begins to pass over into a pathological condition. a 'secret' of the effect of light on the eye is here revealed which remains hidden in ordinary vision, for normally the different forces working together in the eye hold each other in balance, so that none is able to manifest separately. this equilibrium is disturbed, however, when we suddenly expose the eye to light while it is adapted to darkness. the light then acts on the eye in its usual way, but without the immediate counter-action which normally restores the balance. under these conditions we notice that the sudden dazzling has a painful influence on the eye - that is, an influence in some way destructive. this will not seem surprising if we remember that when light strikes on the background of the eye, consciousness is quickened, and this, as we know, presupposes a breaking down of substance in some part of the nervous system. such a process does in fact occur in the retina, the nerve-part of the eye, when external light falls upon it. if the eye were solely a structure of nerves, it would be so far destroyed by the impact of light that it could not be restored even by sleep, as are the more inward parts of the nervous system. but the eye receives also a flow of blood, and we know that throughout the threefold human organism the blood supplies the nervous system with building-up forces, polarically opposite to the destructive ones. in sleep, as we have already seen, the interruption of consciousness allows the blood to inundate the nervous system, as it were, with its healing, building-up activity. it is not necessary, however, for the whole of the body to pass into a condition of sleep before this activity can occur. it functions to some extent also in the waking state, especially in those parts of the organism which, like the eye, serve in the highest degree the unfolding of consciousness. having established this, we have a basis for an understanding of the complete process of vision. we see that it is by no means solely the nerve part of the eye which is responsible for vision, as the spectator-physiology was bound to imagine. the very fact that the place where the optic nerve enters the eye is blind indicates that the function of mediating sight cannot be ascribed to the nerve alone. what we call 'seeing' is far more the result of an interplay between the retina carrying the nerves, and the choroid carrying the blood-vessels. in this interplay the nerves are the passive, receptive organ for the inworking of external light, while the blood-activity comes to meet the nerve-process with a precisely correlated action. in this action we find what goethe called the 'inner light'. the process involved in adaptation now becomes comprehensible. the cause of the dazzling effect of light of normal intensity on an eye adapted to the dark, is that in such an eye the blood is in a state of rest, and this prevents it from exercising quickly enough the necessary counter-action to the influence of the light. a corresponding effect occurs when one suddenly exposes to darkness the eye adapted to light. one can easily observe what goes on then, if, after looking for a time at an undifferentiated light surface such as the evenly luminous sky, one covers the opened eyes with the hollowed hands. it will then be found that the space before the eyes is filled by a sort of white light, and by paying close attention one recognizes that it streams from the eyes out into the hollowed space. it may even be several minutes before the field of vision really appears black, that is, before the activity of the inner light in the choroid has so far died away that equilibrium prevails between the non-stimulated nerves and the non-stimulated blood. with this insight into the twofold nature of the process of vision we are now able to describe more fully the negative after-image. although in this case, as goethe himself remarked, the ordinary explanation seems to suffice, yet in view of our later studies it may be well to bring forward here this wider conception. on the basis of our present findings it is no longer enough to trace the appearing of the after-image solely to a differential fatigue in the retina. the fact is that as long as the eye is turned to the bright window-pane a more intensive blood-activity occurs in the portions of the eye's background met by the light than in those where the dark window-bar throws its shadow on the retina. if the eye so influenced is then directed to the faintly illumined wall of the room, the difference in the activity of the blood persists for some time. hence in the parts of the eye adapted to darkness we experience the faint brightness as strongly luminous, even dazzling, whereas in the parts more adapted to light we feel the same degree of brightness to be dark. that the action of the inner light is responsible for the differences becomes clear if, while the negative after-image is still visible, we darken the eye with the hollowed hands. then at once in the dark field of vision the positive facsimile of the window appears, woven by the activity of the blood which reproduces the outer reality. having traced the colourless after-image to 'higher sources' - that is, to the action of the blood - let us now examine coloured afterimages. we need first to become conscious of the colour-creating light-activity which resides in the blood. for this purpose we expose the eyes for a moment to an intense light, and then darken them for a sufficient time. nothing in external nature resembles in beauty and radiance the play of colour which then arises, unless it be the colour phenomenon of the rainbow under exceptionally favourable circumstances. the physiological process which comes to consciousness in this way as an experience of vision is exactly the same as the process which gives us experiences of vision in dreams. there is indeed evidence that when one awakens in a brightly lit room out of vivid dreaming, one feels less dazzled than on waking from dreamless sleep. this indicates that in dream vision the blood in the eye is active, just as it is in waking vision. the only difference is that in waking consciousness the stimulus reaches the blood from outside, through the eye, whereas in dreams it comes from causes within the organism. the nature of these causes does not concern us here; it will be dealt with later. for the moment it suffices to establish the fact that our organism is supplied with a definite activity of forces which we experience as the appearance of certain images of vision, no matter from which side the stimulus comes. all vision, physiologically considered, is of the nature of dream vision; that is to say, we owe our day-waking sight to the fact that we are able to encounter the pictures of the outer world, brought to us by the light, with a dreaming of the corresponding after-images. just as the simple light-dark after-image shows a reversal of light-values in relation to the external picture, so in the coloured afterimages there is a quite definite and opposite relationship of their colours to those of the original picture. thus, if the eyes are exposed for some time to an impression of the colour red, and then directed to a neutral surface, not too brightly illuminated, one sees it covered with a glimmering green. in this way there is a reciprocal correspondence between the colour-pairs red-green, yellow-violet, blue-orange. to whichever of these six colours one exposes the eye, an after-image always appears of its contrast colour, forming with it a pair of opposites. we must here briefly recall how this phenomenon is generally explained on newtonian lines. the starting-point is the assumption that the eye becomes fatigued by gazing at the colour and gradually becomes insensitive to it. according to newton's theory, if an eye thus affected looks at a white surface, the sum of all the colours comes from there to meet it, while the eye has a reduced sensitivity to the particular colour it has been gazing at. and so among the totality of colours constituting the 'white' light, this one is more or less non-existent for the eye. the remaining colours are then believed to cause the contrasting colour-impression. if we apply the common sense of the hans andersen child to this, we see where it actually leads. for it says no less than this: as long as the eye is in a normal condition, it tells us a lie about the world, for it makes white light seem something that in reality it is not. for the truth to become apparent, the natural function of the eye must be reduced by fatigue. to believe that a body, functioning in this way, is the creation of god, and at the same time to look on this god as a being of absolute moral perfection, would seem a complete contradiction to the hans andersen child. in this contradiction and others of the same kind to which nowadays every child is exposed repeatedly and willy-nilly in school lessons and so on - we must seek the true cause of the moral uncertainty so characteristic of young people today. it was because ruskin felt this that he called for a 'moral' theory of light. since goethe did not judge man from artificially devised experiments, but the latter from man, quite simple reflexions led him to the following view of the presence of the contrasting colour in the coloured after-images. nature outside man had taught him that life on all levels takes it course in a perpetual interplay of opposites, manifested externally in an interplay of diastole and systole comparable to the process of breathing. he, therefore, traced the interchange of light-values in colourless after-images to a 'silent resistance which every vital principle is forced to exhibit when some definite condition is presented to it. thus, inhalation presupposes exhalation; thus every systole, its diastole. when darkness is presented to the eye, the eye demands brightness, and vice versa: it reveals its vital energy, its fitness to grasp the object, precisely by bringing forth out of itself something contrary to the object.' consequently he summarizes his reflexions on coloured afterimages and their reversals of colour in these words: 'the eye demands actual completeness and closes the colour-circle in itself.' how true this is, the law connecting the corresponding colours shows, as may be seen in the following diagram. here, red, yellow and blue as three primary colours confront the three remaining colours, green, violet and orange in such a way that each of the latter represents a mixture of the two other primary colours. (fig. .) colour and contrast-colour are actually so related that to whatever colour the eye is exposed it produces a counter-colour so as to have the sum-total of all the three primary colours in itself. and so, in consequence of the interplay of outer and inner light in the eye, there is always present in it the totality of all the colours. it follows that the appearance of the contrast-colour in the field of vision is not, as the newtonian theory asserts, the result of fatigue, but of an intensified activity of the eye, which continues even after the colour impression which gave rise to it has ceased. what is seen on the neutral surface (it will be shown later why we studiously avoid speaking of 'white light') is no outwardly existing colour at all. it is the activity of the eye itself, working in a dreamlike way from its blood-vessel system, and coming to our consciousness by this means. here again, just as in the simple opposition of light and dark, the perception of coloured after-images is connected with a breaking-down process in the nerve region of the eye, and a corresponding building-up activity coming from the blood. only in this case the eye is not affected by simple light, but by light of a definite colouring. the specific destructive process caused by this light is answered with a specific building-up process by the blood. under certain conditions we can become dreamily aware of this process which normally does not enter our consciousness. in such a case we see the contrasting colour as coloured after-image. only by representing the process in this way do we do justice to a fact which completely eludes the onlooker-consciousness - namely, that the eye produces the contrasting colour even while it is still exposed to the influence of the outer colour. since this is so, all colours appearing to us in ordinary vision are already tinged by the subdued light of the opposite colour, produced by the eye itself. one can easily convince oneself of this through the following experiment. instead of directing the eye, after it has been exposed to a certain colour, to a neutral surface, as previously, gaze at the appropriate contrasting colour. (the first and second coloured surfaces should be so arranged that the former is considerably smaller than the latter.) then, in the middle of the second surface (and in a field about the size of the first), its own colour appears, with a strikingly heightened intensity. here we find the eye producing, as usual, a contrast-colour from out of itself, as an after-image, even while its gaze is fixed on the same colour in the outer world. the heightened brilliance within the given field is due to the addition of the after-image colour to the external colour. the reader may wonder why this phenomenon is not immediately adduced as a decisive proof of the fallacy of the whole newtonian theory of the relation of 'white' light to the various colours. although it does in fact offer such a proof, we have good reason for not making this use of it here. throughout this book it is never our intention to enter into a contest of explanations, or to defeat one explanation by another. how little this would help will be obvious if we realize that research was certainly not ignorant of the fact that the opposite colour arises even when the eye is not turned to a white surface. in spite of this, science did not feel its concept of white light as the sum of all the colours to be an error, since it has succeeded in 'explaining' this phenomenon too, and fitting it into the prevailing theory. to do so is in thorough accord with spectator-thinking. our own concern, however, as in all earlier cases, is to replace this thinking with all its 'proofs' and 'explanations' by learning to read in the phenomena themselves. for no other purpose than this the following facts also are now brought forward. * besides rudolf steiner's fundamental insight into the spiritual-physical nature of the growing human being, through which he laid the basis of a true art of education, he gave advice on many practical points. for example, he indicated how by the choice of a suitable colour environment one can bring a harmonizing influence to bear on extremes of temperament in little children. to-day it is a matter of practical experience that excitable children are quietened if they are surrounded with red or red-yellow colours, or wear clothes of these colours, whereas inactive, lethargic children are roused to inner movement if they are exposed to the influence of blue or blue-green colours. this psychological reaction of children to colour is not surprising if one knows the role played by the blood in the process of seeing, and how differently the soul-life of man is connected with the blood-nerve polarity of his organism in childhood and in later life. what we have described as the polar interplay of blood and nerve in the act of sight is not confined to the narrow field of the eye. just as the nerve processes arising in the retina are continued to the optic centre in the cerebrum, so must we look for the origin of the corresponding blood process not in the choroid itself, but in the lower regions of the organism. wherever, therefore, the colour red influences the whole nerve system, the blood system as a whole answers with an activity of the metabolism corresponding to the contrasting colour, green. similarly it reacts as a whole to a blue-violet affecting the nerve system, this time with a production corresponding to yellow-orange. the reason why in later years we notice this so little lies in a fact we have repeatedly encountered. the consciousness of the grown man to-day, through its one-sided attachment to the death-processes in the nerve region, pays no attention to its connexion with the life-processes centred in the blood system. in this respect the condition of the little child is quite different. just as the child is more asleep in its nerve system than the grown-up person, it is more awake in its blood system. hence in all sense-perceptions a child is not so much aware of how the world works on its nerve system as how its blood system responds. and so a child in a red environment feels quietened because it experiences, though dimly, how its whole blood system is stimulated to the green production; bluish colours enliven it because it feels its blood answer with a production of light yellowish tones. from the latter phenomena we see once more the significance of goethe's arrangement of his farbenlehre. for we are now able to realize that to turn one's attention to the deeds and sufferings of the inner light means nothing less than to bring to consciousness the processes of vision which in childhood, though in a dreamlike way, determine the soul's experience of seeing. through placing his examination of the physiological colours at the beginning of his farbenlehre, goethe actually took the path in scientific research to which thomas reid pointed in philosophy. by adapting reid's words we can say that goethe, in his farbenlehre, proclaims as a basic principle of a true optics: that we must become again as little children if we would reach a philosophy of light and colours. wär' nicht das auge sonnenhaft, wie könnten wir das licht erblicken? lebt' nicht in uns des gottes eigne kraft, wie könnt' uns göttliches entzucken! inquiry, vi, . the italics are reid's. presumably kant and his school. schopenhauer was definitely of this opinion. as regards the principle underlying the line of consideration followed here, see the remark made in chapter v in connexion with goethe's study of the 'proliferated rose' (p. f.). chapter xvi seeing as 'deed' - ii the observation of our own visual process, which we began in the last chapter, will serve now to free us from a series of illusory concepts which have been connected by the onlooker-consciousness with the phenomena brought about by light. there is first the general assumption that light as such is visible. in order to realize that light is itself an invisible agent, we need only consider a few self-evident facts - for instance, that for visibility to arise light must always encounter some material resistance in space. this is, in fact, an encounter between light, typifying levity, and the density of the material world, typifying gravity. accordingly, wherever visible colours appear we have always to do with light meeting its opposite. optics, therefore, as a science of the physically perceptible is never concerned with light alone, but always with light and its opposite together. this is actually referred to in ruskin's statement, quoted in the last chapter, where he speaks of the need of the 'force' and of the intercepting bodily organ before a science of optics can come into existence. ruskin's 'light', however, is what we have learnt with goethe to call 'colour', whereas that for which we reserve the term 'light' is called by him simply 'force'. all this shows how illusory it is to speak of 'white' light as synonymous with simple light, in distinction to 'coloured' light. and yet this has been customary with scientists from the time of newton until today, not excluding newton's critic, eddington. in fact, white exists visibly for the eye as part of the manifested world, and is therefore properly characterized as a colour. this is, therefore, how goethe spoke of it. we shall see presently the special position of white (and likewise of black), as a colour among colours. what matters first of all is to realize that white must be strictly differentiated from light as such, for the function of light is to make visible the material world without itself being visible. to say that light is invisible, however, does not mean that it is wholly imperceptible. it is difficult to bring the perception of light into consciousness, for naturally our attention, when we look out into light-filled space, is claimed by the objects of the illuminated world, in all their manifold colours and forms. nevertheless the effect of pure light on our consciousness can be observed during a railway journey, for instance, when we leave a tunnel that has been long enough to bring about a complete adaptation of the eyes to the prevailing darkness. then, in the first moments of the lightening of the field of vision, and before any separate objects catch the attention, we can notice how the light itself exercises a distinctly expanding influence on our consciousness. we feel how the light calls on the consciousness to participate, as it were, in the world outside the body. it is possible also to perceive directly the opposite of light. this is easier than the direct perception of light, for in the dark one is not distracted by the sight of surrounding objects. one need only pay attention to the fact that, after a complete adapting of the eyes to the dark, one still retains a distinct experience of the extension of the field of vision of both eyes. we find here, just as in the case of light, that our will is engaged within the eye in a definite way; a systolic effect proceeds from dark, a diastolic effect from light. we have a distinct perception of both, but not of anything 'visible' in the ordinary sense. with regard to our visual experience of white and black, it is quite different. we are concerned here with definite conditions of corporeal surfaces, just as with other colours, although the conditions conveying the impressions of white or black are of a special character. a closer inspection of these conditions reveals a property of our act of seeing which has completely escaped scientific observation, but which is of fundamental importance for the understanding of optical phenomena dynamically. it is well known that a corporeal surface, which we experience as white, has the characteristic of throwing back almost all the light that strikes it, whereas light is more or less completely absorbed by a surface which we experience as black. such extreme forms of interplay between light and a corporeal surface, however, do not only occur when the light has no particular colour, but also when a coloured surface is struck by light of the same or opposite colour. in the first instance complete reflexion takes place; in the second, complete absorption. and both these effects are registered by the eye in precisely the same manner as those mentioned before. for example, a red surface in red light looks simply white; a green surface in red light looks black. the usual interpretation of this phenomenon, namely, that it consists in a subjective 'contrast' impression of the eye - a red surface in red light looking brighter, a green surface darker, than its surroundings, and thereby causing the illusion of white or black - is a typical onlooker-interpretation against which there stands the evidence of unprejudiced observation. the reality of the 'white' and the 'black' seen in such cases is so striking that a person who has not seen the colours of the objects in ordinary light can hardly be persuaded to believe that they are not 'really' white or black. the fact is that the white and the black that are seen under these conditions are just as real as 'ordinary' white and black. when in either instance the eye registers 'white' it registers exactly the same event, namely, the total reflexion of the light by the surface struck by it. again, when the eye registers 'black' in both cases it registers an identical process, namely, total absorption of the light. seen thus, the phenomenon informs us of the significant fact that our eye is not at all concerned with the colour of the light that enters its own cavity, but rather with what happens between the light and the surface on which the light falls. in other words, the phenomenon shows that our process of seeing is not confined to the bodily organ of the eye, but extends into outer space to the point where we experience the visible object to be. this picture of the visual process, to which we have been led here by simple optical observation, was reached by thomas reid through his own experience of how, in the act of perceiving the world, man is linked intuitively with it. we remember that he intended in his philosophy to carry ad absurdum the hypothesis that 'the images of the external objects are conveyed by the organs of sense to the brain and are there perceived by the mind'. common sense makes reid speak as follows: 'if any man will shew how the mind may perceive images of the brain, i will undertake to shew how it may perceive the most distant objects; for if we give eyes to the mind, to perceive what is transacted at home in its dark chamber, why may we not make the eyes a little longer-sighted? and then we shall have no occasion for that unphilosophical fiction of images in the brain.' (inq., vi, .) reid proceeds to show this by pointing out, first, that we must only use the idea of 'image' for truly visual perceptions; secondly, that the sole place of this image is the background of the eye, and not any part of the nervous system lying beyond; thirdly, that even this retina-image, as such, does not come to our consciousness, but serves only to direct the consciousness to the cause of the image, namely, the external object itself. in what follows we shall deal with an observation which will show how right reid was in this respect. those familiar with this observation (well known indeed to those living in the hilly and mountainous districts both here and on the continent) know that when distant features of the landscape, in an otherwise clear and sunlit atmosphere, suddenly seem almost near enough to touch, rainy weather is approaching. likewise a conspicuous increase in distance, while the sky is still overcast, foreshadows fine weather. this effect (the customary 'explanation' of which is, as usual, of no avail to us and so need not concern us here) ranks with phenomena described in optics under the name of 'apparent optical depth', a subject we shall discuss more fully in the next chapter. it suffices here to state that it is the higher degree of humidity which, by lending the atmosphere greater optical density (without changing its clarity), makes distant objects seem to be closer to the eye, and vice versa. (if we could substitute for the air a much lighter gas - say, hydrogen - then the things we see through it would look farther off than they ever do in our atmosphere.) observations such as these show us that (a) when external light strikes the retina of our eye, our inner light is stimulated to move out of the eye towards it; (b) in pressing outward, this inner light meets with a certain resistance, and the extent of this determines at what distance from the eye our visual ray comes to rest as the result of a kind of exhaustion. just as the outer light reaches an inner boundary at our retina, so does the inner light meet with an outer boundary, set by the optical density of the medium spread out before the eye, outer and inner light interpenetrate each other along the whole tract between these two boundaries, but normally we are not conscious of this process. we first become conscious of it where our active gaze - that is, the inner light sent forth through the eye - reaches the limit of its activity. at that point we become aware of the object of our gaze. so here we find confirmed a fact noted earlier, that consciousness - at least at its present state of evolution - arises where for some reason or other our volition conies to rest. * the foregoing observations have served to awaken us in a preliminary way to the fact that an essential part of our act of seeing takes place outside our bodily organ of vision and that our visual experience is determined by what happens out there between our gaze and the medium it has to penetrate. our next task will be to find out how this part of our visual activity is affected by the properties of the different colours. we shall thereby gain a further insight into the nature of the polarity underlying all colour-phenomena, and this again will enable us to move a step further towards becoming conscious of what happens in our act of seeing. we shall start by observing what happens to the two sides of the colour-scale when the optical medium assumes various degrees of density. for the sky to appear blue by day a certain purity of the atmosphere is needed. the more veiled the atmosphere becomes the more the blue of the sky turns towards white; the purer and rarer the atmosphere, the deeper the blue, gradually approaching to black. to mountain climbers and those who fly at great heights it is a familiar experience to see the sky assume a deep indigo hue. there can be no doubt that at still higher altitudes the colour of the sky passes over into violet and ultimately into pure black. thus in the case of blue the field of vision owes its darkening to a decrease in the resistance by which our visual ray is met in the optical medium. it is precisely the opposite with yellow. for here, as the density of the medium increases, the colour-effect grows darker by yellow darkening first to orange and then to red, until finally it passes over into complete darkness. this shows that our visual ray is subject to entirely different dynamic effects at the two poles of the colour-scale. at the blue pole, the lightness-effect springs from the resistant medium through which we gaze, a medium under the influence of gravity, while the darkness is provided by the anti-gravity quality of cosmic space, which as a 'negative' resistance exercises a suction on the eye's inner light. at the yellow pole it is just the reverse. here, the resistant medium brings about a darkening of our field of vision, while the lightness-effect springs from a direct meeting of the eye with light, and so with the suctional effect of negative density. our pursuit of the dynamic causes underlying our apperception of the two poles of the colour-scale has led us to a point where it becomes necessary to introduce certain new terms to enable us to go beyond goethe's general distinction between finsternis (darkness) and licht (light). following goethe, we have so far used these two terms for what appears both in blue and yellow as the respective light and dark ingredients. this distinction cannot satisfy us any more. for through our last observations it has become clear that the finsternis in blue and the licht in yellow are opposites only in appearance, because they are both caused by levity, and similarly that the lightening effect in blue and the darkening effect in yellow are both effected by gravity. therefore, to distinguish between what appertains to the primary polarity, levity-gravity, on the one hand, and their visible effects in the secondary polarity of the colours, on the other, we shall henceforth reserve the term darkness and, with it, lightness for instances where the perceptible components of the respective colours are concerned, while speaking of dark and light where reference is made to the generating primary polarity. * if we are justified in thus tracing the colour-polarity to a polarically ordered interplay between levity and gravity, we may then pursue the following line of thought. we know from earlier considerations that wherever such an interplay between the poles of the primary polarity takes place, we have to do, in geometric terms, with the polarity of sphere and radius. we may therefore conclude that the same characteristics will apply to the way in which the blue of the sky and the yellow of the sunlight are encountered spatially. now we need only observe how the blue heavens arch over us spherically, on the one hand, and how the yellow brightness of the sun penetrates the air ray-wise, on the other, in order to realize that this really is so. having thus established the connexion of the two poles of the colour-scale with the spherical and radial structure of space, we are now able to express the goethean ur-phenomenon in a more dynamic way as follows: on the one hand, we see the blue of the heavens emerging when levity is drawn down by gravity from its primal invisibility into visible, spherical manifestation. in the yellow of the sunlight, on the other hand, we see gravity, under the influence of the sun's levity, gleaming up radially into visibility. the aspect of the two colour-poles which thus arises before us prompts us to replace goethe's 'lightened dark' by earthward-dawning-levity, and his 'darkened light' by heavenward-raying-gravity. we have now to show that this picture of the dynamic relationship which underlies the appearance of the colour-polarity in the sky is valid also for other cases which are instances of the ur-phenomenon of the generation of colour in goethe's sense, but seem not to lend themselves to the same cosmic interpretation. such a case is the appearance of yellow and blue when we look through a clouded transparent medium towards a source of light or to a black background. there is no special difficulty here in bringing the appearance of yellow into line with its macrotelluric counterpart, but the appearance of blue requires some consideration. we have seen that a corporeal surface appears as black if light striking it is totally absorbed by it. thus, wherever our eye is met by the colour black, our visual ray is engaged in a process whereby light disappears from physical space. now we need only bring this process into consciousness - as we have tried to do before in similar instances - to realize that what happens here to the visual ray is something similar to what it undergoes when it is directed from the earth into cosmic space. note, in this respect, the principle of the mirror as another instance of the fact that the interplay between light and an illumined surface can have on the visual ray an effect similar to that of external space. for the optical processes which occur on the surface of a mirror are such that, whilst taking place on a two-dimensional plane, they evoke in our consciousness pictures of exactly the same nature as if we were looking through the mirror into the space behind it. * the value of our picture of the colour-polarity is shown further if we observe how natural phenomena based on the same kind of polarity in other realms of nature fit in with it. we remember that one of goethe's starting-points in his investigation of the riddle of colour was the observation that of the totality of colours one part is experienced as 'warm' and the other as 'cold'. now we can go further and say that the colours of the spherical pole are experienced as cold, those of the radial pole as warm. this corresponds precisely to the polarity of snow-formation and volcanic activity. the former, being the spherically directed process, requires physically low temperatures; the latter, being the radially directed process, requires high temperatures. here, once more, we see with what objectivity the human senses register the facts of the outer world. another realm of phenomena based on a similar polar order is that of electricity. when we studied the negative and positive poles of the vacuum tube, with regard to the polar distribution of radius and sphere, our attention was drawn to the colours appearing on the two electrodes - red at the (positive) anode, blue at the (negative) cathode. again we find a coincidence with the natural order of the colours. note how the qualitative dynamic method employed here brings into direct view the relationship between light and electricity, while it precludes the mistake of tracing light processes to those of electricity, as modern science does. nor are electric processes 'explained' from this point of view merely as variations of light processes. rather is the relation between light and electricity seen to be based on the fact that all polarities arising perceptibly in nature are creations of the same primeval polarity, that of levity and gravity. the interplay of levity and gravity can take on many different forms which are distinguished essentially by differences in cosmic age. thus the colour-polarity in its primal form, made manifest by the heavens, differs as much from the corresponding polarity shown by the vacuum tube, as does the lightning in the heights from the electric spark. * with the aid of what we have learnt here concerning outer light-processes we shall turn once more to the activity of our own inner light. we may expect by now that our eye is fitted with two modes of seeing activity, polar to each other, and that the way in which they come into operation depends on whether the interplay of positive and negative density outside the eye leads to the appearance of the blue-violet or of the yellow-red side of the colour-scale. such a polarity in the activity of the eye can indeed be established. along with it goes a significant functional difference between the two eyes (not unlike that shown of the two hands). to observe this we need simply to compare the two eyes of a person in a photograph by covering alternately the right and the left half of the face. nearly always it will be found that the right eye looks out clearly into the world with an active expression, and the left eye with a much gentler one, almost held back. artists are well aware of this asymmetry, as of others in the human countenance, and are careful to depict it. an outstanding example is raphael's sistine madonna, where in the eyes and whole countenance both of mother and child this asymmetry can be studied in a specially impressive way. inner observation leads to a corresponding experience. a convenient method is to exercise the two eyes in complete darkness, in the following way. one eye is made to look actively into the space in front of it, as if it would pierce the darkness with its visual ray, while the activity of the other eye is held back, so that its gaze rests only superficially, as it were, on the darkness in front of it. experience shows that most people find it natural to give the active note to the right eye, and the passive note to the left. once one has grown conscious of this natural difference between the two eyes, it is quite easily detected while one is looking normally into the light-filled environment. we thereby realize that for the two eyes to act differently in this way is the usual thing. as an instance where this fact is well observed and effectively made use of, that of shooting may be mentioned here, especially shooting at flying game. those who train in this sport learn to make a completely different use of the two eyes in sighting the target. the naturally more active eye - only once in about fifty cases is it the left - is called by them the 'master-eye'. whilst the less actively gazing eye is usually employed for surveying the field as a whole into which the target is expected to enter, the master-eye is used for making active contact with the target itself ('throwing' oneself on the target 'through' the eye). one further observation may be added. if one looks with rested eyes and in very faint daylight (perhaps in the early morning on awakening) at a white surface, while opening and closing the eyes alternately, then the white surface looks faintly reddish to the 'master-eye', and faintly bluish to the other. * following the lines of our treatment of after-images in the last chapter, we will next inquire into the anatomical and physiological basis of the two opposite sight-activities. in the previous instance we found this in the polarity of nerve and blood. this time we must look for it in a certain twofold structure of the eye itself. we shall best perceive this by watching the 'becoming' of the eye, thus again following a method first shown by goethe. fig. shows the human eye in different stages of its embryonic formation. the eye is clearly seen to consist of two parts essentially different in origin. growing out from the interior of the embryonic organism is a structure that is gradually pushed in, and in its further development becomes the entire posterior part of the eye, destined to carry its life-imbued functions. a second independent part grows towards this from outside; this is at first a mere thickening of the embryonic skin formation, but later it loosens itself and presses forward into the interior of the cup-shaped structure. it is gradually enclosed by this, and evolves finally into that part of the finished eye which embodies the optical apparatus functioning according to purely physical laws. this series of forms shows that in the embryonic formation of the eye we are confronted with two processes, one of spherical, and the other of radial orientation. consequently the two parts of the eye are differentiated in such a way that the posterior part, which has grown forth radially from the embryonic organism, as the life-filled element represents the sulphur-pole of the total eye, while the anterior part, with its much more crystalline nature, having grown spherically towards the organism, represents the eye's salt-pole. closer inspection into the connexion of the two visual activities of the eye with its basic corporeal parts reveals that here, at the outermost boundary of the human organism, we encounter once more that peculiar reversal of functions which we have already several times met in various realms of nature. for the anterior part of the eye - its salt-pole - which has come into being through a spherically directed formative process, seems to be the one through which we exercise the perceptive activity streaming out radially from the eye, whilst the posterior part - the eye's sulphur-pole - which has come into being through radially directed formative action, serves that form of seeing which is more receptive and is carried out in a plane-wise manner. considerations of this kind, and they alone, enable us also to draw true comparisons between the different sense-organs. take the organ of hearing. usually the ear is assumed to fill the same role in the field of hearing as does the eye in the field of seeing. in fact the ear corresponds to only one half of the eye; the other half must be looked for in the larynx. in other words, the two parts of the eye are represented in the realm of hearing by two separate organs, ear and larynx. speaking from the aspect of metamorphosis, the vital part of our eye may be regarded as our 'light-ear'; the crystalline part, as our 'light-larynx'. in order to come consciously to a perception of sight we must 'listen' to the 'deeds and sufferings' of light, while at the same time we meet them with the help of the 'speaking' of our inner light. something similar holds good for hearing. in fact, observation reveals that we take in no impression of hearing unless we accompany it with an activity of our larynx, even though a silent one. the significance of this fact for the total function of hearing will occupy us more fully later. * our insight into the polar nature of visual activity will enable us now to link the external interplay of light and dark - to which the physical colours owe their existence - to that play of forces which we ourselves set in motion when our eye meets the world of colours in their polar differentiation. we established earlier that in the cold colours the role of darkness belongs to the pole of levity or negative density, and the role of lightness to the pole of gravity or positive density, whereas in the case of the warm colours the roles are reversed. let us now unite with this the insight we have meanwhile gained into the two kinds of activity in seeing - the receptive, 'left-eyed' and the radiating, 'right-eyed' - which mediate to us the experience of the positive or negative density of space spread out before our eyes. taking together the results of outer and inner observation, we can express the polarity ruling in the realm of colour as follows. if lightness and darkness as elements of colour, meet us in such a way that lightness, by reason of its positive density, calls forth 'left-eyed' activity, and darkness, by reason of its negative density, 'right-eyed' activity, then our soul receives the impression of the colour blue and colours related to blue. if lightness and darkness meet us so that we see the former in a 'right-eyed', and the latter in a 'left-eyed' way, then we experience this as the presence of yellow and the colours related to it. the reason why we usually fail to observe the different kinds of interplay of the two modes of seeing, when we perceive one or other of the two categories of colour, is because in ordinary sight both eyes exercise each of the two activities without our becoming aware which is the leading one in a particular eye. if, however, one has come to a real experience of the inner polarity of the visual act, one needs only a little practice to realize the distinction. for example, if one looks at the blue sky, notably at noon-time, on the side away from the sun, or at the morning or evening sky, shining yellow and red, one quickly becomes conscious of how our eyes take hold of the particular contribution which light and dark make to one or other of the two colour appearances. * in the natural course of our argument we had to keep at first to the appearance of colours as they come freely before us in space. the results we have obtained, however, hold good equally well for the permanent tints of material objects, as the following example will show. a fact known to science is that red and blue surface colours, when illumined by light of steadily diminishing intensity, are seen to reverse their normal ratio of brightness. this phenomenon can be seen in nature, if, for instance, one observes a bed of blue and red flowers in the fading evening light and compares the impression with that which the same flowers make in bright daylight. if the phenomenon is reproduced artificially, the actual transition from one state to the other can be clearly observed. the easiest way is to place a red and a blue surface side by side under an electric light whose intensity can be gradually lessened by means of a sliding resistance. here, as much as in the natural phenomenon, our reason finds it difficult to acknowledge that the surface gleaming in a whitish sheen should be the one which ordinarily appears as darkling blue, and that the one disappearing into darkness should be the surface which normally presents itself as radiant red. this riddle is readily solved if we apply what we have learnt about the particular shares of lightness and darkness in these two colours, and if we link this up with the respective forms of seeing exercised by our two eyes. to the dim light, clearly, our eyes will respond more with the 'left-eyed' than with the 'right-eyed' form of vision. now we know that it is 'left-eyed' vision which is roused by the lightness-component in blue and the darkness-component in red. it is only to be expected, therefore, that these elements should become conspicuous when in the dim light our seeing is mainly 'left-eyed'. this solution of the problem makes us realize further, that the laws which goethe first found for the coming into appearance of colours freely hovering in space are indeed applicable to the fixed material colours as well. it will be well to remember here the discussion of our experience of temperature through the sense of warmth in chapter viii (p. f.). along these lines the true solution of the problem of the so-called coloured shadows will be found, goethe studied this without finding, however, a satisfactory answer. chapter xvii optics of the doer three basic concepts form the foundation for the present-day scientific description of a vast field of optical phenomena, among them the occurrence of the spectral colours as a result of light passing through a transparent medium of prismatic shape. they are: 'optical refraction', 'light-ray', and 'light-velocity' - the latter two serving to explain the first. in a science of optics which seeks its foundation in the intercourse between man's own visual activity and the doings and sufferings of light, these three concepts must needs undergo a decisive change, both in their meaning and in their value for the description of the relevant optical phenomena. for they are all purely kinematic concepts typical of the onlooker-way of conceiving things - concepts, that is, to which nothing corresponds in the realm of the actual phenomena. our next task, therefore, will be, where possible, to fill these concepts with new meaning, or else to replace them by other concepts read from the actual phenomena. once this is done the way will be free for the development of the picture of the spectrum phenomenon which is in true accord with the goethean conception of light and colour. * the first to be brought in this sense under our examination is the concept of the 'light-ray'. in present-day optics this concept signifies a geometrical line of infinitely small width drawn, as it were, by the light in space, while the cone or cylinder of light actually filling the space is described as being composed of innumerable such rays. in the same way the object producing or reflecting light is thought of as composed of innumerable single points from which the light-rays emerge. all descriptions of optical processes are based upon this conception. obviously, we cannot be satisfied with such a reduction of wholes into single geometrically describable parts, followed by a reassembling of these parts into a whole. for in reality we have to do with realms of space uniformly filled with light, whether conical or cylindrical in form, which arise through certain boundaries being set to the light. in optical research we have therefore always to do with pictures, spatially bounded. thus what comes before our consciousness is determined equally by the light calling forth the picture, and by the unlit space bordering it. remembering the results of our earlier study, we must say further of such a light-filled realm that it lacks the quality of visibility and therefore has no colour, not even white. goethe and other 'readers', such as reid and ruskin, tried continually to visualize what such a light-filled space represents in reality. hence they directed their attention first to those spheres where light manifests its form-creative activity, as in the moulding of the organ of sight in animal or man, or in the creation of the many forms of the plant kingdom - and only then gave their mind to the purely physical light-phenomena. let us use the same method to form a picture of a light-filled space, and to connect this with the ideas we have previously gained on the co-operation in space of levity and gravity. suppose we have two similar plant-seeds in germ; and let one lie in a space filled with light, the other in an unlit space. from the different behaviour of the two seeds we can observe certain differences between the two regions of space. we note that within the light-filled region the spiritual archetype of the plant belonging to the seed is helped to manifest itself physically in space, whereas in the dark region it receives no such aid. for in the latter the physical plant, even if it grows, does not develop its proper forms. this tells us, in accordance with what we have learnt earlier, that in the two cases there is a different relation of space to the cosmically distant, all-embracing plane. thus inside and outside the light-region there exists a quite different relation of levity and gravity - and this relation changes abruptly at the boundaries of the region. (this fact will be of especial importance for us when we come to examine the arising of colours at the boundary of light and dark, when light passes through a prism.) * after having replaced the customary concept of the light-bundle composed of single rays by the conception of two dynamically polar realms of space bordering each other, we turn to the examination of what is going on dynamically inside these realms. this will help us to gain a proper concept of the propagation of light through space. in an age when the existence of a measurable light-velocity seems to belong to the realm of facts long since experimentally proved; when science has begun to measure the universe, using the magnitude of this velocity as a constant, valid for the whole cosmos; and when entire branches of science have been founded on results thus gained, it is not easy, and yet it cannot be avoided, to proclaim that neither has an actual velocity of light ever been measured, nor can light as such ever be made subject to such measurement by optical means - and that, moreover, light, by its very nature, forbids us to conceive of it as possessing any finite velocity. with the last assertion we do not mean to say that there is nothing going on in connexion with the appearance of optical phenomena to which the concept of a finite velocity is applicable. only, what is propagated in this way is not the entity we comprise under the concept of 'light'. our next task, therefore, will be to create a proper distinction between what moves and what does not move spatially when light is active in the physical world. once more an historical retrospect will help us to establish our own standpoint with regard to the existing theories. the first to think of light as possessing a finite velocity was galileo, who also made the first, though unsuccessful, attempt to measure it. equally unsuccessful were attempts of a similar nature made soon afterwards by members of the accademia del cimento. in both cases the obvious procedure was to produce regular flashes of light and to try to measure the time which elapsed between their production and their observation by some more or less distant observer. still, the conviction of the existence of such a velocity was so deeply ingrained in the minds of men that, when later observations succeeded in establishing a finite magnitude for what seemed to be the rate of the light's movement through space, these observations were hailed much more as the quantitative value of this movement than as proof of its existence, which was already taken for granted. a clear indication of man's state of mind in regard to this question is given in the following passage from huygens's famous traité de la lumière, by which the world was first made acquainted with the concept of light as a sort of undulatory movement. 'one cannot doubt that light consists in the movement of a certain substance. for if one considers its production one finds that here on the earth it is chiefly produced by fire and flame, which without doubt contain bodies in rapid motion, for they dissolve and melt numberless other bodies. or, if one considers its effects, one sees that light collected, for instance, by a concave mirror has the power to heat like fire, i.e. to separate the parts of the bodies; this assuredly points to movement, at least in true philosophy in which one traces all natural activity to mechanical causes. in my opinion one must do this, or quite give up all hope of ever grasping anything in physics.' in these words of huygens it must strike us how he first provides an explanation for a series of phenomena as if this explanation were induced from the phenomena themselves. after he has drawn quite definite conclusions from it, he then derives its necessity from quite other principles - namely, from a certain method of thinking, accepting this as it is, unquestioned and unalterably established. we are here confronted with an 'unlogic' characteristic of human thinking during its state of isolation from the dynamic substratum of the world of the senses, an unlogic which one encounters repeatedly in scientific argumentation once one has grown aware of it. in circles of modern thinkers where such awareness prevails (and they are growing rapidly to-day) the term 'proof of a foregone conclusion' has been coined to describe this fact. 'proof of a foregone conclusion' is indeed the verdict at which one arrives in respect of all the observations concerned with the velocity of light - whether of existing phenomena detectable in the sky or of terrestrial phenomena produced artificially - if one studies them with the attitude of mind represented by the child in hans andersen's story. in view of the seriousness of the matter it will not be out of place if we discuss them here as briefly as possible, one by one. the relevant observations fall into two categories: observations of certain astronomical facts from which the existence of a finite velocity of light and its magnitude as an absolute property of it has been inferred; and terrestrial experiments which permitted direct observation of a process of propagation connected with the establishment of light in space resulting in the measurement of its speed. to the latter category belong the experiments of fizeau ( ) and foucault ( ) as well as the michelson-morley experiment with its implications for einstein's theory of relativity. the former category is represented by roemer's observations of certain apparent irregularities in the times of revolution of one of jupiter's moons ( ), and by bradley's investigation into the reason for the apparent rhythmic changes of the positions of the fixed stars ( ). we shall start with the terrestrial observations, because in their case alone is the entire path of the light surveyable, and what is measured therefore is something appertaining with certainty to every point of the space which spreads between the source of the light and the observer. for this reason textbooks quite rightly say that only the results drawn from these terrestrial observations have the value of empirically observed facts. (the interpretation given to these facts is another question.) now, it is a common feature of all these experiments that by necessity they are based on an arrangement whereby a light-beam can be made to appear and disappear alternately. in this respect there is no difference between the first primitive attempts made by galileo and the academicians, and the ingeniously devised experiments of the later observers, whether they operate with a toothed wheel or a rotating mirror. it is always a flash of light - and how could it be otherwise? - which is produced at certain regular intervals and used for determining the speed of propagation. evidently what in all these cases is measured is the speed with which a beam of light establishes itself in space. of what happens within the beam, once it is established, these observations tell nothing at all. the proof they are held to give of the existence of a finite speed of light, as such, is a 'proof of a foregone conclusion'. all they tell us is that the beam's front, at the moment when this beam is first established, travels through space with a finite velocity and that the rate of this movement is such and such. and they tell us nothing at all about other regions of the cosmos. that we have to do in these observations with the speed of the light-front only, and not of the light itself, is a fact fully acknowledged by modern physical optics. since lord rayleigh first discussed this matter in the eighties of the last century, physicists have learnt to distinguish between the 'wave-velocity' of the light itself and the velocity of an 'impressed peculiarity', the so-called 'group-velocity', and it has been acknowledged that only the latter has been, and can be, directly measured. there is no possibility of inferring from it the value of the 'wave-velocity' unless one has a complete knowledge of the properties of the medium through which the 'groups' travel. nevertheless, the modern mind allows itself to be convinced that light possesses a finite velocity and that this has been established by actual measurement. we feel reminded here of eddington's comment on newton's famous observations: 'such is the glamour of a historical experiment.' (chapter xiv.) let us now turn to roemer and bradley. in a certain sense roemer's observations and even those of bradley rank together with the terrestrial measurements. for roemer used as optical signals the appearance and disappearance of one of jupiter's moons in the course of its revolution round the planet; thus he worked with light-flashes, as the experimental investigations do. hence, also, his measurements were concerned - as optical science acknowledges - with group-velocity only. in fact, even bradley's observations, although he was the only one who operated with continuous light-phenomena, are exposed to the charge that they give information of the group-velocity of light, and not of its wave-velocity. however, we shall ignore these limitations in both cases, because there are quite other factors which invalidate the proofs they are held to give, and to gain a clear insight into these factors is of special importance for us. roemer observed a difference in the length of time during which a certain moon of jupiter was occulted by the planet's body, and found that this difference underwent regular changes coincident with the changes in the earth's position in relation to jupiter and the sun. seen from the sun, the earth is once a year in conjunction with jupiter, once in opposition to it. it seemed obvious to explain the time-lag in the moon's reappearance, when the earth was on the far side of the sun, by the time the light from the moon needed to cover the distance marked by the two extreme positions of the earth - that is, a distance equal to the diameter of the earth's orbit. on dividing the observed interval of time by the accepted value of this distance, roemer obtained for the velocity of light a figure not far from the one found later by terrestrial measurements. we can here leave out of account the fact that roemer's reasoning is based on the assumption that the copernican conception of the relative movements of the members of our solar system is the valid conception, an assumption which, as later considerations will show, cannot be upheld in a science which strives for a truly dynamic understanding of the world. for the change of aspect which becomes necessary in this way does not invalidate roemer's observation as such; it rules out only the customary interpretation of it. freed from all hypothetical by-thought, roemer's observation tells us, first, that the time taken by a flash of light travelling from a cosmic light-source to reach the earth varies to a measurable extent, and, secondly, that this difference is bound up with the yearly changes of the earth's position in relation to the sun and the relevant planetary body. we leave equally out of account the fact that our considerations of the nature of space in chapter xii render it impermissible to conceive of cosmic space as something 'across' which light (or any other entity) can be regarded as travelling this or that distance in this or that time. what matters to us here is the validity of the conclusions drawn from roemer's discovery within the framework of thought in which they were made. boiled down to its purely empirical content, roemer's observation tells us solely and simply that within the earth's cosmic orbit light-flashes travel with a certain measurable speed. to regard this information as automatically valid, firstly for light which is continuously present, and secondly for everywhere in the universe, rests again on nothing but a foregone conclusion. precisely the same criticism applies to bradley's observation, and to an even higher degree. what bradley discovered is the fact that the apparent direction in which we see a fixed star is dependent on the direction in which the earth moves relatively to the star, a phenomenon known under the name of 'aberration of light'. this phenomenon is frequently brought to students' understanding by means of the following or some similar analogy. imagine that a machine-gun in a fixed position has sent its projectile right across a railway-carriage so that both the latter's walls are pierced. if the train is at rest, the position of the gun could be determined by sighting through the shot-holes made by the entrance and exit of the bullet. if, however, the train is moving at high speed, it will have advanced a certain distance during the time taken by the projectile to cross the carriage, and the point of exit will be nearer the rear of the carriage than in the previous case. let us now think of an observer in the train who, while ignorant of the train's movement, undertook to determine the gun's position by considering the direction of the line connecting the two holes. he would necessarily locate the gun in a position which, compared with its true position, would seem to have shifted by some distance in the direction of the train's motion. on the other hand, given the speed of the train, the angle which the line connecting the two holes forms with the true direction of the course of the projectile - the so-called angle of aberration - provides a measure of the speed of the projectile. under the foregone conclusion that light itself has a definite velocity, and that this velocity is the same throughout the universe, bradley's observation of the aberration of the stars seemed indeed to make it possible to calculate this velocity from the knowledge of the earth's own speed and the angle of aberration. this angle could be established by comparing the different directions into which a telescope has to be turned at different times of the year in order to focus a particular star. but what does bradley's observation tell us, once we exclude all foregone conclusions? as the above analogy helps towards an understanding of the concept of aberration, it will be helpful also to determine the limits up to which we are allowed to draw valid conclusions from the supposed occurrence itself. a mind which is free from all preconceived ideas will not ignore the fact that the projectile, by being forced to pierce the wall of the carriage, suffers a considerable diminution of its speed. the projectile, therefore, passes through the carriage with a speed different from its speed outside. since, however, it is the speed from hole to hole which determines the angle of aberration, no conclusion can be drawn from the latter as to the original velocity of the projectile. let us assume the imaginary case that the projectile was shot forth from the gun with infinite velocity, and that the slowing-down effect of the wall was great enough to produce a finite speed of the usual magnitude, then the effect on the position of the exit hole would be precisely the same as if the projectile had moved all the time ' with this speed and not been slowed down at all. seeing things in this light, the scientific andersen child in us is roused to exclaim: 'but all that bradley's observation informs us of , with certainty is a finite velocity of the optical process going on inside the telescope!' indeed, if someone should claim with good reason (as we shall do later on) that light's own velocity is infinite, and (as we shall not do) that the dynamic situation set up in the telescope had the effect of slowing down the light to the measured velocity - there is nothing in bradley's observation which could disprove these assertions. * having thus disposed of the false conclusions drawn by a kinematically orientated thinking from the various observations and measurements of the velocity which appears in connexion with light, we can carry on our own studies undisturbed. two observations stand before us representing empirically established facts: one, that in so far as a finite velocity has been measured or calculated from other observations, nothing is known about the existence or magnitude of such a velocity except within the boundaries of the dynamic realm constituted by the earth's presence in the universe; the other, that this velocity is a 'group'-velocity, that is, the velocity of the front of a light-beam in process of establishment. let us see what these two facts have to tell us when we regard them as letters of the 'word' which light inscribes into the phenomenal world as an indication of its own nature. taking the last-named fact first, we shall make use of the following comparison to help us realize how little we are justified in drawing from observations of the front speed of a light-beam any conclusions concerning the kinematic conditions prevailing in the interior of the beam itself. imagine the process of constructing a tunnel, with all the efforts and time needed for cutting its passage through the resisting rock. when the tunnel is finished the activities necessary to its production are at an end. whereas these continue for a limited time only, they leave behind them permanent traces in the existence of the tunnel, which one can describe dynamically as a definite alteration in the local conditions of the earth's gravity. now, it would occur to no one to ascribe to the tunnel itself, as a lasting quality, the speed with which it had been constructed. yet something similar happens when, after observing the velocity required by light to lay hold on space, this velocity is then attributed to the light as a quality of its own. it was reserved for a mode of thought that could form no concept of the real dynamic of light and dark, to draw conclusions as to the qualities of light from experiences obtained through observing its original spreading out into space. to speak of an independently existing space within which light could move forward like a physical body, is, after what we have learnt about space, altogether forbidden. for space in its relevant structure is itself but a result of a particular co-ordination of levity and gravity or, in other words, of light and dark. what we found earlier about the qualities of the two polar spaces now leads us to conceive of them as representative of two limiting conditions of velocity: absolute contraction representing zero velocity; absolute expansion, infinite velocity (each in its own way a state of 'rest'). thus any motion with finite velocity is a mean between these two extremes, and as such the result of a particular co-ordination of levity and gravity. this makes it evident that to speak of a velocity taking its course in space, whether with reference to light or to a physical body in motion, is something entirely unreal. let us now see what we are really told by the number , miles a second, as the measure of the speed with which a light-impulse establishes itself spatially. in the preceding chapter we learnt that the earth's field of gravity offers a definite resistance to our visual ray. what is true for the inner light holds good equally for the outer light. using an image from another dynamic stratum of nature we can say that light, while appearing within the field of gravity, 'rubs' itself on this. on the magnitude of this friction depends the velocity with which a light-impulse establishes itself in the medium of the resisting gravity. whereas light itself as a manifestation of levity possesses infinite velocity, this is forced down to the known finite measure by the resistance of the earth's field of gravity. thus the speed of light which has been measured by observers such as fizeau and foucault reveals itself as a function of the gravitational constant of the earth, and hence has validity for this sphere only. the same is true for roemer's and bradley's observations, none of which, after what we have stated earlier, contradicts this result. on the contrary, seen from this viewpoint, roemer's discovery of the light's travelling with finite speed within the cosmic realm marked by the earth's orbit provides an important insight into the dynamic conditions of this realm. * among the experiments undertaken with the aim of establishing the properties of the propagation of light by direct measurements, quoted earlier, we mentioned the michelson-morley experiment as having a special bearing on einstein's conceptual edifice. it is the one which has formed the foundation of that (earlier) part of einstein's theory which he himself called the special theory of relativity. let us see what becomes of this foundation - and with it the conceptual edifice erected upon it - when we examine it against the background of what we have found to be the true nature of the so-called velocity of light. it is generally known that modern ideas of light seemed to call for something (huygens's 'certain substance') to act as bearer of the movement attributed to light. this led to the conception of an imponderable agency capable of certain movements, and to denote this agency the greek word ether was borrowed. (how this word can be used again to-day in conformity with its actual significance will be shown in the further course of our discussions.) nevertheless, all endeavours to find in the existence of such an ether a means of explaining wide fields of natural phenomena were disappointed. for the more exact concepts one tried to form of the characteristics of this ether, the greater the contradictions became. one such decisive contradiction arose when optical means were used to discover whether the ether was something absolutely at rest in space, through which physical bodies moved freely, or whether it shared in their movement. experiments made by fizeau with running water seemed to prove the one view, those of michelson and morley, involving the movement of the earth, the other view. in the celebrated michelson-morley experiment the velocity of light was shown to be the same, in whatever direction, relative to the earth's own motion, it was measured. this apparent proof of the absolute constancy of light-velocity - which seemed, however, to contradict other observations - induced einstein to do away with the whole assumption of a bearer of the movement underlying light, whether the bearer were supposed to be at rest or itself in motion. instead, he divested the concepts of space and time, from which that of velocity is usually derived, of the absoluteness hitherto attributed to them, with the result that in his theory time has come to be conceived as part of a four-dimensional 'space-time continuum'. in reality the michelson-morley experiment presents no problem requiring such labours as those of einstein for its solution. for by this experiment nothing is proved beyond what can in any event be known - namely, that the velocity of the propagation of a light-impulse is constant in all directions, so long as the measuring is confined to regions where the density of terrestrial space is more or less the same. with the realization of this truth, however, einstein's special theory loses its entire foundation. all that remains to be said about it is that it was a splendid endeavour to solve a problem which, rightly considered, does not exist. * now that we have realized that it is inadmissible to speak of light as consisting of single rays, or to ascribe to it a finite velocity, the concept of the refraction of light, as understood by optics to-day and employed for the explanation of the spectrum, also becomes untenable. let us find out what we must put in its place. the phenomenon which led the onlooker-consciousness to form the idea of optical refraction has been known since early times. it consists in the fact, surprising at first sight, that an object, such as a coin, which lies at the bottom of a vessel hidden from an observer by the rim, becomes visible when the vessel is filled with water. modern optics has explained this by assuming that from the separate points of the floor of the vessel light-rays go out to all sides, one ray falling in the direction of the eye of the observer. hence, because of the positions of eye and intercepting rim there are a number of points from which no rays can reach the eye. one such point is represented by the coin (p in fig. a). now if the vessel is filled with water, light-rays emerging from it are held to be refracted, so that rays from the points hitherto invisible also meet the eye, which is still in its original position. the eye itself is not conscious of this 'break' in the light-rays, because it is accustomed to 'project' all light impressions rectilinearly out into space (fig. b.). hence, it sees p in the position of p'. this is thought to be the origin of the impression that the whole bottom of the vessel is raised. this kind of explanation is quite in line with the peculiarity of the onlooker-consciousness, noted earlier, to attribute an optical illusion to the eye's way of working, while charging the mind with the task of clearing up the illusion. in reality it is just the reverse. since the intellect can form no other idea of the act of seeing than that this is a passive process taking place solely within the eye, it falls, itself, into illusion. how great is this illusion we see from the fact that the intellect is finally obliged to make the eye somehow or other 'project' into space the impressions it receives - a process lacking any concrete dynamic content. once more, it is not our task to replace this way of 'explaining' the phenomenon by any other, but rather to combine the phenomenon given here with others of kindred nature so that the theory contained in them can be read from them direct. one other such phenomenon is that of so-called apparent optical depth, which an observer encounters when looking through transparent media of varying optical density. what connects the two is the fact that the rate of the alteration of depth, and the rate of change of the direction of light, are the same for the same media. in present-day optics this phenomenon is explained with reference to the former. in proceeding like this, optical science makes the very mistake which goethe condemned in newton, saying that a complicated phenomenon was made the basis, and the simpler derived from the complex. for of these two phenomena, the simpler, since it is independent of any secondary condition, is the one showing that our experience of depth is dependent on the density of the optical medium. the latter phenomenon we met once before, though without reference to its quantitative side, when in looking at a landscape we found how our experiences of depth change in conformity with alterations in atmospheric conditions. this, then, served to make us aware that the way we apprehend things optically is the result of an interplay between our visual ray and the medium outside us which it meets. it is exactly the same when we look through a vessel filled with water and see the bottom of it as if raised in level. this is in no sense an optical illusion; it is the result of what takes place objectively and dynamically within the medium, when our eye-ray passes through it. only our intellect is under an illusion when, in the case of the coin becoming visible at the bottom of the vessel, it deals with the coin as if it were a point from which an individual ray of light went out.. .. etc., instead of conceiving the phenomenon of the raising of the vessel's bottom as one indivisible whole, wherein the coin serves only to link our attention to it. * having thus cleared away the kinematic interpretation of the coin-in-the-bowl phenomenon, we may pass on to discuss the optical effect through which the so-called law of refraction was first established in science. instead of picturing to ourselves, as is usually done, light-rays which are shifted away from or towards the perpendicular at the border-plane between two media of different optical properties, we shall rather build up the picture as light itself designs it into space. we have seen that our inner light, as well as the outer light, suffers a certain hindrance in passing through a physical medium - even such as the earth's gravity-field. whilst we may not describe this retardation, as is usually done, in terms of a smaller velocity of light itself within the denser medium, we may rightly say that density has the effect of lessening the intensity of the light. (it is the time required for the initial establishment of a light-filled realm which is greater within such a medium than outside it.) now by its very nature the intensity of light cannot be measured in spatial terms. yet there is a phenomenon by which the decrease of the inner intensity of the light becomes spatially apparent and thus spatially measurable. it consists in the alteration undergone by the aperture of a cone of light when passing from one optical medium to another. if one sets in the path of a luminous cone a glass-walled trough filled with water, then, if both water and surrounding air are slightly clouded, the cone is seen to make a more acute angle within the water than outside it (fig. ). here in an external phenomenon we meet the same weakening in the light's tendency to expand that we recognized in the shortening of our experience of depth on looking through a dense medium. obviously, we expect the externally observable narrowing of the light-cone and the subjectively experienced change of optical depth to show the same ratio. in order to compare the rate of expansion of a luminous cone inside and outside water, we must measure by how much less the width of the cone increases within the water than it does outside. (to be comparable, the measurements must be based upon the same distances on the edge of the cone, because this is the length of the way the light actually travels.) in fig. this is shown by the two distances, a-b and a'-b'. their ratio is the same as that by which the bottom of a vessel appears to be raised when the vessel is filled with water ( : ). thus by means of pure observation we have arrived at nothing less than what is known to physical optics as snell's law of refraction. this law was itself the result of pure observation, but was clothed in a conceptual form devoid of reality. in this form it states that a ray of light in transition between two media of different densities is refracted at their boundary surface so that the ratio of the angle which is formed by the ray in either medium with a line at right angles to the boundary surface is such that the quotient of the sines of both angles is for these media a constant factor. in symbols sin α / sin β = c. it will be clear to the reader familiar with trigonometry that this ratio of the two sines is nothing else but the ratio of the two distances which served us as a measure for the respective apertures of the cone. but whereas the measurement of these two distances is concerned with something quite real (since they express an actual dynamic alteration of the light), the measuring of the angle between the ray of light and the perpendicular is founded on nothing real. it is now clear that the concept of the ray, as it figures in the usual picture of refraction, is in reality the boundary between the luminous space and its surroundings. evidently the concept of the perpendicular on the boundary between the two media is in itself a complete abstraction, since nothing happens dynamically in its direction. to a normal human understanding it is incomprehensible why a ray of light should be related to an external geometrical line, as stated by the law of refraction in its usual form. physical optics, in order to explain refraction, had therefore to resort to light-bundles spatially diffused, and by use of sundry purely kinematic concepts, to read into these light-bundles certain processes of motion, which are not in the least shown by the phenomenon itself. in contrast to this, the idea that the boundary of a luminous cone is spatially displaced when its expansion is hindered by an optical medium of some density, and that the measure of this displacement is equal to the shortening of depth which we experience in looking through this medium, is directly evident, since all its elements are taken from observation. * from what we have here found we may expect that in order to explain the numerical relationships between natural phenomena (with which science in the past has been solely concerned), we by no means require the artificial theories to which the onlooker in man, confined as he is to abstract thinking, has been unavoidably driven. indeed, to an observer who trains himself on the lines indicated in this book, even the quantitative secrets of nature will become objects of intuitive judgment, just as goethe, by developing this organ of understanding, first found access to nature's qualitative secrets. (the change in our conception of number which this entails will be shown at a later stage of our discussions.) compare with this our account in chapter x of the rise of the atomistic-kinematic interpretation of heat. the following critical study leaves, of course, completely untouched our recognition of the devotion which guided the respective observers in their work, and of the ingenuity with which some of their observations were devised and carried out. the assumption is that the wave-velocity differs from the group-velocity, if at all, by a negligible amount. once this is realized there can be no doubt that with the aid of an adequate mathematical calculus (which would have to be established on a realistic understanding of the respective properties of the fields of force coming into play) it will become possible to derive by calculation the speed of the establishment of light within physical space from the gravitational constant of the earth. the grounds of einstein's general theory were dealt with in our earlier discussions. chapter xviii the spectrum as a script of the spirit the realization that newton's explanation of the spectrum fails to meet the facts prompted goethe to engage in all those studies which made him the founder of a modern optics based on intuitive participation in the phenomena. in spite of all that he achieved, however, he never reached a real solution of the riddle of the colour-phenomenon produced when light passes through a transparent body of prismatic shape. for his assumption of certain 'double images', which are supposed to appear as a result of the optical displacement of the boundaries between the light-filled and the dark-filled parts of space and the mutual superposition of which he believed to be responsible for the appearance of the respective colours, does not solve the problem. what hindered goethe in this field was his limited insight into the nature of the two distinct kinds of forces which, as we have noted in the course of our own inquiries, correspond to his concepts of licht and finsternis. with the aid of this distinction - which we have indeed established through a consistent application of goethe's method - we shall now be able to develop precisely that insight into the coming-into-being of the spectral colours which goethe sought. * dynamically, the process of the formation of the spectrum by light that passes through a prism divides into two clearly distinguishable parts. the first consists in the influence which the light undergoes inside the prism as a result of the latter's special shape, the other, in what happens outside the prism at the boundary between the light-space - influenced by the shape of the prism - and the surrounding dark-space. accordingly, we shall study these two parts of the process separately. as an aid to distinguishing clearly one process from the other, we shall suppose the prism experiment to be so arranged that the light area is larger than the width of the prism, which will then lie completely within it. we shall further suppose the dimensions of the whole to be such that the part observable on the screen represents only a portion of the total light-realm situated between the boundaries of the prism. the result is that the screen depicts a light-phenomenon in which there is no trace of colour. for normal eyesight, the phenomenon on the screen differs in no way from what it would be if no prism intervened in the path of the light. these two seemingly identical light-phenomena reveal at once their inner dynamic difference if we narrow the field of light from either side by introducing into it an object capable of casting shadow. if there is no prism we see simply a black shadow move into the illumined area on the screen, no matter from which side the narrowing comes. if, however, the light has come through a prism (arranged as described above) certain colours appear on the boundary between the regions of light and shadow, and these differ according to the side from which the darkening is effected. the same part of the light area may thus be made to display either the colours of the blue pole of the colour-scale, or those of the yellow pole. this shows that the inner dynamic condition of the light-realm is altered in some way by being exposed to an optically resistant medium of prismatic shape. if we are to find the cause and nature of this alteration we must revert to the prism itself, and inquire what effect it has on light in the part of space occupied by it. by proceeding in this way we follow goethe's model: first, to keep the two border-phenomena separate, and, secondly, not to ascribe to the light itself what is in fact due to certain boundary conditions. in order to realize what happens to the light in passing through the prism, let us remember that it is a characteristic of an ordinary light-beam to direct itself through space in a straight line if not interfered with, and to illuminate equally any cross-section of the area it fills. both these features are altered when the light is exposed to a transparent medium of prismatic shape - that is, to an optically resistant medium so shaped that the length of the light's passage through it changes from one side of the beam to the other, being least at the so-called refracting edge of the prism, greatest at the base opposite to that. the dimming effect of the medium, therefore, has a different magnitude at each point of the width of the beam. obviously, the ratio between levity and gravity inside such a light-realm, instead of being constant, varies from one side to the other. the result is a transverse dynamic impulse which acts from that part of the light-realm where the weakening influence of the prism is least towards the part where it is strongest (see long arrow in plate c, fig. i). this impulse manifests in the deflection of the light from its original course. apart from this, nothing is noticeable in the light itself when caught by an observation screen, the reason being that the transverse impulse now immanent in the light-realm has no effect on the reflecting surface. the situation changes when the light-realm is narrowed down from one side or the other - in other words, when an abrupt change of the field-conditions, that is, a sudden leap from light to dark or from dark to light, is introduced within this realm. in this case, clearly, the effect of the transverse field-gradient on such a leap will be different, depending on the relation between the directions of the two (see small arrows in fig. i). our eyes witness to this difference by seeing the colours of the blue pole of the colour-scale appear when the field-gradient is directed towards the leap (a), and the colours of the yellow pole when the gradient is directed away from it (b). for our further investigation it is very important to observe how the colours spread when they emerge at the edge of the shadow-casting object thus introduced into the light-realm from the one side or the other. figs, ii and iii on plate c show, closely enough for our purpose, the position of the colour-bearing areas in each case, with the dotted line indicating the direction which the light would have at the place of origin of the colours if there were no object interfering with its free expansion. we observe a distinct difference in the widening out of the two colour-areas on both sides of the original direction of the light: in each case the angle which the boundary of the colour-area forms with this direction is smaller on the side of the colours nearest the light-realm (blue and yellow respectively) than on the opposite side (violet and red). remembering what we have learnt about the dynamic characteristics of the two colour-poles, we are now in a position to state the following. when a light-area subject to a lateral gradient is narrowed down, so that the gradient is directed towards the narrowing object, colours arise in which the interaction between the two polarically opposite forms of density is such that positive density makes for lightness, and negative density for darkness. whereas, when the border is so situated that the gradient is directed away from it, the interaction is such that positive density makes for darkness, and negative density for lightness. further, the fact that on both occasions the darkness element in the colour-band increases in the outward direction tells us that in this direction there is on the blue-violet side a gradual decrease in positive, and increase in negative, density, while on the opposite side we find just the reverse. we note again that both processes occupy a considerable part of the space originally outside the boundaries of the light-area - that is, at the violet end the part towards which the light-beam is deflected, and at the red end the part from which it turns away. the visual ray, when penetrating actively into the two colour-phenomena thus described, receives evidence of a dynamic happening which may be expressed as follows. where the transverse impulse, which is due to the varying degree of trübung in the light-realm, is directed towards the latter's edge, the intermingling of the dark-ingredient and the light-ingredient, contained in that realm, is such that dark follows light along its already existing gradient, thereby diminishing steadily. hence our visual ray, meeting conditions quite similar to those occurring when we look across the light-filled atmosphere into universal space, notifies us of the presence of the blue-violet colour-pole. if, on the other hand, the edge is in the wake of the transverse impulse, then a kind of dynamic vacuum arises in that part of space from which the beam is deflected, with the effect that the dark-ingredient, imprinted on the light within the prism, is drawn into this vacuum by following a kind of suctional influence. consequently dark and light here come to oppose one another, and the former, on its way out of the light-area, gains in relative strength. on this side our visual ray meets conditions resembling those which occur when we look across the darkening atmosphere into the sun. accordingly our optical experience tells us of the presence of the yellow-red colour-pole. from our description of the two kinds of dynamic co-ordination of positive and negative density at the two ends of the spectrum it follows that the spatial conditions prevailing at one end must be quite different from those at the other. to see this by way of actual perception is indeed not difficult. in fact, if we believe that we see both ends of the spectrum lying, as it were, flatly on the surface of the observation screen, this is merely an illusion due to our superficial way of using our eyes. if we gaze with our visual ray (activated in the manner previously described) into the two sides of the spectrum, while turning our eyes alternately in one or other direction, we soon notice that the colours of the yellow-red rise towards the eye so as to give the impression of protruding almost corporeally from the surface of the screen. we feel: density obtains here in a state of fiery radiation. when turning to the other side we feel our visual ray, instead of being as before caught up in the colours, passing freely across the colours as if carried by them into the infinite. on the blue-violet side, space itself seems to fluoresce mysteriously . following goethe's conception of the physical-moral effect of colours, we may describe the experience received thus from the two poles of the spectrum by saying that an 'other-worldly' character belongs to the colours of the blue-violet pole; an 'earthly' character to those of the yellow-red; while that of green, which appears when both sides are made to overlap, witnesses to its mediating nature between the two. * in our endeavour to view the fundamental experiment of newtonian optics with the eyes of goethe we have been led from the wide expanse of the earth's sunlit periphery into the confines of the darkened experimental chamber. with the aid of the results gained from studying the artificially produced spectrum phenomenon, we shall now return to our original field of observation in order to study the same phenomenon in nature. there it meets us in the form of the rainbow, which we shall now be able to read as a chapter in the great book of nature. from what we have learnt already we can say at once that the rainbow must represent some sort of border-phenomenon, thus pointing to the existence of a boundary between two space-regions of differing illumination. our question therefore must be: what is the light-image whose boundary comes to coloured manifestation in the phenomenon of the rainbow? there can be no doubt that the image is that of the sun-disk, shining in the sky. when we see a rainbow, what we are really looking at is the edge of an image of the sun-disk, caught and reflected, owing to favourable conditions, in the atmosphere. (observe in this respect that the whole area inside the rainbow is always considerably brighter than the space outside.) once we realize this to be the true nature of the rainbow, the peculiar order of its colours begins to speak a significant language. the essential point to observe is that the blue-violet part of the spectrum lies on the inner side of the rainbow-arch - the side immediately adjoining the outer rim of the sun-image - while the yellow-red part lies on the outer side of the arch - the side turned away from the sun-image. what can we learn from this about the distribution of positive and negative density inside and outside the realm occupied by the sun-disk itself in the cosmos? we remember that along the gradient from blue to violet, negative density (light) increases and positive density (dark) decreases, while from yellow to red it is just the reverse-positive density increases and negative density decreases. the rainbow therefore indicates a steady increase of dark towards the outer rim, and of light towards the inner. evidently, what the optical image of the sun in the atmosphere thus reveals concerning the gradation of the ratio between light and dark in the radial direction, is an attribute of the entire light-realm which stretches from the sun to that image. and again, the attribute of this realm is but an effect of the dynamic relation between the sun itself and the surrounding cosmic space. the rainbow thus becomes a script to us in which we read the remarkable fact that the region occupied by the sun in the cosmos is a region of negative density, in relation to which the region surrounding the sun is one of positive density. far from being an accumulation of ponderable matter in a state of extremely high temperature, as science supposes, the sun represents the very opposite of ponderability. (it would be beyond the scope of this book to show how in the light of this fact one learns to re-read the various solar phenomena known to science.) once we realize this, our judgment of all that our terrestrially devised optical instruments, such as the telescope and spectroscope, tell us about the nature of the sun and its surroundings, will change accordingly. for it becomes clear that for the interpretation of solar phenomena shown by these instruments we cannot properly use concepts derived from observations within the earth's realm of positive density. to compare adequately solar and terrestrial phenomena, we must keep in mind that they are in every respect polar opposites. for instance, the fact that the spectroscope reveals phenomena in the sun's light which are strikingly similar to others occurring when earthly matter is first caused to emit light - that is, brought near the upper border of its ponderable existence - and then studied spectroscopically, should not impose on us the illusion that the sun consists of matter in this same condition. on the contrary, the similarity should tell us that imponderable substance, while on its way between sun and earth to ponderable existence, assumes, at the point of transition, aspects exactly like those revealed by ponderable substance at the corresponding point in its upward transformation. what we observe, when we study the sun through a spectroscope, is not the sun itself, but the conditions obtaining in this border-region, where imponderable substance enters the earth-realm. the rainbow, directly we learn to see it as the border-phenomenon that it is, tells us something of itself which revives in modern form a conception held generally in former ages, when it was seen as a mediator between the cosmic-divine and the earthly-human worlds. thus the bible speaks of it as a symbol of god's reconciliation with the human race after the great flood. thus the greeks beheld it when they saw it as the bridge of iris, messenger of the gods; and similarly the germanic mythology speaks of it as the pathway along which the souls of the fallen warriors draw near to valhalla. by recovering this old conception in a new and scientifically grounded form we are enabled also to rectify the misunderstanding from which the ancient bridge-conception of the rainbow has suffered in later days, when tradition had begun to replace direct insight into the truth. when with the rise of man's onlooker-relation to the world of the senses, the rainbow could appear to him only as a form flattened against the sky, people began to think that the ancient picture of it as a bridge had been derived from its likeness to the latter's arched form. representations of the rainbow from these times indeed show supersensible beings, such as the souls of the dead, moving upwards and downwards along the two halves of the arch. it is not in this abstract way that ancient man formed his cosmic imagery. what was seen going on between the upper and nether worlds when a rainbow appeared in the heights of the atmosphere was no traffic over the arch, but an interplay across the rainbow between the realm of levity, glimmering down in the rainbow's violet border, and the realm of gravity glowing up from the red. and this is how we have now learnt to see it again. * at one point in our optical studies (page ) we referred to some words of ruskin in which he deplored the influence exerted on the soul-life of modern man by the world-conception of science. he illustrated this by showing how much less inspiration a man trained in the science of optics receives from the sight of a rainbow than does a 'simple peasant'. one lesson of our studies is that training in optics, if it proceeds on goethean lines, has no such detrimental effect. there is, however, a further problem, outside ruskin's scope, which we are now able to approach in the same healthy way. ruskin distinguishes between three possible stages in man's relation to the world of the senses. the first stage he calls that of 'inactive reverie'; the second - in a certain respect more advanced - that of 'useful thought', the stage of scientifically awakened man to whom all things disintegrate into countable and nothing but countable parts. beyond this, ruskin conceives of a third, still higher stage, in which man becomes capable of raising himself through 'higher contemplation' into an artistic-ethical relation to the content of the sense-world. now, in the way ruskin represents the second and third stages they seem to be exclusive of one another. that was as far as he could go, in his own day. natural observation along goethean lines leads to a form of higher contemplation which unites the second and third stages by nourishing man's ethical being and at the same time furnishing him with useful knowledge-knowledge, that is, which enables him to improve the conditions of the human race on the earth. the following is an example of the practical possibilities that open up in the field we are discussing if we apply the knowledge gained through our new approach to the forces working in nature. we shall speak here of a task of experimental research which was mentioned by rudolf steiner in connexion with the renewal of natural science. rudolf steiner felt the need for pioneers who, by advancing along the paths opened up by goethe, would press forward into the realm of undiscovered phenomena on the upper border of nature, and this prompted him to give to those who were ready to listen various pointers towards new ways of experimental research. in so far as practical results have already been reached along these lines, they lie in the fields of biology and physiology (and of chemistry, in a certain respect) rather than in that of physics. now, among the indications given in this latter field, and not yet worked out, there is one which deals with a way, unknown to-day, of influencing the spectrum by the magnet. the possibility of a magnetic influence on the spectrum is, in itself, not unknown to modern physics. it was the dutchman, zeeman, who first observed a change in the appearance of certain spectral lines as a result of light passing through a magnetic field. this discovery, however, is in two respects typical of modern science. the zeeman effect consists in the splitting up of certain spectral lines into other lines - hence, of a breaking up of a whole into parts. and by seemingly providing a decisive confirmation of contemporary views concerning the electromagnetic nature of light, zeeman's discovery has formed one of the milestones in the progress of modern physical thought - with the usual result that an enlargement of man's knowledge of the behaviour of natural forces has served to entangle his conception of nature still more deeply in illusion. apart from the fact that our own way of combining observation and thought guards us against drawing theoretical conclusions from zeeman's discovery, rudolf steiner's indication opens up the prospect of achieving quite practical results, opposite in character to those of the zeeman effect. for in contradistinction to the use of a magnetic field for splitting the spectrum, rudolf steiner has made us aware of the possibility of uniting into a higher synthesis parts of the spectrum which normally appear in separated form. his indication points to nothing less than a leading over of the optically produced spectrum from its usual linear form, with two boundaries on either side, into a closed circular form, and of doing this by an adequate application - as yet undiscovered - of magnetic force. further, according to his statement, the point where the two ends of the spectrum meet will prove to be a fountain-head of certain higher natural forces which otherwise are not directly accessible. in order to understand how this is possible, we must remember that in two respects the spectrum is not a complete phenomenon. there is, to begin with, the fact that the colour-band visible on the observation screen is only apparently confined to the surface of the screen. for, as we have seen, because of the differing co-ordination of levity and gravity at the two ends of the spectrum, the conditions of space prevailing at each are polarically opposite. negative space opens up spherically behind the blue-violet colours on one side, while positive space, filled by the radially shining yellow-red colours, arises on the other. so we see that what we found earlier for the two poles of magnetism and electricity holds good also for the spectrum. that is, the two processes bringing about the relevant phenomena are not confined to the part of space which these phenomena seem to occupy; for the whole positive and negative realms of the universe share in them. hence the spectrum, though apparently bounded at its two ends, proves by its very nature to be part of a greater whole. once before we were led to recognize - though from a different aspect - that the spectrum is a phenomenon which, when rightly viewed, calls for a certain completion. in following goethe's initial observations we realized that the known spectrum, extending from red via green to violet, has a counterpart extending from violet via peach-blossom to red. the reader may have wondered why we never returned to this other spectrum, in spite of the role it played in making goethe aware of newton's error. the reason was that in order to gain the understanding we needed of the spectrum, we had to observe the two border-phenomena independently - that is, without regard to their relative positions. moreover, with ordinary optical means it is possible to produce only one type of spectrum at a time, so that each is left in need of being complemented by the other. in order to have both together in finite space, as part of one and the same phenomenon, space itself must be dynamically transformed in such a way that the continuation of the finite spectral band running through infinity enters into the finite as well. our understanding of magnetism as a specific representation of the polarity of the second order enables us to comprehend, at least in principle, how magnetism might influence - not light itself, as present-day physics erroneously believes - but the secondary polarity of the spectral colours formed out of the primary polarity light and dark. to see this in all necessary detail is a task of the future, beyond the scope of this book. we have here to continue our account of rudolf steiner's statement by communicating what he indicated concerning the particular nature of the new source of force which would appear in the normally infinite part of the spectrum, if this were brought into the region of the finite. in order to understand the significance of this indication we must turn our attention to parts of the ordinary spectrum, well known in themselves, which we have purposely left out of our study so far. these are the regions of the ultra-violet and the infra-red, invisible in themselves, but forming part of the spectrum as a whole. the ultraviolet manifests through chemical effects, the infra-red through thermal effects. we have left them out of our considerations because these regions of the spectrum differ from the visible part not only quantitatively, as present-day science believes, but qualitatively also, and in a fundamental way. we must regard them as dynamic realms of particularly extreme spherical and radial activities. as such they represent metamorphoses, in the goethean sense, of the levity-gravity interaction represented by the optically visible part of the spectrum. in this way the spectrum discloses a threefold differentiation of that region of force, which up to now we have called simply levity, into activities producing chemical, optical and thermal effects. so far physical investigation is able to lead us, but no further. if, however, we let nature herself speak to us, while holding this differentiated concept of levity in mind, she tells us that beyond the three metamorphoses envisaged so far, there must be a fourth. let us remember that it was certain phenomena of life which first made us aware of the existence of a realm of forces with the attributes of anti-gravity, and that these forces revealed themselves first as creators of form. now it is obvious that warmth, light and chemical energy, though they all play an essential part in living organisms, could never by themselves bring about that 'catching from chaos, carbon, water, lime and what not and fastening them into a given form' which ruskin describes as the activity of the spirit in the plant. in order to be in this sense an instrument of the spirit active in nature, levity must be capable of yet another metamorphosis into an activity which controls the other three, so that through their action, definitely shaped organic structures may come into being. the reason why this fourth and highest metamorphosis of light does not appear in the ordinary spectrum is because it is of too spiritual a quality to be caught by the optical apparatus. in nature herself a creative life-process requires always the presence of a germ already imbued with life. and so, in order to call this fourth metamorphosis of light into the spectrum, stronger means are needed than the mere optical transformation of light-filled spaces. this stronger agent, according to rudolf steiner, is magnetism. with the aid of this it will be possible to organize together round a common spatial centre that part of the activity of levity which escapes the optical instrument and thus remains cosmic, and that part which appears by itself in terrestrial space. once this is practically carried out, we may expect a complete colour-circle to appear as already divined by goethe. the full circle consists of twelve discernible colours, with the goethean peach-blossom diametrically opposite the green. it is in this region of the peach-blossom that - again according to rudolf steiner - we shall find a source of actively working life-forces, springing from the fourth metamorphosis of levity. such is the prospect for research work guided on the new lines. postscript the fact of our having disclosed here one of rudolf steiner's indications concerning as yet undetected possibilities of scientific research, makes it necessary to deal with an objection which may be raised, particularly by some readers who already know this indication through their own relation to rudolf steiner's work. they may object to a discussion of the subject in a publication such as this, feeling it dangerous to hand over to the world information which in the economic battles of to-day might be used in a sense contrary to the social-moral aims to which the work of rudolf steiner was dedicated. in reply it may be said that all we have gone through in this book has shown that concrete knowledge of the world cannot be gained without a certain ethical effort by the seeker. therefore, anyone who receives such knowledge with a passive attitude of soul will find it meaningless, and will be quite unable to turn it to practical account. we may therefore rest assured that the solution of the problem related here, as of any other experimental task set by rudolf steiner, will contain in itself a guarantee that no use will be made of it detrimental to the true progress of mankind. on the other hand, the present world-situation, which to so high a degree is determined by the vast liberation of the sub-physical forces of the earth, makes one feel it is essential not to close the considerations of the fields of knowledge dealt with in these chapters, without a hint at the practical possibilities which arise from a continuation of goethe's strivings in this field. see, in rudolf steiner's edition of goethe's scientific writings, his footnote to goethe's criticism of nuguet's theory of the spectrum in the historical part of the farbenlehre (vol. iv, p. , in kürschner's edition). it is obvious that the reader who wishes to appreciate fully the significance of the observations described in the following paragraphs, must, as in previous cases, carry out these observations himself. in this and the two following diagrams the light-realm has been represented as being less wide than the space obtained by the prism. to avoid unnecessary complexity the colours which, in such a case, actually appear at the border of the light-realm where it emerges from the prism are not shown in any of the diagrams. this direction can be established with sufficient exactitude by holding a very thin object right in front of the prism and marking with a stretched thread the direction which leads from the object to its shadow on the screen. the colour-producing edge must then be introduced from either side so that it just touches the thread. the difference in character of the various parts of the spectrum, as described above, comes out particularly impressively if for capturing the colour-phenomenon one uses instead of a flat white surface, a clear crystal of not too small size, or else a cluster of crystals - moving it slowly along the coloured band from one end to the other. (i am indebted to fr. julius, teacher of natural science at the free school in the hague, for this suggestion.) part iii towards a new cosmosophy chapter xix the country in which man is not a stranger i question not my corporeal or vegetative eye any more than i question a window concerning sight. i look through it and not with it. william blake. (a) introductory note a fundamental achievement along our path of study was the recognition that a force of levity exists, polar to that of gravity, and that these two together represent a primary polarity in nature which in turn is the source of nature's manifold secondary polarities. in the last part of these studies a vista opened up of an inner differentiation of levity itself into warmth, light, chemical action and the formative activity of life. our next task will be to develop a clearer conception of these four modes of action of levity. in undertaking this task, however, we shall have to extend our observations of nature beyond the frontier that can be reached by using only what we can learn from goethe. it is here that rudolf steiner comes to our aid by what he was able to impart through his researches in the realm of the supersensible itself. this turning to information given by another mind, whose sources of knowledge are beyond our own immediate reach, seems at first sight to be incompatible with the principles guiding all our studies hitherto; for in gaining insight into the how and whence of a phenomenon of the sense-world we have up to now admitted only what is yielded by an observation of the phenomenon per se (though with the aid of the 'eye of the spirit') and of other phenomena related to it. this is what we have called 'reading in the book of nature', and we have found it to be the method on which a science aspiring to overcome the onlooker-picture of the universe must be based. so we must first make sure that the step we now propose to take does not violate this principle. * the assurance we want will be found in two characteristics of the communications made by rudolf steiner from his researches. the content of these communications was acquired by way of a 'reading' which is nothing but a higher metamorphosis of the reading first employed by goethe; and the acceptance of this content by another mind is itself nothing but another act of reading, save that the direction of the reading gaze differs from the usual one. in order to understand this we must go back to what we learnt in the course of our optical studies as to the two forms of vision arising from the activity of the eye's inner light - the dream-vision and the seeing of after-images. of these two, seeing in dream is in a certain sense the purer form of inner seeing in that it arises without any outer stimulus exercised upon the physical organ of sight. on the other hand, it lacks that objective conformity to law characteristic of the after-images which mirror the order of the external world. there is an arbitrary, enigmatic element in dream-pictures, and their logic often seems to run counter to that of waking consciousness. a further characteristic of dream-perception is that we are tied to the level of consciousness prevailing in the dream. while we are dreaming we cannot awaken to the extent of being able to make the pictures the object of conscious observation. with the after-images it is different. although to begin with they are present in our consciousness with a clarity no greater than that of the dream-pictures, nevertheless we are able so to enhance our consciousness of them as to bring them under observation like any external phenomenon. as previously shown, it is possible, even while the eye is riveted on an impression from outside, to develop such awareness in the activity of the inner light called forth by this impression, that together with the results of the deeds and sufferings of the light we can perceive something of these deeds and sufferings themselves. perception of the after-images thus turns into what we may call perception of simultaneous images. (this activity of the eye corresponds with what goethe, in a different connexion, called an 'alliance of the eyes of spirit with the eyes of the body'.) these two forms of visual perception - which we may briefly call: ( ) perception of post-images, and ( ) perception of co-images - represent successive rungs on a 'spiritual ladder' pointing beyond themselves to a further rung. by the logic of succession this may be expected to consist in some sort of seeing of pre-images, with the characteristic of being a still less physical mode of seeing than the two others. this seeing must be based on an activity of the inner light which will be similar to that in dream by its arising without any stimulus from external light-impressions, yet at the same time there must be no arbitrariness in the contents of this perception. further, our consciousness in this perceptive activity must be such as to allow us to be in full control of it, as we are of ordinary day-waking seeing. this kind of pure sense-free perception does indeed exist, and it can be aroused by means of a well-ordered training from the dormant state in which it is present in every human being. anyone who learns to see in this way gains perception of the activity of cosmic light, contacting it directly with his own inner light - that is to say, without mediation of his corporeal eye which is subject to gravity. so this eye-of-the-spirit becomes capable of perceiving the levity-woven archetypes (ur-images), which underlie all that the physical eye discerns in the world of ordinary space. in respect of the intrinsic character of the world-content thus perceived, rudolf steiner called this mode of perception, imaginative perception, or, simply, imagination. by so doing he invested this word with its due and rightful meaning. from what we found in our optical studies concerning the nature of after-images (chapter xv), it is clear that the acquisition of imaginative perception rests on a re-awakening in the eye (and thus in the total organism behind the eye) of certain 'infant' forces which have grown dormant in the course of the growing up of the human being. it thus represents a fulfilment of thomas reid's philosophic demand. consequently we find among the descriptions which traherne gives of the mode of perception peculiar to man when the inner light, brought into this world at birth, is not yet absorbed by the physical eye, many helpful characterizations of the nature of imaginative perception, some of which may be quoted here. consider, in this respect, the following passage from traherne's poem the praeparative, quoted earlier. in describing the state of soul at a time when the physical senses are not yet in operation, traherne says: 'then was my soul my only all to me, a living, endless ey, whose power, and act, and essence was to see: i was an inward sphere of light or an interminable orb of sight, exceeding that which makes the days, a vital sun that shed abroad its rays: all life, all sense, a naked, simple, pure intelligence.'' this is the condition of soul of which traherne says in the same poem that through it a man is still a recipient of the 'true ideas of all things'. in this condition the object of sight is not the corporeal world which reflects the light, but light itself, engaged in the weaving of the archetypal images. in a later passage of the same poem traherne expresses this by saying: 'tis not the object, but the light that maketh hev'n. ...' and more clearly still in the following part of his poem an infant eye: 'a simple light from all contagion free, a beam that's purely spiritual, an ey that's altogether virgin, things doth see ev'n like unto the deity; that is, it shineth in an hevenly sense, and round about (unmov'd) its light dispense. 'the visiv rays are beams of light indeed, refined, subtil, piercing, quick and pure; and as they do the sprightly winds exceed, are worthy longer to endure; they far out-shoot the reach of grosser air, with which such excellence may not compare. but being once debas'd, they soon becom less activ than they were before.' how at this stage the soul experiences the act of perception in itself is shown in the following passage from the poem wonder: 'a nativ health and innocence within my bones did grow and while my god did all his glories show i felt a vigour in my sense that was all spirit: i within did flow with seas of life like wine.' utterances of this kind illustrate the fact that perception of the ur-images of the world consists in a reading with the eye-of-the-spirit, which has been rendered so strong that for its action no support from the physical eye is any longer required. this faculty of spiritual imagination (which rudolf steiner was able to exercise in advance of other human beings) is acquired on a path of training which is the direct continuation of the goethean path. it remains to show that acceptance of information obtained through spiritual imagination, without ourselves being as yet in actual command of it, is not in contradiction with the principles of 'reading'. let us, to this end, think of reading in the ordinary sense of this word, calling to mind that for the acquisition of this faculty we depend on someone who can teach it because he already has it. exactly the same holds good for the reading with which we are here concerned. here, too, a teacher already possessing this faculty is required. thus goethe became for us a teacher of reading, and it would be a mistake to imagine that he, for his part, needed no teacher. in his case this function was fulfilled partly by what he learned through his studies of the earlier fruits of man's spiritual activity, that is, from an epoch when vestiges at least of the original, instinctive faculty of spiritual imagination were still extant. a similar function on our own path of study was performed by our occupation with the old doctrine of the four elements and the basic concepts of alchemy. indispensable as is such a training in reading by turning to past conceptions of man, it does not suffice to meet the present-day demands of a scientific understanding of the universe. for this, we need a 'technique' of reading that cannot be attained along these lines alone. awareness of this fact led rudolf steiner to pursue his spiritual-scientific investigations and to communicate the results in such a way that they can be a 'school of reading' for those who study them. in point of fact we have already made use in this sense of one of the results of rudolf steiner's researches, for at the very beginning of this book his picture of the threefold psycho-physical organism of man was taken as the basis of our own investigations. the reason why the present remarks were not then included is that the relevant results of higher research were in that case of such a nature that, once known, they could be confirmed by the simplest kind of self-observation. the fact, however, remains that from the very beginning we have called upon one fully trained in reading, to help in deciphering certain facts of nature - in this case of human nature. a similar need, though now in an amplified form, arises at the present stage of our studies. and here, out of the wealth of knowledge conveyed by rudolf steiner from the realm of supersensible imagination, it is his characterization of the four modifications of levity which will now give the guidance necessary for our own observation. adopting the terminology chosen by him for the description of this sphere, we shall in future speak of it as of the 'ether' pervading the universe (thus using this word also in its true and original meaning). accordingly, we shall refer to its fourfold differentiation as to the four kinds of ether: warmth-ether, light-ether, chemical ether and life-ether. * * * (b) warmth we begin with the warmth-ether as the only modification of ether which combines certain etheric with certain physical properties. constituting as it does a border-condition between the two worlds, the warmth-ether has, on the one hand, the function of receiving the picture-weaving transmitted to it by the higher ethers, and, on the other, of bringing physical matter into the state where it becomes receptive to the working of the etheric forces. the warmth-ether achieves this by freeing matter from being controlled one-sidedly by the centre-bound forces of the earth. it thus calls forth, when acting physically, the processes of melting of solids and of evaporation of liquids: phenomena which yielded the initial observations for our introduction of the concept of levity. in processes of this kind we now recognize the physical manifestation of a universal function of the warmth-ether, namely, to divest matter of all form and to lead it over from the realm dominated by gravity into that of levity. provided we attach the right meaning to the word, we may say that the function of the warmth-ether is to bring about chaos at the upper border of physical nature. it is thus that we have already found it working in the plant, when through the union of the pollen with the seed a state of chaos is produced within the seed, which enables the type to impress anew its form-principle into it. another instance of the warmth-ether's anti-gravitational effect, also discussed earlier, is the earth's seismic activity. true, it appears at first sight as if little were gained by speaking of warmth-ether, instead, as we did previously, of levity in general. but it must not be forgotten that in the ether-realm as a whole, warmth - that is, the overcoming of earthly gravity - is only one of the four modes of etheric action, albeit the one which enables the other three to work into the physical world. we shall see, later on, that only by taking into account the action of the higher modifications of the ether is it possible to gain insight into the true causes of the apparently so arbitrary occurrences of volcanic and kindred phenomena. here, too, it is the function of the warmth-ether to produce in the physical sphere the chaos which is necessary to make the physical sphere receptive to the activities going on in higher spheres. in view of this universal function of the warmth-ether, which distinguishes it from the other modifications of ether, we may give it as a second name that of 'chaoticizing ether'. * * * (c) light the function of the light-ether, the second of the four modes of ether, can best be envisaged by thinking of the difference between a plant growing in darkness (perhaps a potato sprouting in a cellar) and another of the same species exposed to the influence of the light. on plates vii and viii two kinds of unicellular organisms are shown, of one which - the green algae - is accustomed to live in light, the other - the bacilli - in darkness. these things are, of course, well-known facts. our purpose here, however, is not merely to record them as 'fact', but, by re-creating them within ourselves, to use them to gain an experience of the function of the light-ether. the following passages from goethe's metamorphosis of plants are a classical example of observation of the activity of the light-ether in the plant. they are taken from the second part of the essay, where goethe is describing leaf-development: 'while the leaves owe their first nourishment principally to the more or less modified watery parts, which they draw from the stem, they are indebted for their increased perfection and refinement to the light and air. the cotyledons which are formed beneath the closed seed-sheath are charged, so to speak, with only a crude sap; they are scarcely and but rudely organized and quite undeveloped. in the same way the leaves are more rudely organized in plants which grow under water than in others which are exposed to the open air. indeed, even the same species of plant develops smoother and less intricately formed leaves when growing in low damp places, whereas, if transplanted to a higher region, it will produce leaves which are rough, hairy and more delicately finished.' 'so it is also with the anastomosis of the vessels which spring forth from the larger veins, seeking each other with their ends and coalescing, and thus providing the necessary basis for the leaf-skin or cuticle. all this, if not entirely caused by subtle forms of air, is at least very much furthered by them. if the leaves of many water-plants are thread-like or assume the form of antlers, we are inclined to attribute it to lack of complete anastomosis. the growth of the water buttercup, ranunculus aquatilis, shows this quite obviously, with its aquatic leaves consisting of mere thread-like veins, while in the leaves developed above water the anastomosis is complete and a connected plane is formed. occasionally, indeed, in this plant, the transition may be still more definitely observed, in leaves which are half anastomosed and half thread-like.' the second of these paragraphs describes the phenomenon of vascular anastomosis which, having already been more than once an object of our study, here reveals a new meaning. if, following goethe's method, we re-create in our mind the repeated separations and reunions of the sap-vessels, while keeping in view the fact that the leaf's outer form is the result of a purposive, many times repeated anastomosis, then the picture of the activity of weaving arises before our mind's eye. (hence the word 'tissue' for the flesh of a living being.) in truth all nature's forms are woven of light, including the crystals. how clear a picture goethe had of the conformity of man's act of thinking with nature's way of producing her forms - both being an act of supersensible weaving - is shown by the following two verses. that on the left is a passage from faust, from the scene in which mephisto (disguised as faust) instructs the young scholar. the other is an altered version of it, written by goethe at a later time to conclude an essay (bedenken und ergebung) in which he deals with the problem of the relation between experience and idea: truly, when men their thoughts conceive 'tis as if some masterpiece they weave. one thread, and a thousand strands take flight, swift to and fro the shuttles going, all unseen the threads a-flowing, one stroke, and a thousand close unite. so with a modest eye perceive her masterpiece dame nature weave. one thread, and a thousand strands take flight, swift to and fro the shuttles going, each to the other the threads a-flowing, one stroke, and a thousand close unite. - what goethe wants to show here by applying to the activity of nature the same image which he used originally to depict the act of thinking, we can express to-day by saying that it is the identity of the activity of the light-ether in human thinking and in external nature which is responsible for the fact that the objective ideas operating in nature can become the content of man's consciousness in the form of thoughts. following our previous procedure when we gave the warmth-ether a second name by calling it chaoticizing ether, we can denote the light-ether also as 'weaving ether'. * if at this point in our discussion we revert once more to the realm of physical manifestations of light, dealt with in the preceding chapters, we do so because by studying them in the present context we shall gain further insight into the fact that one plane of nature provides illustrations of processes which on another plane remain more or less veiled. at the same time this will help us to learn more about the properties of levity-space. the optical phenomenon which we shall discuss in this sense is that of the so-called pin-hole camera. (the pin-hole camera effect is easily produced by a keyhole in a closed door which on one side faces a window and on the other leads to a comparatively dark room.) the usual explanation of the appearance of the optical image on the back inside wall of such a camera is that light-rays, emanating from every point outside, cross each other in the aperture of the camera and so - again point by point - create the inverted image. no such explanation, clearly, is open to us. for the world of external objects is a whole, and so is its image appearing in the camera. equally, the light entering the camera is not a sum of single rays. pure observation leads to the following description of the optical process. by surveying the path which the light takes from the illuminated surface of the outer objects via the pin-hole to the optical image inside the camera, we realize that the light-realm engaged in this process has the shape of a double cone, with its apex in the opening of the camera. within this cone the light carries the image across the space stretching in front of the light-reflecting objects up to the point where the image becomes visible by being caught on the back wall of the camera. thus in every section of the cone the image is present in its totality - even in the very apex of the cone. there, too, the image in all its details is present as a whole, though without (ideally) any spatial extension. seen thus, on this level of its action the light-ether reveals as one of its characteristics the faculty of making present in a spaceless point an image originally expanded in space, and of letting it emerge from this point in spatial expansion. further, there is the fact that, wherever we set up a pin-hole camera, the aperture in its front will cause the formation of an optical image inside it. this shows that each point in space filled with light is the bearer of an optical image, contracted to a point, of the entire world of light-reflecting objects surrounding it. all we do with such a camera is to select a particular image and bring it to separate visibility. through these observations we grow aware of light's faculty of communicating simultaneously to space as a whole, and to each point in it, a potential image of the light-reflecting object. what we observe here in the sphere of physical light-activity is exactly what the light-ether performs on a higher level of nature when with its help the spiritual archetype of a plant takes on spatial appearance. for to this end the archetype, itself without spatial limitations, imprints its image into the tiny seed, whence the growing plant organism carries it again into space. and there is in principle no limitation to the number of such seeds, each of which will bear the complete image of the archetype. * * * (d) sound the characteristics of the third modification of ether are such that they prompted rudolf steiner to give it as a second name, besides chemical ether, that of sound-ether. in view of the fact, stressed at the beginning of this chapter, that perception of the ether is achieved by a heightening of the power of the spirit-eye, it must cause surprise to learn that a certain mode of activity of the ether has a quality which makes appeal to aural experiences. the full answer to this riddle must await the discussion that follows this chapter. two points, however, may be brought forward at once. firstly, where gravity, with its tendency to individualize, is absent, no such sharp distinctions exist between one form of perception and another as are found in the sphere of the physical senses. secondly, even in ordinary sense-perception a certain overlapping of visual and aural experiences is known to us. we need only think how common it is to give musical attributes, such as 'consonant' and 'dissonant' to colours, and to describe tones as 'light' and 'dark'. the reason is that subconsciously we accompany visual experiences with tone-sensations, and vice versa. cases are even known of human beings in whom the secondary sensation occurs with such intensity as to equal the primary one. such people say that they 'see' sounds and 'hear' colours. * everything that is true of the supersensible sphere we may expect to come to expression in some form in the world of sense-perception. the sphere of the ether is the sphere of the creative archetypes of the world, and when we learn that to one part of this world the character of sound is attributed, we must search for a phenomenon, perceptible to our senses, which reveals to us the secret of the sound's form-creating power. this we have in the so-called sound-figures, discovered by the german physicist chladni ( - ) and called after him 'chladni's sound-figures'. a short description of how they are produced will not be out of place. a round or square plate of glass or brass, fixed at its centre so that it can vibrate freely at its edges, is required. it is evenly and not too thickly covered with fine sand or lycopodium powder and then caused to vibrate acoustically by the repeated drawing of a violin-bow with some pressure across the edge of the plate until a steady note becomes audible. through the vibrations thus caused within the plate, the particles of sand or powder are set in movement and caused to collect in certain stationary parts of the plate, thereby creating figures of very regular and often surprising form. by stroking the plate at different points on the edge, and at the same time damping the vibrations by touching the edge at other points with the finger, notes of different pitch can be produced, and for each of these notes a characteristic figure will appear (fig. ). the significance for us of chladni's experiment will emerge still more clearly if we modify it in the following way. instead of directly setting the plate with the powder into vibration by stroking it with the bow, we produce a corresponding movement on a second plate and let it be transmitted to the other by resonance. for this purpose the two plates must be acoustically tuned to each other and placed not too far apart. let us imagine, further, that the whole experiment was arranged - as it well might be - in such a way that the second plate was hidden from a spectator, who also lacked the faculty of hearing. this gives us a picture of the situation in which we find ourselves whenever the higher kinds of ether by way of a tone-activity inaudible to our physical ear, cause shapeless matter to assume regularly ordered form. * this comparison of the activity of the sound-ether, as the form-creating element in nature, with chladni's phenomenon is drawn correctly only if we recognize that the conception of form, as an expression of that which is called forth through the etheric forces in nature, comprises more than the external spatially bounded shape of an organic or inorganic entity. apart from the fact already indicated, that for the formation of such entities the co-operation also of life-ether is necessary, we can judge the activity of sound-ether correctly only if we conceive it as a much more inward activity, compared with the formation in external space of chladni's figures. in the latter case, the reason why the influence of sound causes nothing beyond the ordering of form in outer space is because on this plane of nature the only changes that can occur are changes in the positions of separate physical bodies. where the forces of sound in ether-form are able to take hold of matter from within, they can produce changes of form of a quite different kind. this effect of the activity of sound-ether has given it its other name: chemical ether. we have mentioned once before that our conception of 'form' in organically active nature must not be limited merely to that of a body's spatial outline. this was in connexion with ruskin's definition of the spiritual principle active in plant-formation as 'the power that catches out of chaos charcoal, water, lime and what not, and fastens them down into a given form'. besides the external order of matter revealed in space-form, there exists also an inner qualitative order expressed in a body's chemical composition. upon this inner chemical order is based all that we encounter as colour, smell, taste, etc., of a substance, as well as its nourishing, healing or harmful properties. accordingly, all these parts of an organism, both in the plant-kingdom and within the higher organisms, have a certain inner material order, apart from their characteristic space-structure. the one is never present without the other, and in some way they are causally connected. in this inner order of substance we must see in the very first place the work of the sound or chemical ether. and we should be aware that by the word 'chemistry' in this connexion we mean something much more far-reaching than those chemical reactions which we can bring about by the reciprocal affinity of physical substances, however complicated these reactions may be. a few examples will illustrate the difference between chemical processes caused by direct influence of the chemical ether, and others in which only the physical consequences of the ether are effective. in his book, man the unknown, professor carrel shows very impressively, by an example from the human organism, the difference of quantitative ratio in externally similar processes, one of which occurs within the domain of life, the other, outside it. he compares the quantity of liquid necessary to keep artificially alive a piece of living tissue which has been reduced to pulp, with the quantity of blood doing the same within the living organism. if all the tissues of a human body were treated in this way, it would take , gallons of circulating fluid to keep them from being poisoned in a few days by their own waste products. within the living organism the blood achieves the same task with j gallons. very many chemical changes within living organisms are effected by the two polar processes of oxidation and reduction. we have discussed them repeatedly as hieroglyphs of much that occurs in nature by way of polarity. in accordance with the principle ruling the physical plane of nature, that differences of level tend to disappear, oxidation can occur by itself, whereas reduction requires the expenditure of energy. let us from this point of view compare the transformation of oxidized into reduced iron, as it takes place inside and outside the realm of life. an example of this process in its purely physical form is the reduction of iron-ore to metallic iron in blast-furnaces, where, with the help of high temperature and high pressure, carbon is made to combine with the oxygen ingredient of the ore and to impart to it its own imponderable energy. precisely the same process is going on continuously and unobtrusively within the human body under normal bodily conditions of temperature and pressure, when the oxy-haemoglobin of the arterial blood changes over into the haemoglobin of the venous blood. a macrotelluric counterpart of this is the transformation of the red river-mud into the blue-black continental mud at the bottom of the sea, around the continental shores. here, again, reduction takes place without those preliminaries that are necessary for carrying through the process by technical means. through examples of this kind we gain insight into the nature of the chemical ether as a 'magic' force (in the sense in which we have introduced this term at the beginning of the book). what the chemical ether is capable of effecting in a gentle manner, so to speak, in cooperation with the inertness-overcoming power of the warmth-ether, can be imitated physically only by an extraordinary concentration of external energy and the use of masses of material substance. at the same time the imitation is never complete. for to all that happens through the action of the chemical ether there belongs the quality of cosmic youth, while everything brought about in a purely physical manner is of necessity cosmically old. of all the provinces of nature towards which man's exploring eye has turned since the dawn of the onlooker-consciousness, none has furthered his purely quantitative thinking more than chemistry, ever since the discovery that the chemical reactions of the various substances are conditioned by a quite definite and constant numerical relationship. it was these relationships which impelled the rise of the atomic conception of matter and all its consequences. for since the onlooker-consciousness is quite unable to conceive the existence of numerical relationships in the physical world except as sums of computable units in space, it was natural for this type of consciousness to reduce all empirically established numerical relationships to correspending relationships among quantities of the smallest possible material or matter-like units. scientific thinking, if guided by knowledge of the existence of etheric forces and their action, has no need of such an interpretation of the numerical relationships revealed in the physical world; for it knows them to be nothing but the last expression of the action of the chemical ether (hence occasionally also called 'number-ether' by rudolf steiner). to do justice to the appearance of measurable numerical relationships in nature, in whatever sphere, it is necessary to free ourselves from the abstract conception of number which governs modern scientific thought and to replace it by a more concrete one. we shall rind that for the existence of a certain number there may be two quite different reasons, although the method of establishing the number itself is the same in each case. a simple example will illustrate this. let us look at a number of similar objects, say a group of five apples. we observe that the relation of the number five to the group of objects in front of us is purely external and accidental. in applying to it the conception 'five' we combine the single objects into a group and give it a name, or numerical label, which has nothing to do with the nature of the items making up the group. this way of thinking, we may observe, is of exactly the kind which the nominalists of the middle ages attributed to every conception formed by the human mind. in fact, the process of counting is a process of pure abstraction. the more differentiated are the things which we want to combine into a group through the process of counting, the further this abstraction has to go. we can count apples and pears together under the collective conception of 'fruit'; if turnips are added, we must help ourselves out with the conception 'vegetable products'; until finally we deal only with 'things', without considering any qualitative differentiation. thus the conception of number is created solely within the human mind, which applies it to things from outside. from the moment when human consciousness was unable to attribute to itself any other than a purely nominalistic mode of comprehension it was inevitable that all explanations of natural phenomena would have two results: ( ) the exclusion from observation of everything that could not be conceived in terms of numbers, and ( ) an endeavour to find for every numerical relationship capable of empirical proof an explanation which could be interpreted as the result of taking qualitatively identical units and counting them. for this method of forming conceptions is the only one which nominalism can accept with a good conscience. the fact that in so doing it is led ad absurdum has only quite lately occurred to it. for if by the logical following of this path - as in modern theoretical physics - the whole universe is dissolved into units which can no longer be distinguished from each other, then it will become impossible to count these parts, for it cannot be established whether any given one of these hypothetical elemental particles has been counted or not. none the less, eddington claimed to have found the exact number of particles composing the universe - a number with figures - by using a special calculus, but this number is valid only on the supposition that the particles cannot be counted because they are indistinguishable! however correct the nominalistic conception of number may be in such a case as that of numbering the five apples, it is wholly incorrect to restrict the concept of number itself to one valid for this kind of occurrence. we shall see this immediately if we take one of the apples and cut it across. there we find the number five confronting us in the well-known star-like figure, represented by the fivefold pericarp in the centre of the apple. what man, restricted as he was to the mode of understanding, has completely overlooked is this: although the act of counting, by which we establish the number five, is the same in both cases, the quality of the number five is totally different. for in the case of the five pericarps this number is a quality immanent in the apple, which it shares with the whole species of rosaceae. the apple itself is just as much 'five' as it is 'round', 'sweet', etc. in the supersensible type which creates in the plant its own organ of manifestation, the creation of a number - in the apple the number five - is part of the form-creating activities characteristic of the type. the numerical relationships which appear between natural phenomena depend upon the way in which the chemical ether participates. this is true equally of those discovered by chemistry in the sphere of inorganic matter and used to-day with such great success. let us be quite clear that the relationship of unity to plurality in the case of the five apples is totally different from what it is in the fivefold pericarp. in the first case unity is the smallest quantity represented by each of the five apples. there, the step from one to two is made by joining together two units from outside. the path from one to many is by way of continuous addition. in the second case the unity is represented by the pericarp - i.e. by the one comprising the many, the latter appearing as parts of the whole. in such a case two is part of one and so are three, four, five, etc. plurality arises from a continuous process of division of unity. the ancient world knew the idea of number only in the last-mentioned form. there unity appeared as an all-embracing magnitude, revealed through the universe. the world's manifoldness was felt to be not a juxtaposition of single things, externally connected, but the content of this unity, and therefore derived from it. this was expressed by the pre-socratic greek philosophers in the formula έν και �αν (the one and the all). with the appearance of the arabs on the scene of history, human thought turned to the additive concept of number, and the original distributive concept receded gradually into oblivion. the acceptance of the new concept made it possible for the first time to conceive the zero. it is clear that by a continuous division of unity one is carried to a constantly growing number of constantly diminishing parts, but without ever reaching the nothing represented by the number zero. to-day we should say that in this way we can reach zero only by an infinite series of steps. yet the idea of the infinite did not exist in this form for ancient man. on the other hand, in the arabic conception of number the steps necessary to reach zero are finite. for just as by the external addition of unities we can step forward from one number to the next, so we can also step back on the same path by repeated subtractions of unities. having thus reached one, nothing can stop us from going beyond it by one more such step. the arabic numeral system, therefore, is the only one to possess its own symbol for zero. it has been correctly noted that the penetration into european thought of this additive concept of number was responsible for developing the idea of the machine; for it accustomed human beings to think calmly of zero as a quantity existing side by side with the others. in ancient man the idea of nothingness, the absolute void, created fear; he judged nature's relation to the void accordingly, as the phrase 'natura abhorret vacuum' indicates. his capacity to think fearlessly of this vacuum and to handle it thus had to be developed in order to bring about the machine age, and particularly the development of efficient steam engines. consider also the decisive part played by the vacuum in crookes's researches, through which the path to the sub-physical realm of nature was laid open. yet nature makes use of number as a regulating factor in quite a different way from its appearance in the purely electrical and gravitational connexions of inorganic matter, namely where sound-ether from the upper boundary of nature so regulates nature's dynamic that the manifold sense-qualities appear in their time-and-space order. when we interpret the arrangement of numbers found there on a nominalistic basis, as is done when the axis- and angle-relationships of crystals are reduced to a mere propinquity of the atoms distributed like a grid in space, or when the difference in angle of the position of the various colours in the spectrum is reduced to mere differences in frequency of the electromagnetic oscillations in a hypothetical ether - then we bar the way to the comprehension not only of number itself, as a quality among qualities, but also of all other qualities in nature. * (e) life as already mentioned, the three kinds of ether, warmth, light and sound, are not sufficient in themselves to bring into existence what in its proper sense we call 'life' in nature, i.e. the formation of single living organisms. this requires the action of a fourth kind of ether, the life-ether, ranged above the other three. we can best comprehend the life-ether's contribution to the total activity of the ether in nature by considering the interaction of the four kinds of ether with the four physical elements. we have seen that the warmth-ether has the double function of being at once the lowest ether and the highest physical element, thus acting as a sphere of reflexion for the other kinds of ether and the elements respectively. each stage in the etheric has its reflexion in the physical, as the above table shows. thus to the physical air the etheric light is related. (the affinity of light and air is best seen in the plant and its leaf-formation.) to bring about real changes in the material composition of the physical world requires the stronger powers of the chemical ether. therefore it is also the first ether of which we had to speak as 'magical' ether. its effects reach into the watery element which is already bound up with gravity, but by its own strength it cannot penetrate beyond that. the causation of material changes in the liquid sphere would in fact be all that these three kinds of ether could achieve together. only when the power of the life-ether is added to the three others can etheric action reach as far as the sphere of solid matter. thus the life-ether is responsible for all solid formation in nature, both in her organic and inorganic fields (the latter-crystal-formation-being the effect of external ether-action). it is to the action of the life-ether that nature owes the existence in her different realms of multitudes of separate solid forms. to mention an instance from our previous studies: in the same way as volcanic phenomena manifest the warmth-ether's gravity-overcoming power on a macrotelluric scale, so snow-formation illustrates the life-ether's matter-shaping might. through its power to bind flowing action into solid form, the life-ether is related to the sound-ether in the same way as the articulated word formed by human speaking is related to the mere musical tone. the latter by itself is as it were fluid. in human speech this fluidity is represented by the vowels. with a language consisting only of vowels man would be able to express feelings, but not thoughts. to let the word as carrier of thought arise out of sound, human speech possesses the consonants, which represent the solid element in it. the emergence of the sense-bearing word from the merely ringing sound is an exact counterpart to what takes place in nature when the play of organic liquids, regulated by the chemical ether, is caused by the life-ether to solidify into outwardly perceptible form. by reading in this way the special function of the life-ether among the other three, we are led to the term ' word-ether' as an appropriate second name for it, corresponding to the term sound-ether for the chemical ether. * thus levity presents itself to us as being engaged in the fourfold activity of chaoticizing, weaving, sounding and, lastly, speaking the form-creative cosmic word into the realm of gravity. to avoid misunderstandings, it should be emphasized that spiritual imagination is not attained by any exercise involving directly the sense of sight and its organ, the eye, but by purely mental exercises designed to increase the 'seeing' faculty of the mind. indeed, it is a misunderstanding of the whole meaning of anthroposophy when its contents are quoted - as they sometimes are even by adherents - in such a way as to suggest that by their help a better 'explanation' may be gained of matters for which there is otherwise no, or at least no satisfactory, explanation. the question: 'how does anthroposophy explain this or that?' is quite wrongly put. we ought rather to ask: 'how does anthroposophy help us to read more clearly this or that otherwise enigmatical chapter of the script of existence?' see space and the light of creation, by g. adams, where this 'weaving' is shown with the help of projective geometry. translation by j. darrell. we may recall here also the passage from ruskin's the queen of the air, quoted earlier, p. ). that the ether, apart from being supersensibly seen, is also heard, was empirically known to goethe. see the opening words of the 'prologue in heaven" (faust, i) and the call of the spirit of the elements in the first scene of the second part of the drama, which follow upon the stage direction: 'the sun announces his approach with overwhelming noise.' by attending chladni's lectures on his discovery in paris the french physicist savart became acquainted with this phenomenon and devoted himself to its study. chladni and savart together published a great number of these figures. understanding the attributes of the chemical ether enables us to see in their right perspective rudolf steiner's suggestions to farmers for the preparation of the soil and for keeping healthy the crops growing on it. attempts have been made to dismiss these suggestions by calling them 'mysticism' and 'mediaeval magic'. both terms are titles of honour if we understand by the one the form of insight into the supersensible realm of nature acquired by the higher mode of reading, and by the other a faculty of nature herself, whose magic wand is the chemical or sound-ether. see eddington's humorous and at the same time serious treatment of this problem in his philosophy of physical science. of the difference between external and internal ether-action more will be said in the concluding chapter. chapter xx pro anima thy functions are ethereal, as if within thee dwelt a glancing mind, organ of vision! and a spirit aëreal informs the cell of hearing, dark and blind. w. wordsworth (a) the well-springs of nature's deeds and sufferings as our observations have shown, gravity and levity not only exist side by side as a primary polarity; the manifold interaction of their fields gives rise to all sorts of secondary polarities. obviously, this interaction must be brought about by a further kind of force to which gravity and levity are subordinate. in what follows we shall try, so far as is possible within the scope of this book, to throw light on the nature of this force. since the direct experience of the dynamic realm constituted by it is based on faculties of the mind other than those needed for the imaginative perception of the etheric realm, we shall have to examine also the nature and origin of these faculties. this will lead us again to the study of one of man's higher senses, this time his sense of hearing, with the aim of finding the spiritual function that is hidden in it. but our order of procedure will have to differ from the one followed in the last chapter, because it will be necessary first to make ourselves acquainted with the nature of the new force and then to turn to an examination of the sense-activity concerned. * let our first object of observation be man himself in so far as he illustrates a polarity of the second order. when studying man's nature with the idea of understanding the genesis of his onlooker-consciousness, it will be remembered, we had to examine the ordering of his consciousness into waking, dreaming and sleeping in the different members of his organism. we recognized three different organic systems, the sensory-nerve system, the rhythmic system and the metabolic-limb system, as the bodily foundation of three different soul activities. these are the thought-forming activity which belongs to waking consciousness; the feeling activity which belongs to dream consciousness; and the willing activity which belongs to sleep consciousness. we then saw in these three systems representatives of the three alchemical functions - 'sulphurous' in the metabolic, 'saline' in the nervous, 'mercurial' in the mediating rhythmic system. regarded thus, man's nature reveals itself as being endowed with a physical organization, and an etheric organization, which are brought into different relationships by being acted upon by a third organization consisting of forces of the kind here to be studied. at his lower pole these forces co-ordinate the ether and physical organizations in a manner corresponding to the function of the 'sulphur'-pole of the alchemical triad. here, therefore, the warmth-ether takes the lead and acts in such a way that the higher kinds of ether are able to come to expression in material processes of the body. at the upper pole corresponding forces co-ordinate the physical and ether organizations in a way characteristic of the 'salt'-pole. this gives the lead to the life-ether, so that the physical organism provides the foundation for the activity of the ether-forces without, however, being actually penetrated by them (at least after completion of the embryonic and first post-embryonic development). as a result, consciousness lights up in this part of the body. the rhythmic sphere, being the 'mercurial' middle, is distinguished by an alternation of the two conditions described. with each diastole it becomes more akin to the pole below, and with each systole more akin to the pole above. here, therefore, the lighting up of consciousness is only partial. by means of these observations we realize that the third type of force, in so far as it is active in man, has the capacity, by co-ordinating the physical and etheric parts of the organism in one way or another, to promote happenings either of a more corporeal or a more psychical nature - namely, motion at one pole, sensation at the other, and feeling in the middle between them. remembering goethe's formula, 'colours are deeds and sufferings of light', we realize how deeply true the concepts were to which he was led by his way of developing observation and thought. what we have now brought to our awareness by studying man, holds good in some sense also for the animal. the animal, too, is polarized into motion and sensation. (what makes the animal differ from man need not concern us here, for it belongs to a dynamic realm other than the one we are now studying. this other realm will come under consideration in the next chapter.) quite a different picture arises when we turn to the plant. the plant, too, is characterized by a threefold structure, root, stem with leaves, and florescence, which in their way represent the three alchemical functions. consequently, there is also motion in the plant, although this is confined to internal movements leading to growth and formation. and at the opposite pole there is sensation, though again very different from the sensation experienced by higher living beings. what we mean here by 'sensation' can be best expressed by quoting the following passage from ruskin's the queen of the air, in which the dual activity of the dynamic which we seek to understand is brought out particularly clearly. in describing the forming of blossom in the plant as the climax of the 'spirit' active in it, ruskin says: 'its (the plant's) form becomes invested with aspects that are chiefly delightful to our own human passions; namely, first, with the loveliest outlines of shape and, secondly, with the most brilliant phases of the primary colours, blue, yellow, red or white, the unison of all; and to make it more strange, this time of peculiar and perfect glory is associated with relations of the plants or blossoms to each other, correspondent to the joy of love in human creatures and having the same object in the continuance of the race.' if we wish to understand why the same dynamic action working on the physical and etheric organisms of the plant, on the one hand, and of man and the animal, on the other, brings about effects so different, we must turn to the realm whence this action originates in both cases. for the animal and for man this realm is situated within their organisms because in addition to their individual physical and etheric organizations they are endowed also with an individual organization of the higher kind. not so with the plant. for the rhythms of its growth, the successive formation of its various organs, the production of its colours, etc., the plant depends on outer conditions. what strikes us first in this respect is the plant's dependence on the succession of the seasons. these in turn are an outcome of the changing mutual positions of earth and sun. that which forms part of the individual organism in higher living beings is located in the cosmic surroundings of the plant. in fact, it is our planetary system which provides the forces that stir the etheric and physical forces of the earth to their various interactions, thus bringing about all the manifold secondary polarities. * before we embark on a description of further phenomena which testify to the cosmic nature of the forces with which we are here concerned, it will be well (following a principle applied before) to establish the historical antecedents of the conception of the universe we are about to develop. we realize that the type of force with which we are here seeking to become familiar is the one responsible for the existence of what we commonly call 'soul'. the creation of a body-bound soul, however, is only one particular form of the activity of these forces. another is the one which we have just seen manifest in the plant. in yet another way the same forces function as movers and stirrers of the macro-telluric processes of the earth, and beyond this of the happenings in the body of our planetary system, including the movements of the various planets. this is an aspect which was by no means unfamiliar to ancient man. it was naturally lost when the onlooker-consciousness awoke. in this respect it is of historical significance that the same man, g. a. borelli ( - ), a member of the florentine academy, who was the first to inquire into the movements of the animal and human body from a purely mechanical point of view, made the first attempt to deduce the planetary movements from a purely physical cause. through this fact an impulse comes to expression which we may term contra animam, and against which we have to put our pro anima, in much the same way that we put our pro levitate against the contra levitatem call of the florentine academicians. * it will help our further descriptions if we introduce at this point the name which rudolf steiner adopted for the type of forces we are concerned with here. in view of the fact that their origin lies in the extra-terrestrial realm of the universe, he called them 'astral' forces, thereby giving back to this term, also, its true and original meaning. it is under this name that we shall speak of them henceforth. to make ourselves more familiar with the character of the astral forces, it will be well to observe them first of all in their macrotelluric form of activity. there is, as already mentioned, the rhythmic occurrence of the seasons in connexion with the varying relative positions of earth and sun. alongside this we may put the rhythm of the tides, coincident with the phases of the moon. just as the solar rhythm manifests in an alternating rise and fall of the saps in the plants, so also does the lunar rhythm. (note how this fact actually vitiates the usual explanation that the tidal rhythm of the sea is caused by a gravitational pull exerted by the moon's body on the oceanic water.) in neither instance is the change of position of the relevant cosmic body - in our examples that of the sun or moon in relation to the earth - the 'cause' of the corresponding rhythmic events on the earth. together with all other rhythmic events of equal periodicity, it is itself the effect of the activity of a force-sphere constituting the cosmic realm to which the relevant planetary body belongs. from this statement three major questions arise, which need to be answered before we can carry on our description of the astral forces themselves: firstly, by the way we have spoken of the varying relations of the sun and moon to the earth, seeing in them the effects of certain astral activities, we have treated them as if they were of like nature, namely, resulting from a movement of the relevant heavenly body round the earth. according to the copernican conception, however, only the moon rotates round the earth, whereas the apparent yearly progression of the sun is actually caused by the earth's motion round the sun. this raises the question of how far the copernican, heliocentric aspect is valid in a science which strives to embrace the astral realm of the universe in its inquiries. secondly, what roles do the other members of our planetary system play as compared with those of the sun and the moon? thirdly, if it is true that the essential solar and lunar effects - and presumably the effects of the other planets - on the earth do not spring from physical influence exerted by the visible bodies of the planets concerned, but from certain astral force-fields of which these bodies themselves form part, what is the significance of such a body within the planet's dynamic whole? starting with the answer to the first question, we shall quote the following passage from a lecture on theoretical physics given by professor planck in at the columbia university, new york: 'only the hypothesis of the general value of the principle of relativity in mechanics could admit the copernican system into physics, since this principle guarantees the independence of all processes on the earth from the progressive motion of the earth. for, if we had to make allowance for this motion, then i should, for instance, have to reckon with the fact that the piece of chalk in my hand possesses the enormous kinetic energy corresponding to a velocity of about km/sec.' the implications for us of these remarks by an eminent physicist can be expressed as follows: in a science which knows how to deal with movement as an event of absolute dynamic reality, the copernican aspect loses its significance as the only valid aspect of our cosmic system. for its application as a means of describing the dynamic happenings within this system presupposes the acceptance of einstein's relativistic conception of motion. indeed, for the building up of a picture of the dynamic structure of our system, the copernican view-point is inadequate. this statement must not be taken to deny all justification to the heliocentric view-point. there is, after all, the fact that the orbits which the heavenly bodies appear to follow when viewed in this way, assume a particular geometrical character which cannot be accidental. and more than that, when the heliocentric aspect is seen in its true setting, it forms (as will be shown later) an extremely revealing part of the script which tells us of the nature of the astral forces. all that is required is that the heliocentric picture be taken for what it is, namely, a purely kinematic aspect of the true dynamic ordering of our cosmic system, which in itself calls for quite other means of conceptual representation. from the point of view of the astral order of the universe, the earth appears in the centre of a number of force-fields which penetrate each other and in their peripheral region extend beyond one another in accordance with the respective orbits of the various planetary bodies. how many force-fields there are, and what is the respective character of each, will become clear from the following consideration, which will also provide the answer to the second of our three questions. as the originator of the secondary polarities in earthly nature the astral realm must undoubtedly itself be structured polarically, one part of it forming the cause of all the happenings by which levity is brought into interaction with gravity, the other of all the happenings by which gravity is brought into interaction with levity. there must be a further part which is responsible for the establishment of the 'mercurial' mean between the two poles of the secondary polarity. this leads us to a threefold aspect of the astral realm. closer inspection reveals a repetition of this threefold order within each of the two polar regions. in chapter xii we learnt to distinguish the material happenings at the two poles of the secondary polarity by observing their appearance in the plant as 'sublimation', on the one hand, and 'assimilation' on the other. of the former process, by which matter is carried from its gravity-bound to its gravity-free condition, we know that it takes place in three stages, of which the first implies the lifting of matter from the solid to the liquid condition, the second from the liquid to the aeriform condition, and the third to the condition of pure heat. there are three corresponding stages by which ether becomes susceptible to gravity. it is in their nature that they are not in the same degree manifest as are their polar opposites. still, properly guided observation is able to detect them and enables us to describe them as follows. at the first stage, ether, which in itself has a purely peripheral orientation, becomes linked to some all-relating point; at the second stage, the various ether-activities, already point-related, are brought into some characteristic interrelationship so as to become the cause of a particular formative action in the material realm; at the third stage, the etheric aggregate thus organized receives the impulse to link itself with some particular portion of ponderable matter. in these six forms of astral activity, observation, if guided by modern spiritual science, recognizes the characteristics of the six planetary spheres, known as 'moon', 'mercury', 'venus', on the one hand, 'saturn', 'jupiter', 'mars', on the other. in the same way the dynamic sphere of the 'sun' is found to provide the astral activity which mediates between the two groups of planetary spheres. the following observations may help us to become familiar with the different modes of activity of the force-spheres. let us start with the astral forces corresponding to the three cosmic bodies nearest to the earth - moon, mercury, venus. their activity can be discerned, for example, by watching the successive stages of plant development - the formation of the sap-bearing parts; the flower-substance already partly transformed into aeriform condition; finally the propagating processes which belong essentially to the sphere of activity of the warmth-ether. in the human organism we find the same sequence in the step-by-step transformation of nutriment right up to the moment when earthly form passes into chaos, as we learnt previously. the so-called enzyme action, ascribed by physiology to the various digestive juices, is in reality the product of an activity of the lower part of man's astral organization, for which the relevant juices exercise the function of physical 'carriers'. in the field of macrotelluric phenomena, the metamorphosis of the atmospheric moisture extending beyond the different cloud-stages up to the stage of pure warmth is an example of the activity of the same forces. within all three-stage transitions of this kind, the astral forces connected with the moon preponderate during the first stage, those connected with mercury during the second, those connected with venus during the third. we have already come across some examples of the outstanding share taken by the moon in the events of the earth's watery sphere. to these phenomena, which show by their rhythm their connexion with the moon, we may add the fertility rhythm in the female human organism which coincides, not in phase but in duration, with the rhythm set by the moon's course in the heavens. if we consider that the formation of a new human body in the womb needs the play of formative forces from out of the whole world environment, and that for this purpose matter must be brought into a receptive condition for these forces, then we can better understand the preparatory part played by the moon-forces. in order, however, that the substance of the female germ should reach that condition of chaos suitable for embryonic development, there is still necessary the influence of the supra-lunar astral forces. entry for these is provided by the union of the germ-cell with the male sperm-cell. as the three sub-solar planetary spheres are responsible for events of a 'sulphurous' (radial) character, so are the three supra-solar spheres responsible for those of a 'saline' (spherical) character. for example, we meet with saturn-activity in everything which radiates from the human head and brings about the hardening both of the head itself and of the entire skeleton. observation has shown that, even if the human being, as usually happens, stops growing in the early twenties, so that the skeleton undergoes no further lengthening, it nevertheless reaches its final shape and its final hardening only between the twenty-eighth and thirtieth years. this is the time in man's life when saturn returns for the first time to the position in which it stood relatively to the earth at his birth, or, more correctly, at his conception. if the activity of the saturn-force is most clearly manifest in the formation of the hard skull, that of jupiter, the planet of 'wisdom', is shown in the formation of the complicated structure of the brain, which enables it to co-ordinate the bodily and psychic functions of the entire man. in the realm of physical nature, man's brain is indeed the most perfect example of cosmic intelligence at work in a manner resembling that activity of human intelligence which one usually understands by 'organizing'. in order that form should come about, the forces of saturn are required; for the formative process to take place in wisdom-filled order, jupiter's forces are necessary. if form and order are to become manifest in the realm of earthly substance, both require the assistance of mars. we can best form an idea of the part which mars contributes to the coming into being of the world of form in nature if we observe what takes place when we make use of speech as a medium for expressing our thoughts. in order to be able to shape a thought we have to participate in the formative force of saturn. we depend upon jupiter to bring about logical connexion between the single thoughts. to announce them to the world, we need the motive force of mars, which enables us so to set external matter in motion that it becomes a carrier and relayer of our thoughts. (we here touch upon the field of the acoustic movements of the air which will occupy us more closely later on.) many examples of the activity of the force-spheres represented by the three exterior planets are to be found also in nature external to man. from the realm of plant life we may take the woody and bark-like formation of the trees as representing the operation of saturn-forces. similarly, all that goes on in the organizing of the single leaf, and particularly in the organization of the countless separate leaves which make up the foliage of a tree into a unified whole, the characteristic crown of a tree, is an example of the work of jupiter. both activities are assisted by the force of mars, which directs them from the cosmic periphery toward the single physical object. between the two groups of astral force operating in this manner, the sun acts as a mediating element through its double function of supporting the activity of the three lower planets by means of its heat and of conveying to the earth, through its light, the forces of the three higher planets. in the human microcosm the sun-forces accomplish a corresponding task by means of the influences which radiate from the heart through the body along the paths taken by the blood. * in what follows we shall point to a group of phenomena which show the astral interconnexion between earth and universe; we owe our knowledge of them to rudolf steiner. it is due to him, also, that experimental research into the relevant facts became possible. they concern the reflexion of the various planetary movements, observable in the sky, in the behaviour of certain mineral substances of the earth. in connexion with our discussion of electricity (chapter xiii) we spoke of the special function of the metals as bearers of the 'mercurial' quality (in the alchemical sense of the term). as one of the characteristics which reveal this function we mentioned the peculiar capacity of metals to behave as 'solid fluids'. this exceptional place among the mineral substances of the earth, the metals owe to their close association with the extra-terrestrial astral forces of the world. in this field, too, modern spiritual investigation has recovered something which was known to people of old - that among the metals there are seven which have a distinctive character, for each stands in a special relation to one of the seven planets (that is, the planetary force-spheres) of our cosmic system. this is shown in the following table: saturn	lead jupiter	tin mars	iron sun	gold venus	copper mercury	quicksilver moon	silver as compared with these seven, the other metals are products of combinations of various planetary forces. a comparison of the role of saturn as the outermost planet of our cosmic system with the role played by its metal, lead, as a final product of radioactive disintegration, leads one to conceive of the radioactive sphere of the earth as being related especially to the planets outside the orbit of saturn, namely, uranus, neptune, pluto. thanks to the work of l. kolisko who, in following rudolf steiner's indications, observed for many years the behaviour of the seven metals singly and in combination by submitting their salts to certain capillary effects, we know to-day that the" earth bears in her womb substances whose dynamic condition follows exactly the events in the planetary realm of the universe. * the picture of the universe which has thus arisen before our mind's eye is a startling one only so long as we keep comparing it with its heliocentric predecessor. how wrong it would be to regard it as something inconceivable for the modern mind, is shown by the fact that the modern physiologist has already been driven to form quite a similar picture of the human organism, as far as it concerns glandular action in this organism. his observations have taught him to distinguish between the gland as a spatially limited physical organ and the gland as a functional sphere, and to conceive of the latter as the essential gland. seen thus, 'the spatial and temporal dimensions of each gland are equal to those of the entire organism' (a. carrel). in this way we come to see the human organism as a realm of interpenetrating spheres of distinctive physiological activities. each of these activities is anchored somewhere in the physical body by the anatomically discernible gland-body, and the latter's relationship to the functional sphere is such that a gland's 'physiological individuality is far more comprehensive than its anatomical individuality'. we need only translate this statement into its macrocosmic counterpart to obtain another statement which expresses fittingly the relationship of the visible body of a planet to the functional (astral) sphere indicated by its orbit. then we shall say that 'a planet's astral individuality is far more comprehensive than its astronomical individuality'. it should be observed that the step we have here taken, by using a conception obtained through microcosmic observation to help us to find the answer to a question put to us by the macrocosm, complies with one of the fundamentals of our method of research, namely, to allow 'the heavens to explain the earth, and the earth the heavens' (r. st.). * * * (b) hearing as deed in the introductory part of the last chapter we said that we have the right to employ results of investigation carried out by higher faculties of spiritual perception without contradicting our principle of seeking to understand the phenomenal world by reading it, provided our doing so helps to enhance our own reading activity, and provided it can be shown that the acquisition of the higher faculties of perception is a direct continuation of the training we have to apply to our mind and senses to make them capable of such reading. as regards the forces of astral character, the first of these two conditions has been fulfilled by the observations we have already worked through in this chapter. we have still to show that the second condition is equally fulfilled. the faculty of the mind which permits direct investigation of the astral realm was called (spiritual) inspiration by rudolf steiner, who thereby restored to this term, also, its proper meaning. we have already indicated that this faculty resides in the sense of hearing in the same way that the faculty of imagination - as we have found - resides in the sense of seeing. in order to understand why it is this particular sense which comes into consideration here, we have to consider that the phenomena through which the astral world manifests most directly are all of a rhythmic nature. now, the sense through which our soul penetrates with direct experience into some outer rhythmic activity is the sense of hearing, our aural perceptions being conveyed by certain rhythmic movements of the air. in what follows we shall see how the study of both the outer acoustic phenomena and our own psycho-physical make-up in the region of the acoustic sense, leads to an understanding of the nature of inspiration and of how it can be trained. * among all our sense-perceptions, sound is unique in making itself perceptible in two quite different ways - via the ear as a direct sense experience and via the eye (potentially also via the senses of touch and movement) in the form of certain mechanical movements, such as those of a string or a tuning fork. hence the world-spectator, as soon as he began to investigate acoustic phenomena scientifically, found himself in a unique position. in all other fields of perception, with the exception of the purely mechanical processes, the transition to non-stereoscopic colourless observation had the effect that the world-content of the naive consciousness simply ceased to exist, leaving the ensuing hiatus to be filled in by a pattern of imagined kinematic happenings - for example, colour by 'ether'-vibrations, heat by molecular movements. not so in the sphere of acoustics. for here a part of the entire event, on account of its genuine kinetic character, remains a content of actual observation. in consequence, the science of acoustics became for the scientific mind of man a model of the required division between the 'subjective' (that is, for scientific considerations non-existent) and the 'objective' (that is, the purely kinematic) part of observation. the field of aural perception seemed to justify the procedure of collecting a mass of phenomena, stripped of all that is experienced by man's soul in meeting them, and of assembling them under a purely abstract concept, 'sound'. professor heisenberg, in his lecture (quoted at the beginning of chapter ii) on the way in which the scientific interrogation of nature has deliberately limited itself, draws attention to the fact that a full knowledge of the science of optics in its present form might be acquired merely through theoretical study by one born blind, yet without his ever getting to know what light is. heisenberg could, of course, have said the same of the science of acoustics in regard to one born deaf. but we can go a step further by asking how far a deaf and a blind person could get towards establishing the respective science. the answer must be that, whereas the person lacking sight would not of himself be in a position to establish a science of optics, it would be well within the scope of the deaf man to establish a science of acoustics. for all the processes essential to a physical acoustics are accessible to the eye and other senses. in order to make our experience of hearing a finger-post pointing the way to an understanding of the faculty of inspiration innate in man, we must first of all seek to transform acoustics from a 'deaf into a 'hearing' science, just as goethe turned the theory of colour from a colour-blind into a colour-seeing science. * following our procedure in the case of optics, we select from the total field of acoustic phenomena a defined realm specially suited to our purpose. as it was then the spectrum, so it will be now the so-called quality of sound, or tone-colour. by this term in acoustics is understood a property possessed by sound apart from pitch and volume, and dependent on the nature of the source from which a tone is derived. it is the tone-colour by which the tone of a violin, for instance, is distinguished from a tone of equal intensity and pitch produced by a flute. similarly, two musical instruments of the same kind are distinguished from each other by tone-colour. tone-colour plays a specially significant part in human and animal voices. not only has each individual voice its unique colour, but the colour varies in one and the same person or animal, according to the prevailing mood. moreover, by uttering the various vowels of his language, man is able to impart varying colour to the sounds of his speech. for the difference we experience when a tone is sung on the vowel 'a' or the vowel 'e', etc., derives from the particular colour given by the vowel to that tone. among the discoveries of the last century in the realm of acoustics, there is one which especially helped to establish a purely kinematic conception of sound. helmholtz showed that tones which to our ears seem to have a clear and definite pitch may be split up by a series of resonators into a number of different tones, each of them sounding at a different pitch. the lowest of these has the pitch which our ears attach to the entire tone. thus in any ordinary tone there may be distinguished a 'fundamental' tone and a series of 'overtones'. helmholtz further showed that the particular series of overtones into which a tone can be resolved is responsible for the colour of that tone as a whole. naturally, this meant for the prevailing mode of thinking that the experience of the colour of a tone had to be interpreted as the effect of a kind of acoustical adding together of a number of single tone perceptions (very much as newton had interpreted 'white' light as the outcome of an optical adding together of a certain number of single colour perceptions). the picture becomes different if we apply to the aural experience goethe's theorem that, in so far as we are deluded, it is not by our senses but by our own reasoning. for we then realize that sounds never occur of themselves without some tone-colour, whilst physically 'pure' tones - those that represent simple harmonic motions - exist only as an artificial laboratory product. the colour of a tone, therefore, is an integral part of it, and must not be conceived of as an additional attribute resulting from a summing up of a number of colourless tone experiences. further, if we compare our experiences of the two kinds of tone, they tell us that through the quality or colour of the natural tone something of a soul-nature, pleasant or unpleasant, speaks to us, whereas 'pure' tones have a soulless character. resolving normal tones by helmholtz's method (useful as it is for certain purposes) amounts to something like dissecting a living, ensouled organism into its members; only the parts of the corpse remain in our hands. * having thus established that the psychic content of aural experience forms an integral part of the tone-phenomenon as such, we must seek to understand how the kinetic process which is indispensable for its appearance comes to be the vehicle for the manifestation of 'soul' in the manner described. to this end we must first of all heed the fact that the movement which mediates aural sensation is one of alternating expansion and contraction. expressed in the language of the four elements, this means that the air thus set in vibration approaches alternately the condition of the watery element beneath it and of the element of fire (heat) above it. thus, in a regular rhythm, the air comes near the border of its ponderable existence. purely physical considerations make us realize that this entails another rhythmic occurrence in the realm of heat. for with each expansion of the air heat is absorbed by it and thereby rendered space-bound, while with every contraction of the air heat is set free and returns to its indigenous condition - that is, it becomes free from spatial limitations. this picture of the complete happenings during an acoustic event enables us to understand how such a process can be the vehicle for conveying certain astral impulses in such a way that, when met by them, we grow aware of them in the form of a direct sensation. taking as a model the expression 'transparent' for the perviousness of a substance to light, we may say that the air, when in a state of acoustic vibration, becomes 'trans-audient' for astral impulses, and that the nature of these vibrations determines which particular impulses are let through. what we have here found to be the true role of the kinetic part of the acoustic process applies equally to sounds which are emitted by living beings, and to those that arise when lifeless material is set mechanically in motion, as in the case of ordinary noises or the musical production of tone. there is only this difference: in the first instance the vibrations of the sound-producing organs have their origin in the activity of the astral part of the living being, and it is this activity which comes to the recipient's direct experience in the form of aural impressions; in the second instance the air, by being brought externally into a state of vibration, exerts a kind of suction on the astral realm which pervades the air, with the result that parts of this realm become physically audible. for we are constantly surrounded by supersensible sounds, and the state of motion of the air determines which of them become perceptible to us in our present state of consciousness. at this point our mind turns to a happening in the macrotelluric sphere of the earth, already considered in another connexion, which now assumes the significance of an ur-phenomenon revealing the astral generation of sound. this is the thunder-storm, constituted for our external perception by the two events: lightning and thunder. remembering what we have found earlier (chapter x) to be the nature of lightning, we are now in a position to say: a supraterrestrial astral impulse obtains control of the earth's etheric and physical spheres of force in such a way that etheric substance is thrown into the condition of space-bound physical matter. this substance is converted by stages from the state of light and heat via that of air into the liquid and, in certain cases, into the solid state (hail). to this we now add that, while in lightning the first effect of the etheric-physical interference of the astral impulse appears before our eyes, our ears give us direct awareness of this impulse in the form of thunder. it is this fact which accounts for the awe-inspiring character of thunderstorms. * the picture we have thus received of the outer part of the acoustic process has a counterpart in the processes inside the organ of hearing. hearing, like seeing, depends upon the co-operation of both poles of the human organism-nerve and blood. in the case of hearing, however, they play a reversed role. in the eye, the primary effect of light-impressions is on the nervous part; a secondary response to them comes from the blood organization. in the ear, the receptive organ for the astral impulses pressing in upon it is a part which belongs to the body's limb system, while it is the nervous organization which functions as the organ of response. for in the ear the sound-waves are first of all taken over by the so-called ossicles, three small bones in the middle ear which, when examined with the goethean eye, appear to be a complete metamorphosis of ah arm or a leg. they are instrumental in transferring the outer acoustic movements to the fluid contained in the inner ear, whence these are communicated to the entire fluid system of the body and lastly to the muscular system. we shall speak of this in detail later on. let it be stated here that the peculiar role played by the larynx in hearing, already referred to by us in chapter xvi, is one of the symptoms which tells of the participation of the muscular system in the internal acoustic process. psychologically, the difference between ear and eye is that aural perceptions work much more directly on the human will - that is, on the part of our astral organization connected with the limb system. whereas eye-impressions stimulate us in the first place to think, ear-impressions stimulate us to ... dance. the whole art of dancing, from its original sacred character up to its degenerate modern forms, is based upon the limb system being the recipient of acoustic impressions. in order to understand how the muscles respond to the outer astral impulses which reach us through our ear, we must first understand what happens in the muscles when our will makes use of them for bodily motion. in this case, too, the muscular system is the organ through which certain astral impulses, this time arising out of the body's own astral member, come to expression. moreover, the movement of the muscles, though not outwardly perceptible, is quite similar to acoustic movements outside the body. for whenever a muscle is caused to alter its length, it will perform some kind of vibration - a vibration characterized even by a definite pitch, which differs in different people. since throughout life our body is never entirely without movement, we are thus in a constant state of inward sounding. the muscular system is capable of this vibration because during the body's initial period of growth the bones increase in length to a much greater extent than do the sinews and muscles. hence the latter arrive at a condition of elastic tension not unlike that of the strings of a musical instrument. in the case of bodily movement, therefore, the muscles are tone-producers, whereas in acoustic perceptions they are tone-receivers. what, then, is it that prevents an acoustic perception from actually setting the limbs in motion, and, instead, enables our sentient being to take hold of the astral impulse invading our muscles? this impediment comes from the contribution made by the nervous system to the auditory process. in order to understand the nature of this contribution we must remember the role played by the blood in seeing. it was found by us to consist in the bringing about of that state of equilibrium without which we should experience light merely as a pain-producing agent. similarly, the perception of sound requires the presence of a certain state of equilibrium between the nerve-system and the limb-system. in this case, however, a lack of equilibrium would result not in pain, but in ecstasy. for if acoustic impressions played directly into our limb-system, with nothing to hold them in check, every tone we encounter would compel us to an outward manifestation of astral activity. we should become part of the tone-process itself, forced to transform it by the volitional part of our astral organization into spatial movement. that this does not happen is because the participation of the nervous system serves to damp down the potential ecstasy. hence it is more or less left to the sentient part of the astral organization - that is, the part free from the physical body - to partake in the astral processes underlying the tone occurrences. * our discussion has reached a point where we are able to answer a question which first arose in the course of our study of the four ethers, and which arises here anew. in studying the chemical or sound ether we were faced with the fact that part of the etheric realm, although in itself accessible to the spiritual part of the sense of sight, offers supersensible experience comparable to the perception of sound. conversely, we are now met by the fact that it is spiritual hearing which gives access to the immediate perception of a realm of forces which is not only the source of acoustic phenomena, but the origin of all that manifests in nature in the form of sulphurous, saline and mercurial events, such as the world of colours, electricity, magnetism, the manifold rhythmic occurrences on the earth (both taken as a whole .and in single organisms), etc. - all of which are taken hold of by quite other senses than that of hearing. at our first encounter with this problem we remarked that in the supersensible no such sharp distinctions exist between different sense-spheres as are found in body-bound sense-perception. at the same time we remembered that even in physical perception we are inclined to attach acoustic attributes to colours and optical attributes to tones. in fact, it was precisely an instance of this kind of experience, namely, our conception of tone-colour, which gave us our lead in discussing the acoustic sphere in general. our picture of the particular interaction of the two polar bodily systems in the acts of seeing and hearing now enables us to understand more clearly how these two spheres of perception overlap in man. for we have seen how the system which in seeing is the receiving organ, works in hearing as the responding one, and vice versa. as a result, optical impressions are accompanied by dim sensations of sound, and aural impressions by dim sensations of colour. what we are thus dimly aware of in physical sense activity, becomes definite experience when the supersensible part of the senses concerned can work unfettered by the bodily organ. clear testimony of this is again given to us by traherne in a poem entitled dumnesse. this poem contains an account of traherne's recollection of the significant fact that the transition from the cosmic to the earthly condition of his consciousness was caused by his learning to speak. the following is a passage from the description of the impressions which were his before his soul was overcome by this change: 'then did i dwell within a world of light distinct and seperat from all mens sight, where i did feel strange thoughts, and such things see that were, or seemd, only reveald to me ... '... a pulpit in my mind a temple, and a teacher i did find, with a large text to comment on. no ear, but eys them selvs were all the hearers there. and evry stone, and evry star a tongue, and evry gale of wind a curious song.' * we have obtained a sufficiently clear picture of the organization of our sense of hearing to see where the way lies that leads from hearing with the ears of the body to hearing with the ears of the spirit, that is, to the inspirative perception of the astral world. in the psycho-physical condition which is characteristic of our present day-consciousness, the participation of our astral organization in any happenings of the outer astral world depends on our corporeal motor system being stimulated by the acoustic motions of the air, or of some other suitable medium contacting our body. for it is only in this way that our astral organization is brought into the sympathetic vibrations necessary for perceiving outer astral happenings. in order that astral events other than those manifesting acoustically may become accessible to our consciousness, our own astral being must become capable of vibrating in tune with them, just as if we were hearing them - that is, we must be able to rouse our astral forces to an activity similar to that of hearing, yet without any physical stimulus. the way to this consists in training ourselves to experience the deeds and sufferings of nature as if they were the deeds and sufferings of a beloved friend. it is thus that we shall learn to hear the soul of the universe directly speaking to us, as lorenzo divined it, when his love for jessica made him feel in love with all the world, and he exclaimed: 'there's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st but in his motion like an angel sings, still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim, - such harmony is in immortal souls. but whilst this muddy vesture of decay doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.' * * * (c) kepler and the 'music of the spheres' 'one must choose one's saints .. . and so i have chosen mine, and before all others, kepler. in my ante-room he has ever a niche of his own, with his bust in it.' this opinion of goethe's must surprise us in view of the fact that kepler was the discoverer of the three laws called after him, one of which is supposed to have laid the foundation for newton's mechanical conception of the universe. in what follows it will be shown how wrong it is to see in kepler a forerunner of the mechanistic conception of the world; how near, in reality, his world-picture is to the one to which we are led by working along goetheanistic lines; and how right therefore goethe was in his judgment on kepler. goethe possessed a sensitive organ for the historical appropriateness of human ideas. as an illustration of this it may be mentioned how he reacted when someone suggested to him that joachim jungius - an outstanding german thinker, contemporary of bacon, van helmont, etc. - had anticipated his idea of the metamorphosis of the plant. this remark worried goethe, not because he could not endure the thought of being anticipated (see his treatment of k. f. wolff), but because this would have run counter to the meaning of man's historical development as he saw it. 'why do i regard as essential the question whether jungius conceived the idea of metamorphosis as we know it? my answer is, that it is most significant in the history of the sciences, when a penetrating and vitalizing maxim comes to be uttered. therefore it is not only of importance that jungius has not expressed this maxim; but it is of highest significance that he was positively unable to express it - as we boldly assert.' for the same reason goethe knew it would be historically unjustified to expect that kepler could have conceived an aspect of the universe implicit in his own conception of nature. hence it did not disturb him in his admiration for kepler, that through him the copernican aspect of the universe had become finally established in the modern mind - that is, an aspect which, as we have seen, is invalid as a means of forming a truly dynamic conception of the world. in forming his picture of the universe, it is true, copernicus was concerned with nothing but the spatial movements of the luminous entities discernible in the sky, without any regard to their actual nature and dynamic interrelationships. hence his world-picture - as befits the spectator-form of human consciousness which was coming to birth in his own time - is a purely kinematic one. as such it has validity for a certain sphere of human observation. when kepler, against the hopes of his forerunner and friend, tycho brahe, accepted the heliocentric standpoint and made it the basis of his observations, he did so out of his understanding of what was the truth for his own time. kepler's ideal was to seek after knowledge through pure observation. in this respect goethe took him as his model. kepler's discoveries were a proof that man's searching mind is given insight into great truths at any stage of its development, provided it keeps to the virtue of practising pure observation. it has been the error of newton and his successors up to our own day, to try to conceive the world dynamically within the limits of their spectator-consciousness and thus to form a dynamic interpretation of the universe based on its heliocentric aspect. this was just as repellent to goethe as kepler's attitude was attractive. but by so sharply distinguishing between newton and kepler, do we not do injustice to the fact that, as the world believes, kepler's third law is the parent of newton's law of gravitation? the following will show that this belief is founded on an illusory conception of the kind we met before. as we shall see, kepler's discovery, when treated in a keplerian way, instead of leading to newton, is found to be in full agreement with the very world-picture to which our own observations have led us. * it is an established conviction of the mathematical scientist that, once an observed regularity in nature has been expressed as a mathematical equation, this equation may be transformed in any mathematically valid way, and the resulting formula will still apply to some existing fact in the world. on innumerable occasions this principle has been used in the expectation of providing further insight into the secrets of nature. we came across a typical instance of this in discussing the basic theorem of kinematics and dynamics (chapter viii). another example is newton's treatment of kepler's third law, or - more precisely - the way in which newton's law of gravitation has been held to confirm kepler's observations, and vice versa, it will be our task to analyse the kepler-newton case on the very lines of our treatment of the two parallelogram theorems. this analysis will give us insight into a truth which we have to regard as one of the basic maxims of the new science. it says that whether a given formula, derived mathematically from one that was first read from nature, still expresses some fact of nature, cannot be decided by pure mathematical logic, but only by testing it against truly observable phenomena. through kepler's third law a certain relation is expressed between the spatial dimensions of the different planetary spheres and the time needed by the relevant planet to circle once round the circumference of its own sphere. it says: 'the squares of the periodic times of the planets are always in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun.' in mathematical symbols this reads: t / t = r / r we shall see later how kepler arrived at this law. the point is that there is nothing in it which is not accessible to pure observation. spatial distances and lengths of time are measured and the results compared. nothing, for instance, is said about the dynamic cause of the movements. the assertion is restricted - and this is true also of the first and second law - to a purely kinematic content, and so precisely to what the earthly onlooker can apprehend. now it is said that kepler's third law is a necessary consequence of newton's law of gravitation, and that - since it is based on pure observation - it therefore establishes the truth of newton's conception. in this assertion we encounter a misconception exactly like the one in the statement that the theorem of the parallelogram of forces follows by logical necessity from the theorem of the parallelogram of velocities. for: (a) the law of gravitation itself derives from newton's formula for the centripetal force acting at a point which moves along a circle, this formula being itself the result of an amplification of the formula for centripetal acceleration by the factor 'mass' (as if the latter were a pure number): centripetal acceleration: a = (�^ )r / t centripetal force: p = am = (�^ )mr / t (b) the formula for centripetal acceleration - and the concept of such acceleration itself - is the result of splitting circular movement into two rectilinear movements, one in the direction of the tangent, the other in the direction of the radius, and of regarding it - by a mode of reasoning typical of spectator-thinking - as composed of the two. this procedure, however, useful as it may be for the purpose of calculation, is contrary to observation. for, as we have pointed out earlier, observation tells us that all original movement - and what can be more original than the movements of the planetary bodies - is curvilinear. no insight into the dynamic reality of cosmic movement, therefore, can ever be gained by handling it mathematically in this way. (c) the transformation of kepler's formula which is necessary in order to give it a form representing the nucleus of newton's formula, is one which, though mathematically justified, deprives kepler's formula of any significance as expression of an observed fact. the following analysis will show this. kepler's formula- r ^ / r ^ = t ^ / t ^ may be written also r ^ / t ^ = r ^ / t ^ and this again in the generalized form: r / t = c. obviously, by each of these steps we diminish the reality-value of the formula. in its original form, we find spatial extension compared with spatial extension, and temporal extension with temporal extension. each of the two comparisons is a fully concrete one, because we compare entities of like nature, and only then test the ratios of the two - that is, two pure numbers against each other - to find that they are identical. to compare a spatial and a temporal magnitude, as is done by the formula in its second form, requires already a certain degree of abstraction. still, it is all spectator's work, and for the spectator time is conceivable and measurable only as a rate of spatial displacement. hence the constant number c, by representing the ratio between the spatial extension of the realm inside a planet's orbit and the time needed by it to perform one round on this orbit - a ratio which is the same for all planets - represents a definite structural element of our cosmic system. by this last operation our equation has now achieved a form which requires only one more transformation to bring it into line with newton's formula. instead of writing: r / t = c we write: r / t = c ( / r ) all that now remains to be done amounts to an amplification of this equation by the factor (�^ )m, and a gathering of the constant product (�^ )c under a new symbol, for which we choose the letter f. in this way we arrive at: (�^ )mr / t = (�^ )cm / r and finally: p = ... = fm / r which is the expression of the gravitational pull believed to be exerted by the sun on the various planetary bodies. nothing can be said against this procedure from the point of view of mathematical logic. for the latter the equation r / t = c ( / r ) is still an expression of kepler's observation. not so for a logic which tries to keep in touch with concrete reality. for what meaning, relevant to the phenomenal universe as it manifests in space and time to physical perception, is there in stating - as the equation in this form does - that: the ratio between a planet's distance from the sun and the square of its period is always proportional to the reciprocal value of the area lying inside its orbit? * once we have rid ourselves of the false conception that kepler's law implies newton's interpretation of the physical universe as a dynamic entity ruled by gravity, and gravity alone, we are free to ask what this law can tell us about the nature of the universe if in examining it we try to remain true to kepler's own approach. to behave in a keplerian (and thus in a goethean) fashion regarding a mathematical formula which expresses an observed fact of nature, does not mean that to submit such a formula to algebraic transformation is altogether impermissible. all we have to make sure of is that the transformation is required by the observed facts themselves: for instance, by the need for an even clearer manifestation of their ideal content. such is indeed the case with the equation which embodies kepler's third law. we said that in its original form this equation contains a concrete statement because it expresses comparisons between spatial extensions, on the one hand, and between temporal extensions, on the other. now, in the form in which the spatial magnitudes occur, they express something which is directly conceivable. the third power of a spatial distance (r^ ) represents the measure of a volume in three-dimensional space. the same cannot be said of the temporal magnitudes on the other side of the equation (t^ ). for our conception of time forbids us to connect any concrete idea with 'squared time'. we are therefore called upon to find out what form we can give this side of the equation so as to express the time-factor in a manner which is in accord with our conception of time, that is, in linear form. this form readily suggests itself if we consider that we have here to do with a ratio of squares. for such a ratio may be resolved into a ratio of two simple ratios. in this way the equation - r ^ / r ^ = t ^ / t ^ assumes the form- r ^ / r ^ = (t / t ) / (t / t ) the right-hand side of the equation is now constituted by the double ratio of the linear values of the periods of two planets, and this is something with which we can connect a quite concrete idea. to see this, let us choose the periods of two definite planets - say, earth and jupiter. for these the equation assumes the following form ('j' and 'e' indicating 'jupiter' and 'earth' respectively): rj^ / re^ = (tj / te) / (te / tj) let us now see what meaning we can attach to the two expressions tj / te and te / tj. during one rotation of jupiter round the sun the earth circles times round it. this we are wont to express by saying that jupiter needs earth-years for one rotation; in symbols: tj / te = / to find the analogous expression for the reciprocal ratio: te / tj = / we must obviously form the concept 'jupiter-year', which covers one rotation of jupiter, just as the concept 'earth-year' covers one rotation of the earth (always round the sun). measured in this time-scale, the earth needs for one of her rotations / of a jupiter-year. with the help of these concepts we are now able to express the double ratio of the planetary periods in the following simplified way. if we suppose the measuring of the two planetary periods to be carried out not by the same time-scale, but each by the time-scale of the other, the formula becomes: rj / re = (tj / te) / (te / tj) = period of jupiter measured in earth-years / period of earth measured in jupiter-years. interpreted in this manner, kepler's third law discloses an intimate interrelatedness of each planet to all the others as co-members of the same cosmic whole. for the equation now tells us that the solar times of the various planets are regulated in such a way that for any two of them the ratio of these times, measured in their mutual time-units, is the same as the ratio of the spaces swept out by their (solar) orbits. further, by having the various times of its members thus tuned to one another, our cosmic system shows itself to be ordered on a principle which is essentially musical. to see this, we need only recall that the musical value of a given tone is determined by its relation to other tones, whether they sound together in a chord, or in succession as melody. a 'c' alone is musically undefined. it receives its character from its interval-relation to some other tone, say, 'g', together with which it forms a fifth. as the lower tone of this interval, 'c' bears a definite character; and so does 'g' as the upper tone. now we know that each interval represents a definite ratio between the periodicities of its two tones. in the case of the fifth the ratio is : (in the natural scale). this means that the lower tone receives its character from being related to the upper tone by the ratio : . similarly, the upper tone receives its character from the ratio : . the specific character of an interval arising out of the merging of its two tones, therefore, is determined by the ratio of their ratios. in the case of the fifth this is : . it is this ratio, therefore, which underlies our experience of a fifth. the cosmic factor corresponding to the periodicity of the single tone in music is the orbital period of the single planet. to the musical interval formed by two tones corresponds the double ratio of the periods of any two planets. regarded thus, kepler's law can be expressed as follows: the spatial ordering of our planetary system is determined by the interval-relation in which the different planets stand to each other. by thus unlocking the ideal content hidden in kepler's third law, we are at the same time enabled to do justice to the way in which he himself announced his discovery. in textbooks and encyclopaedias it is usually said that the discovery of the third law was the surprising result of kepler's fantastic attempt to prove by external observation what was once taught in the school of pythagoras, namely, that (in wordsworth's language): 'by one pervading spirit of tones and numbers all things are controlled.' actually, kepler's great work, harmonices mundi, in the last part of which he announces his third law, is entirely devoted to proving the truth of the pythagorean doctrine that the universe is ordered according to the laws of music. this doctrine sprang from the gift of spiritual hearing still possessed by pythagoras, by which he could perceive the harmonies of the spheres. it was the aim of his school to keep this faculty alive as long as possible, and with its aid to establish a communicable world-conception. the pythagorean teaching became the foundation of all later cosmological thinking, right up to the age which was destined to bring to birth the spectator-relationship of man's consciousness with the world. thus it was left to copernicus to give mankind the first truly non-pythagorean picture of the universe. when kepler declared himself in favour of the heliocentric aspect, as indicated by copernicus, he acknowledged that the universe had grown dumb for man's inner ear. yet, besides his strong impulse to meet the true needs of his time, there were inner voices telling him of secrets that were hidden behind the veil woven by man's physical perceptions. one of these secrets was the musical order of the world. such knowledge, however, could not induce him to turn to older world-conceptions in his search for truth. he had no need of them, because there was yet another voice in him which told him that the spiritual order of the world must somehow manifest itself in the body of the world as it lay open to physical perception. just as a musical instrument, if it is to be a perfect means of bringing forth music, must bear in its build the very laws of music, so must the body of the universe, as the instrument on which the harmonies of the spheres play their spiritual music, bear in its proportions a reflexion of these harmonies. kepler was sure that investigation of the world's body, provided it was carried out by means of pure observation, must needs lead to a re-establishment of the ancient truth in a form appropriate to the modern mind. thus kepler, guided by an ancient spiritual conception of the world, could devote himself to confirming its truth by the most up-to-date methods of research. that his search was not in vain, our examination of the third law has shown. one thing, however, remains surprising - that kepler announced his discovery in the form in which it has henceforth engraved itself in the modern mind, while refraining from that analysis of it which we have applied to it here. yet, in this respect also kepler proves to have remained true to himself. there is, on the one hand, the form in which kepler pronounced his discovery; there is, on the other, the context in which he made this pronouncement. we have already pointed out that the third law forms part of kepler's comprehensive work, harmonices mundi. to the modern critic's understanding it appears there like an erratic block. for kepler this was different. while publishing his discovery in precisely the form in which it is conceived by a mind bent on pure observation, he gave it a setting by which he left no doubt as to his own conception of its ideal content. and as a warning to the future reader not to overlook the message conveyed by this arrangement, he introduced the section of his book which contains the announcement of the law, with the mysterious words about himself: 'i have stolen the golden vessels of the egyptians from which to furnish for my god a holy shrine far from egypt's confines.' we must here distinguish sensation from feeling proper, in which sensation and motion merge in mercurial balance. note how for ruskin the gulf which for the onlooker-consciousness lies between subject and object is bridged here - as it was for goethe in his representation of the physico-moral effect of colour. de motu animalium and theoria mediceorum planetarum ex causis physicis deducta. knowledge of this biological rhythm is still preserved among native peoples to-day and leads them to take account of the phases of the moon in their treatment of plants. a cosmic nature-wisdom of this kind has been reopened for us in modern form by rudolf steiner, and has since found widespread practical application in agriculture. see l. kolisko, the moon and plant growth. in the order of names given above we follow the ancient usage for the two planets nearest to the sun, not the reversed order in which they are used to-day. this is necessary in a cosmology which aspires at a qualitative understanding of the universe, in view of the qualities represented by these names. note also the absence of the three most distant planets, uranus, neptune and pluto. they are not to be considered as parts of the indigenous astral structure of our cosmic system - any more than radioactivity is an original feature of the earth. note the 'venus' character of ruskin's description of the plant's state of florescence quoted above (p. ). as to the time-scale of the processes brought about by mercury and venus respectively, experience shows that they reveal the cosmic rhythms less clearly than those for which the moon-activity is responsible. the same is found at the opposite pole. there it is the saturn - generated processes which show the cosmic rhythm more conspicuously than those engendered by jupiter and mars. to learn to recognize rhythmic events in nature and man as reflexions of corresponding planetary rhythms is one of the tasks which future scientific research has to tackle. a practical example of this kind will appear in the further course of this chapter. see l. kolisko: working of the stars in earthly substances, and other publications by the same author. the close connexion between the ear and the motor system of the body is shown in another way by the fact that part of the ear serves as an organ for the sense of balance. the muscle-tone can be made audible by the following means. in a room guarded against noise, press the thumbs lightly upon the ears and tense the muscles of the hands and arms - say by pressure of the fingers against the palms or by contracting the muscle of the upper arms. if this is done repeatedly, the muscle-tone will be heard after some practice with increasing distinctness. it is easily distinguished from the sound of the circulating blood as it is much higher. (as an example: the author's muscular pitch, not a particularly high one, has a frequency of approx. per sec., which puts it between treble d sharp and e.) compare also the beginning of traherne's poem wonder, quoted in chapter vi (p. ), where he says that everything he saw 'did with me talk'. for the particular reasons by which goethe justifies his assertion, see his essay leben und verdienste des doktor joachim jungius. the natural question why kepler himself did not take this step, will be answered later on. chapter xxi know thyself our inquiries have led us to a picture of man as a sensible-supersensible organism composed of three dynamic aggregates - physical, etheric, astral. as three rungs of a spiritual ladder they point to a fourth, which represents that particular power in man by which he distinguishes himself from all other beings in nature. for what makes man differ from all these is that he is not only fitted, as they are, with a once-for-all given mode of spiritual-physical existence peculiar to himself, but that he is endowed with the possibility of transforming his existence by dint of his free will - that indeed his manhood is based on this capacity for self-willed becoming. to this fourth principle in man we can give no better name than that which every human being can apply to himself alone and to no other, and which no other can apply to him. this is the name, i. in truth, we describe man in his entirety only if we ascribe to him, in addition to a physical, etheric and astral body, the possession of an i (ego). naturally, our previous studies have afforded many opportunities for observing the nature and mode of activity of the i. still, at the conclusion of these studies it is not redundant to form a concise picture of this part of man's being, with particular regard to how it works within the three other principles as its sheaths. for in modern psychology, not excluding the branch of it where efforts are made to penetrate into deeper regions of man's being, nothing is less well understood than the true nature of man's egoity. * in order to recognize the peculiar function of the i in man, we must first be clear as to how he differs from the other kingdoms of nature, and how they differ from one another with respect to the mode of action of the physical, etheric and astral forces. the beings of all the kingdoms of nature are endowed with an aggregate of physical forces in the form of a material body subject to gravity. the same cannot be said of the etheric forces. only where life is present as an inherent principle - that is, in plant, animal and man - is ether at work in the form of an individual etheric organization, while the mineral is formed by the universal ether from outside. where life prevails, we are met by the phenomena of birth and death. when a living organism comes to birth, an individual ether-body is formed out of the general etheric substance of the universe. the death of such an organism consists in the separation of the etheric from the physical body and the dissolution of both in their respective mother-realms. so long as an organism is alive, its form is maintained by the ether-body present in it. our studies have shown that the plant is not devoid of the operation of astral forces. in the plant's life-cycle this comes to clearest expression in its florescence. but it is a working of the astral forces from outside, very much as the ether works on the mineral. as a symptom of this fact we may recall the dependence of the plant on the various outer astronomical rhythms. it is only in animal and man that we find the astral forces working in the form of separate astral bodies. this accounts for their capacity for sensation and volition. besides the alternation of birth and death, they experience the rhythm of sleeping and waking. sleep occurs when the astral body leaves the physical and etheric bodies in order to expand into its planetary mother-sphere, whence it gathers new energy. during this time its action on the physical-etheric aggregate remaining upon earth is similar to that of the astral cosmos upon the plant. again, in the animal kingdom the ego-principle works as an external force in the form of various group-soul activities which control and regulate the life of the different animal species. it is in the group-ego of the species that we have to look for the source of the wisdom-filled instincts which we meet in the single animals. only in man does the ego-principle enter as an individual entity into the single physico-etheric-astral organism. here, however, the succession of stages we have outlined comes to a conclusion. for with the appearance of the i as an individual principle, the preceding evolutionary process - or, more correctly, the involutionary process - begins to be reversed. in moving up from one kingdom to the next, we find always one more dynamic principle appearing in a state of separation from its mother-sphere; this continues to the point where the i, through uniting itself with a thus emancipated physico-etheric-astral organism, arrives at the stage of self-consciousness. once this stage has been reached, however, it falls to the i to reverse the process of isolation, temporarily sanctioned by the cosmos for the sake of man. that it is not in the nature of the i to leave its sheaths in the condition in which it finds them when entering them at the beginning of life, can be seen from the activities it performs in them during the first period after birth. indeed, in man's early childhood we meet a number of events in which we can perceive something like ur-deeds of the i. they are the acquisition of the faculties of walking, speaking and thinking. what we shall here say about them has, in essentials, already been touched upon in earlier pages. here, however, we are putting it forward in a new light. once again we find our attention directed to the threefold structure of man's physical organism. for the faculty of upright walking is a result of the i's activity in the limb-system of the body; the acquisition of speech takes place in the rhythmic system; and thinking is a faculty based on the nerve-system. consequently, each of the three achievements comes to pass at a different level of consciousness-sleeping, dreaming, waking. all through the struggle of erecting the body against the pull of gravity, the child is entirely unaware of the activities of his own i. in the course of acquiring speech he gains a dim awareness, as though in dream, of his efforts. some capacity of thinking has to unfold before the first glimmer of true self-consciousness is kindled. (note that the word 'i' is the only one that is not added to the child's vocabulary by way of imitation. otherwise he would, as some mentally inhibited children do, call all other people 'i' and himself 'you'.) this picture of the three ur-deeds of the i can now be amplified in the following way. we know that the region of the bodily limbs is that in which physical, etheric and astral forces interpenetrate most deeply. consequently, the i can here press forward most powerfully into the physical body and on into the dynamic sphere to which the body is subject. here the i is active in a way that is 'magic' in the highest degree. moreover, there is no other action for which the i receives so little stimulus from outside. for, in comparison, the activity that leads to the acquisition of speech is much more of the nature of a reaction to stimuli coming from outside - the sounds reaching the child from his environment. and it is also with the first words of the language that the first thoughts enter the child's mind. nothing of the kind happens at the first stage. on the contrary: everything that confronts the i here is of the nature of an obstacle that is to be overcome. there is no learning to speak without the hearing of uttered sounds. as these sounds approach the human being they set the astral body in movement, as we have seen. the movements of the astral body flow towards the larynx, where they are seized by the i; through their help the i imbues the larynx with the faculty of producing these sounds itself. here, therefore, the i is active essentially within the astral body which has received its stimulus from outside. in order to understand what impels the i to such action, we must remember the role played by speech in human life: without speech there would be no community among human individuals on earth. an illustration of what the i accomplishes as it enters upon the third stage is provided by the following episode, actually observed. whilst all the members of a family were sitting at table taking their soup, the youngest member suddenly cried out: 'daddy spoon ... mummy spoon. ... ' (everyone in turn spoon) ' ... all spoon!' at this moment, from merely designating single objects by names learnt through imitation, the child's consciousness had awakened to connective thinking. that this achievement was a cause of inner satisfaction could be heard in the joyful crescendo with which these ejaculations were made. we know that the presence of waking consciousness within the nerves-and-senses organism rests upon the fact that the connexion between physical body and etheric body is there the most external of all. but precisely because this is so, the etheric body is dominated very strongly by the forces to which the physical head owes its formation. this, too, is not fundamentally new to us. what can now be added is that, in consequence, the physical brain and the part of the etheric body belonging to it - the etheric brain - assume a function comparable with that of a mirror, the physical organ representing the reflecting mass and the etheric organ its metallic gloss. when, within the head, the etheric body reflects back the impressions received from the astral body, the i becomes aware of them in the form of mental images (the 'ideas' of the onlooker-philosopher). it is also by way of such reflexion that the i first grows aware of itself - but as nothing more than an image among images. here, therefore, it is itself least active. if, once again, we compare the three happenings of learning to walk, to speak and to think, we find ourselves faced with the remarkable fact that the progressive lighting up of consciousness from one stage to the next, goes hand in hand with a retrogression in the activity of the i itself. at the first stage, where the i knows least of itself, it is alive in the most direct sense out of its own being; at the second stage, where it is in the dreaming state, it receives the impetus of action through the astral body; at the third stage, where the i wakens to clear self-consciousness, it assumes merely the role of onlooker at the pictures moving within the etheric body. compare with this the paths to higher faculties of knowledge, imagination and inspiration, as we learnt to know them in our previous studies. the comparison shows that exactly the same forces come into play at the beginning of life, when the i endeavours to descend from its pre-earthly, cosmic environment to its earthly existence, as have to be made use of for the ascending of the i from earthly to cosmic consciousness. only, as is natural, the sequence of steps is reversed. for on the upward way the first deed of the i is that which leads to a wakening in the etheric world: it is a learning to set in motion the etheric forces in the region of the head in such a way that the usual isolation of this part of the etheric body is overcome. regarded thus, the activity of the i at this stage reveals a striking similarity to the activity applied in the earliest period of childhood at the opposite pole of the organism. to be capable of imaginative sight actually means to be able to move about in etheric space by means of the etheric limbs of the eyes just as one moves about in physical space by means of the physical limbs. similarly, the acquisition of inspiration is a resuming on a higher level of the activity exercised by the i with the help of the astral body when learning to speak. and here, too, the functions are reversed. for while the child is stimulated by the spoken sounds he hears to bring his own organ of speech into corresponding movements, and so gradually learns to produce speech, the acquisition of inspiration, as we have seen, depends on learning to bring the supersensible forces of the speech-organ into movement in such a way that these forces become the organ for hearing the supersensible language of the universe. our knowledge of the threefold structure of man's organism leads us to seek, besides the stages of imagination and inspiration, a third stage which is as much germinally present in the body's region of movement, as the two others are in the regions of thought and speech. after what we have learnt in regard to these three, we may assume that the path leading to this third stage consists in producing a condition of wide-awake, tranquil contemplation in the very region where the i is wont to unfold its highest degree of initiative on the lowest level of consciousness. in an elementary manner this attitude of soul was practised by us when, in our earlier studies, we endeavoured to become inner observers of the activity of our own limbs, with the aim of discovering the origin of our concept of mass. it was in this way that a line of observation opened up to us which led to the recognition of the physical substances of the earth as congealed spiritual functions or, we may say, congealed utterances of cosmic will. cosmic will, however, does not work into our existence only in such a way that, in the form of old and therefore rigid will, it puts up resistance against the young will-power of the i, so that in overcoming this resistance the i may waken to self-activity. cosmic will is also present in us in an active form. we point here to the penetration by the higher powers of the universe into the forming of the destiny of humanity and of individual man. and here rudolf steiner has shown that to a man who succeeds in becoming a completely objective observer of his own existence while actively functioning within it (as in an elementary way we endeavoured to become observers of our limb actions while engaged in performing them) the world begins to reveal itself as an arena of the activities of divine-spiritual beings, whose reality and acts he is now able to apprehend through inner awareness. herewith a third stage of man's faculty of cognition is added to the stages of imagination and inspiration. when rudolf steiner chose for it the word intuition he applied this word, also, in its truest meaning. * while through imagination man comes to know of his ether-body as part of his make-up, and correspondingly through inspiration of his astral body, and thereby recognizes himself as participant in the supersensible forces of the universe, it is through intuition that he grows into full awareness of his i as a spirit-being among spirit-beings - god-begotten, god-companioned, for ever god-ward striving. the word 'body' is here used in a sense no different from our earlier use of it, when in connexion with our study of combustion (chapter xi) we referred to the 'warmth-body' as a characteristic of the higher animals and man. such a warmth-body is nothing else but the warmth-ether part of an ether-body. to use the word body for aggregations of etheric or astral forces is legitimate if one considers the fact that the physical body also is really a purely dynamic entity, that is, a certain aggregate of forces more or less self-contained. representative men seven lectures by ralph waldo emerson i. uses of great men ii. plato; or, the philosopher plato; new readings iii. swedenborg; or, the mystic iv. montaigne; or, the skeptic v. shakspeare; or, the poet vi. napoleon; or, the man of the world vii. goethe; or, the writer i. uses of great men. it is natural to believe in great men. if the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it would not surprise us. all mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. in the legends of the gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it deliciously sweet. nature seems to exist for the excellent. the world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. they who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and actually, or ideally, we manage to live with superiors. we call our children and our lands by their names. their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them. the search after the great is the dream of youth, and the most serious occupation of manhood. we travel into foreign parts to find his works,--if possible, to get a glimpse of him. but we are put off with fortune instead. you say, the english are practical; the germans are hospitable; in valencia, the climate is delicious; and in the hills of sacramento there is gold for the gathering. yes, but i do not travel to find comfortable, rich, and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. but if there were any magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, i would sell all, and buy it, and put myself on the road to-day. the race goes with us on their credit. the knowledge, that in the city is a man who invented the railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens. but enormous populations, if they be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants, or of fleas--the more, the worse. our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. the gods of fable are the shining moments of great men. we run all our vessels into one mould. our colossal theologies of judaism, christism, buddhism, mahometism, are the necessary and structural action of the human mind. the student of history is like a man going into a warehouse to buy cloths or carpets. he fancies he has a new article. if he go to the factory, he shall find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and rosettes which are found on the interior walls of the pyramids of thebes. our theism is the purification of the human mind. man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. he believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought. and our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed. if now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we derive from others, let us be warned of the danger of modern studies, and begin low enough. we must not contend against love, or deny the substantial existence of other people. i know not what would happen to us. we have social strengths. our affection toward others creates a sort of vantage or purchase which nothing will supply. i can do that by another which i cannot do alone. i can say to you what i cannot first say to myself. other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the otherest. the stronger the nature, the more it is reactive. let us have the quality pure. a little genius let us leave alone. a main difference betwixt men is, whether they attend their own affair or not. man is that noble endogenous plant which grows, like the palm, from within, outward. his own affair, though impossible to others, he can open with celerity and in sport. it is easy to sugar to be sweet, and to nitre to be salt. we take a great deal of pains to waylay and entrap that which of itself will fall into our hands. i count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error. his service to us is of like sort. it costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! it costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men. and every one can do his best thing easiest--"_peu de moyens, beaucoup d'effet._" he is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others. but he must be related to us, and our life receive from him some promise of explanation. i cannot tell what i would know; but i have observed there are persons, who, in their character and actions, answer questions which i have not skill to put. one man answers some questions which none of his contemporaries put, and is isolated. the past and passing religions and philosophies answer some other question. certain men affect us as rich possibilities, but helpless to themselves and to their times,--the sport, perhaps, of some instinct that rules in the air;--they do not speak to our want. but the great are near: we know them at sight. they satisfy expectation, and fall into place. what is good is effective, generative; makes for itself room, food, and allies. a sound apple produces seed,--a hybrid does not. is a man in his place, he is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating armies with his purpose, which is thus executed. the river makes its own shores, and each legitimate idea makes its own channels and welcome,--harvest for food, institutions for expression, weapons to fight with, and disciples to explain it. the true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes. our common discourse respects two kinds of use of service from superior men. direct giving is agreeable to the early belief of men; direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power, and prophecy. the boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. churches believe in imputed merit. but, in strictness, we are not much cognizant of direct serving. man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. the aid we have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature in us. what is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains. right ethics are central, and go from the soul outward. gift is contrary to the law of the universe. serving others is serving us. i must absolve me to myself. "mind thy affair," says the spirit:--"coxcomb, would you meddle with the skies, or with other people?" indirect service is left. men have a pictorial or representative quality, and serve us in the intellect. behmen and swedenborg saw that things were representative. men are also representative; first, of things, and secondly, of ideas. as plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. the inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron; lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; musician,--severally make an easy way for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. each man is, by secret liking, connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he is, as linnaeus, of plants; huber, of bees; fries, of lichens; van mons, of pears; dalton, of atomic forms; euclid, of lines; newton, of fluxions. a man is a center for nature, running out threads of relation through everything, fluid and solid, material and elemental. the earth rolls; every clod and stone comes to the meridian; so every organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the brain. it waits long, but its turn comes. each plant has its parasite, and each created thing its lover and poet. justice has already been done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine, to corn, and cotton; but how few materials are yet used by our arts! the mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expectant. it would seem as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined human deliverer. each must be disenchanted, and walk forth to the day in human shape. in the history of discovery, the ripe and latent truth seems to have fashioned a brain for itself. a magnet must be made man, in some gilbert, or swedenborg, or oersted, before the general mind can come to entertain its powers. if we limit ourselves to the first advantages;--a sober grace adheres to the mineral and botanic kingdoms, which, in the highest moments, comes up as the charm of nature,--the glitter of the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity of angles. light and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid, and gas, circle us round in a wreath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, beguile the day of life. the eye repeats every day the finest eulogy on things--"he saw that they were good." we know where to find them; and these performers are relished all the more, after a little experience of the pretending races. we are entitled, also, to higher advantages. something is wanting to science, until it has been humanized. the table of logarithms is one thing, and its vital play, in botany, music, optics, and architecture, another. there are advancements to numbers, anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little suspected at first, when, by union with intellect and will, they ascend into the life, and re-appear in conversation, character and politics. but this comes later. we speak now only of our acquaintance with them in their own sphere, and the way in which they seem to fascinate and draw to them some genius who occupies himself with one thing, all his life long. the possibility of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer with the observed. each material thing has its celestial side; has its translation, through humanity, into the spiritual and necessary sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible as any other. and to these, their ends, all things continually ascend. the gases gather to the solid firmament; the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and grows; arrives at the quadruped, and walks; arrives at the man, and thinks. but also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. he is not only representative, but participant. like can only be known by like. the reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of that thing. animated chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc, of zinc. their quality makes this career; and he can variously publish their virtues, because they compose him. man, made of the dust of the world, does not forget his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason. unpublished nature will have its whole secret told. shall we say that quartz mountains will pulverize into innumerable werners, von buchs, and beaumonts; and the laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution i know not what berzeliuses and davys? thus, we sit by the fire, and take hold on the poles of the earth. this quasi omnipresence supplies the imbecility of our condition. in one of those celestial days, when heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that we can only spend it once; we wish for a thousand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate its immense beauty in many ways and places. is this fancy? well, in good faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. how easily we adopt their labors! every ship that comes to america got its chart from columbus. every novel is debtor to homer. every carpenter who shaves with a foreplane borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. life is girt all around with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. engineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, and every man, inasmuch as he has any science, is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes and longitudes of our condition. these road-makers on every hand enrich us. we must extend the area of life, and multiply our relations. we are as much gainers by finding a new property in the old earth, as by acquiring a new planet. we are too passive in the reception of these material or semi-material aids. we must not be sacks and stomachs. to ascend one step,--we are better served through our sympathy. activity is contagious. looking where others look, and conversing with the same things, we catch the charm which lured them. napoleon said, "you must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war." talk much with any man of vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of looking at things in the same light, and, on each occurrence, we anticipate his thought. men are helpful through the intellect and the affections. other help, i find a false appearance. if you affect to give me bread and fire, i perceive that i pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither better nor worse: but all mental and moral force is a positive good. it goes out from you whether you will or not, and profits me whom you never thought of. i cannot even hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution. we are emulous of all that man can do. cecil's saying of sir walter raleigh, "i know that he can toil terribly," is an electric touch. so are clarendon's portraits,--of hampden; "who was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts"--of falkland; "who was so severe an adorer of truth, that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal, as to dissemble." we cannot read plutarch, without a tingling of the blood; and i accept the saying of the chinese mencius: "as age is the instructor of a hundred ages. when the manners of loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined." this is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for departed men to touch the quick like our own companions, whose names may not last as long. what is he whom i never think of? whilst in every solitude are those who succor our genius, and stimulate us in wonderful manners. there is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. what has friendship so signaled as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? we will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. we are piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the railroad will not again shame us. under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as i think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from coriolanus and gracchus, down to pitt, lafayette, wellington, webster, lamartine. hear the shouts in the street! the people cannot see him enough. they delight in a man. here is a head and a trunk! what a front! what eyes! atlantean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal inward force to guide the great machine! this pleasure of full expression to that which, in their private experience, is usually cramped and obstructed, runs, also, much higher, and is the secret of the reader's joy in literary genius. nothing is kept back. there is fire enough to fuse the mountain of ore. shakspeare's principal merit may be conveyed, in saying that he, of all men, best understands the english language, and can say what he will. yet these unchoked channels and floodgates of expression are only health or fortunate constitution. shakspeare's name suggests other and purely intellectual benefits. senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their medals, swords, and armorial coats, like the addressing to a human being thoughts out of a certain height, and presupposing his intelligence. this honor, which is possible in personal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius perpetually pays; contented, if now and then, in a century, the proffer is accepted. the indicators of the values of matter are degraded to a sort of cooks and confectioners, on the appearance of the indicators of ideas. genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws on their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. these are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show. we go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see the power and beauty of the body; there is the like pleasure, and a higher benefit, from witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds; as, feats of memory, of mathematical combination, great power of abstraction, the transmutings of the imagination, even versatility, and concentration, as these acts expose the invisible organs and members of the mind, which respond, member for member, to the parts of the body. for, we thus enter a new gymnasium, and learn to choose men by their truest marks, taught, with plato, "to choose those who can, without aid from the eyes, or any other sense, proceed to truth and to being." foremost among these activities, are the summersaults, spells, and resurrections, wrought by the imagination. when this wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a thousand times his force. it opens the delicious sense of indeterminate size, and inspires an audacious mental habit. we are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book, or a word dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the pit. and this benefit is real, because we are entitled to these enlargements, and, once having passed the bounds, shall never again be quite the miserable pedants we were. the high functions of the intellect are so allied, that some imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. this class serve us, so that they have the perception of identity and the perception of reaction. the eyes of plato, shakespeare, swedenborg, goethe, never shut on either of these laws. the perception of these laws is a kind of metre of the mind. little minds are little, through failure to see them. even these feasts have their surfeit. our delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald. especially when a mind of powerful method has instructed men, we find the examples of oppression. the dominion of aristotle, the ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of luther, of bacon, of locke,--in religion the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the sects which have taken the name of each founder, are in point. alas! every man is such a victim. the imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. it is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to bind the beholder. but true genius seeks to defend us from itself. true genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. if a wise man should appear in our village, he would create, in those who conversed with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. the rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes and their resources. but nature brings all this about in due time. rotation is her remedy. the soul is impatient of masters, and eager for change. housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valuable, "she has lived with me long enough." we are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. we touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. rotation is the law of nature. when nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes and none will. his class is extinguished with him. in some other and quite different field, the next man will appear; not jefferson, nor franklin, but now a great salesman; then a road-contractor; then a student of fishes; then a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage western general. thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but against the best there is a finer remedy. the power which they communicate is not theirs. when we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to plato, but to the idea, to which, also, plato was debtor. i must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class. life is a scale of degrees. between rank and rank of our great men are wide intervals. mankind have, in all ages, attached themselves to a few persons, who, either by the quality of that idea they embodied, or by the largeness of their reception, were entitled to the position of leaders and law-givers. these teach us the qualities of primary nature,--admit us to the constitution of things. we swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. but life is a sincerity. in lucid intervals we say, "let there be an entrance opened for me into realities; i have worn the fool's cap too long." we will know the meaning of our economies and politics. give us the cipher, and, if persons and things are scores of a celestial music, let us read off the strains. we have been cheated of our reason; yet there have been sane men, who enjoyed a rich and related existence. what they know, they know for us. with each new mind, a new secret of nature transpires; nor can the bible be closed, until the last great man is born. these men correct the delirium of the animal spirits, make us considerate, and engage us to new aims and powers. the veneration of mankind selects these for the highest place. witness the multitude of statues, pictures, and memorials which recall their genius in every city, village, house, and ship:-- "ever their phantoms arise before us. our loftier brothers, but one in blood; at bed and table they lord it o'er us, with looks of beauty, and words of good." how to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the service rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the general mind?--i am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual tariff of prices. if i work in my garden, and prune an apple-tree, i am well enough entertained, and could continue indefinitely in the like occupation. but it comes to mind that a day is gone, and i have got this precious nothing done. i go to boston or new york, and run up and down on my affairs: they are sped, but so is the day. i am vexed by the recollection of this price i have paid for a trifling advantage. i remember the _peau d'ane_, on which whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of the skin was gone for every wish. i go to a convention of philanthropists. do what i can, i cannot keep my eyes off the clock. but if there should appear in the company some gentle soul who knows little of persons or parties, of carolina or cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me; i forget the clock. i pass out of the sore relation to persons. i am healed of my hurts. i am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods. here is great competition of rich and poor. we live in a market, where is only so much wheat, or wool, or land; and if i have so much more, every other must have so much less. i seem to have no good, without breach of good manners. nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. every child of the saxon race is educated to wish to be first. it is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors. but in these new fields there is room: here are no self-esteems, no exclusions. i admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts, and for thoughts; i like rough and smooth "scourges of god," and "darlings of the human race." i like the first caesar; and charles v., of spain; and charles xii., of sweden; richard plantagenet; and bonaparte, in france. i applaud a sufficient man, an officer, equal to his office; captains, ministers, senators. i like a master standing firm on legs of iron, well-born, rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fascination into tributaries and supporters of his power. sword and staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work of the world. but i find him greater, when he can abolish himself, and all heroes, by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of persons; this subtilizer, and irresistible upward force, into our thought, destroying individualism; the power so great, that the potentate is nothing. then he is a monarch, who gives a constitution to his people; a pontiff, who preaches the equality of souls, and releases his servants from their barbarous homages; an emperor, who can spare his empire. but i intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or three points of service. nature never spares the opium or nepenthe; but wherever she mars her creature with some deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though all the world point their finger at it every day. the worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries. our globe discovers its hidden virtues, not only in heroes and archangels, but in gossips and nurses. is it not a rare contrivance that lodged the due inertia in every creature, the conserving, resisting energy, the anger at being waked or changed? altogether independent of the intellectual force in each, is the pride of opinion, the security that we are right. not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot, but uses what spark of perception and faculty is left, to chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities of all the rest. difference from me is the measure of absurdity. not one has a misgiving of being wrong. was it not a bright thought that made things cohere with this bitumen, fastest of cements? but, in the midst of this chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure goes by, which thersites too can love and admire. this is he that should marshal us the way we were going. there is no end to his aid. without plato, we should almost lose our faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. we seem to want but one, but we want one. we love to associate with heroic persons, since our receptivity is unlimited; and, with the great, our thoughts and manners easily become great. we are all wise in capacity, though so few in energy. there needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion. great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from egotism, and enable us to see other people and their works. but there are vices and follies incident to whole populations and ages. men resemble their contemporaries, even more than their progenitors. it is observed in old couples, or in persons who have been housemates for a course of years, that they grow alike; and, if they should live long enough, we should not be able to know them apart. nature abhors these complaisances, which threaten to melt the world into a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin agglutinations. the like assimilation goes on between men of one town, of one sect, of one political party; and the ideas of the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe it. viewed from any high point, the city of new york, yonder city of london, the western civilization, would seem a bundle of insanities. we keep each other in countenance, and exasperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. the shield against the stingings of conscience, is the universal practice, or our contemporaries. again; it is very easy to be as wise and good as your companions. we learn of our contemporaries, what they know, without effort, and almost through the pores of the skin. we catch it by sympathy, or, as a wife arrives at the intellectual and moral elevations of her husband. but we stop where they stop. very hardly can we take another step. the great, or such as hold of nature, and transcend fashions, by their fidelity to universal ideas, are saviors from these federal errors, and defend us from our contemporaries. they are the exceptions which we want, where all grows alike. a foreign greatness is the antidote for cabalism. thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much conversation with our mates, and exult in the depth of nature in that direction in which he leads us. what indemnification is one great man for populations of pigmies! every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest should be mediocre. but a new danger appears in the excess of influence of the great man. his attractions warp us from our place. we have become underlings and intellectual suicides. ah! yonder in the horizon is our help:--other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each other. we cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. every hero becomes a bore at last. perhaps voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good jesus, even, "i pray you, let me never hear that man's name again." they cry up the virtues of george washington,--"damn george washington!" is the poor jacobin's whole speech and confutation. but it is human nature's indispensable defense. the centripetence augments the centrifugence. we balance one man with his opposite, and the health of the state depends on the see-saw. there is, however, a speedy limit to the use of heroes. every genius is defended from approach by quantities of availableness. they are very attractive, and seem at a distance our own: but we are hindered on all sides from approach. the more we are drawn, the more we are repelled. there is something not solid in the good that is done for us. the best discovery the discoverer makes for himself. it has something unreal for his companion, until he too has substantiated it. it seems as if the deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to other men, and, sending it to perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote "not transferable," and "good for this trip only," on these garments of the soul. there is somewhat deceptive about the intercourse of minds. the boundaries are invisible, but they are never crossed. there is such good will to impart, and such good will to receive, that each threatens to become the other; but the law of individuality collects its secret strength: you are you, and i am i, and so we remain. for nature wishes every thing to remain itself; and, whilst every individual strives to grow and exclude, and to exclude and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature, nature steadily aims to protect each against every other. each is self-defended. nothing is more marked than the power by which individuals are guarded from individuals, in a world where every benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor, only by continuation of his activity into places where it is not due; where children seem so much at the mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost all men are too social and interfering. we rightly speak of the guardian angels of children. how superior in their security from infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought! they shed their own abundant beauty on the objects they behold. therefore, they are not at the mercy of such poor educators as we adults. if we huff and chide them, they soon come not to mind it, and get a self-reliance; and if we indulge them to folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere. we need not fear excessive influence. a more generous trust is permitted. serve the great. stick at no humiliation. grudge no office thou canst render. be the limb of their body, the breath of their mouth. compromise thy egotism. who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler? never mind the taunt of boswellism: the devotion may easily be greater than the wretched pride which is guarding its own skirts. be another: not thyself, but a platonist; not a soul, but a christian; not a naturalist, but a cartesian; not a poet, but a shakspearian. in vain, the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, or love itself, hold thee there. on, and forever onward! the microscope observes a monad or wheel-insect among the infusories circulating in water. presently, a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. the ever-proceeding detachment appears not less in all thought, and in society. children think they cannot live without their parents. but, long before they are aware of it, the black dot has appeared, and the detachment taken place. any accident will now reveal to them their independence. but great men:--the word is injurious. is there caste? is there fate? what becomes of the promise to virtue? the thoughtful youth laments the superfoetation of nature. "generous and handsome," he says, "is your hero; but look at yonder poor paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of paddies." why are the masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder? the idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion; and they make war and death sacred;--but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill? the cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. it is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we must have society. is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, society is a pestalozzian school; all are teachers and pupils in turn. we are equally served by receiving and by imparting. men who know the same things, are not long the best company for each other. but bring to each an intelligent person of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a lake, by cutting a lower basin. it seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to himself. we pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to dependence. and if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about. as to what we call the masses, and common men;--there are no common men. all men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible, on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! but heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation. the heroes of the hour are relatively great: of a faster growth; or they are such, in whom, at the moment of success, a quality is ripe which is then in request. other days will demand other qualities. some rays escape the common observer, and want a finely adapted eye. ask the great man if there be none greater. his companions are; and not the less great, but the more, that society cannot see them. nature never sends a great man into the planet, without confiding the secret to another soul. one gracious fact emerges from these studies,--that there is true ascension in our love. the reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. the genius of humanity is the real subject whose biography is written in our annals. we must infer much, and supply many chasms in the record. the history of the universe is symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. no man, in all the procession of famous men, is reason or illumination, or that essence we were looking for; but is an exhibition, in some quarter, of new possibilities. could we one day complete the immense figure which these flagrant points compose! the study of many individuals leads us to an elemental region wherein the individual is lost, or wherein all touch by their summits. thought and feeling, that break out there, cannot be impounded by any fence of personality. this is the key to the power of the greatest men,--their spirit diffuses itself. a new quality of mind travels by night and by day, in concentric circles from its origin, and publishes itself by unknown methods: the union of all minds appears intimate: what gets admission to one, cannot be kept out of any other: the smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to the commonwealth of souls. if the disparities of talent and position vanish, when the individuals are seen in the duration which is necessary to complete the career of each; even more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears, when we ascend to the central identity of all the individuals, and know that they are made of the same substance which ordaineth and doeth. the genius of humanity is the right point of view of history. the qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have now more, now less, and pass away; the qualities remain on another brow. no experience is more familiar. once you saw phoenixes: they are gone; the world is not therefore disenchanted. the vessels on which you read sacred emblems turn out to be common pottery; but the sense of the pictures is sacred, and you may still read them transferred to the walls of the world. for a time, our teachers serve us personally, as metres or milestones of progress. once they were angels of knowledge, and their figures touched the sky. then we drew near, saw their means, culture, and limits; and they yielded their places to other geniuses. happy, if a few names remain so high, that we have not been able to read them nearer, and age and comparison have not robbed them of a ray. but, at last, we shall cease to look in men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their social and delegated quality. all that respects the individual is temporary and prospective, like the individual himself, who is ascending out of his limits, into a catholic existence. we have never come at the true and best benefit of any genius, so long as we believe him an original force. in the moment when he ceases to help us as a cause, he begins to help us move as an effect. then he appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and will. the opaque self becomes transparent with the light of the first cause. yet, within the limits of human education and agency, we may say, great men exist that there may be greater men. the destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who can tell its limits? it is for man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied. ii. plato; or, the philosopher. among books, plato only is entitled to omar's fanatical compliment to the koran, when he said, "burn the libraries; for, their value is in this book." these sentences contain the culture of nations; these are the corner-stone of schools; these are the fountain-head of literatures. a discipline it is in logic, arithmetic, taste, symmetry, poetry, language, rhetoric, ontology, morals, or practical wisdom. there was never such range of speculation. out of plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. great havoc makes he among our originalities. we have reached the mountain from which all these drift bowlders were detached. the bible of the learned for twenty- two hundred years, every brisk young man, who says in succession fine things to each reluctant generation,--boethius, rabelais, erasmus, bruno, locke, rousseau, alfieri, coleridge,--is some reader of plato, translating into the vernacular, wittily, his good things. even the men of grander proportion suffer some deduction from the misfortune (shall i say?) of coming after this exhausting generalizer. st. augustine, copernicus, newton, behmen, swedenborg, goethe, are likewise his debtors, and must say after him. for it is fair to credit the broadest generalizer with all the particulars deducible from his thesis. plato is philosophy, and philosophy, plato,--at once the glory and the shame of mankind, since neither saxon nor roman have availed to add any idea to his categories. no wife, no children had he, and the thinkers of all civilized nations are his posterity, and are tinged with his mind. how many great men nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men,--platonists! the alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the elizabethans, not less; sir thomas more, henry more, john hales, john smith, lord bacon, jeremy taylor, ralph cudworth, sydenham, thomas taylor; marcilius ficinus, and picus mirandola. calvinism is in his phaedo: christianity is in it. mahometanism draws all its philosophy, in its hand-book of morals, the akhlak-y-jalaly, from him. mysticism finds in plato all its texts. this citizen of a town in greece is no villager nor patriot. an englishman reads and says, "how english!" a german--"how teutonic!" an italian--"how roman and how greek!" as they say that helen of argos had that universal beauty that everybody felt related to her, so plato seems, to a reader in new england, an american genius. his broad humanity transcends all sectional lines. this range of plato instructs us what to think of the vexed question concerning his reputed works,--what are genuine, what spurious. it is singular that wherever we find a man higher, by a whole head, than any of his contemporaries, it is sure to come into doubt, what are his real works. thus, homer, plato, raffaelle, shakspeare. for these men magnetize their contemporaries, so that their companions can do for them what they can never do for themselves; and the great man does thus live in several bodies; and write, or paint, or act, by many hands; and after some time, it is not easy to say what is the authentic work of the master, and what is only of his school. plato, too, like every great man, consumed his own times. what is a great man, but one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food? he can spare nothing; he can dispose of everything. what is not good for virtue is good for knowledge. hence his contemporaries tax him with plagiarism. but the inventor only knows how to borrow; and society is glad to forget the innumerable laborers who ministered to this architect, and reserves all its gratitude for him. when we are praising plato, it seems we are praising quotations from solon, and sophron, and philolaus. be it so. every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests, and mines, and stone quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors. and this grasping inventor puts all nations under contribution. plato absorbed the learning of his times,--philolaus, timaeus, heraclitus, parmenides, and what else; then his master, socrates; and finding himself still capable of a larger synthesis,--beyond all example then or since,--he traveled into italy, to gain what pythagoras had for him; then into egypt, and perhaps still further east, to import the other element, which europe wanted, into the european mind. this breadth entitles him to stand as the representative of philosophy. he says, in the republic, "such a genius as philosophers must of necessity have, is wont but seldom, in all its parts, to meet in one man; but its different parts generally spring up in different persons." every man, who would do anything well, must come to it from a higher ground. a philosopher must be more than a philosopher. plato is clothed with the powers of a poet, stands upon the highest place of the poet, and (though i doubt he wanted the decisive gift of lyric expression) mainly is not a poet, because he chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior purpose. great geniuses have the shortest biographies. their cousins can tell you nothing about them. they lived in their writings, and so their house and street life was trivial and commonplace. if you would know their tastes and complexions, the most admiring of their readers most resembles them. plato, especially, has no external biography. if he had lover, wife, or children, we hear nothing of them. he ground them all into paint. as a good chimney burns its smoke, so a philosopher converts the value of all his fortunes into his intellectual performances. he was born a. c., about the time of the death of pericles; was of patrician connection in his times and city; and is said to have had an early inclination for war; but in his twentieth year, meeting with socrates, was easily dissuaded from this pursuit, and remained for ten years his scholar, until the death of socrates. he then went to megara; accepted the invitations of dion and of dionysius, to the court of sicily; and went thither three times, though very capriciously treated. he traveled into italy; then into egypt, where he stayed a long time; some say three,--some say thirteen years. it is said, he went farther, into babylonia: this is uncertain. returning to athens, he gave lessons, in the academy, to those whom his fame drew thither; and died, as we have received it, in the act of writing, at eighty-one years. but the biography of plato is interior. we are to account for the supreme elevation of this man, in the intellectual history of our race,--how it happens that, in proportion to the culture of men, they become his scholars; that, as our jewish bible has implanted itself in the table-talk and household life of every man and woman in the european and american nations, so the writings of plato have pre-occupied every school of learning, every lover of thought, every church, every poet,--making it impossible to think, on certain levels, except through him. he stands between the truth and every man's mind, and has almost impressed language, and the primary forms of thought, with his name and seal. i am struck, in reading him, with the extreme modernness of his style and spirit. here is the germ of that europe we know so well, in its long history of arts and arms; here are all its traits, already discernible in the mind of plato,--and in none before him. it has spread itself since into a hundred histories, but has added no new element. this perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything shortlived or local, but abode by real and abiding traits. how plato came thus to be europe, and philosophy, and almost literature, is the problem for us to solve. this could not have happened, without a sound, sincere, and catholic man, able to honor, at the same time, the ideal, or laws of the mind, and fate, or the order of nature. the first period of a nation, as of an individual, is the period of unconscious strength. children cry, scream and stamp with fury, unable to express their desires. as soon as they can speak and tell their want, and the reason of it, they become gentle. in adult life, whilst the perceptions are obtuse, men and women talk vehemently and superlatively, blunder and quarrel; their manners are full of desperation; their speech is full of oaths. as soon as, with culture, things have cleared up a little, and they see them no longer in lumps and masses, but accurately distributed, they desist from that weak vehemence, and explain their meaning in detail. if the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest. the same weakness and want, on a higher plane, occurs daily in the education of ardent young men and women. "ah! you don't understand me; i have never met with any one who comprehends me:" and they sigh and weep, write verses, and walk alone,--fault of power to express their precise meaning. in a month or two, through the favor of their good genius, they meet some one so related as to assist their volcanic estate; and, good communication being once established, they are thenceforward good citizens. it is ever thus. the progress is to accuracy, to skill, to truth, from blind force. there is a moment, in the history of every nation, when, proceeding out of this brute youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripeness, and have not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that instant, extends across the entire scale; and, with his feet still planted on the immense forces of night, converses, by his eyes and brain, with solar and stellar creation. that is the moment of adult health, the culmination of power. such is the history of europe, in all points; and such in philosophy. its early records, almost perished, are of the immigrations from asia, bringing with them the dreams of barbarians; a confusion of crude notions of morals, and of natural philosophy, gradually subsiding, through the partial insight of single teachers. before pericles, came the seven wise masters; and we have the beginnings of geometry, metaphysics, and ethics: then the partialists,--deducing the origin of things from flux or water, or from air, or from fire, or from mind. all mix with these causes mythologic pictures. at last, comes plato, the distributor, who needs no barbaric paint, or tattoo, or whooping; for he can define. he leaves with asia the vast and superlative; he is the arrival of accuracy and intelligence. "he shall be as a god to me, who can rightly divide and define." this defining is philosophy. philosophy is the account which the human mind gives to itself of the constitution of the world. two cardinal facts lie forever at the base: the one, and the two.-- . unity, or identity; and, , variety. we unite all things, by perceiving the law which pervades them; by perceiving the superficial differences, and the profound resemblances. but every mental act,--this very perception of identity or oneness, recognizes the difference of things. oneness and otherness. it is impossible to speak, or to think, without embracing both. the mind is urged to ask for one cause of many effects; then for the cause of that; and again the cause, diving still into the profound; self-assured that it shall arrive at an absolute and sufficient one,--a one that shall be all. "in the midst of the sun is the light, in the midst of the light is truth, and in the midst of truth is the imperishable being, "say the vedas. all philosophy, of east and west, has the same centripetence. urged by an opposite necessity, the mind returns from the one, to that which is not one, but other or many; from cause to effect; and affirms the necessary existence of variety, the self-existence of both, as each is involved in the other. these strictly-blended elements it is the problem of thought to separate, and to reconcile. their existence is mutually contradictory and exclusive; and each so fast slides into the other, that we can never say what is one, and what it is not. the proteus is as nimble in the highest as in the lowest grounds, when we contemplate the one, the true, the good,--as in the surfaces and extremities of matter. in all nations, there are minds which incline to dwell in the conception of the fundamental unity. the raptures of prayer and ecstasy of devotion lose all being in one being. this tendency finds its highest expression in the religious writings of the east, and chiefly, in the indian scriptures, in the vedas, the bhagavat geeta, and the vishnu purana. those writings contain little else than this idea, and they rise to pure and sublime strains in celebrating it. the same, the same! friend and foe are of one stuff; the ploughman, the plough, and the furrow, are of one stuff; and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of forms are unimportant. "you are fit" (says the supreme krishna to a sage) "to apprehend that you are not distinct from me. that which i am, thou art, and that also is this world, with its gods, and heroes, and mankind. men contemplate distinctions, because they are stupefied with ignorance." "the words i and mine constitute ignorance. what is the great end of all, you shall now learn from me. it is soul,--one in all bodies, pervading, uniform, perfect, preeminent over nature, exempt from birth, growth, and decay, omnipresent, made up of true knowledge, independent, unconnected with unrealities, with name, species, and the rest, in time past, present, and to come. the knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is in one's own, and in all other bodies, is the wisdom of one who knows the unity of things. as one diffusive air, passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of a scale, so the nature of the great spirit is single, though its forms be manifold, arising from the consequences of acts. when the difference of the investing form, as that of god, or the rest, is destroyed, there is no distinction." "the whole world is but a manifestation of vishnu, who is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by the wise, as not differing from, but as the same as themselves. i neither am going nor coming; nor is my dwelling in any one place; nor art thou, thou; nor are others, others; nor am i, i." as if he had said, "all is for the soul, and the soul is vishnu; and animals and stars are transient painting; and light is whitewash; and durations are deceptive; and form is imprisonment; and heaven itself a decoy." that which the soul seeks is resolution into being, above form, out of tartarus, and out of heaven,--liberation from nature. if speculation tends thus to a terrific unity, in which all things are absorbed, action tends directly backwards to diversity. the first is the course of gravitation of mind; the second is the power of nature. nature is the manifold. the unity absorbs, and melts or reduces. nature opens and creates. these two principles reappear and interpenetrate all things, all thought; the one, the many. one is being; the other, intellect; one is necessity; the other, freedom; one, rest; the other, motion; one, power; the other, distribution; one, strength; the other, pleasure; one, consciousness; the other, definition; one, genius; the other, talent, one, earnestness; the other, knowledge; one, possession; the other, trade; one, caste; the other, culture; one king; the other, democracy; and, if we dare carry these generalizations a step higher, and name the last tendency of both, we might say, that the end of the one is escape from organization,--pure science; and the end of the other is the highest instrumentality, or use of means, or executive deity. each student adheres, by temperament and by habit, to the first or to the second of these gods of the mind. by religion, he tends to unity; by intellect, or by the senses, to the many. a too rapid unification, and an excessive appliance to parts and particulars, are the twin dangers of speculation. to this partiality the history of nations corresponded. the country of unity, of immovable institutions, the seat of a philosophy delighting in abstractions, of men faithful in doctrine and in practice to the idea of a deaf, unimplorable, immense fate, is asia; and it realizes this fate in the social institution of caste. on the other side, the genius of europe is active and creative; it resists caste by culture; its philosophy was a discipline; it is a land of arts, inventions, trade, freedom. if the east loved infinity, the west delighted in boundaries. european civility is the triumph of talent, the extension of system, the sharpened understanding, adaptive skill, delight in forms, delight in manifestation, in comprehensible results. pericles, athens, greece, had been working in this element with the joy of genius not yet chilled by any foresight of the detriment of an excess. they saw before them no sinister political economy; no ominous malthus; no paris or london; no pitiless subdivision of classes,--the doom of the pinmakers, the doom of the weavers, of dressers, of stockingers, of carders, of spinners, of colliers; no ireland; no indian caste, superinduced by the efforts of europe to throw it off. the understanding was in its health and prime. art was in its splendid novelty. they cut the pentelican marble as if it were snow, and their perfect works in architecture and sculpture seemed things of course, not more difficult than the completion of a new ship at the medford yards, or new mills at lowell. these things are in course, and may be taken for granted. the roman legion, byzantine legislation, english trade, the saloons of versailles, the cafes of paris, the steam-mill, steamboat, steam-coach, may all be seen in perspective; the town-meeting, the ballot-box, the newspaper and cheap press. meantime, plato, in egypt, and in eastern pilgrimages, imbibed the idea of one deity, in which all things are absorbed. the unity of asia, and the detail of europe; the infinitude of the asiatic soul, and the defining, result-loving, machine-making, surface-seeking, opera-going europe,--plato came to join, and by contact to enhance the energy of each. the excellence of europe and asia are in his brain. metaphysics and natural philosophy expressed the genius of europe; he substructs the religion of asia, as the base. in short, a balanced soul was born, perceptive of the two elements. it is as easy to be great as to be small. the reason why we do not at once believe in admirable souls, is because they are not in our experience. in actual life, they are so rare, as to be incredible; but, primarily, there is not only no presumption against them, but the strongest presumption in favor of their appearance. but whether voices were heard in the sky, or not; whether his mother or his father dreamed that the infant man-child was the son of apollo; whether a swarm of bees settled on his lips, or not; a man who could see two sides of a thing was born. the wonderful synthesis so familiar in nature; the upper and the under side of the medal of jove; the union of impossibilities, which reappears in every object; its real and its ideal power,--was now, also, transferred entire to the consciousness of a man. the balanced soul came. if he loved abstract truth, he saved himself by propounding the most popular of all principles, the absolute good, which rules rulers, and judges the judge. if he made transcendental distinctions, he fortified himself by drawing all his illustrations from sources disdained by orators, and polite conversers; from mares and puppies; from pitchers and soup-ladles; from cooks and criers; the shops of potters, horse-doctors, butchers, and fishmongers. he cannot forgive in himself a partiality, but is resolved that the two poles of thought shall appear in his statement. his arguments and his sentences are self-poised and spherical. the two poles appear; yes, and become two hands, to grasp and appropriate their own. every great artist has been such by synthesis. our strength is transitional, alternating; or, shall i say, a thread of two strands. the seashore, sea seen from shore, shore seen from sea; the taste of two metals in contact; and our enlarged powers at the approach and at the departure of a friend; the experience of poetic creativeness, which is not found in staying at home, nor yet in traveling, but in transitions from one to the other, which must therefore be adroitly managed to present as much transitional surface as possible; this command of two elements must explain the power and charm of plato. art expresses the one, or the same by the different. thought seeks to know unity in unity; poetry to show it by variety; that is, always by an object or symbol. plato keeps the two vases, one of aether and one of pigment, at his side, and invariably uses both. things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive. plato turns incessantly the obverse and the reverse of the medal of jove. to take an example:--the physical philosophers have sketched each his theory of the world; the theory of atoms, of fire, of flux, of spirit; theories mechanical and chemical in their genius. plato, a master of mathematics, studious of all natural laws and causes, feels these, as second causes, to be no theories of the world, but bare inventories and lists. to the study of nature he therefore prefixes the dogma,--"let us declare the cause which led the supreme ordainer to produce and compose the universe. he was good; and he who is good has no kind of envy. exempt from envy, he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself. whosoever, taught by wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the origin and foundation of the world, will be in the truth." "all things are for the sake of the good, and it is the cause of everything beautiful." this dogma animates and impersonates his philosophy. the synthesis which makes the character of his mind appears in all his talents. where there is great compass of wit, we usually find excellencies that combine easily in the living man, but in description appear incompatible. the mind of plato is not to be exhibited by a chinese catalogue, but is to be apprehended by an original mind in the exercise of its original power. in him the freest abandonment is united with the precision of a geometer. his daring imagination gives him the more solid grasp of facts; as the birds of highest flight have the strongest alar bones. his patrician polish, his intrinsic elegance, edged by an irony so subtle that it stings and paralyzes, adorn the soundest health and strength of frame. according to the old sentence, "if jove should descend to the earth, he would speak in the style of plato." with this palatial air, there is, for the direct aim of several of his works, and running through the tenor of them all, a certain earnestness, which mounts, in the republic, and in the phaedo, to piety. he has been charged with feigning sickness at the time of the death of socrates. but the anecdotes that have come down from the times attest his manly interference before the people in his master's behalf, since even the savage cry of the assembly to plato is preserved; and the indignation towards popular government, in many of his pieces, expresses a personal exasperation. he has a probity, a native reverence for justice and honor, and a humanity which makes him tender for the superstitions of the people. add to this, he believes that poetry, prophecy, and the high insight, arc from a wisdom of which man is not master; that the gods never philosophize; but, by a celestial mania, these miracles are accomplished. horsed on these winged steeds, he sweeps the dim regions, visits worlds which flesh cannot enter; he saw the souls in pain; he hears the doom of the judge; he beholds the penal metempsychosis; the fates, with the rock and shears; and hears the intoxicating hum of their spindle. but his circumspection never forsook him. one would say, he had read the inscription on the gates of busyrane,--"be bold;" and on the second gate,--"be bold, be bold and evermore be bold;" and then again he paused well at the third gate,--"be not too bold." his strength is like the momentum of a falling planet; and his discretion, the return of its due and perfect curve,--so excellent is his greek love of boundary, and his skill in definition. in reading logarithms, one is not more secure, than in following plato in his flights. nothing can be colder than his head, when the lightnings of his imagination are playing in the sky. he has finished his thinking, before he brings it to the reader; and he abounds in the surprises of a literary master. he has that opulence which furnishes, at every turn, the precise weapon he needs. as the rich man wears no more garments, drives no more horses, sits in no more chambers, than the poor,--but has that one dress, or equipage, or instrument, which is fit for the hour and the need; so plato, in his plenty, is never restricted, but has the fit word. there is, indeed, no weapon in all the armory of wit which he did not possess and use,--epic, analysis, mania, intuition, music, satire, and irony, down to the customary and polite. his illustrations are poetry and his jests illustrations. socrates' profession of obstetric art is good philosophy; and his finding that word "cookery," and "adulatory art," for rhetoric, in the gorgias, does us a substantial service still. no orator can measure in effect with him who can give good nicknames. what moderation, and understatement, and checking his thunder in mid volley! he has good-naturedly furnished the courtier and citizen with all that can be said against the schools. "for philosophy is an elegant thing, if any one modestly meddles with it; but, if he is conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts the man." he could well afford to be generous,--he, who from the sunlike centrality and reach of his vision, had a faith without cloud. such as his perception, was his speech: he plays with the doubt, and makes the most of it: he paints and quibbles; and by and by comes a sentence that moves the sea and land. the admirable earnest comes not only at intervals, in the perfect yes and no of the dialogue, but in bursts of light. "i, therefore, callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and consider how i may exhibit my soul before the judge in a healthy condition. wherefore, disregarding the honors that most men value, and looking to the truth, i shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as i can and, when i die, to die so. and i invite all other men, to the utmost of my power; and you, too, i in turn invite to this contest, which, i affirm, surpasses all contests here." he is a great average man one who, to the best thinking, adds a proportion and equality in his faculties, so that men see in him their own dreams and glimpses made available, and made to pass for what they are. a great common sense is his warrant and qualification to be the world's interpreter. he has reason, as all the philosophic and poetic class have: but he has, also, what they have not,--this strong solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the appearances of the world, and build a bridge from the streets of cities to the atlantis. he omits never this graduation, but slopes his thought, however picturesque the precipice on one side, to an access from the plain. he never writes in ecstasy, or catches us up into poetic rapture. plato apprehended the cardinal facts. he could prostrate himself on the earth, and cover his eyes, whilst he adorned that which cannot be numbered, or gauged, or known, or named: that of which everything can be affirmed and denied: that "which is entity and nonentity." he called it super-essential. he even stood ready, as in the parmenides, to demonstrate that it was so,--that this being exceeded the limits of intellect. no man ever more fully acknowledged the ineffable. having paid his homage, as for the human race, to the illimitable, he then stood erect, and for the human race affirmed, "and yet things are knowable!"--that is, the asia in his mind was first heartily honored,--the ocean of love and power, before form, before will, before knowledge, the same, the good, the one; and now, refreshed and empowered by this worship, the instinct of europe, namely, culture, returns; and he cries, yet things are knowable! they are knowable, because, being from one, things correspond. there is a scale: and the correspondence of heaven to earth, of matter to mind, of the part to the whole, is our guide. as there is a science of stars, called astronomy; a science of quantities called mathematics; a science of qualities, called chemistry; so there is a science of sciences,--i call it dialectic,--which is the intellect discriminating the false and the true. it rests on the observation of identity and diversity; for, to judge, is to unite to an object the notion which belongs to it. the sciences, even the best,--mathematics, and astronomy, are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of them. dialectic must teach the use of them. "this is of that rank that no intellectual man will enter on any study for its own sake, but only with a view to advance himself in that one sole science which embraces all." "the essence or peculiarity of man is to comprehend the whole; or that which in the diversity of sensations, can be comprised under a rational unity." "the soul which has never perceived the truth, cannot pass into the human form." i announce to men the intellect. i announce the good of being interpenetrated by the mind that made nature: this benefit, namely, that it can understand nature, which it made and maketh. nature is good, but intellect is better: as the law-giver is before the law-receiver. i give you joy, o sons of men: that truth is altogether wholesome; that we have hope to search out what might be the very self of everything. the misery of man is to be balked of the sight of essence, and to be stuffed with conjecture: but the supreme good is reality; the supreme beauty is reality; and all virtue and all felicity depend on this science of the real: for courage is nothing else than knowledge: the fairest fortune that can befall man, is to be guided by his daemon to that which is truly his own. this also is the essence of justice,--to attend every one his own; nay, the notion of virtue is not to be arrived at, except through direct contemplation of the divine essence. courage, then, for "the persuasion that we must search that which we do not know, will render us, beyond comparison, better, braver, and more industrious, than if we thought it impossible to discover what we do not know, and useless to search for it." he secures a position not to be commanded, by his passion for reality; valuing philosophy only as it is the pleasure of conversing with real being. thus, full of the genius of europe, he said, "culture." he saw the institutions of sparta, and recognized more genially, one would say, than any since, the hope of education. he delighted in every accomplishment, in every graceful and useful and truthful performance; above all, in the splendors of genius and intellectual achievement. "the whole of life, o socrates," said glauco, "is, with the wise the measure of hearing such discourses as these." what a price he sets on the feats of talent, on the powers of pericles, of isocrates, of parmenides! what price, above price on the talents themselves! he called the several faculties, gods, in his beautiful personation. what value he gives to the art of gymnastics in education; what to geometry; what to music, what to astronomy, whose appeasing and medicinal power he celebrates! in the timseus, he indicates the highest employment of the eyes. "by us it is asserted, that god invented and bestowed sight on us for this purpose,--that, on surveying the circles of intelligence in the heavens, we might properly employ those of our own minds, which, though disturbed when compared with the others that are uniform, are still allied to their circulations; and that, having thus learned, and being naturally possessed of a correct reasoning faculty, we might, by imitating the uniform revolutions of divinity, set right our own wanderings and blunders." and in the republic,--"by each of these disciplines, a certain organ of the soul is both purified and reanimated, which is blinded and buried by studies of another kind; an organ better worth saving than ten thousand eyes, since truth is perceived by this alone." he said, culture; but he first admitted its basis, and gave immeasurably the first place to advantages of nature. his patrician tastes laid stress on the distinctions of birth. in the doctrine of the organic character and disposition is the origin of caste. "such as were fit to govern, into their composition the informing deity mingled gold: into the military, silver; iron and brass for husbandmen and artificers." the east confirms itself, in all ages, in this faith. the koran is explicit on this point of caste. "men have their metal, as of gold and silver. those of you who were the worthy ones in the state of ignorance, will be the worthy ones in the state of faith, as soon as you embrace it." plato was not less firm. "of the five orders of things, only four can be taught in the generality of men." in the republic, he insists on the temperaments of the youth, as the first of the first. a happier example of the stress laid on nature, is in the dialogue with the young theages, who wishes to receive lessons from socrates. socrates declares that, if some have grown wise by associating with him, no thanks are due to him; but, simply, whilst they were with him, they grew wise, not because of him; he pretends not to know the way of it. "it is adverse to many, nor can those be benefited by associating with me, whom the daemons oppose, so that it is not possible for me to live with these. with many, however, he does not prevent me from conversing, who yet are not at all benefited by associating with me. such, o theages, is the association with me; for, if it pleases the god, you will make great and rapid proficiency: you will not, if he does not please. judge whether it is not safer to be instructed by some one of those who have power over the benefit which they impart to men, than by me, who benefit or not, just as it may happen." as if he had said, "i have no system. i cannot be answerable for you. you will be what you must. if there is love between us, inconceivably delicious and profitable will our intercourse be; if not, your time is lost, and you will only annoy me. i shall seem to you stupid, and the reputation i have, false. quite above us, beyond the will of you or me, is this secret affinity or repulsion laid. all my good is magnetic, and i educate, not by lessons, but by going about my business." he said, culture; he said, nature; and he failed not to add, "there is also the divine." there is no thought in any mind, but it quickly tends to convert itself into a power, and organizes a huge instrumentality of means. plato, lover of limits, loved the illimitable, saw the enlargement and nobility which come from truth itself, and good itself, and attempted, as if on the part of the human intellect, once for all, to do it adequate homage,--homage fit for the immense soul to receive, and yet homage becoming the intellect to render. he said, then, "our faculties run out into infinity, and return to us thence. we can define but a little way; but here is a fact which will not be skipped, and which to shut our eyes upon is suicide. all things are in a scale; and, begin where we will, ascend and ascend. all things are symbolical; and what we call results are beginnings." a key to the method and completeness of plato is his twice bisected line. after he has illustrated the relation between the absolute good and true, and the forms of the intelligible world, he says:--"let there be a line cut in two, unequal parts. cut again each of these two parts,--one representing the visible, the other the intelligible world,--and these two new sections, representing the bright part and the dark part of these worlds, you will have, for one of the sections of the visible world,--images, that is, both shadows and reflections; for the other section, the objects of these images,-that is, plants, animals, and the works of art and nature. then divide the intelligible world in like manner; the one section will be of opinions and hypotheses, and the other section, of truths." to these four sections, the four operations of the soul correspond,--conjecture, faith, understanding, reason. as every pool reflects the image of the sun, so every thought and thing restores us an image and creature of the supreme good. the universe is perforated by a million channels for his activity. all things mount and mount. all his thought has this ascension; in phaedrus, teaching that "beauty is the most lovely of all things, exciting hilarity, and shedding desire and confidence through the universe, wherever it enters; and it enters, in some degree, into all things; but that there is another, which is as much more beautiful than beauty, as beauty is than chaos; namely, wisdom, which our wonderful organ of sight cannot reach unto, but which, could it be seen, would ravish us with its perfect reality." he has the same regard to it as the source of excellence in works of art. "when an artificer, in the fabrication of any work, looks to that which always subsists according to the same; and, employing a model of this kind, expresses its idea and power in his work; it must follow, that his production should be beautiful. but when he beholds that which is born and dies, it will be far from beautiful." thus ever: the banquet is a teaching in the same spirit, familiar now to all the poetry, and to all the sermons of the world, that the love of the sexes is initial; and symbolizes, at a distance, the passion of the soul for that immense lake of beauty it exists to seek. this faith in the divinity is never out of mind, and constitutes the limitation of all his dogmas. body cannot teach wisdom;--god only. in the same mind, he constantly affirms that virtue cannot be taught; that it is not a science, but an inspiration; that the greatest goods are produced to us through mania, and are assigned to us by a divine gift. this leads me to that central figure, which he has established in his academy, as the organ through which every considered opinion shall be announced, and whose biography he has likewise so labored, that the historic facts are lost in the light of plato's mind. socrates and plato are the double star, which the most powerful instruments will not entirely separate. socrates, again, in his traits and genius, is the best example of that synthesis which constitutes plato's extraordinary power. socrates, a man of humble stem, but honest enough; of the commonest history; of a personal homeliness so remarkable, as to be a cause of wit in others,--the rather that his broad good nature and exquisite taste for a joke invited the sally, which was sure to be paid. the players personated him on the stage; the potters copied his ugly face on their stone jugs. he was a cool fellow, adding to his humor a perfect temper, and a knowledge of his man, be he who he might whom he talked with, which laid the companion open to certain defeat in any debate,--and in debate he immoderately delighted. the young men are prodigiously fond of him, and invite him to their feasts, whither he goes for conversation. he can drink, too; has the strongest head in athens; and, after leaving the whole party under the table, goes away, as if nothing had happened, to begin new dialogues with somebody that is sober. in short, he was what our country-people call an old one. he affected a good many citizen-like tastes, was monstrously fond of athens, hated trees, never willingly went beyond the walls, knew the old characters, valued the bores and philistines, thought everything in athens a little better than anything in any other place. he was plain as a quaker in habit and speech, affected low phrases, and illustrations from cocks and quails, soup-pans and sycamore-spoons, grooms and farriers, and unnameable offices,--especially if he talked with any superfine person. he had a franklin-like wisdom. thus, he showed one who was afraid to go on foot to olympia, that it was no more than his daily walk within doors, if continuously extended, would easily reach. plain old uncle as he was, with his great ears,--an immense talker,--the rumor ran, that, on one or two occasions, in the war with boeotia, he had shown a determination which had covered the retreat of a troop; and there was some story that, under cover of folly, he had, in the city government, when one day he chanced to hold a seat there, evinced a courage in opposing singly the popular voice, which had well-nigh ruined him. he is very poor; but then he is hardy as a soldier, and can live on a few olives; usually, in the strictest sense, on bread and water, except when entertained by his friends. his necessary expenses were exceedingly small, and no one could live as he did. he wore no undergarment; his upper garment was the same for summer and winter; and he went barefooted; and it is said that, to procure the pleasure, which he loves, of talking at his ease all day with the most elegant and cultivated young men, he will now and then return to his shop, and carve statues, good or bad, for sale. however that be, it is certain that he had grown to delight in nothing else than this conversation; and that, under his hypocritical pretense of knowing nothing, he attacks and brings down all the fine speakers, all the fine philosophers of athens, whether natives, or strangers from asia minor and the islands. nobody can refuse to talk with him, he is so honest, and really curious to know; a man who was willingly confuted, if he did not speak the truth, and who willingly confuted others, asserting what was false; and not less pleased when confuted than when confuting; for he thought not any evil happened to men, of such a magnitude as false opinion respecting the just and unjust. a pitiless disputant, who knows nothing, but the bounds of whose conquering intelligence no man had ever reached; whose temper was imperturbable; whose dreadful logic was always leisurely and sportive; so careless and ignorant as to disarm the weariest, and draw them, in the pleasantest manner, into horrible doubts and confusion. but he always knew the way out; knew it, yet would not tell it. no escape; he drives them to terrible choices by his dilemmas, and tosses the hippiases and gorgiases, with their grand reputations, as a boy tosses his balls. the tyrannous realist!-meno has discoursed a thousand times, at length, on virtue, before many companies, and very well, as it appeared to him; but, at this moment, he cannot even tell what it is,--this cramp-fish of a socrates has so bewitched him. this hard-headed humorist, whose strange conceits, drollery, and _bon-hommie_, diverted the young patricians, whilst the rumor of his sayings and quibbles gets abroad every day, turns out, in a sequel, to have a probity as invincible as his logic and to be either insane, or, at least, under cover of this play, enthusiastic in his religion. when accused before the judges of subverting the popular creed, he affirms the immortality of the soul, the future reward and punishment; and, refusing to recant, in a caprice of the popular government, was condemned to die, and sent to the prison. socrates entered the prison, and took away all ignominy from the place, which could not be a prison, whilst he was there. crito bribed the jailor; but socrates would not go out by treachery. "whatever inconvenience ensue, nothing is to be preferred before justice. these things i hear like pipes and drums, whose sound makes me deaf to everything you say." the fame of this prison, the fame of the discourses there, and the drinking of the hemlock, are one of the most precious passages in the history of the world. the rare coincidence, in one ugly body, of the droll and the martyr, the keen street and market debater with the sweetest saint known to any history at that time, had forcibly struck the mind of plato, so capacious of these contrasts; and the figure of socrates, by a necessity, placed itself in the foreground of the scene, as the fittest dispenser of the intellectual treasurers he had to communicate. it was a rare fortune, that this aesod of the mob, and this robed scholar, should meet, to make each other immortal in their mutual faculty. the strange synthesis, in the character of socrates, capped the synthesis in the mind of plato. moreover, by this means, he was able, in the direct way, and without envy, to avail himself of the wit and weight of socrates, to which unquestionably his own debt was great; and these derived again their principal advantage from the perfect art of plato. it remains to say, that the defect of plato in power is only that which results inevitably from his quality. he is intellectual in his aim; and, therefore, in expression, literary. mounting into heaven, driving into the pit, expounding the laws of the state, the passion of love, the remorse of crime, the hope of the parting soul,--he is literary, and never otherwise. it is almost the sole deduction from the merit of plato, that his writings have not,--what is, no doubt, incident to this regnancy of intellect in his work,--the vital authority which the screams of prophets and the sermons of unlettered arabs and jews possess. there is an interval; and to cohesion, contact is necessary. i know not what can be said in reply to this criticism, but that we have come to a fact in the nature of things: an oak is not an orange. the qualities of sugar remain with sugar, and those of salt, with salt. in the second place, he has not a system. the dearest defenders and disciples are at fault. he attempted a theory of the universe, and his theory is not complete or self-evident. one man thinks he means this, and another, that: he has said one thing in one place, and the reverse of it in another place. he is charged with having failed to make the transition from ideas to matter. here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches. the longest wave is quickly lost in the sea. plato would willingly have a platonism, a known and accurate expression for the world, and it should be accurate. it shall be the world passed through the mind of plato,--nothing less. every atom shall have the platonic tinge; every atom, every relation or quality you knew before, you shall know again and find here, but now ordered; not nature, but art. and you shall feel that alexander indeed overran, with men and horses, some countries of the planet; but countries, and things of which countries are made, elements, planet itself, laws of planet and of men, have passed through this man as bread into his body, and become no longer bread, but body: so all this mammoth morsel has become plato. he has clapped copyright on the world. this is the ambition of individualism. but the mouthful proves too large. boa constrictor has good will to eat it, but he is foiled. he falls abroad in the attempt; and biting, gets strangled: the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own teeth. there he perishes: unconquered nature lives on, and forgets him. so it fares with all: so must it fare with plato. in view of eternal nature, plato turns out to be philosophical exercitations. he argues on this side, and on that. the acutest german, the lovingest disciple, could never tell what platonism was; indeed, admirable texts can be quoted on both sides of every great question from him. these things we are forced to say, if we must consider the effort of plato, or of any philosopher, to dispose of nature,--which will not be disposed of. no power of genius has ever yet had the smallest success in explaining existence. the perfect enigma remains. but there is an injustice in assuming this ambition for plato. let us not seem to treat with flippancy his venerable name. men, in proportion to their intellect, have admitted his transcendent claims. the way to know him, is to compare him, not with nature, but with other men. how many ages have gone by, and he remains unapproached! a chief structure of human wit, like karnac, or the mediaeval cathedrals, or the etrurian remains, it requires all the breadth of human faculty to know it. i think it is truliest seen, when seen with the most respect. his sense deepens, his merits multiply, with study. when we say, here is a fine collection of fables; or, when we praise the style; or the common sense; or arithmetic; we speak as boys, and much of our impatient criticism of the dialectic, i suspect, is no better. the criticism is like our impatience of miles when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards. the great-eyed plato proportioned the lights and shades after the genius of our life. plato: new readings the publication, in mr. bohn's "serial library," of the excellent translations of plato, which we esteem one of the chief benefits the cheap press has yielded, gives us an occasion to take hastily a few more notes of the elevation and bearings of this fixed star; or, to add a bulletin, like the journals, of plato at the latest dates. modern science, by the extent of its generalization, has learned to indemnify the student of man for the defects of individuals, by tracing growth and ascent in races; and, by the simple expedient of lighting up the vast background, generates a feeling of complacency and hope. the human being has the saurian and the plant in his rear. his arts and sciences, the easy issue of his brain, look glorious when prospectively beheld from the distant brain of ox, crocodile, and fish. it seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as homer, phidias, menu, and columbus, was nowise discontented with the result. these samples attested the virtue of the tree. these were a clear amelioration of trilobite and saurus, and a good basis for further proceeding. with this artist time and space are cheap, and she is insensible of what you say of tedious preparation. she waited tranquilly the flowing periods of paleontology, for the hour to be struck when man should arrive. then periods must pass before the motion of the earth can be suspected; then before the map of the instincts and the cultivable powers can be drawn. but as of races, so the succession of individual men is fatal and beautiful, and plato has the fortune, in the history of mankind, to mark an epoch. plato's fame does not stand on a syllogism, or on any masterpieces of the socratic, or on any thesis, as, for example, the immortality of the soul. he is more than an expert, or a school-man, or a geometer, or the prophet of a peculiar message. he represents the privilege of the intellect, the power, namely, of carrying up every fact to successive platforms, and so disclosing, in every fact, a germ of expansion. these expansions are in the essence of thought. the naturalist would never help us to them by any discoveries of the extent of the universe, but is as poor, when cataloguing the resolved nebula of orion, as when measuring the angles of an acre. but the republic of plato, by these expansions, may be said to require, and so to anticipate, the astronomy of laplace. the expansions are organic. the mind does not create what it perceives, any more than the eye creates the rose. in ascribing to plato the merit of announcing them, we only say, here was a more complete man, who could apply to nature the whole scale of the senses, the understanding, and the reason. these expansions, or extensions, consist in continuing the spiritual sight where the horizon falls on our natural vision, and, by this second sight, discovering the long lines of law which shoot in every direction. everywhere he stands on a path which has no end, but runs continuously round the universe. therefore, every word becomes an exponent of nature. whatever he looks upon discloses a second sense, and ulterior senses. his perception of the generation of contraries, of death out of life, and life out of death,--that law by which, in nature, decomposition is recomposition, and putrefaction and cholera are only signals of a new creation; his discernment of the little in the large, and the large in the small; studying the state in the citizen, and the citizen in the state; and leaving it doubtful whether he exhibited the republic as an allegory on the education of the private soul; his beautiful definitions of ideas, of time, of form, of figure, of the line, sometimes hypothetically given, as his defining of virtue, courage, justice, temperance; his love of the apologue, and his apologues themselves; the cave of trophonius; the ring of gyges; the charioteer and two horses; the golden, silver, brass, and iron temperaments; theuth and thamus; and the visions of hades and the fates--fables which have imprinted themselves in the human memory like the signs of the zodiac; his soliform eye and his boniform soul; his doctrine of assimilation; his doctrine of reminiscence; his clear vision of the laws of return, or reaction, which secure instant justice throughout the universe, instanced everywhere, but specially in the doctrine, "what comes from god to us, returns from us to god," and in socrates' belief that the laws below are sisters of the laws above. more striking examples are his moral conclusions. plato affirms the coincidence of science and virtue; for vice can never know itself and virtue; but virtue knows both itself and vice. the eye attested that justice was best, as long as it was profitable; plato affirms that it is profitable throughout; that the profit is intrinsic, though the just conceal his justice from gods and men; that it is better to suffer injustice, than to do it; that the sinner ought to covet punishment; that the lie was more hurtful than homicide; and that ignorance, or the involuntary lie, was more calamitous than involuntary homicide; that the soul is unwillingly deprived of true opinions; and that no man sins willingly; that the order of proceeding of nature was from the mind to the body; and, though a sound body cannot restore an unsound mind, yet a good soul can, by its virtue, render the body the best possible. the intelligent have a right over the ignorant, namely, the right of instructing them. the right punishment of one out of tune, is to make him play in tune; the fine which the good, refusing to govern, ought to pay, is, to be governed by a worse man; that his guards shall not handle gold and silver, but shall be instructed that there is gold and silver in their souls, which will make men willing to give them everything which they need. this second sight explains the stress laid on geometry. he saw that the globe of earth was not more lawful and precise than was the supersensible; that a celestial geometry was in place there, as a logic of lines and angles here below; that the world was throughout mathematical; the proportions are constant of oxygen, azote, and lime; there is just so much water, and slate, and magnesia; not less are the proportions constant of moral elements. this eldest goethe, hating varnish and falsehood, delighted in revealing the real at the base of the accidental; in discovering connection, continuity, and representation, everywhere; hating insulation; and appears like the god of wealth among the cabins of vagabonds, opening power and capability in everything he touches. ethical science was new and vacant, when plato could write thus:--"of all whose arguments are left to the men of the present time, no one has ever yet condemned injustice, or praised justice, otherwise than as respects the repute, honors, and emoluments arising therefrom; while, as respects either of them in itself, and subsisting by its own power in the soul of the possessor, and concealed both from gods and men, no one has yet sufficiently investigated, either in poetry or prose writings,--how, namely, that the one is the greatest of all the evils that the soul has within it, and justice the greatest good." his definition of ideas, as what is simple, permanent, uniform, and self-existent, forever discriminating them from the notions of the understanding, marks an era in the world. he was born to behold the self-evolving power of spirit, endless generator of new ends; a power which is the key at once to the centrality and the evanescence of things. plato is so centered, that he can well spare all his dogmas. thus the fact of knowledge and ideas reveals to him the fact of eternity; and the doctrine of reminiscence he offers as the most probable particular explication. call that fanciful,--it matters not; the connection between our knowledge and the abyss of being is still real, and the explication must be not less magnificent. he has indicated every eminent point in speculation. he wrote on the scale of the mind itself, so that all things have symmetry in his tablet. he put in all the past, without weariness, and descended into detail with a courage like that he witnessed in nature. one would say, that his forerunners had mapped out each a farm, or a district, or an island, in intellectual geography, but that plato first drew the sphere. he domesticates the soul in nature; man is the microcosm. all the circles of the visible heaven represent as many circles in the rational soul. there is no lawless particle, and there is nothing casual in the action of the human mind. the names of things, too, are fatal, following the nature of things. all the gods of the pantheon are, by their names, significant of a profound sense. the gods are the ideas. pan is speech, or manifestation; saturn, the contemplative; jove, the regal soul; and mars, passion. venus is proportion; calliope, the soul of the world; aglaia, intellectual illustration. these thoughts, in sparkles of light, had appeared often to pious and to poetic souls; but this well-bred, all-knowing greek geometer comes with command, gathers them all up into rank and gradation, the euclid of holiness, and marries the two parts of nature. before all men, he saw the intellectual values of the moral sentiment. he describes his own ideal, when he paints in timaeus a god leading things from disorder into order. he kindled a fire so truly in the center, that we see the sphere illuminated, and can distinguish poles, equator, and lines of latitude, every arc and node; a theory so averaged, so modulated, that you would say, the winds of ages had swept through this rhythmic structure, and not that it was the brief extempore blotting of one short-lived scribe. hence it has happened that a very well-marked class of souls, namely those who delight in giving a spiritual, that is, an ethico-intellectual expression to every truth by exhibiting an ulterior end which is yet legitimate to it, are said to platonize. thus, michel angelo is a platonist, in his sonnets. shakspeare is a platonist, when he writes, "nature is made better by no mean, but nature makes that mean," or, "he that can endure to follow with allegiance a fallen lord, does conquer him that did his master conquer, and earns a place in the story." hamlet is a pure platonist, and 'tis the magnitude only of shakspeare's proper genius that hinders him from being classed as the most eminent of this school. swedenborg, throughout his prose poem of "conjugal love," is a platonist. his subtlety commended him to men of thought. the secret of his popular success is the moral aim, which endeared him to mankind. "intellect," he said, "is king of heaven and of earth;" but, in plato, intellect is always moral. his writings have also the sempiternal youth of poetry. for their arguments, most of them, might have been couched in sonnets; and poetry has never soared higher than in the timaeus and the phaedrus. as the poet, too, he is only contemplative. he did not, like pythagoras, break himself with an institution. all his painting in the republic must be esteemed mythical, with intent to bring out, sometimes in violent colors, his thought. you cannot institute, without peril of charlatan. it was a high scheme, his absolute privilege for the best (which, to make emphatic, he expressed by community of women), as the premium which he would set on grandeur. there shall be exempts of two kinds: first, those who by demerit have put themselves below protection,--outlaws; and secondly, those who by eminence of nature and desert are out of the reach of your rewards; let such be free of the city, and above the law. we confide them to themselves; let them do with us as they will. let none presume to measure the irregularities of michel angelo and socrates by village scales. in his eighth book of the republic, he throws a little mathematical dust in our eyes. i am sorry to see him, after such noble superiorities, permitting the lie to governors. plato plays providence a little with the baser sort, as people allow themselves with their dogs and cats. iii. swedenborg; or, the mystic. among eminent persons, those who are most dear to men are not the class which the economists call producers; they have nothing in their hands; they have not cultivated corn, nor made bread; they have not led out a colony, nor invented a loom. a higher class, in the estimation and love of this city-building, market-going race of mankind, are the poets, who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the thought and imagination with ideas and pictures which raise men out of the world of corn and money, and console them for the shortcomings of the day, and the meannesses of labor and traffic. then, also, the philosopher has his value, who flatters the intellect of this laborer, by engaging him with subtleties which instruct him in new faculties. others may build cities; he is to understand them, and keep them in awe. but there is a class who lead us into another region,--the world of morals, or of will. what is singular about this region of thought, is, its claim. wherever the sentiment of right comes in, it takes precedence of everything else. for other things, i make poetry of them; but the moral sentiment makes poetry of me. i have sometimes thought that he would render the greatest service to modern criticism, who shall draw the line of relation that subsists between shakespeare and swedenborg. the human mind stands ever in perplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, impatient equally of each without the other. the reconciler has not yet appeared. if we tire of the saints, shakespeare is our city of refuge. yet the instincts presently teach, that the problem of essence must take precedence of all others,--the questions of whence? what? and whither? and the solution of these must be in a life, and not in a book. a drama or poem is a proximate or oblique reply; but moses, menu, jesus, work directly on this problem. the atmosphere of moral sentiment is a region of grandeur which reduces all material magnificence to toys, yet opens to every wretch that has reason, the doors of the universe. almost with a fierce haste it lays its empire on the man. in the language of the koran, "god said, the heaven and the earth, and all that is between them, think ye that we created them in jest, and that ye shall not return to us?" it is the kingdom of the will, and by inspiring the will, which is the seat of personality, seems to convert the universe into a person:-- "the realms of being to no other bow, not only all are thine, but all are thou." all men are commanded by the saint. the koran makes a distinct class of those who are by nature good, and whose goodness has an influence on others, and pronounces this class to be the aim of creation: the other classes are admitted to the feast of being, only as following in the train of this. and the persian poet exclaims to a soul of this kind: "go boldly forth, and feast on being's banquet; thou art the called,--the rest admitted with thee." the privilege of this caste is an access to the secrets and structure of nature, by some higher method than by experience. in common parlance, what one man is said to learn by experience, a man of extraordinary sagacity is said, without experience, to divine. the arabians say, that abul khain, the mystic, and abu ali seena, the philosopher, conferred together; and, on parting, the philosopher said, "all that he sees, i know;" and the mystic said, "all that he knows, i see." if one should ask the reason of this intuition, the solution would lead us into that property which plato denoted as reminiscence, and which is implied by the bramins in the tenet of transmigration. the soul having been often born, or, as the hindoos say, "traveling the path of existence through thousands of births," having beheld the things which are here, those which are in heaven, and those which are beneath, there is nothing of which she has not gained the knowledge: no wonder that she is able to recollect, in regard to any one thing, what formerly she knew. "for, all things in nature being linked and related, and the soul having heretofore known all, nothing hinders but that any man who has recalled to mind, or, according to the common phrase, has learned one thing only, should of himself recover all his ancient knowledge, and find out again all the rest, if he have but courage, and faint not in the midst of his researches. for inquiry and learning is reminiscence all." how much more, if he that inquires be a holy and godlike soul! for, by being assimilated to the original soul, by whom, and after whom, all things subsist, the soul of man does then easily flow into all things, and all things flow into it: they mix: and he is present and sympathetic with their structure and law. this path is difficult, secret, and beset with terror. the ancients called it ecstasy or absence,--a getting out of their bodies to think. all religious history contains traces of the trance of saints,--a beatitude, but without any sign of joy, earnest, solitary, even sad; "the flight," plotinus called it, "of the alone to the alone." the trances of socrates, plotinus, porphyry, behmen, bunyan, fox, pascal, guion, swedenborg, will readily come to mind. but what as readily comes to mind, is the accompaniment of disease. this beatitude comes in terror, and with shocks to the mind of the receiver. "it o'erinforms the tenement of clay," and drives the man mad; or, gives a certain violent bias, which taints his judgment. in the chief examples of religious illumination, somewhat morbid, has mingled, in spite of the unquestionable increase of mental power. must the highest good drag after it a quality which neutralizes and discredits it?-- "indeed it takes from our achievements, when performed at height, the pith and marrow of our attribute." shall we say, that the economical mother disburses so much earth and so much fire, by weight and metre, to make a man, and will not add a pennyweight, though a nation is perishing for a leader? therefore, the men of god purchased their science by folly or pain. if you will have pure carbon, carbuncle, or diamond, to make the brain transparent, the trunk and organs shall be so much the grosser: instead of porcelain, they are potter's earth, clay, or mud. in modern times, no such remarkable example of this introverted mind has occurred, as in emanuel swedenborg, born in stockholm, in . this man, who appeared to his contemporaries a visionary, and elixir of moonbeams, no doubt led the most real life of any man then in the world: and now, when the royal and ducal frederics, cristierns, and brunswicks, of that day, have slid into oblivion, he begins to spread himself into the minds of thousands. as happens in great men, he seemed, by the variety and amount of his powers, to be a composition of several persons,--like the giant fruits which are matured in gardens by the union of four or five single blossoms. his frame is on a larger scale, and possesses the advantage of size. as it is easier to see the reflection of the great sphere in large globes, though defaced by some crack or blemish, than in drops of water, so men of large calibre, though with some eccentricity or madness, like pascal or newton, help us more than balanced mediocre minds. his youth and training could not fail to be extraordinary. such a boy could not whistle or dance, but goes grubbing into mines and mountains, prying into chemistry and optics, physiology, mathematics, and astronomy, to find images fit for the measure of his versatile and capacious brain. he was a scholar from a child, and was educated at upsala. at the age of twenty-eight, he was made assessor of the board of mines, by charles xii. in , he left home for four years, and visited the universities of england, holland, france, and germany. he performed a notable feat of engineering in , at the siege of fredericshall, by hauling two galleys, five boats, and a sloop, some fourteen english miles overland, for the royal service. in he journeyed over europe, to examine mines and smelting works. he published, in , his daedalus hyperboreus, and, from this time, for the next thirty years, was employed in the composition and publication of his scientific works. with the like force, he threw himself into theology. in , when he was fifty-four years old, what is called his illumination began. all his metallurgy, and transportation of ships overland, was absorbed into this ecstasy. he ceased to publish any more scientific books, withdrew from his practical labors, and devoted himself to the writing and publication of his voluminous theological works, which were printed at his own expense, or at that of the duke of brunswick, or other prince, at dresden, liepsic, london, or amsterdam. later, he resigned his office of assessor: the salary attached to this office continued to be paid to him during his life. his duties had brought him into intimate acquaintance with king charles xii., by whom he was much consulted and honored. the like favor was continued to him by his successor. at the diet of , count hopken says, the most solid memorials on finance were from his pen. in sweden, he appears to have attracted a marked regard. his rare science and practical skill, and the added fame of second sight and extraordinary religious knowledge and gifts, drew to him queens, nobles, clergy, shipmasters, and people about the ports through which he was wont to pass in his many voyages. the clergy interfered a little with the importation and publication of his religious works; but he seems to have kept the friendship of men in power. he was never married. he had great modesty and gentleness of bearing. his habits were simple; he lived on bread, milk, and vegetables; and he lived in a house situated in a large garden; he went several times to england, where he does not seem to have attracted any attention whatever from the learned or the eminent; and died at london, march , , of apoplexy, in his eighty-fifth year. he is described, when in london, as a man of quiet, clerical habit, not averse to tea and coffee, and kind to children. he wore a sword when in full velvet dress, and, whenever he walked out, carried a gold-headed cane. there is a common portrait of him in antique coat and wig, but the face has a wandering or vacant air. the genius which was to penetrate the science of the age with a far more subtle science; to pass the bounds of space and time; venture into the dim spirit-realm, and attempt to establish a new religion in the world,--began its lessons in quarries and forges, in the smelting-pot and crucible, in ship-yards and dissecting-rooms. no one man is perhaps able to judge of the merits of his works on so many subjects. one is glad to learn that his books on mines and metals are held in the highest esteem by those who understand these matters. it seems that he anticipated much science of the nineteenth century; anticipated, in astronomy, the discovery of the seventh planet,--but, unhappily, not also of the eighth; anticipated the views of modern astronomy in regard to the generation of earth by the sun; in magnetism, some important experiments and conclusions of later students; in chemistry, the atomic theory; in anatomy, the discoveries of schlichting, monro, and wilson; and first demonstrated the office of the lungs. his excellent english editor magnanimously lays no stress on his discoveries, since he was too great to care to be original; and we are to judge, by what he can spare, of what remains. a colossal soul, he lies vast abroad on his times, uncomprehended by them, and requires a long local distance to be seen; suggest, as aristotle, bacon, selden, humboldt, that a certain vastness of learning, or _quasi_ omnipresence of the human soul in nature, is possible. his superb speculations, as from a tower, over nature and arts, without ever losing sight of the texture and sequence of things, almost realizes his own picture, in the "principia," of the original integrity of man. over and above the merit of his particular discoveries, is the capital merit of his self-equality. a drop of water has the properties of the sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. there is beauty of a concert, as well as of a flute; strength of a host, as well as of a hero; and, in swedenborg, those who are best acquainted with modern books, will most admire the merit of mass. one of the missouriums and mastodons of literature, he is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary scholars. his stalwart presence would flutter the gowns of an university. our books are false by being fragmentary; their sentences are _bon mots_, and not parts of natural discourse; childish expressions of surprise or pleasure in nature; or, worse, owing a brief notoriety to their petulance, or aversion from the order of nature,--being some curiosity or oddity, designedly not in harmony with nature, and purposely framed to excite a surprise, as jugglers do by concealing their means. but swedenborg is systematic, and respective of the world in every sentence; all the means are orderly given; his faculties work with astronomic punctuality, and this admirable writing is pure from all pertness or egotism. swedenborg was born into an atmosphere of great ideas. 'tis hard to say what was his own: yet his life was dignified by noblest pictures of the universe. the robust aristotelian method, with its breadth and adequateness, shaming our sterile and linear logic by its genial radiation, conversant with series and degree, with effects and ends, skilful to discriminate power from form, essence from accident, and opening by its terminology and definition, high roads into nature, had trained a race of athletic philosophers. harvey had shown the circulation of the blood; gilbert had shown that the earth was a magnet; descartes, taught by gilbert's magnet, with its vortex, spiral, and polarity, had filled europe with the leading thought of vortical motion, as the secret of nature. newton, in the year in which swedenborg was born, published the "principia," and established the universal gravity. malpighi, following the high doctrines of hippocrates, leucippus, and lucretius, had given emphasis to the dogma that nature works in leasts,--"_tota in minimis existit natura_." unrivalled dissectors, swammerdam, leeuwenhoek, winslow, eustachius, heister, vesalius, boerhaave, had left nothing for scalpel or microscope to reveal in human or comparative anatomy; linnaeus, his contemporary, was affirming, in his beautiful science, that "nature is always like herself;" and, lastly, the nobility of method, the largest application of principles, had been exhibited by leibnitz and christian wolff, in cosmology; whilst locke and grotius had drawn the moral argument. what was left for a genius of the largest calibre, but to go over their ground, and verify and unite? it is easy to see, in these minds, the original of swedenborg's studies, and the suggestion of his problems. he had a capacity to entertain and vivify these volumes of thought. yet the proximity of these geniuses, one or other of whom had introduced all his leading ideas, makes swedenborg another example of the difficulty, even in a highly fertile genius, of proving originality, the first birth and annunciation of one of the laws of nature. he named his favorite views, the doctrine of forms, the doctrine of series and degrees, the doctrine of influx, the doctrine of correspondence. his statement of these doctrines deserves to be studied in his books. not every man can read them, but they will reward him who can. his theologic works are valuable to illustrate these. his writings would be a sufficient library to a lonely and athletic student; and the "economy of the animal kingdom" is one of those books which, by the sustained dignity of thinking, is an honor to the human race. he had studied spars and metals to some purpose. his varied and solid knowledge makes his style lustrous with points and shooting spicula of thought, and resembling one of those winter mornings when the air sparkles with crystals. the grandeur of the topics makes the grandeur of the style. he was apt for cosmology, because of that native perception of identity which made mere size of no account to him. in the atom of magnetic iron, he saw the quality which would generate the spiral motion of sun and planet. the thoughts in which he lived were, the universality of each law in nature; the platonic doctrine of the scale or degrees; the version or conversion of each into other, and so the correspondence of all the parts; the fine secret that little explains large, and large, little; the centrality of man in nature, and the connection that subsists throughout all things: he saw that the human body was strictly universal, or an instrument through which the soul feeds and is fed by the whole of matter: so that he held, in exact antagonism to the skeptics, that, "the wiser a man is, the more will he be a worshipper of the deity." in short, he was a believer in the identity-philosophy, which he held not idly, as the dreamers of berlin or boston, but which he experimented with and established through years of labor, with the heart and strength of the rudest viking that his rough sweden ever sent to battle. this theory dates from the oldest philosophers, and derives perhaps its best illustration from the newest. it is this: that nature iterates her means perpetually on successive planes. in the old aphorism, nature is always self-similar. in the plant, the eye or germinative point opens to a leaf, then to another leaf, with a power of transforming the leaf into radicle, stamen, pistil, petal, bract, sepal, or seed. the whole art of the plant is still to repeat leaf on leaf without end, the more or less of heat, light, moisture, and food, determining the form it shall assume. in the animal, nature makes a vertebra, or a spine of vertebrae, and helps herself still by a new spine, with a limited power of modifying its form,--spine on spine, to the end of the world. a poetic anatomist, in our own day, teaches that a snake, being a horizontal line, and man, being an erect line, constitute a right angle; and, between the lines of this mystical quadrant, all animate beings find their place; and he assumes the hair-worm, the span-worm, or the snake, as the type of prediction of the spine. manifestly, at the end of the spine, nature puts out smaller spines, as arms; at the end of the arms, new spines, as hands; at the other end, she repeats the process, as legs and feet. at the top of the column, she puts out another spine, which doubles or loops itself over, as a span-worm, into a ball, and forms the skull, with extremities again; the hands being now the upper jaw, the feet the lower jaw, the fingers and toes being represented this time by upper and lower teeth. this new spine is destined to high uses. it is a new man on the shoulders of the last. it can almost shed its trunk, and manage to live alone, according to the platonic idea in the timaeus. within it, on a higher plane, all that was done in the trunk repeats itself. nature recites her lesson once more in a higher mood. the mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. here again is the mystery of generation repeated. in the brain are male and female faculties; here is marriage, here is fruit. and there is no limit to this ascending scale, but series on series. everything, at the end of one use, is taken up into the next, each series punctually repeating every organ and process of the last. we are adapted to infinity. we are hard to please, and love nothing which ends; and in nature is no end; but everything, at the end of one use, is lifted into a superior, and the ascent of these things climbs into daemonic and celestial natures. creative force, like a musical composer, goes on unweariedly repeating a simple air or theme now high, now low, in solo, in chorus, ten thousand times reverberated, till it fills earth and heaven with the chant. gravitation, as explained by newton, is good, but grandeur, when we find chemistry only an extension of the law of masses into particles, and that the atomic theory shows the action of chemistry to be mechanical also. metaphysics shows us a sort of gravitation, operative also in the mental phenomena; and the terrible tabulation of the french statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical rations. if one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother. what we call gravitation, and fancy ultimate, is one fork of a mightier stream, for which we have yet no name. astronomy is excellent; but it must come up into life to have its full value, and not remain there in globes and spaces. the globule of blood gyrates around its own axis in the human veins, as the planet in the sky; and the circles of intellect relate to those of the heavens. each law of nature has the like universality; eating, sleep or hybernation, rotation, generation, metamorphosis, vortical motion, which is seen in eggs as in planets. these grand rhymes or returns in nature,--the dear, best-known face startling us at every turn, under a mask so unexpected that we think it the face of a stranger, and, carrying up the semblance into divine forms,--delighted the prophetic eye of swedenborg; and he must be reckoned a leader in that revolution, which, by giving to science an idea, has given to an aimless accumulation of experiments, guidance and form, and a beating heart. i own, with some regret, that his printed works amount to about fifty stout octaves, his scientific works being about half of the whole number; and it appears that a mass of manuscript still unedited remains in the royal library at stockholm. the scientific works have just now been translated into english, in an excellent edition. swedenborg printed these scientific books in the ten years from to , and they remained from that time neglected; and now, after their century is complete, he has at last found a pupil in mr. wilkinson, in london, a philosophic critic, with a co-equal vigor of understanding and imagination comparable only to lord bacon's, who has produced his master's buried books to the day, and transferred them, with every advantage, from their forgotten latin into english, to go round the world in our commercial and conquering tongue. this startling reappearance of swedenborg, after a hundred years, in his pupil, is not the least remarkable fact in his history. aided, it is said, by the munificence of mr. clissold, and also by his literary skill, this piece of poetic justice is done. the admirable preliminary discourses with which mr. wilkinson has enriched these volumes, throw all the contemporary philosophy of england into shade, and leave me nothing to say on their proper grounds. the "animal kingdom" is a book of wonderful merits. it was written with the highest end,--to put science and the soul, long estranged from each other, at one again. it was an anatomist's account of the human body, in the highest style of poetry. nothing can exceed the bold and brilliant treatment of a subject usually so dry and repulsive. he saw nature "wreathing through an everlasting spiral, with wheels that never dry, on axles that never creak," and sometimes sought "to uncover those secret recess is where nature is sitting at the fires in the depths of her laboratory;" whilst the picture comes recommended by the hard fidelity with which it is based on practical anatomy. it is remarkable that this sublime genius decides, peremptorily for the analytic, against the synthetic method; and, in a book whose genius is a daring poetic synthesis, claims to confine himself to a rigid experience. he knows, if he only, the flowing of nature and how wise was that old answer of amasis to him who bade him drink up the sea,--"yes, willingly, if you will stop the rivers that flow in." few knew as much about nature and her subtle manners, or expressed more subtly her goings. he thought as large a demand is made on our faith by nature, as by miracles. "he noted that in her proceeding from first principles through her several subordinations, there was no state through which she did not pass, as if her path lay through all things." "for as often as she betakes herself upward from visible phenomena, or, in other words, withdraws herself inward, she instantly, as it were, disappears, while no one knows what has become of her, or whither she is gone; so that it is necessary to take science as a guide in pursuing her steps." the pursuing the inquiry under the light of an end or final cause, gives wonderful animation, a sort of personality to the whole writing. this book announces his favorite dogmas. the ancient doctrines of hippocrates, that the brain is a gland; and of leucippus, that the atom may be known by the mass; or, in plato, the macrocosm by the microcosm; and, in the verses of lucretius,-- ossa videlicet e pauxillis atque minutis ossibus sic et de pauxillis atque minutis visceribus viscus gigni, sanguenque creari sanguinis inter se multis coeuntibus guttis; ex aurique putat micis consistere posse aurum, et de terris terram concrescere parvis; ignibus ex igneis, humorem humoribus esse. lib. i. . "the principle of all things entrails made of smallest entrails; bone, of smallest bone, blood, of small sanguine drops reduced to one; gold, of small grains; earth, of small sands compacted small drops to water, sparks to fire contracted:" and which malpighi had summed in his maxim, that "nature exists entirely in leasts,"--is a favorite thought of swedenborg. "it is a constant law of the organic body, that large, compound, or visible forms exist and subsist from smaller, simpler, and ultimately from invisible forms, which act similarly to the larger ones, but more perfectly and more universally, and the least forms so perfectly and universally, as to involve an idea representative of their entire universe." the unities of each organ are so many little organs, homogeneous with their compound; the unities of the tongue are little tongues; those of the stomach, little stomachs; those of the heart are little hearts. this fruitful idea furnishes a key to every secret. what was too small for the eye to detect was read by the aggregates; what was too large, by the units. there is no end to his application of the thought. "hunger is an aggregate of very many little hungers, or losses of blood by the little veins all over the body." it is the key to his theology, also. "man is a kind of very minute heaven, corresponding to the world of spirits and to heaven. every particular idea of man, and every affection, yea, every smallest spark of his affection, is an image and effigy of him. a spirit may be known from only a single thought. god is the grand man." the hardihood and thoroughness of his study of nature required a theory of forms, also. "forms ascend in order from the lowest to the highest. the lowest form is angular, or the terrestrial and corporeal. the second and next higher form is the circular, which is also called the perpetual-angular, because the circumference of a circle is a perpetual angle. the form above this is the spiral, parent and measure of circular forms; its diameters are not rectilinear, but variously circular, and have a spherical surface for center; therefore it is called the perpetual-circular. the form above this is the vortical, or perpetual-spiral; next, the perpetual-vortical, or celestial; last, the perpetual-celestial, or spiritual." was it strange that a genius so bold should take the last step, also,--conceive that he might attain the science of all sciences, to unlock the meaning of the world? in the first volume of the "animal kingdom," he broaches the subject, in a remarkable note.-- "in our doctrine of representations and correspondences, we shall treat of both these symbolical and typical resemblances, and of the astonishing things which occur, i will not say, in the living body only, but throughout nature, and which correspond so entirely to supreme and spiritual things, that one would swear that the physical world was purely symbolical of the spiritual world; insomuch, that if we choose to express any natural truth in physical and definite vocalterms, and to convert these terms only into the corresponding and spiritual terms, we shall by this means elicit a spiritual truth, or theological dogma, in place of the physical truth or precept; although no mortal would have predicted that anything of the kind could possibly arise by bare literal transposition; inasmuch as the one precept, considered separately from the other, appears to have absolutely no relation to it. i intend, hereafter, to communicate a number of examples of such correspondences, together with a vocabulary containing the terms of spiritual things, as well as of the physical things for which they are to be substituted. this symbolism pervades the living body." the fact, thus explicitly stated, is implied in all poetry, in allegory, in fable, in the use of emblems, and in the structure of language. plato knew of it, as is evident from his twice bisected line, in the sixth book of the republic. lord bacon had found that truth and nature differed only as seal and print; and he instanced some physical proportions, with their translation into a moral and political sense. behmen, and all mystics, imply this law in their dark riddle-writing. the poets, in as far as they are poets, use it; but it is known to them only, as the magnet was known for ages, as a toy. swedenborg first put the fact into a detached and scientific statement, because it was habitually present to him, and never not seen. it was involved, as we explained already, in the doctrine of identity and iteration, because the mental series exactly tallies with the material series. it required an insight that could rank things in order and series; or, rather, it required such rightness of position, that the poles of the eye should coincide with the axis of the world. the earth has fed its mankind through five or six millenniums, and they had sciences, religions, philosophies; and yet had failed to see the correspondence of meaning between every part and every other part. and, down to this hour, literature has no book in which the symbolism of things is scientifically opened. one would say, that, as soon as men had the first hint that every sensible object,--animal, rock, river, air,--nay, space and time, subsists not for itself, nor finally to a material end, but as a picture-language, to tell another story of beings and duties, other science would be put by, and a science of such grand presage would absorb all faculties; that each man would ask of all objects, what they mean: why does the horizon hold me fast, with my joy and grief, in this center? why hear i the same sense from countless differing voices, and read one never quite expressed fact in endless picture-language? yet, whether it be that these things will not be intellectually learned, or, that many centuries must elaborate and compose so rare and opulent a soul,--there is no comet, rock-stratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, spider, or fungus, that, for itself, does not interest more scholars and classifiers than the meaning and upshot of the frame of things. but swedenborg was not content with the culinary use of the world. in his fifty-fourth year, these thoughts held him fast, and his profound mind admitted the perilous opinion, too frequent in religious history, that he was an abnormal person, to whom was granted the privilege of conversing with angels and spirits; and this ecstasy connected itself with just this office of explaining the moral import of the sensible world. to a right perception, at once broad and minute, of the order of nature, he added the comprehension of the moral laws in their widest social aspects; but whatever he saw, through some excessive determination to form, in his constitution, he saw not abstractly, but in pictures, heard it in dialogues, constructed it in events. when he attempted to announce the law most sanely, he was forced to couch it in parable. modern psychology offers no similar example of a deranged balance. the principal powers continued to maintain a healthy action; and, to a reader who can make due allowance in the report for the reporter's peculiarities, the results are still instructive, and a more striking testimony to the sublime laws he announced, than any that balanced dulness could afford. he attempts to give some account of the modus of the new state, affirming that "his presence in the spiritual world is attended with a certain separation, but only as to the intellectual part of his mind, not as to the will part;" and he affirms that "he sees, with the internal sight, the things that are in another life, more clearly than he sees the things which are here in the world." having adopted the belief that certain books of the old and new testaments were exact allegories, or written in the angelic and ecstatic mode, he employed his remaining years in extricating from the literal, the universal sense. he had borrowed from plato the fine fable of "a most ancient people, men better than we, and dwelling nigher to the gods;" and swedenborg added, that they used the earth symbolically; that these, when they saw terrestrial objects, did not think at all about them, but only about those which they signified. the correspondence between thoughts and things henceforward occupied him. "the very organic form resembles the end inscribed on it." a man is in general, and in particular, an organizd justice or injustice, selfishness or gratitude. and the cause of this harmony he assigned in the arcana: "the reason why all and single things, in the heavens and on earth, are representative, is because they exist from an influx of the lord, through heaven." this design of exhibiting such correspondences, which, if adequately executed, would be the poem of the world, in which all history and science would play an essential part, was narrowed and defeated by the exclusively theologic direction which his inquiries took. his perception of nature is not human and universal, but is mystical and hebraic. he fastens each natural object to a theologic notion:--a horse signifies carnal understanding; a tree, perception; the moon, faith; a cat means this; an ostrich, that; an artichoke, this other; and poorly tethers every symbol to a several ecclesiastic sense. the slippery proteus is not so easily caught. in nature, each individual symbol plays innumerable parts, as each particle of matter circulates in turn through every system. the central identity enables any one symbol to express successively all the qualities and shades of the real being. in the transmission of the heavenly waters, every hose fits every hydrant. nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. she is no literalist. everything must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition to understand anything rightly. his theological bias thus fatally narrowed his interpretation of nature, and the dictionary of symbols is yet to be written. but the interpreter, whom mankind must still expect, will find no predecessor who has approached so near to the true problem. swedenborg styles himself, in the title-page of his books, "servant of the lord jesus christ;" and by force of intellect, and in effect, he is the last father in the church, and is not likely to have a successor. no wonder that his depth of ethical wisdom should give him influence as a teacher. to the withered traditional church yielding dry catechisms, he let in nature again, and the worshiper, escaping from the vestry of verbs and texts, is surprised to find himself a party to the whole of his religion. his religion thinks for him, and is of universal application. he turns it on every side; it fits every part of life, interprets and dignifies every circumstance. instead of a religion which visited him diplomatically three or four times,-- when he was born, when he married, when he fell sick, and when he died, and for the rest never interfered with him,--here was a teaching which accompanied him all day, accompanied him even into sleep and dreams; into his thinking, and showed him through what a long ancestry his thoughts descend; into society, and showed by what affinities he was girt to his equals and his counterparts; into natural objects, and showed their origin and meaning, what are friendly, and what are hurtful; and opened the future world, by indicating the continuity of the same laws. his disciples allege that their intellect is invigorated by the study of his books. there is no such problem for criticism as his theological writings, their merits are so commanding; yet such grave deductions must be made. their immense and sandy diffuseness is like the prairie, or the desert, and their incongruities are like the last deliration. he is superfluously explanatory, and his feelings of the ignorance of men, strangely exaggerated. men take truths of this nature very fast. yet he abounds in assertions; he is a rich discoverer, and of things which most import us to know. his thought dwells in essential resemblances, like the resemblance of a house to the man who built it. he saw things in their law, in likeness of function, not of structure. there is an invariable method and order in his delivery of his truth, the habitual proceeding of the mind from inmost to outmost. what earnestness and weightiness,--his eye never roving, without one swell of vanity, or one look to self, in any common form of literary pride! a theoretic or speculative man, but whom no practical man in the universe could affect to scorn. plato is a gownsman; his garment, though of purple, and almost skywoven, is an academic robe, and hinders action with its voluminous folds. but this mystic is awful to caesar. lycurgus himself would bow. the moral insight of swedenborg, the correction of popular errors, the announcement of ethical laws, take him out of comparison with any other modern writer, and entitle him to a place, vacant for some ages, among the lawgivers of mankind. that slow but commanding influence which he has acquired, like that of other religious geniuses, must be excessive also, and have its tides, before it subsides into a permanent amount. of course, what is real and universal cannot be confined to the circle of those who sympathize strictly with his genius, but will pass forth into the common stock of wise and just thinking. the world has a sure chemistry, by which it attracts what is excellent in its children, and lets fall the infirmities and limitations of the grandest mind. that metempsychosis which is familiar in the old mythology of the greeks, collected in ovid, and in the indian transmigration, and is there objective, or really takes place in bodies by alien will,--in swedenborg's mind, has a more philosophic character. it is subjective, or depends entirely upon the thought of the person. all things in the universe arrange themselves to each person anew, according to his ruling love. man is such as his affection and thought are. man is man by virtue of willing, not by virtue of knowing and understanding. as he is, so he sees. the marriages of the world are broken up. interiors associate all in the spiritual world. whatever the angels looked upon was to them celestial. each satan appears to himself a man; to those as bad as he, a comely man; to the purified, a heap of carrion. nothing can resist states; everything gravitates; like will to like; what we call poetic justice takes effect on the spot. we have come into a world which is a living poem. every thing is as i am. bird and beast is not bird and beast, but emanation and effluvia of the minds and wills of men there present. every one makes his own house and state. the ghosts are tormented with the fear of death, and cannot remember that they have died. they who are in evil and falsehood are afraid of all others. such as have deprived themselves of charity, wander and flee; the societies which they approach discover their quality, and drive them away. the covetous seem to themselves to be abiding in cells where their money is deposited, and these to be infested with mice. they who place merit in good works seem to themselves to cut wood. "i asked such, if they were not wearied? they replied, that they have not yet done work enough to merit heaven." he delivers golden sayings, which express with singular beauty the ethical laws; as when he uttered that famed sentence, that, "in heaven the angels are advancing continually to the springtime of their youth, so that the oldest angel appears the youngest:" "the more angels, the more room:" "the perfection of man is the love of use:" "man, in his perfect form, is heaven:" "what is from him, is him:" "ends always ascend as nature descends:" and the truly poetic account of the writing in the inmost heaven, which, as it consists of inflexions according to the form of heaven, can be read without instruction he almost justifies his claim to preternatural vision, by strange insights of the structure of the human body and mind. "it is never permitted to any one, in heaven, to stand behind another and look at the back of his head; for then the influx which is from the lord is disturbed." the angels, from the sound of the voice, know a man's love; from the articulation of the sound, his wisdom; and from the sense of the words, his science. in the "conjugal love," he has unfolded the science of marriage. of this book, one would say, that, with the highest elements, it has failed of success. it came near to be the hymn of love, which plato attempted in the "banquet;" the love, which, dante says, casella sang among the angels in paradise; and which, as rightly celebrated, in its genesis, fruition, and effect, might well entrance the souls, as it would lay open the genesis of all institutions, customs, and manners. the book had been grand, if the hebraism had been omitted, and the law stated without gothicism, as ethics, and with that scope for ascension of state which the nature of things requires. it is a fine platonic development of the science of marriage; teaching that sex is universal, and not local; virility in the male qualifying every organ, act, and thought; and the feminine in woman. therefore, in the real or spiritual world, the nuptial union is not momentary, but incessant and total; and chastity not a local, but a universal virtue; unchastity being discovered as much in the trading, or planting, or speaking, or philosophizing, as in generation; and that, though the virgins he saw in heaven were beautiful, the wives were incomparably more beautiful, and went on increasing in beauty evermore. yet swedenborg, after his mode, pinned his theory to a temporary form. he exaggerates the circumstance of marriage; and, though he finds false marriages on the earth, fancies a wiser choice in heaven. but of progressive souls, all loves and friendships are momentary. do you love me? means, do you see the same truth? if you do, we are happy with the same happiness; but presently one of us passes into the perception of new truth;--we are divorced, and no tension in nature can hold us to each other. i know how delicious is this cup of love,--i existing for you, you existing for me; but it is a child's clinging to his toy; an attempt to eternize the fireside and nuptial chamber; to keep the picture-alphabet through which our first lessons are prettily conveyed. the eden of god is bare and grand: like the outdoor landscape, remembered from the evening fireside, it seems cold and desolate, whilst you cower over the coals; but, once abroad again, we pity those who can forego the magnificence of nature, for candle-light and cards. perhaps the true subject of the "conjugal love" is conversation, whose laws are profoundly eliminated. it is false, if literally applied to marriage. for god is the bride or bridegroom of the soul. heaven is not the pairing of two, but the communion of all souls. we meet, and dwell an instant under the temple of one thought, and part as though we parted not, to join another thought in other fellowships of joy. so far from there being anything divine in the low and proprietary sense of, do you love me? it is only when you leave and lose me, by casting yourself on a sentiment which is higher than both of us, that i draw near, and find myself at your side; and i am repelled, if you fix your eye on me, and demand love. in fact, in the spiritual world, we change sexes every moment. you love the worth in me; then i am your husband: but it is not me, but the worth, that fixes the love; and that worth is a drop of the ocean of worth that is beyond me. meantime, i adore the greater worth in another, and so become his wife. he aspires to a higher worth in another spirit, and is wife of receiver of that influence. whether a self-inquisitorial habit, that he grew into, from jealousy of the sins to which men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in disentangling and demonstrating that particular form of moral disease, an acumen which no conscience can resist. i refer to his feeling of the profanation of thinking to what is good "from scientifics." "to reason about faith, is to doubt and deny." he was painfully alive to the difference between knowing and doing, and this sensibility is incessantly expressed. philosophers are, therefore, vipers, cockatrices, asps, hemorrhoids, presters, and flying serpents; literary men are conjurers and charlatans. but this topic suggests a sad afterthought, that here we find the seat of his own pain. possibly swedenborg paid the penalty of introverted faculties. success, or a fortunate genius, seems to depend on a happy adjustment of heart and brain; on a due proportion, hard to hit, of moral and mental power, which, perhaps, obeys the law of those chemical ratios which make a proportion in volumes necessary to combination, as when gases will combine in certain fixed rates, but not at any rate. it is hard to carry a full cup: and this man, profusely endowed in heart and mind, early fell into dangerous discord with himself. in his animal kingdom, he surprises us, by declaring that he loved analysis, and not synthesis; and now, after his fiftieth year, he falls into jealousy of his intellect; and, though aware that truth is not solitary, nor is goodness solitary, but both must ever mix and marry, he makes war on his mind, takes the part of the conscience against it, and, on all occasions, traduces and blasphemes it. the violence is instantly avenged. beauty is disgraced, love is unlovely, when truth, the half part of heaven, is denied, as much as when a bitterness in men of talent leads to satire, and destroys the judgment. he is wise, but wise in his own despite. there is an air of infinite grief, and the sound of wailing, all over and through this lurid universe. a vampyre sits in the seat of the prophet, and turns with gloomy appetite to the images of pain. indeed, a bird does not more readily weave its nest, or a mole bore into the ground, than this seer of souls substructs a new hell and pit, each more abominable than the last, round every new crew of offenders. he was let down through a column that seemed of brass, but it was formed of angelic spirits, that he might descend safely amongst the unhappy, and witness the vastation of souls; and heard there, for a long continuance, their lamentations; he saw their tormentors, who increase and strain pangs to infinity; he saw the hell of the jugglers, the hell of the assassins, the hell of the lascivious; the hell of robbers, who kill and boil men; the infernal tun of the deceitful; the excrementitious hells; the hell of the revengeful, whose faces resembled a round, broad-cake, and their arms rotate like a wheel. except rabelais and dean swift, nobody ever had such science of filth and corruption. these books should be used with caution. it is dangerous to sculpture these evanescing images of thought. true in transition, they become false if fixed. it requires, for his just apprehension, almost a genius equal to his own. but when his visions become the stereotyped language of multitudes of persons, of all degrees of age and capacity, they are perverted. the wise people of the greek race were accustomed to lead the most intelligent and virtuous young men, as part of their education, through the eleusinian mysteries, wherein, with much pomp and graduation, the highest truths known to ancient wisdom were taught. an ardent and contemplative young man, at eighteen or twenty years, might read once these books of swedenborg, these mysteries of love and conscience, and then throw them aside forever. genius is ever haunted by similar dreams, when the hells and the heavens are opened to it. but these pictures are to be held as mystical, that is, as a quite arbitrary and accidental picture of the truth--not as the truth. any other symbol would be as good: then this is safely seen. swedenborg's system of the world wants central spontaneity; it is dynamic, not vital, and lacks power to generate life. there is no individual in it. the universe is a gigantic crystal, all those atoms and laminae lie in uninterrupted order, and with unbroken unity, but cold and still. what seems an individual and a will, is none. there is an immense chain of intermediation, extending from center to extremes, which bereaves every agency of all freedom and character. the universe, in his poem, suffers under a magnetic sleep, and only reflects the mind of the magnetizer. every thought comes into each mind by influence from a society of spirits that surround it, and into these from a higher society, and so on. all his types mean the same few things. all his figures speak one speech. all his interlocutors swedenborgize. be they who they may, to this complexion must they come at last. this charon ferries them all over in his boat; kings, counselors, cavaliers, doctors, sir isaac newton, sir hans sloane, king george ii., mahomet, or whosoever, and all gather one grimness of hue and style. only when cicero comes by, our gentle seer sticks a little at saying he talked with cicero, and, with a touch of human relenting, remarks, "one whom it was given me to believe was cicero;" and when the _soi disant_ roman opens his mouth, rome and eloquence have ebbed away,--it is plain theologic swedenborg, like the rest. his heavens and hells are dull; fault of want of individualism. the thousand-fold relation of men is not there. the interest that attaches in nature to each man, because he is right by his wrong, and wrong by his right, because he defies all dogmatizing and classification, so many allowances, and contingencies, and futurities, are to be taken into account, strong by his vices, often paralyzed by his virtues,--sinks into entire sympathy with his society. this want reacts to the center of the system. though the agency of "the lord" is in every line referred to by name, it never becomes alive. there is no lustre in that eye which gazes from the center, and which should vivify the immense dependency of beings. the vice of swedenborg's mind is its theologic determination. nothing with him has the liberality of universal wisdom, but we are always in a church. that hebrew muse, which taught the lore of right and wrong to man, had the same excess of influence for him, it has had for the nations. the mode, as well as the essence, was sacred. palestine is ever the more valuable as a chapter in universal history, and ever the less an available element in education. the genius of swedenborg, largest of all modern souls in this department of thought, wasted itself in the endeavor to reanimate and conserve what had already arrived at its natural term, and, in the great secular providence, was retiring from its prominence, before western modes of thought and expression. swedenborg and behmen both failed by attaching themselves to the christian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which carries innumerable christianities, humanities, divinities, in its bosom. the excess of influence shows itself in the incongruous importation of a foreign rhetoric. "what have i to do," asks the impatient reader, "with jasper and sardonyx, beryl and chalcedony; what with arks and passovers, ephahs and ephods; what with lepers and emerods; what with heave-offerings and unleavened bread; chariots of fire, dragons crowned and horned, behemoth and unicorn? good for orientals, these are nothing to me. the more learning you bring to explain them, the more glaring the impertinence. the more coherent and elaborate the system, the less i like it. i say, with the spartan, 'why do you speak so much to the purpose, of that which is nothing to the purpose?' my learning is such as god gave me in my birth and habit, in the delight and study of my eyes, and not of another man's. of all absurdities, this of some foreigner, purposing to take away my rhetoric, and substitute his own, and amuse me with pelican and stork, instead of thrush and robin; palm-trees and shittim-wood, instead of sassafras and hickory,--seems the most needless." locke said, "god, when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man." swedenborg's history points the remark. the parish disputes, in the swedish church, between the friends and foes of luther and melancthon, concerning "faith alone," and "works alone," intrude themselves into his speculations upon the economy of the universe, and of the celestial societies. the lutheran bishop's son, for whom the heavens are opened, so that he sees with eyes, and in the richest symbolic forms, the awful truth of things, and utters again, in his books, as under a heavenly mandate, the indisputable secrets of moral nature,--with all these grandeurs resting upon him, remains the lutheran bishop's son; his judgments are those of a swedish polemic, and his vast enlargements purchased by adamantine limitations. he carries his controversial memory with him, in his visits to the souls. he is like michel angelo, who, in his frescoes, put the cardinal who had offended him to roast under a mountain of devils; or, like dante, who avenged, in vindictive melodies, all his private wrongs; or, perhaps still more like montaigne's parish priest, who, if a hailstorm passes over the village, thinks the day of doom has come, and the cannibals already have got the pip. swedenborg confounds us not less with the pains of melancthon, and luther, and wolfius, and his own books, which he advertises among the angels. under the same theologic cramp, many of his dogmas are bound. his cardinal position in morals is, that evils should be shunned as sins. but he does not know what evil is, or what good is, who thinks any ground remains to be occupied, after saying that evil is to be shunned as evil. i doubt not he was led by the desire to insert the element of personality of deity. but nothing is added. one man, you say, dreads crysipelas,--show him that this dread is evil: or, one dreads hell,--show him that dread is evil. he who loves goodness, harbors angels, reveres reverence, and lives with god. the less we have to do with our sins, the better. no man can afford to waste his moments in compunctions. "that is active duty," say the hindoos, "which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge, which is for our liberation; all other duty is good only unto weariness." another dogma, growing out of this pernicious theologic limitation, is this inferno. swedenborg has devils. evil, according to old philosophers, is good in the making. that pure malignity can exist, is the extreme proposition of unbelief. it is not to be entertained by a rational agent; it is atheism; it is the last profanation. euripides rightly said,-- "goodness and being in the gods are one; he who imputes ill to them makes them none." to what a painful perversion had gothic theology arrived, that swedenborg admitted no conversion for evil spirits! but the divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself to grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is good and true. burns, with the wild humor of his apostrophe to "poor old nickie ben," "o wad ye tak a thought, and mend!" has the advantage of the vindictive theologian. everything is superficial, and perishes, but love and truth only. the largest is always the truest sentiment, and we feel the more generous spirit of the indian vishnu,-"i am the same to all mankind. there is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred. they who serve me with adoration,--i am in them, and they in me. if one whose ways are altogether evil, serve me alone, he is as respectable as the just man; he is altogether well employed; he soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth eternal happiness." for the anomalous pretension of revelations of the other world,--only his probity and genius can entitle it to any serious regard. his revelations destroy their credit by running into detail. if a man say, that the holy ghost hath informed him that the last judgment (or the last of the judgments) took place in ; or, that the dutch, in the other world, live in a heaven by themselves, and the english in a heaven by themselves; i reply, that the spirit which is holy, is reserved, taciturn, and deals in laws. the rumors of ghosts and hobgoblins gossip and tell fortunes. the teachings of the high spirit are abstemious, and, in regard to particulars, negative. socrates' genius did not advise him to act or to find, but if he proposed to do somewhat not advantageous, it dissuaded him. "what god is," he said, "i know not; what he is not i know." the hindoos have denominated the supreme being, the "internal check." the illuminated quakers explained their light, not as somewhat which leads to any action, but it appears as an obstruction to anything unfit. but the right examples are private experiences, which are absolutely at one on this point. strictly speaking, swedenborg's revelation is a confounding of planes,--a capital offence in so learned a categorist. this is to carry the law of surface into the plane of substance, to carry individualism and its fopperies into the realm of essences and generals, which is dislocation and chaos. the secret of heaven is kept from age to age. no imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. we should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul. but it is certain that it must tally with what is best in nature. it must not be inferior in tone to the already known works of the artist who sculptures the globes of the firmament, and writes the moral law. it must be fresher than rainbows, stabler than mountains, agreeing with flowers, with tides, and the rising and setting of autumnal stars. melodious poets shall be hoarse as street ballads, when once the penetrating key-note of nature and spirit is sounded,--the earth-beat, sea-beat, heart-beat which makes the tune to which the sun rolls, and the globule of blood, and the sap of trees. in this mood, we hear the rumor that the seer has arrived, and his tale is told. but there is no beauty, no heaven: for angels, goblins. the sad muse loves night and death, and the pit. his inferno is mesmeric. his spiritual world bears the same relation to the generosities and joys of truth, of which human souls have already made us cognizant, as a man's bad dreams bear to his ideal life. it is indeed very like, in its endless power of lurid pictures, to the phenomena of dreaming, which nightly turns many an honest gentleman, benevolent but dyspeptic, into a wretch, skulking like a dog about the outer yards and kennels of creation. when he mounts into the heavens, i do not hear its language. a man should not tell me that he has walked among the angels; his proof is, that his eloquence makes me one. shall the archangels be less majestic and sweet than the figures that have actually walked the earth? these angels that swedenborg paints give us no very high idea of their discipline and culture; they are all country parsons; their heaven is a _fete champetre_, and evangelical picnic, or french distribution of prizes to virtuous peasants. strange, scholastic, didactic, passionless, bloodless man, who denotes classes of souls as a botanist disposes of a carex, and visits doleful hells as a stratum of chalk or hornblende! he has no sympathy. he goes up and down the world of men, a modern rhadamanthus in gold-headed cane and peruke, and with nonchalance, and the air of a referee, distributing souls. the warm, many-weathered, passionate-peopled world is to him a grammar of hieroglyphs, or an emblematic freemason's procession. how different is jacob behmen! he is tremulous with emotion, and listens awe-struck, with the gentlest humanity, to the teacher whose lessons he conveys; and when he asserts that, "in some sort, love is greater than god," his heart beats so high that the thumping against his leathern coat is audible across the centuries. 'tis a great difference. behmen is healthily and beautifully wise, notwithstanding the mystical narrowness and incommunicableness. swedenborg is disagreeably wise, and, with all his accumulated gifts, paralyzes and repels. it is the best sign of a great nature, that it opens a foreground, and, like the breath of morning landscapes, invites us onward. swedenborg is retrospective, nor can we divest him of his mattock and shroud. some minds are forever restrained from descending into nature; others are forever prevented from ascending out of it. with a force of many men, he could never break the umbilical cord which held him to nature, and he did not rise to the platform of pure genius. it is remarkable that this man, who, by his perception of symbols, saw the poetic construction of things, and the primary relation of mind to matter, remained entirely devoid of the whole apparatus of poetic expression, which that perception creates. he knew the grammar and rudiments of the mother-tongue,--how could he not read off one strain into music? was he like saadi, who, in his vision, designed to fill his lap with the celestial flowers, as presents for his friends; but the fragrance of the roses so intoxicated him, that the skirt dropped from his hands? or, is reporting a breach of the manners of that heavenly society? or, was it that he saw the vision intellectually, and hence that chiding of the intellectual that pervades his books? be it as it may, his books have no melody, no emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead prosaic level. in his profuse and accurate imagery is no pleasure, for there is no beauty. we wander forlorn in a lack- lustre landscape. no bird ever sang in all these gardens of the dead. the entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease, and, like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of warning. i think, sometimes, he will not be read longer. his great name will turn a sentence. his books have become a monument. his laurels so largely mixed with cypress, a charnel-breath so mingles with the temple incense, that boys and maids will shun the spot. yet, in this immolation of genius and fame at the shrine of conscience, is a merit sublime beyond praise. he lived to purpose: he gave a verdict. he elected goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling in all this labyrinth of nature. many opinions conflict as to the true center. in the shipwreck, some cling to running rigging, some to cask and barrel, some to spars, some to mast; the pilot chooses with science,--i plant myself here; all will sink before this; "he comes to land who sails with me." do not rely on heavenly favor, or on compassion to folly, or on prudence, on common sense, the old usage and main chance of men; nothing can keep you,--not fate, nor health, nor admirable intellect; none can keep you, but rectitude only, rectitude forever and ever!--and, with a tenacity that never swerved in all his studies, inventions, dreams, he adheres to this brave choice. i think of him as of some transmigratory votary of indian legend, who says, "though i be dog, or jackal, or pismire, in the last rudiments of nature, under what integument or ferocity, i cleave to right, as the sure ladder that leads up to man and to god." swedenborg has rendered a double service to mankind, which is now only beginning to be known. by the science of experiment and use, he made his first steps; he observed and published the laws of nature; and, ascending by just degrees, from events to their summits and causes, he was fired with piety at the harmonies he felt, and abandoned himself to his joy and worship. this was his first service. if the glory was too bright for his eyes to bear, if he staggered under the trance of delight, the more excellent is the spectacle he saw, the realities of being which beam and blaze through him, and which no infirmities of the prophet are suffered to obscure; and he renders a second passive service to men, not less than the first,--perhaps, in the great circle of being, and in the retributions of spiritual nature, not less glorious or less beautiful to himself. iv. montaigne; or, the skeptic. every fact is related on one side to sensation and, on the other, to morals. the game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other; given the upper, to find the under side. nothing so thin, but has these two faces; and, when the observer has seen the obverse, he turns it over to see the reverse. life is a pitching of this penny,--heads or tails. we never tire of this game, because there is still a slight shudder of astonishment at the exhibition of the other face, at the contrast of the two faces. a man is flushed with success, and bethinks himself what this good luck signifies. he drives his bargain in the street; but it occurs that he also is bought and sold. he sees the beauty of a human face, and searches the cause of that beauty, which must be more beautiful. he builds his fortunes, maintains the laws, cherishes his children; but he asks himself, why? and whereto? this head and this tail are called, in the language of philosophy, infinite and finite; relative and absolute; apparent and real; and many fine names beside. each man is born with a predisposition to one or the other of these sides of nature; and it will easily happen that men will be found devoted to one or the other. one class has the perception of difference, and is conversant with facts and surfaces; cities and persons; and the bringing certain things to pass;--the men of talent and action. another class have the perception of identity, and are men of faith and philosophy, men of genius. each of these riders drives too fast. plotinus believes only in philosophers; fenelon, in saints; pindar and byron, in poets. read the haughty language in which plato and the platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining abstractions: other men are rats and mice. the literary class is usually proud and exclusive. the correspondence of pope and swift describes mankind around them as monsters; and that of goethe and schiller, in our own time, is scarcely more kind. it is easy to see how this arrogance comes. the genius is a genius by the first look he casts on any object. is his eye creative? does he not rest in angles and colors, but beholds the design--he will presently undervalue the actual object. in powerful moments, his thought has dissolved the works of art and nature into their causes, so that the works appear heavy and faulty. he has a conception of beauty which the sculptor cannot embody. picture, statue, temple, railroad, steam-engine, existed first in an artist's mind, without flaw, mistake, or friction, which impair the executed models. so did the church, the state, college, court, social circle, and all the institutions. it is not strange that these men, remembering what they have seen and hoped of ideas, should affirm disdainfully the superiority of ideas. having at some time seen that the happy soul will carry all the arts in power, they say, why cumber ourselves with superfluous realizations? and, like dreaming beggars, they assume to speak and act as if these values were already substantiated. on the other part, the men of toil and trade and luxury,--the animal world, including the animal in the philosopher and poet also,--and the practical world, including the painful drudgeries which are never excused to philosopher or poet any more than to the rest,--weigh heavily on the other side. the trade in our streets believes in no metaphysical causes, thinks nothing of the force which necessitated traders and a trading planet to exist; no, but sticks to cotton, sugar, wool, and salt. the ward meetings, on election days, are not softened by any misgivings of the value of these ballotings. hot life is streaming in a single direction. to the men of this world, to the animal strength and spirits, to the men of practical power, whilst immersed in it, the man of ideas appears out of his reason. they alone have reason. things always bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence. no man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic, also. in england, the richest country that ever existed, property stands for more, compared with personal ability, than in any other. after dinner, a man believes less, denies more; verities have lost some charm. after dinner, arithmetic is the only science; ideas are disturbing, incendiary, follies of young men, repudiated by the solid portion of society; and a man comes to be valued by his athletic and animal qualities. spence relates, that mr. pope was with sir godfrey kneller one day, when his nephew, a guinea trader, came in. "nephew," said sir godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest men in the world." "i don't know how great men you may be," said the guinea man, "but i don't like your looks. i have often bought a man much better than both of you, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas. thus, the men of the senses revenge themselves on the professors, and repay scorn for scorn. the first had leaped to conclusions not yet ripe, and say more than is true; the others make themselves merry with the philosopher, and weigh man by the pound.--they believe that mustard bites the tongue, that pepper is hot, friction-matches are incendiary, revolvers to be avoided, and suspenders hold up pantaloons; that there is much sentiment in a chest of tea; and a man will be eloquent, if you give him good wine. are you tender and scrupulous,--you must eat more mince-pie. they hold that luther had milk in him when he said, "wer nicht liebt wein, weib, und gesang der bleibt ein narr sein leben lang," and when he advised a young scholar perplexed with fore-ordination and free-will, to get well drunk. "the nerves," says cabanis, "they are the man." my neighbor, a jolly farmer, in the tavern bar-room, thinks that the use of money is sure and speedy spending. "for his part," he says, "he puts his down his neck, and gets the good of it." the inconvenience of this way of thinking is, that it runs into indifferentism, and then into disgust. life is eating us up. we shall be fables presently. keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence. life's well enough; but we shall be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to have us. why should we fret and drudge? our meat will taste to-morrow as it did yesterday, and we may at last have had enough of it. "ah," said my languid gentleman at oxford, "there's nothing new or true,--and no matter." with a little more bitterness, the cynic moans: our life is like an ass led to market by a bundle of hay being carried before him: he sees nothing but the bundle of hay. "there is so much trouble in coming into the world," said lord bolingbroke, "and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that 'tis hardly worth while to be here at all." i knew a philosopher of this kidney, who was accustomed briefly to sum up his experience of human nature in saying, "mankind is a damned rascal:" and the natural corollary is pretty sure to follow,--"the world lives by humbug, and so will i." the abstractionist and the materialist thus mutually exasperating each other, and the scoffer expressing the worst of materialism, there arises a third party to occupy the middle ground between these two, the skeptic, namely. he finds both wrong by being in extremes. he labors to plant his feet, to be the beam of the balance. he will not go beyond his card. he sees the one-sidedness of these men of the street; he will not be a gibeonite; he stands for the intellectual faculties, a cool head, and whatever serves to keep it cool; no unadvised industry, no unrewarded self-devotion, no loss of the brains in toil. am i an ox, or a dray?--you are both in extremes, he says. you that will have all solid, and a world of pig-lead, deceive yourselves grossly. you believe yourselves rooted and grounded on adamant; and, yet, if we uncover the last facts of our knowledge, you are spinning like bubbles in a river, you know not whither or whence, and you are bottomed and capped and wrapped in delusions. neither will he be betrayed to a book, and wrapped in a gown. the studious class are their own victims; they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption,--pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. if you come near them, and see what conceits they entertain,--they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dreams; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it. but i see plainly, he says, that i cannot see. i know that human strength is not in extremes, but in avoiding extremes. i, at least, will shun the weakness of philosophizing beyond my depth. what is the use of pretending to powers we have not? what is the use of pretending to assurances we have not, respecting the other life? why exaggerate the power of virtue? why be an angel before your time? these strings, wound up too high, will snap. if there is a wish for immortality, and no evidence, why not say just that? if there are conflicting evidences, why not state them? if there is not ground for a candid thinker to make up his mind, yea or nay,--why not suspend the judgment? i weary of these dogmatizers. i tire of these hacks of routine, who deny the dogmas. i neither affirm nor deny. i stand here to try the case. i am here to consider,--to consider how it is. i will try to keep the balance true. of what use to take the chair, and glibly rattle off theories of societies, religion, and nature, when i know that practical objections lie in the way, insurmountable by me and by my mates? why so talkative in public, when each of my neighbors can pin me to my seat by arguments i cannot refute? why pretend that life is so simple a game, when we know how subtle and elusive the proteus is? why think to shut up all things in your narrow coop, when we know there are not one or two only, but ten, twenty, a thousand things, and unlike? why fancy that you have all the truth in your keeping? there is much to say on all sides. who shall forbid a wise skepticism, seeing that there is no practical question on which anything more than an approximate solution can be had? is not marriage an open question when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? and the reply of socrates, to him who asked whether he should choose a wife, still remains reasonable, "that, whether he should choose one or not, he would repent it." is not the state a question? all society is divided in opinion on the subject of the state. nobody loves it; great numbers dislike it, and suffer conscientious scruples to allegiance: and the only defense set up, is, the fear of doing worse in disorganizing. is it otherwise with the church? or, to put any of the questions which touch mankind nearest,--shall the young man aim at a leading part in law, in politics, in trade? it will not be pretended that a success in either of these kinds is quite coincident with what is best and inmost in his mind. shall he, then, cutting the stays that hold him fast to the social state, put out to sea with no guidance but his genius? there is much to say on both sides. remember the open question between the present order of "competition," and the friends of "attractive and associated labor." the generous minds embrace the proposition of labor shared by all; it is the only honesty; nothing else is safe. it is from the poor man's hut alone, that strength and virtue come; and yet, on the other side, it is alleged that labor impairs the form, and breaks the spirit of man, and the laborers cry unanimously, "we have no thoughts." culture, how indispensable! i cannot forgive you the want of accomplishment; and yet, culture will instantly destroy that chiefest beauty of spontaneousness. excellent is culture for a savage; but once let him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to think of plutarch's heroes. in short, since true fortitude of understanding consists "in not letting what we know be embarrassed by what we do not know," we ought to secure those advantages which we can command, and not risk them by clutching after the airy and unattainable. come, no chimeras! let us go abroad; let us mix in affairs; let us learn, and get, and have, and climb. "men are a sort of moving plants, and, like trees, receive a great part of their nourishment from the air. if they keep too much at home, they pine." let us have a robust, manly life; let us know what we know, for certain; what we have, let it be solid, and seasonable, and our own. a world in the hand is worth two in the bush. let us have to do with real men and women, and not with skipping ghosts. this, then, is the right ground of the skeptic,--this of consideration, of self-containing; not at all of unbelief; not at all of universal denying, nor of universal doubting,--doubting even that he doubts; least of all, of scoffing and profligate jeering at all that is stable and good. these are no more his moods than are those of religion and philosophy. he is the considerer, the prudent, taking in sail, counting stock, husbanding his means, believing that a man has too many enemies, than that he can afford to be his own; that we cannot give ourselves too many advantages, in this unequal conflict, with powers so vast and unweariable ranged on one side, and this little, conceited, vulnerable popinjay that a man is, bobbing up and down into every danger, on the other. it is a position taken up for better defense, as of more safety, and one that can be maintained; and it is one of more opportunity and range; as, when we build a house, the rule is, to set it not too high nor too low, under the wind, but out of the dirt. the philosophy we want is one of fluxions and mobility. the spartan and stoic schemes are too stark and stiff for our occasion. a theory of saint john, and of non-resistance, seems, on the other hand, too thin and aerial. we want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. we want a ship in these billows we inhabit. an angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. no, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea. the soul of man must be the type of our scheme, just as the body of man is the type after which a dwelling-house is built. adaptiveness is the peculiarity of human nature. we are golden averages, volitant stabilities, compensated or periodic errors, houses founded on the sea. the wise skeptic wishes to have a near view of the best game, and the chief players; what is best in the planet; art and nature, places and events, but mainly men. everything that is excellent in mankind,--a form of grace, an arm of iron, lips of persuasion, a brain of resources, every one skilful to play and win,--he will see and judge. the terms of admission to this spectacle are, that he have a certain solid and intelligible way of living of his own; some method of answering the inevitable needs of human life; proof that he has played with skill and success; that he has evinced the temper, stoutness, and the range of qualities which, among his contemporaries and countrymen, entitle him to fellowship and trust. for, the secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness. men do not confide themselves to boys, or coxcombs, or pedants, but to their peers. some wise limitation, as the modern phrase is; some condition between the extremes, and having itself a positive quality; some stark and sufficient man, who is not salt or sugar, but sufficiently related to the world to do justice to paris or london, and, at the same time, a vigorous and original thinker, whom cities cannot overawe, but who uses them,--is the fit person to occupy this ground of speculation. these qualities meet in the character of montaigne. and yet, since the personal regard which i entertain for montaigne may be unduly great, i will, under the shield of this prince of egotists, offer, as an apology for electing him as the representative of skepticism, a word or two to explain how my love began and grew for this admirable gossip. a single odd volume of cotton's translation of the essays remained to me from my father's library, when a boy. it lay long neglected, until, after many years, when i was newly escaped from college, i read the book, and procured the remaining volumes. i remember the delight and wonder in which i lived with it. it seemed to me as if i had myself written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience. it happened, when in paris, in , that, in the cemetery of pere le chaise, i came to a tomb of augustus collignon, who died in , aged sixty-eight years, and who, said the monument, "lived to do right, and had formed himself to virtue on the essays of montaigne." some years later, i became acquainted with an accomplished english poet, john sterling; and, in prosecuting my correspondence, i found that, from a love of montaigne, he had made a pilgrimage to his chateau, still standing near castellan, in perigord, and, after two hundred and fifty years, had copied from the walls of his library the inscriptions which montaigne had written there. that journal of mr. sterling's, published in the westminster review, mr. hazlitt has reprinted in the prolegomenae to his edition of the essays. i heard with pleasure that one of the newly-discovered autographs of william shakspeare was in a copy of florio's translation of montaigne. it is the only book which we certainly know to have been in the poet's library. and, oddly enough, the duplicate copy of florio, which the british museum purchased, with a view of protecting the shakspeare autograph (as i was informed in the museum), turned out to have the autograph of ben jonson in the fly-leaf. leigh hunt relates of lord byron, that montaigne was the only great writer of past times whom he read with avowed satisfaction. other coincidences, not needful to be mentioned here, concurred to make this old gascon still new and immortal for me. in , on the death of his father, montaigne, then thirty-eight years old, retired from the practice of law, at bordeaux, and settled himself on his estate. though he had been a man of pleasure, and sometimes a courtier, his studious habits now grew on him, and he loved the compass, staidness, and independence of the country gentleman's life. he took up his economy in good earnest, and made his farms yield the most. downright and plain-dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or to deceive, he was esteemed in the country for his sense and probity. in the civil wars of the league, which converted every house into a fort, montaigne kept his gates open, and his house without defense. all parties freely came and went, his courage and honor being universally esteemed. the neighboring lords and gentry brought jewels and papers to him for safekeeping. gibbon reckons, in these bigoted times, but two men of liberality in france,--henry iv. and montaigne. montaigne is the frankest and honestest of all writers. his french freedom runs into grossness; but he has anticipated all censures by the bounty of his own confessions. in his times, books were written to one sex only, and almost all were written in latin; so that, in a humorist, a certain nakedness of statement was permitted, which our manners, of a literature addressed equally to both sexes, do not allow. but, though a biblical plainness, coupled with a most uncanonical levity, may shut his pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offence is superficial. he parades it: he makes the most of it; nobody can think or say worse of him than he does. he pretends to most of the vices; and, if there be any virtue in him, he says, it got in by stealth. there is no man, in his opinion, who has not deserved hanging five or six times; and he pretends no exception in his own behalf. "five or six as ridiculous stories," too, he says, "can be told of me, as of any man living." but, with all this really superfluous frankness, the opinion of an invincible probity grows into every reader's mind. "when i the most strictly and religiously confess myself, i find that the best virtue i have has in it some tincture of vice; and i am afraid that plato, in his purest virtue (i, who am as sincere and perfect a lover of virtue of that stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened, and laid his ear close to himself, would have heard some jarring sound of human mixture; but faint and remote, and only to be perceived by himself." here is an impatience and fastidiousness at color or pretense of any kind. he has been in courts so long as to have conceived a furious disgust at appearances; he will indulge himself with a little cursing and swearing; he will talk with sailors and gypsies, use flash and street ballads; he has stayed indoors till he is deadly sick; he will to the open air, though it rain bullets. he has seen too much of gentlemen of the long robe, until he wishes for cannibals; and is so nervous, by factitious life, that he thinks, the more barbarous man is, the better he is. he likes his saddle. you may read theology, and grammar, and metaphysics elsewhere. whatever you get here, shall smack of the earth and of real life, sweet, or smart, or stinging. he makes no hesitation to entertain you with the records of his disease; and his journey to italy is quite full of that matter. he took and kept this position of equilibrium. over his name, he drew an emblematic pair of scales, and wrote, _que sais-je?_ under it. as i look at his effigy opposite the title-page, i seem to hear him say, "you may play old poz, if you will; you may rail and exaggerate,--i stand here for truth, and will not, for all the states, and churches, and revenues, and personal reputations of europe, overstate the dry fact, as i see it; i will rather mumble and prose about what i certainly know,--my house and barns; my father, my wife, and my tenants; my old lean bald pate; my knives and forks; what meats i eat, and what drinks i prefer; and a hundred straws just as ridiculous,--than i will write, with a fine crow-quill, a fine romance. i like gray days, and autumn and winter weather. i am gray and autumnal myself, and think an undress, and old shoes that do not pinch my feet, and old friends who do not constrain me, and plain topics where i do not need to strain myself and pump my brains, the most suitable. our condition as men is risky and ticklish enough. one cannot be sure of himself and his fortune an hour, but he may be whisked off into some pitiable or ridiculous plight. why should i vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best i can, this dancing balloon? so, at least, i live within compass, keep myself ready for action, and can shoot the gulf, at last, with decency. if there be anything farcical in such a life, the blame is not mine; let it lie at fate's and nature's door." the essays, therefore, are an entertaining soliloquy on every random topic that comes into his head; treating everything without ceremony, yet with masculine sense. there have been men with deeper insight; but, one would say, never a man with such abundance of thoughts; he is never dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all that he cares for. the sincerity and marrow of the man reaches to his sentences. i know not anywhere the book that seems less written. it is the language of conversation transferred to a book. cut these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive. one has the same pleasure in it that we have in listening to the necessary speech of men about their work, when any unusual circumstance give momentary importance to the dialogue. for blacksmiths and teamsters do not trip in their speech; it is a shower of bullets. it is cambridge men who correct themselves, and begin again at every half-sentence, and, moreover, will pun, and refine too much, and swerve from the matter to the expression. montaigne talks with shrewdness, knows the world, and books, and himself, and uses the positive degree; never shrieks, or protests, or prays; no weakness, no convulsion, no superlative; does not wish to jump out of his skin, or play any antics, or annihilate space or time; but is stout and solid; tastes every moment of the day; likes pain, because it makes him feel himself, and realize things; as we pinch ourselves to know that we are awake. he keeps the plain; he rarely mounts or sinks; likes to feel solid ground, and the stones underneath. his writing has no enthusiasms, no aspiration; contented, self-respecting, and keeping the middle of the road. there is but one exception,--in his love for socrates. in speaking of him, for once his cheek flushes, and his style rises to passion. montaigne died of a quinsy, at the age of sixty, in . when he came to die, he caused the mass to be celebrated in his chamber. at the age of thirty-three, he had been married. "but," he says, "might i have had my own will, i would not have married wisdom herself, if she would have had me; but 'tis to much purpose to evade it, the common custom and use of life will have it so. most of my actions are guided by example, not choice." in the hour of death he gave the same weight to custom. _que sais-je?_ what do i know. this book of montaigne the world has endorsed, by translating it into all tongues, and printing seventy-five editions of it in europe; and that, too, a circulation somewhat chosen, namely, among courtiers, soldiers, princes, men of the world, and men of wit and generosity. shall we say that montaigne has spoken wisely, and given the right and permanent expression of the human mind, on the conduct of life? we are natural believers. truth, or the connection between cause and effect, alone interests us. we are persuaded that a thread runs through all things; all worlds are strung on it, as beads; and men, and events, and life, come to us, only because of that thread; they pass and repass, only that we may know the direction and continuity of that line. a book or statement which goes to show that there is no line, but random and chaos, a calamity out of nothing, a prosperity and no account of it, a hero born from a fool, a fool from a hero,--dispirits us. seen or unseen, we believe the tie exists. talent makes counterfeit ties; genius finds the real ones. we hearken to the man of science, because we anticipate the sequence in natural phenomena which he uncovers. we love whatever affirms, connects, preserves; and dislike what scatters or pulls down. one man appears whose nature is to all men's eyes conserving and constructive; his presence supposes a well-ordered society, agriculture, trade, large institutions, and empire. if these did not exist, they would begin to exist through his endeavors. therefore, he cheers and comforts men, who feel all this in him very readily. the nonconformist and the rebel say all manner of unanswerable things against the existing republic, but discover to our sense no plan of house or state of their own. therefore, though the town, and state, and way of living, which our counselor contemplated, might be a very modest or musty prosperity, yet men rightly go for him, and reject the reformer, so long as he comes only with axe and crowbar. but though we are natural conservers and causationists, and reject a sour, dumpish unbelief, the skeptical class, which montaigne represents, have reason, and every man, at some time, belongs to it. every superior mind will pass through this domain of equilibration,--i should rather say, will know how to avail himself of the checks and balances in nature, as a natural weapon against the exaggeration and formalism of bigots and blockheads. skepticism is the attitude assumed by the student in relation to the particulars which society adores, but which he sees to be reverent only in their tendency and spirit. the ground occupied by the skeptic is the vestibule of the temple. society does not like to have any breath of question blown on the existing order. but the interrogation of custom at all points is an inevitable stage in the growth of every superior mind, and is the evidence of its perception of the flowing power which remains itself in all changes. the superior mind will find itself equally at odds with the evils of society, and with the projects that are offered to relieve them. the wise skeptic is a bad citizen; no conservative; he sees the selfishness of property, and the drowsiness of institutions. but neither is he fit to work with any democratic party that ever was constituted; for parties wish every one committed, and he penetrates the popular patriotism. his politics are those of the "soul's errand" of sir walter raleigh; or of krishna, in the bhagavat, "there is none who is worthy of my love or hatred;" while he sentences law, physic, divinity, commerce, and custom. he is a reformer: yet he is no better member of the philanthropic association. it turns out that he is not the champion of the operative, the pauper, the prisoner, the slave. it stands in his mind, that our life in this world is not of quite so easy interpretation as churches and school-books say. he does not wish to take ground against these benevolences, to play the part of devil's attorney, and blazon every doubt and sneer that darkens the sun for him. but he says, there are doubts. i mean to use the occasion, and celebrate the calendar-day of our saint michel de montaigne, by counting and describing these doubts or negations. i wish to ferret them out of their holes, and sun them a little. we must do with them as the police do with old rogues, who are shown up to the public at the marshal's office. they will never be so formidable, when once they have been identified and registered. but i mean honestly by them--that justice shall be done to their terrors. i shall not take sunday objections, made up on purpose to be put down. i shall take the worst i can find, whether i can dispose of them, or they of me. i do not press the skepticism of the materialist. i know the quadruped opinion will not prevail. 'tis of no importance what bats and oxen think. the first dangerous symptom i report is, the levity of intellect; as if it were fatal to earnestness to know much. knowledge is the knowing that we cannot know. the dull pray; the geniuses are light mockers. how respectable is earnestness on every platform! but intellect kills it. nay, san carlo, my subtle and admirable friend, one of the most penetrating of men, finds that all direct ascension, even of lofty piety, leads to this ghastly insight, and sends back the votary orphaned. my astonishing san carlo thought the lawgivers and saints infected. they found the ark empty; saw, and would not tell; and tried to choke off their approaching followers, by saying, "action, action, my dear fellows, is for you!" bad as was to me this detection by san carlo, this frost in july, this blow from a brick, there was still a worse, namely, the cloy or satiety of the saints. in the mount of vision, ere they have yet risen from their knees, they say, "we discover that this our homage and beatitude is partial and deformed; we must fly for relief to the suspected and reviled intellect, to the understanding, the mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of latent." this is hobgoblin the first; and, though it has been the subject of much elegy, in our nineteenth century, from byron, goethe, and other poets of less fame, not to mention many distinguished private observers,--i confess it is not very affecting to my imagination; for it seems to concern the shattering of baby-houses and crockery-shops. what flutters the church of rome, or of england, or of geneva, or of boston, may yet be very far from touching any principle of faith. i think that the intellect and moral sentiment are unanimous; and that, though philosophy extirpates bugbears, yet it supplies the natural checks of vice, and polarity to the soul. i think that the wiser a man is, the more stupendous he finds the natural and moral economy, and lifts himself to a more absolute reliance. there is the power of moods, each setting at nought all but its own tissue of facts and beliefs. there is the power of complexions, obviously modifying the dispositions and sentiments. the beliefs and unbeliefs appear to be structural; and, as soon as each man attains the poise and vivacity which allow the whole machinery to play, he will not need extreme examples, but will rapidly alternate all opinions in his own life. our life is march weather, savage and serene in one hour. we go forth austere, dedicated, believing in the iron links of destiny, and will not turn on our heel to save our life; but a book, or a bust, or only the sound of a name, shoots a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly believe in will: my finger-ring shall be the seal of solomon: fate is for imbeciles: all is possible to the resolved mind. presently, a new experience gives a new turn to our thoughts: common sense resumes its tyranny: we say, "well, the army, after all, is the gate to fame, manners, and poetry: and, look you,--on the whole, selfishness plants best, prunes best, makes the best commerce, and the best citizen." are the opinions of a man on right and wrong, on fate and causation, at the mercy of a broken sleep or an indigestion? is his belief in god and duty no deeper than a stomach evidence? and what guaranty for the permanence of his opinions? i like not the french celerity,--a new church and state once a week.--this is the second negation; and i shall let it pass for what it will. as far as it asserts rotation of states of mind, i suppose it suggests its own remedy, namely, in the record of larger periods. what is the mean of many states; of all the states? does the general voice of ages affirm any principle, or is no community of sentiment discoverable in distant times and places? and when it shows the power of self-interest, i accept that as a part of the divine law, and must reconcile it with aspiration the best i can. the word fate, or destiny, expresses the sense of mankind, in all ages,--that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often hurt and crush us. fate, in the shape of kinde or nature, grows over us like grass. we paint time with a scythe; love and fortune, blind; and destiny, deaf. we have too little power of resistance against this ferocity which champs us up. what front can we make against these unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? what can i do against the influence of race, in my history? what can i do against hereditary and constitutional habits, against scrofula, lymph, impotence? against climate, against barbarism, in my country? i can reason down or deny everything, except this perpetual belly; feed he must and will, and i cannot make him respectable. but the main resistance which the affirmative impulse finds, and one including all others, is in the doctrine of the illusionists. there is a painful rumor in circulation, that we have been practiced upon in all the principal performances of life, and free agency is the emptiest name. we have been sopped and drugged with the air, with food, with woman, with children, with sciences, with events which leave us exactly where they found us. the mathematics, 'tis complained, leave the mind where they find it: so do all sciences; and so do all events and actions. i find a man who has passed through all the sciences, the churl he was; and, through all the offices, learned, civil, and social, can detect the child. we are not the less necessitated to dedicate life to them. in fact, we may come to accept it as the fixed rule and theory of our state of education, that god is a substance, and his method is illusion. the eastern sages owned the goddess yoganidra, the great illusory energy of vishnu, by whom, as utter ignorance, the whole world is beguiled. or, shall i state it thus?--the astonishment of life, is, the absence of any appearance of reconciliation between the theory and practice of life. reason, the prized reality, the law, is apprehended, now and then, for a serene and profound moment, amidst the hubbub of cares and works which have no direct bearing on it;--is then lost, for months or years, and again found, for an interval, to be lost again. if we compute it in time, we may, in fifty years, have half a dozen reasonable hours. but what are these cares and works the better? a method in the world we do not see, but this parallelism of great and little, which never react on each other, nor discover the smallest tendency to converge. experiences, fortunes, governings, readings, writings are nothing to the purpose; as when a man comes into the room, it does not appear whether he has been fed on yams or buffalo,--he has contrived to get so much bone and fibre as he wants, out of rice or out of snow. so vast is the disproportion between the sky of law and the pismire of performance under it, that, whether he is a man of worth or a sot, is not so great a matter as we say. shall i add, as one juggle of this enchantment, the stunning non-intercourse law which makes cooperation impossible? the young spirit pants to enter society. but all the ways of culture and greatness lead to solitary imprisonment. he has been often baulked. he did not expect a sympathy with his thought from the village, but he went with it to the chosen and intelligent, and found no entertainment for it, but mere misapprehension, distaste, and scoffing. men are strangely mistimed and misapplied; and the excellence of each is an inflamed individualism which separates him more. there are these, and more than these diseases of thought, which our ordinary teachers do not attempt to remove. now shall we, because a good nature inclines us to virtue's side, say, there are no doubts,--and lie for the right? is life to be led in a brave or in a cowardly manner? and is not the satisfaction of the doubts essential to all manliness? is the name of virtue to be a barrier to that which is virtue? can you not believe that a man of earnest and burly habit may find small good in tea, essays, and catechism, and want a rougher instruction, want men, labor, trade, farming, war, hunger, plenty, love, hatred, doubt, and terror, to make things plain to him; and has he not a right to insist on being convinced in his own way? when he is convinced, he will be worth the pains. belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief in denying them. some minds are incapable of skepticism. the doubts they profess to entertain are rather a civility or accommodation to the common discourse of their company. they may well give themselves leave to speculate, for they are secure of a return. once admitted to the heaven of thought, they see no relapse into night, but infinite invitation on the other side. heaven is within heaven, and sky over sky, and they are encompassed with divinities. others there are, to whom the heaven is brass, and it shuts down to the surface of the earth. it is a question of temperament, or of more or less immersion in nature. the last class must needs have a reflex or parasite faith; not a sight of realities, but an instinctive reliance on the seers and believers of realities. the manners and thoughts of believers astonish them, and convince them that these have seen something which is hid from themselves. but their sensual habit would fix the believer to his last position, whilst he as inevitably advances; and presently the unbeliever, for love of belief, burns the believer. great believers are always reckoned infidels, impracticable, fantastic, atheistic, and really men of no account. the spiritualist finds himself driven to express his faith by a series of skepticisms. charitable souls come with their projects, and ask his cooperation. how can he hesitate? it is the rule of mere comity and courtesy to agree where you can, and to turn your sentence with something auspicious, and not freezing and sinister. but he is forced to say, "o, these things will be as they must be: what can you do? these particular griefs and crimes are the foliage and fruit of such trees as we see growing. it is vain to complain of the leaf or the berry: cut it off; it will bear another just as bad. you must begin your cure lower down." the generosities of the day prove an intractable element for him. the people's questions are not his; their methods are not his; and, against all the dictates of good nature, he is driven to say, he has no pleasure in them. even the doctrines dear to the hope of man, of the divine providence, and of the immortality of the soul, his neighbors cannot put the statement so that he shall affirm it. but he denies out of more faith, and not less. he denies out of honesty. he had rather stand charged with the imbecility of skepticism, than with untruth. i believe, he says, in the moral design of the universe; it exists hospitably for the weal of the souls; but your dogmas seem to me caricatures; why should i make believe them? will any say, this is cold and infidel? the wise and magnanimous will not say so. they will exult in his far-sighted good-will, that can abandon to the adversary all the ground of tradition and common belief, without losing a jot of strength. it sees to the end of all transgression. george fox saw "that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but withal, an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over that of darkness." the final solution in which skepticism is lost is in the moral sentiment, which never forfeits its supremacy. all moods may be safely tried, and their weight allowed to all objections: the moral sentiment as easily outweighs them all, as any one. this is the drop which balances the sea. i play with the miscellany of facts, and take those superficial views which we call skepticism; but i know that they will presently appear to me in that order which makes skepticism impossible. a man of thought must feel the thought that is parent of the universe, that the masses of nature do undulate and flow. this faith avails to the whole emergency of life and objects. the world is saturated with deity and with law. he is content with just and unjust, with sots and fools, with the triumph of folly and fraud. he can behold with serenity the yawning gulf between the ambition of man and his power of performance, between the demand and supply of power, which makes the tragedy of all souls. charles fourier announced that "the attractions of man are proportioned to his destinies;" in other words, that every desire predicts its own satisfaction. yet, all experience exhibits the reverse of this; the incompetency of power is the universal grief of young and ardent minds. they accuse the divine providence of a certain parsimony. it has shown the heaven and earth to every child, and filled him with a desire for the whole; a desire raging, infinite; a hunger, as of space to be filled with planets; a cry of famine, as of devils for souls. then for the satisfaction,--to each man is administered a single drop, a bead of dew of vital power per day,--a cup as large as space, and one drop of the water of life in it. each man woke in the morning, with an appetite that could eat the solar system like a cake; a spirit for action and passion without bounds; he could lay his hand on the morning star; he could try conclusions with gravitation or chemistry; but, on the first motion to prove his strength--hands, feet, senses, gave way, and would not serve him. he was an emperor deserted by his states, and left to whistle by himself, or thrust into a mob of emperors, all whistling: and still the sirens sang, "the attractions are proportioned to the destinies." in every house, in the heart of each maiden, and of each boy, in the soul of the soaring saint, this chasm is found,-- between the largest promise of ideal power, and the shabby experience. the expansive nature of truth comes to our succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. man helps himself by larger generalizations. the lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense. things seem to say one thing, and say the reverse. the appearance is immoral; the result is moral. things seem to tend downward, to justify despondency, to promote rogues, to defeat the just; and, by knaves, as by martyrs, the just cause is carried forward. although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and the march of civilization is a train of felonies, yet, general ends are somehow answered. we see, now, events forced on, which seem to retard or retrograde the civility of ages. but the world-spirit is a good swimmer, and storms and waves cannot drown him. he snaps his finger at laws; and so, throughout history, heaven seems to affect low and poor means. through the years and the centuries, through evil agents, through toys and atoms, a great and beneficent tendency irresistibly streams. let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence, without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the eternal cause.-- "if my bark sink, 'tis to another sea." v. shakspeare; or, the poet. great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. if we require the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and making bricks and building the house, no great men are original. nor does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men. the hero is in the press of knights, and the thick of events; and, seeing what men want, and sharing their desire, he adds the needful length of sight and of arm, to come at the desired point. the greatest genius is the most indebted man. a poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says everything, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. there is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times. the genius of our life is jealous of individuals, and will not have any individual great, except through the general. there is no choice to genius. a great man does not wake up on some fine morning, and say, "i am full of life, i will go to sea, and find an antarctic continent: to-day i will square the circle: i will ransack botany, and find a new food for man: i have a new architecture in my mind: i foresee a new mechanic power;" no, but he finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. he stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and their hands all point in the direction in which he should go. the church has reared him amidst rites and pomps, and he carries out the advice which her music gave him, and builds a cathedral needed by her chants and processions. he finds a war raging: it educates him by trumpet, in barracks, and he betters the instruction. he finds two counties groping to bring coal, or flour, or fish, from the place of production to the place of consumption, and he hits on a railroad. every master has found his materials collected, and his power lay in his sympathy with his people, and in his love of the materials he wrought in. what an economy of power! and what a compensation for the shortness of life! all is done to his hand. the world has brought him thus far on his way. the human race has gone out before him, sunk the hills, filled the hollows, and bridged the rivers. men, nations, poets, artisans, women, all have worked for him, and he enters into their labors. choose any other thing, out of the line of tendency, out of the national feeling and history, and he would have all to do for himself: his powers would be expended in the first preparations. great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind. shakspeare's youth fell in a time when the english people were importunate for dramatic entertainments. the court took offence easily at political allusions, and attempted to suppress them. the puritans, a growing and energetic party, and the religious among the anglican church, would suppress them. but the people wanted them. inn-yards, houses without roofs, and extemporaneous enclosures at country fairs, were the ready theatres of strolling players. the people had tasted this new joy; and, as we could not hope to suppress newspapers now,--no, not by the strongest party,--neither then could king, prelate, or puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ, which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, punch, and library, at the same time. probably king, prelate and puritan, all found their own account in it. it had become, by all causes, a national interest,--by no means conspicuous, so that some great scholar would have thought of treating it in an english history,--but not a whit less considerable, because it was cheap, and of no account, like a baker's-shop. the best proof of its vitality is the crowd of writers which suddenly broke into this field; kyd, marlow, greene, jonson, chapman, dekker, webster, heywood, middleton, peele, ford, massinger, beaumont, and fletcher. the secure possession, by the stage, of the public mind, is of the first importance to the poet who works for it. he loses no time in idle experiments. here is audience and expectation prepared. in the case of shakespeare there is much more. at the time when he left stratford, and went up to london, a great body of stage-plays, of all dates and writers, existed in manuscript, and were in turn produced on the boards. here is the tale of troy, which the audience will bear hearing some part of every week; the death of julius caesar, and other stories out of plutarch, which they never tire of; a shelf full of english history, from the chronicles of brut and arthur, down to the royal henries, which men hear eagerly; and a string of doleful tragedies, merry italian tales, and spanish voyages, which all the london 'prentices know. all the mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. it is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. they have been the property of the theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole scene, or adding a song, that no man can any longer claim copyright on this work of numbers. happily, no man wishes to. they are not yet desired in that way. we have few readers, many spectators and hearers. they had best lie where they are. shakspeare, in common with his comrades, esteemed the mass of old plays, waste stock, in which any experiment could be freely tried. had the _prestige_ which hedges about a modern tragedy existed, nothing could have been done. the rude warm blood of the living england circulated in the play, as in street-ballads, and gave body which he wanted to his airy and majestic fancy. the poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. it holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination. in short, the poet owes to his legend what sculpture owed to the temple. sculpture in egypt, and in greece, grew up in subordination to architecture. it was the ornament of the temple wall: at first, a rude relief carved on pediments, then the relief became bolder, and a head or arm was projected from the wall, the groups being still arrayed with reference to the building, which serves also as a frame to hold the figures; and when, at last, the greatest freedom of style and treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. as soon as the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and exhibition, took the place of the old temperance. this balance-wheel, which the sculptor found in architecture, the perilous irritability of poetic talent found in the accumulated dramatic materials to which the people were already wonted, and which had a certain excellence which no single genius, however extraordinary, could hope to create. in point of fact, it appears that shakspeare did owe debts in all directions, and was able to use whatever he found; and the amount of indebtedness may be inferred from malone's laborious computations in regard to the first, second, and third parts of henry vi., in which, "out of lines, were written by some author preceding shakspeare; by him, on the foundation laid by his predecessors; and were entirely his own." and the preceding investigation hardly leaves a single drama of his absolute invention. malone's sentence is an important piece of external history. in henry viii., i think i see plainly the cropping out of the original rock on which his own finer stratum was laid. the first play was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. i can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. see wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with cromwell, where,--instead of the metre of shakspeare, whose secret is, that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm,--here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. but the play contains, through all its length, unmistakable traits of shakspeare's hand, and some passages, as the account of the coronation, are like autographs. what is odd, the compliment to queen elizabeth is in the bad rhythm. shakspeare knew that tradition supplies a better fable that any invention can. if he lost any credit of design, he augmented his resources; and, at that day our petulant demand for originality was not so much pressed. there was no literature for the million. the universal reading, the cheap press, were unknown. a great poet, who appears in illiterate times, absorbs into his sphere all the light which is anywhere radiating. every intellectual jewel, every flower of sentiment, it is his fine office to bring to his people; and he comes to value his memory equally with his invention. he is therefore little solicitous whence his thoughts have been derived; whether through translation, whether through tradition, whether by travel in distant countries, whether by inspiration; from whatever source, they are equally welcome to his uncritical audience. nay, he borrows very near home. other men say wise things as well as he; only they say a good many foolish things, and do not know when they have spoken wisely. he knows the sparkle of the true stone, and puts it in high place, wherever he finds it. such is the happy position of homer, perhaps; of chaucer, of saadi. they felt that all wit was their wit. and they are librarians and historiographers, as well as poets. each romancer was heir and dispenser of all the hundred tales of the world,-- "presenting thebes' and pelops' line and the tale of troy divine." the influence of chaucer is conspicuous in all our early literature; and, more recently, not only pope and dryden have been beholden to him, but, in the whole society of english writers, a large unacknowledged debt is easily traced. one is charmed with the opulence which feeds so many pensioners. but chaucer is a huge borrower. chaucer, it seems, drew continually, through lydgate and caxton, from guido di colonna, whose latin romance of the trojan war was in turn a compilation from dares phrygius, ovid, and statius. then petrarch, boccaccio, and the provencal poets, are his benefactors: the romaunt of the rose is only judicious translation from william of lorris and john of meun: troilus and creseide, from lollius of urbino: the cock and the fox, from the _lais_ of marie: the house of fame, from the french or italian: and poor gower he uses as if he were only a brick-kiln or stone-quarry out of which to build his house. he steals by this apology,--that what he takes has no worth where he finds it, and the greatest where he leaves it. it has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion. thought is the property of him who can entertain it; and of him who can adequately place it. a certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but, as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own. thus, all originality is relative. every thinker is retrospective. the learned member of the legislature, at westminster, or at washington, speaks and votes for thousands. show us the constituency, and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of their wishes, the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence, anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and resistance of something of their impressiveness. as sir robert peel and mr. webster vote, so locke and rousseau think for thousands; and so there were fountains all around homer, menu, saadi, or milton, from which they drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,--all perished,--which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. did the bard speak with authority? did he feel himself, overmatched by any companion? the appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. is there at last in his breast a delhi whereof to ask concerning any thought or thing, whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have answer, and to rely on that? all the debt which such a man could contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he has conversed. it is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, in the world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. our english bible is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the english language. but it was not made by one man, or at one time; but centuries and churches brought it to perfection. there never was a time when there was not some translation existing. the liturgy, admired for its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the catholic church,--these collected, too, in long periods, from the prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer, all over the world. grotius makes the like remark in respect to the lord's prayer, that the single clauses of which it is composed were already in use, in the time of christ, in the rabbinical forms. he picked out the grains of gold. the nervous language of the common law, the impressive forms of our courts, and the precision and substantial truth of the legal distinctions, are the contribution of all the sharp-sighted, strong-minded men who have lived in the countries where these laws govern. the translation of plutarch gets its excellence by being translation on translation. there never was a time when there was none. all the truly diomatic and national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out and thrown away. something like the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. the world takes liberties with world-books. vedas, aesop's fables, pilpay, arabian nights, cid, iliad, robin hood, scottish minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. in the composition of such works, the time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, all think for us. every book supplies its time with one good word; every municipal law, every trade, every folly of the day, and the generic catholic genius who is not afraid or ashamed to owe his originality to the originality of all, stands with the next age as the recorder and embodiment of his own. we have to thank the researches of antiquaries, and the shakspeare society, for ascertaining the steps of the english drama, from the mysteries celebrated in churches and by churchmen, and the final detachment from the church, and the completion of secular plays, from ferrex and porrex, and gammer gurton's needle, down to the possession of the stage by the very pieces which shakspeare altered, remodelled, and finally made his own. elated with success, and piqued by the growing interest of the problem, they have left no book-stall unsearched, no chest in a garret unopened, no file of old yellow accounts to decompose in damp and worms, so keen was the hope to discover whether the boy shakspeare poached or not, whether he held horses at the theater door, whether he kept school, and why he left in his will only his second-best bed to ann hathaway, his wife. there is somewhat touching in the madness with which the passing age mischooses the object on which all candles shine, and all eyes are turned; the care with which it registers every trifle touching queen elizabeth, and king james, and the essexes, leicesters, burleighs, and buckinghams; and let pass without a single valuable note the founder of another dynasty, which alone will cause the tudor dynasty to be remembered,--the man who carries the saxon race in him by the inspiration which feeds him, and on whose thoughts the foremost people of the world are now for some ages to be nourished, and minds to receive this and not another bias. a popular player,--nobody suspected he was the poet of the human race; and the secret was kept as faithfully from poets and intellectual men, as from courtiers and frivolous people. bacon, who took the inventory of the human understanding for his times, never mentioned his name. ben jonson, though we have strained his few words of regard and panegyric, had no suspicion of the elastic fame whose first vibrations he was attempting. he no doubt thought the praise he has conceded to him generous, and esteemed himself, out of all question, the better poet of the two. if it need wit to know wit, according to the proverb, shakspeare's time should be capable of recognizing it. sir henry wotton was born four years after shakspeare, and died twenty-three years after him; and i find among his correspondents and acquaintances, the following persons: theodore beza, isaac casaubon, sir philip sidney, earl of essex, lord bacon, sir walter raleigh, john milton, sir henry vane, isaac walton, dr. donne, abraham cowley, bellarmine, charles cotton, john pym, john hales, kepler, vieta, albericus gentilis, paul sarpi, ariminius; with all of whom exist some token of his having communicated, without enumerating many others, whom doubtless he saw,--shakspeare, spenser, jonson, beaumont, massinger, two herberts, marlow, chapman, and the rest. since the constellation of great men who appeared in greece in the time of pericles, there was never any such society;--yet their genius failed them to find out the best head in the universe. our poet's mask was impenetrable. you cannot see the mountain near. it took a century to make it suspected; and not until two centuries had passed, after his death, did any criticism which we think adequate begin to appear. it was not possible to write the history of shakspeare till now; for he is the father of german literature: it was on the introduction of shakspeare into german by lessing, and the translation of his works by wieland and schlegel, that the rapid burst of german literature was most intimately connected. it was not until the nineteenth century, whose speculative genius is a sort of living hamlet, that the tragedy of hamlet should find such wondering readers. now, literature, philosophy, and thought are shakspearized. his mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do not see. our ears are educated to music by his rhythm. coleridge and goethe are the only critics who have expressed our convictions with any adequate fidelity: but there is in all cultivated minds a silent appreciation of his superlative power and beauty, which, like christianity, qualifies the period. the shakspeare society have inquired in all directions, advertised the missing facts, offered money for any information that will lead to proof; and with what results? beside some important illustration of the history of the english stage, to which i have adverted, they have gleaned a few facts touching the property, and dealings in regard to property, of the poet. it appears that, from year to year, he owned a larger share in the blackfriars' theater: its wardrobe and other appurtenances were his: that he bought an estate in his native village, with his earnings, as writer and shareholder; that he lived in the best house in stratford; was intrusted by his neighbors with their commissions in london, as of borrowing money, and the like; that he was a veritable farmer. about the time when he was writing macbeth, he sues philip rogers, in the borough-court of stratford, for thirty-five shillings ten pence, for corn delivered to him at different times; and, in all respects, appears as a good husband, with no reputation for eccentricity or excess. he was a good-natured sort of man, an actor and shareholder in the theater, not in any striking manner distinguished from other actors and managers. i admit the importance of this information. it was well worth the pains that have been taken to procure it. but whatever scraps of information concerning his condition these researches may have rescued, they can shed no light upon that infinite invention which is the concealed magnet of his attraction for us. we are very clumsy writers of history. we tell the chronicle of parentage, birth, birthplace, schooling, schoolmates, earning of money, marriage, publication of books, celebrity, death; and when we have come to an end of this gossip, no ray of relation appears between it and the goddess-born; and it seems as if, had we dipped at random into the "modern plutarch," and read any other life there, it would have fitted the poems as well, it is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history. malone, warburton, dyce, and collier, have wasted their oil. the famed theaters, covent garden, drury lane, the park, and tremont, have vainly assisted. betterton, garrick, kemble, kean, and macready, dedicate their lives to this genius; him they crown, elucidate, obey, and express. the genius knows them not. the recitation begins; one golden word leaps out immortal from all this painted pedantry, and sweetly torments us with invitations to its own inaccessible homes. i remember, i went once to see the hamlet of a famed performer, the pride of the english stage; and all i then heard, and all i now remember, of the tragedian, was that in which the tragedian had no part; simply, hamlet's question to the ghost,-- "what may this mean, that thou, dead corse, again in complete steel revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?" that imagination which dilates the closet he writes into the world's dimension, crowds it with agents in rank and order, as quickly reduces the big reality to be the glimpses of the moon. these tricks of his magic spoil for us the illusions of the green-room. can any biography shed light on the localities into which the midsummer night's dream admits me? did shakspeare confide to any notary or parish recorder, sacristan, or surrogate, in stratford, the genesis of that delicate creation? the forest of arden, the nimble air of scone castle, the moonlight of portia's villa, "the antres vast and desarts idle," of othello's captivity,--where is the third cousin, or grand-nephew, the chancellor's file of accounts, or private letter, that has kept one word of those transcendent secrets. in fine, in this drama, as in all great works of art,--in the cyclopaean architecture of egypt and india; in the phidian sculpture; the gothic minsters; the italian painting; the ballads of spain and scotland,--the genius draws up the ladder after him, when the creative age goes up to heaven, and gives way to a new, who see the works, and ask in vain for a history. shakspeare is the only biographer of shakspeare; and even he can tell nothing, except to the shakspeare in us; that is, to our most apprehensive and sympathetic hour. he cannot step from off his tripod, and give us anecdotes of his inspirations. read the antique documents extricated, analyzed, and compared, by the assiduous dyce and collier; and now read one of those skyey sentences,--aerolites,--which seem to have fallen out of heaven, and which, not your experience, but the man within the breast, has accepted as words of fate; and tell me if they match; if the former account in any manner for the latter; or, which gives the most historical insight into the man. hence, though our external history is so meager, yet, with shakspeare for biographer, instead of aubrey and rowe, we have really the information which is material, that which describes character and fortune; that which, if we were about to meet the man and deal with him, would most import us to know. we have his recorded convictions on those questions which knock for answer at every heart,--on life and death, on love, on wealth and poverty, on the prizes of life, and the ways whereby we may come at them; on the characters of men, and the influences, occult and open, which affect their fortunes: and on those mysterious and demoniacal powers which defy our science, and which yet interweave their malice and their gift in our brightest hours. who ever read the volume of sonnets, without finding that the poet had there revealed, under masks that are no masks to the intelligent, the lore of friendship and of love; the confusion of sentiments in the most susceptible, and, at the same time, the most intellectual of men? what trait of his private mind has he hidden in his dramas? one can discern, in his ample pictures of the gentleman and the king, what forms and humanities pleased him; his delight in troops of friends, in large hospitality, in cheerful giving. let timon, let warwick, let antonio the merchant, answer for his great heart. so far from shakspeare being the least known, he is the one person, in all modern history, known to us. what point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? what mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? what office or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? what king has he not taught state, as talma taught napoleon? what maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? what lover has he not outloved? what sage has he not outseen? what gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior? some able and appreciating critics think no criticism on shakspeare valuable, that does not rest purely on the dramatic merit; that he is falsely judged as poet and philosopher. i think as highly as these critics of his dramatic merit, but still think it secondary. he was a full man, who liked to talk; a brain exhaling thoughts and images, which, seeking vent, found the drama next at hand. had he been less, we should have had to consider how well he filled his place, how good a dramatist he was,--and he is the best in the world. but it turns out; that what he has to say is of that weight, as to withdraw some attention from the vehicle; and he is like some saint whose history is to be rendered into all languages, into verse and prose, into songs and pictures, and cut up into proverbs; so that the occasions which gave the saint's meaning the form of a conversation, or of a prayer, or of a code of laws, is immaterial compared with the universality of its application. so it fares with the wise shakspeare and his book of life. he wrote the airs for all our modern music: he wrote the text of modern life; the text of manners: he drew the man of england and europe; the father of the man in america: he drew the man and described the day, and what is done in it: he read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second thought, and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries: he could divide the mother's part from the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and fate: he knew the laws of repression which make the police of nature: and all the sweets and all the terrors of human lot lay in his mind as truly but as softly as the landscape lies on the eye. and the importance of this wisdom of life sinks the form, as of drama or epic, out of notice. 'tis like making a question concerning the paper on which a king's message is written. shakspeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors, as he is out of the crowd. he is inconceivably wise; the others, conceivably. a good reader can, in a sort, nestle into plato's brain, and think from thence; but not into shakspeare's. we are still out of doors. for executive faculty, for creation, shakspeare is unique. no man can imagine it better. he was the farthest reach of subtlety compatible with an individual self,--the subtilest of authors, and only just within the possibility of authorship. with this wisdom of life, is the equal endowment of imaginative and of lyric power. he clothed the creatures of his legend with form and sentiments, as if they were people who had lived under his roof; and few real men have left such distinct characters as these fictions. and they spoke in language as sweet as it was fit. yet his talents never seduced him into an ostentation, nor did he harp on one string. an omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. give a man of talents a story to tell, and his partiality will presently appear. he has certain observations, opinions, topics, which have some accidental prominence, and which he disposes all to exhibit. he crams this part, and starves that other part, consulting not the fitness of the thing, but his fitness and strength. but shakspeare has no peculiarity, no importunate topic; but all is duly given; no veins, no curiosities: no cow-painter, no bird-fancier, no mannerist is he: he has no discoverable egotism: the great he tells greatly; the small subordinately. he is wise without emphasis or assertion; he is strong, as nature is strong, who lifts the land into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and likes as well to do the one as the other. this makes that equality of power in farce, tragedy, narrative, and love-songs; a merit so incessant, that each reader is incredulous of the perception of other readers. this power of expression, or of transferring the inmost truth of things into music and verse, makes him the type of the poet, and has added a new problem to metaphysics. this is that which throws him into natural history, as a main production of the globe, and as announcing new eras and ameliorations. things were mirrored in his poetry without loss or blur: he could paint the fine with precision, the great with compass; the tragic and comic indifferently, and without any distortion or favor. he carried his powerful execution into minute details, to a hair point; finishes an eyelash or a dimple as firmly as he draws a mountain; and yet these like nature's, will bear the scrutiny of the solar microscope. in short, he is the chief example to prove that more or less of production, more or fewer pictures, is a thing indifferent. he had the power to make one picture. daguerre learned how to let one flower etch its image on his plate of iodine; and then proceeds at leisure to etch a million. there are always objects; but there was never representation. here is perfect representation, at last; and now let the world of figures sit for their portraits. no recipe can be given for the making of a shakspeare; but the possibility of the translation of things into song is demonstrated. his lyric power lies in the genius of the piece. the sonnets, though their excellence is lost in the splendor of the dramas, are as inimitable as they: and it is not a merit of lines, but a total merit of the piece; like the tone of voice of some incomparable person, so is this a speech of poetic beings, and any clause as unproducible now as a whole poem. though the speeches in the plays, and single lines, have a beauty which tempts the ear to pause on them for their euphuism, yet the sentence is so loaded with meaning, and so linked with its foregoers and followers, that the logician is satisfied. his means are as admirable as his ends; every subordinate invention, by which he helps himself to connect some irreconcilable opposites, is a poem too. he is not reduced to dismount and walk, because his horses are running off with him in some distant direction: he always rides. the finest poetry was first experience: but the thought has suffered a transformation since it was an experience. cultivated men often attain a good degree of skill in writing verses; but it is easy to read, through their poems, their personal history; any one acquainted with parties can name every figure: this is andrew, and that is rachel. the sense thus remains prosaic. it is a caterpillar with wings, and not yet a butterfly. in the poet's mind, the fact has gone quite over into the new element of thought, and has lost all that is exuvial. this generosity abides with shakspeare. we say, from the truth and closeness of his pictures, that he knows the lesson by heart. yet there is not a trace of egotism. one more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. i mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his aim. he loves virtue, not for its obligation, but for its grace: he delights in the world, in man, in woman, for the lovely light that sparkles from them. beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds over the universe. epicurus relates, that poetry hath such charms that a lover might forsake his mistress to partake of them. and the true bards have been noted for their firm and cheerful temper. homer lies in sunshine; chaucer is glad and erect; and saadi says, "it was rumored abroad that i was penitent; but what had i to do with repentance?" not less sovereign and cheerful,--much more sovereign and cheerful is the tone of shakspeare. his name suggests joy and emancipation to the heart of men. if he should appear in any company of human souls, who would not march in his troop? he touches nothing that does not borrow health and longevity from his festive style. and now, how stands the account of man with this bard and benefactor, when in solitude, shutting our ears to the reverberations of his fame, we seek to strike the balance? solitude has austere lessons; it can teach us to spare both heroes and poets; and it weighs shakspeare also, and finds him to share the halfness and imperfections of humanity. shakspeare, homer, dante, chaucer, saw the splendor of meaning that plays over the visible world; knew that a tree had another use than for apples, and corn another than for meal, and the ball of the earth, than for tillage and roads: that these things bore a second and finer harvest to the mind, being emblems of its thoughts, and conveying in all their natural history a certain mute commentary on human life. shakspeare employed them as colors to compose his picture. he rested in their beauty; and never took the step which seemed inevitable to such genius, namely, to explore the virtue which resides in these symbols, and imparts this power,--what is that which they themselves say? he converted the elements, which waited on his command, into entertainments. he was master of the revels to mankind. is it not as if one should have, through majestic powers of science, the comets given into his hand, or the planets and their moons, and should draw them from their orbits to glare with the municipal fireworks on a holiday night, and advertise in all towns, "very superior pyrotechny this evening!" are the agents of nature, and the power to understand them, worth no more than a street serenade, or the breath of a cigar? one remembers again the trumpet-text in the koran--"the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them, think ye we have created them in jest?" as long as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show. but when the question is to life, and its materials, and its auxiliaries, how does he profit me? what does it signify? it is but a twelfth night, or midsummer-night's dream, or a winter evening's tale: what signifies another picture more or less? the egyptian verdict of the shakspeare societies comes to mind, that he was a jovial actor and manager. i cannot marry this fact to his verse. other admirable men have led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought; but this man, in wide contrast. had he been less, had he reached only the common measure of great authors, of bacon, milton, tasso, cervantes, we might leave the fact in the twilight of human fate: but, that this man of men, he who gave to the science of mind a new and larger subject than had ever existed, and planted the standard of humanity some furlongs forward into chaos,--that he should not be wise for himself,--it must even go into the world's history, that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement. well, other men, priest and prophet, israelite, german, and swede, beheld the same objects: they also saw through them that which was contained. and to what purpose? the beauty straightway vanishes; they read commandments, all-excluding mountainous duty; an obligation, a sadness, as of piled mountains, fell on them, and life became ghastly, joyless, a pilgrim's progress, a probation, beleaguered round with doleful histories of adam's fall and curse, behind us; with doomsdays and purgatorial and penal fires before us; and the heart of the seer and the heart of the listener sank in them. it must be conceded that these are half-views of half-men. the world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. for knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with universal wisdom. vi. napoleon; or, the man of the world. among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, bonaparte is far the best known, and the most powerful; and owes his predominance to the fidelity with which he expresses the tone of thought and belief, the aims of the masses of active and cultivated men. it is swedenborg's theory, that every organ is made up of homogeneous particles; or, as it is sometimes expressed, every whole is made of similars; that is, the lungs are composed of infinitely small lungs; the liver, of infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little kidneys, etc. following this analogy, if any man is found to carry with him the power and affections of vast numbers, if napoleon is france, if napoleon is europe, it is because the people whom he sways are little napoleons. in our society, there is a standing antagonism between the conservative and the democratic classes; between those who have made their fortunes, and the young and the poor who have fortunes to make; between the interests of dead labor,--that is, the labor of hands long ago still in the grave, which labor is now entombed in money stocks, or in land and buildings owned by idle capitalists,--and the interests of living labor, which seeks to possess itself of land, and buildings, and money stocks. the first class is timid, selfish, illiberal, hating innovation, and continually losing numbers by death. the second class is selfish also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, always outnumbering the other, and recruiting its numbers every hour by births. it desires to keep open every avenue to the competition of all, and to multiply avenues;--the class of business men in america, in england, in france, and throughout europe; the class of industry and skill. napoleon is its representative. the instinct of active, brave, able men, throughout the middle class everywhere, has pointed out napoleon as the incarnate democrat. he had their virtues, and their vices; above all, he had their spirit or aim. that tendency is material, pointing at a sensual success, and employing the richest and most various means to that end; conversant with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, widely and accurately learned and skilful, but subordinating all intellectual and spiritual forces into means to a material success. to be the rich man is the end. "god has granted" says the koran, "to every people a prophet in its own tongue." paris, and london, and new york, the spirit of commerce, of money, and material power, were also to have their prophet; and bonaparte was qualified and sent. every one of the million readers of anecdotes, or memoirs, or lives of napoleon, delights in the page, because he studies in it his own history. napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, at the highest point of his fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. he is no saint,--to use his own word, "no capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense. the man in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other men in the street. he finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position, that he could indulge all those tastes which the common man possesses, but is obliged to conceal and deny; good society, good books, fast traveling, dress, dinners, servants without number, personal weight, the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor to all persons about him, the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues, music, palaces, and conventional honors,--precisely what is agreeable to the heart of every man in the nineteenth century,--this powerful man possessed. it is true that a man of napoleon's truth of adaptation to the mind of the masses around him becomes not merely representative, but actually a monopolizer and usurper of other minds. thus mirabeau plagiarized every good thought, every good word, that was spoken in france. dumont relates that he sat in the gallery of the convention, and heard mirabeau make a speech. it struck dumont that he could fit it with a peroration, which he wrote in pencil immediately, and showed to lord elgin, who sat by him. lord elgin approved it, and dumont, in the evening, showed it to mirabeau. mirabeau read it, pronounced it admirable, and declared he would incorporate it into his harangue, to-morrow, to the assembly. "it is impossible," said dumont, "as, unfortunately, i have shown it to lord elgin." "if you have shown it to lord elgin, and to fifty persons beside, i shall still speak it to-morrow:" and he did speak it, with much effect, at the next day's session. for mirabeau, with his overpowering personality, felt that these things, which his presence inspired, were as much his own, as if he had said them, and that his adoption of them gave them their weight. much more absolute and centralizing was the successor to mirabeau's popularity, and to much more than his predominance in france. indeed, a man of napoleon's stamp almost ceases to have a private speech and opinion. he is so largely receptive, and is so placed, that he comes to be a bureau for all the intelligence, wit, and power, of the age and country. he gains the battle; he makes the code; he makes the system of weights and measures; he levels the alps; he builds the road. all distinguished engineers, savants, statists, report to him; so likewise do all good heads in every kind; he adopts the best measures, sets his stamp on them, and not these alone, but on every happy and memorable expression. every sentence spoken by napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of france. bonaparte was the idol of common men, because he had in transcendent degree the qualities and powers of common men. there is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy. bonaparte wrought, in common with that great class he represented, for power and wealth,--but bonaparte, specially, without any scruple as to the means. all the sentiments which embarrass men's pursuit of these objects, he set aside. the sentiments were for women and children. fontanes, in , expressed napoleon's own sense, when, in behalf of the senate, he addressed him,--"sire, the desire of perfection is the worst disease that ever afflicted the human mind." the advocates of liberty, and of progress, are "ideologists;"--a word of contempt often in his mouth;--"necker is an ideologist:" "lafayette is an ideologist." an italian proverb, too well known, declares that, "if you would succeed, you must not be too good." it is an advantage, within certain limits, to have renounced the dominion of the sentiments of piety, gratitude, and generosity; since, what was an impassable bar to us, and still is to others, becomes a convenient weapon for our purposes; just as the river which was a formidable barrier, winter transforms into the smoothest of roads. napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections, and would help himself with his hands and his head. with him is no miracle, and no magic. he is a worker in brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in buildings, in money, and in troops, and a very consistent and wise master-workman. he is never weak and literary, but acts with the solidity and the precision of natural agents. he has not lost his native sense and sympathy with things. men give way before such a man as before natural events. to be sure, there are men enough who are immersed in things, as farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics generally; and we know how real and solid such men appear in the presence of scholars and grammarians; but these men ordinarily lack the power of arrangement, and are like hands without a head. but bonaparte superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and generalization, so that men saw in him combined the natural and the intellectual power, as if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose him. he came unto his own, and they received him. this ciphering operative knows what he is working with, and what is the product. he knew the properties of gold and iron, of wheels and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and required that each should do after its kind. the art of war was the game in which he exerted his arithmetic. it consisted, according to him, in having always more forces than the enemy, on the point where the enemy is attacked, or where he attacks: and his whole talent is strained by endless manoeuvre and evolution, to march always on the enemy at an angle, and destroy his forces in detail. it is obvious that a very small force, skilfully and rapidly manoeuvring, so as always to bring two men against one at the point of engagement, will be an overmatch for a much larger body of men. the times, his constitution, and his early circumstances, combined to develop this pattern democrat. he had the virtues of his class, and the conditions for their activity. that common sense, which no sooner respects any end, than it finds the means to effect it; the delight in the use of means; in the choice, simplification, and combining of means; the directness and thoroughness of his work; the prudence with which all was seen, and the energy with which all was done, make him the natural organ and head of what i may almost call, from its extent, the modern party. nature must have far the greatest share in every success, and so in his. such a man was wanted, and such a man was born; a man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours, of going many days together without rest or food, except by snatches, and with the speed and spring of a tiger in action; a man not embarrassed by any scruples; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, and of a perception which did not suffer itself to be balked or misled by any pretences of others, or any superstition, or any heat or haste of his own. "my hand of iron," he said, "was not at the extremity of my arm; it was immediately connected with my head." he respected the power of nature and fortune, and ascribed to it his superiority, instead of valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opinionativeness and waging war with nature. his favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his star: and he pleased himself, as well as the people, when he styled himself the "child of destiny." "they charge me," he said, "with the commission of great crimes: men of my stamp do not commit crimes. nothing has been more simple than my elevation: 'tis in vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime: it was owing to the peculiarity of the times, and to my reputation of having fought well against the enemies of my country. i have always marched with the opinion of great masses, and with events. of what use, then, would crimes be to me?" again he said, speaking of his son, "my son cannot replace me; i could not replace myself. i am the creature of circumstances." he had a directness of action never before combined with so much comprehension. he is a realist, terrific to all talkers, and confused truth-obscuring persons. he sees where the matter hinges, throws himself on the precise point of resistance, and slights all other considerations. he is strong in the right manner, namely, by insight. he never blundered into victory, but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field. his principal means are in himself. he asks counsel of no other. in , he writes to the directory: "i have conducted the campaign without consulting any one. i should have done no good, if i had been under the necessity of conforming to the notions of another person. i have gained some advantages over superior forces, and when totally destitute of everything, because, in the persuasion that your confidence was reposed in me, my actions were as prompt as my thoughts." history is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. they are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they know not what they should do. the weavers strike for bread; and the king and his ministers, not knowing what to do, meet them with bayonets. but napoleon understood his business. here was a man who, in each moment and emergency, knew what to do next. it is an immense comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens. few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, and, after each action, wait for an impulse from abroad. napoleon had been the first man of the world if his ends had been purely public. as he is, he inspires confidence and vigor by the extraordinary unity of his action. he is firm, sure, self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing everything to his aim,--money, troops, generals, and his own safety also, to his aim; not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor of his own means. "incidents ought not to govern policy," he said, "but policy, incidents." "to be hurried away by every event, is to have no political system at all. his victories were only so many doors, and he never for a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the present circumstance. he knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. he would shorten a straight line to come at his object. horrible anecdotes may, no doubt, be collected from his history, of the price at which he bought his successes; but he must not therefore be set down as cruel; but only as one who knew no impediment to his will; not bloodthirsty, not cruel,--but woe to what thing or person stood in his way! not bloodthirsty, but not sparing of blood,--and pitiless. he saw only the object: the obstacle must give way. "sire, general clarke cannot combine with general junot, for the dreadful fire of the austrian battery."--"let him carry the battery."--"sire, every regiment that approaches the heavy artillery is sacrified: sire, what orders?"-- "forward, forward!" seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his "military memoirs," the following sketch of a scene after the battle of austerlitz.--"at the moment in which the russian army was making its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the lake, the emperor napoleon came riding at full speed toward the artillery. 'you are losing time,' he cried; 'fire upon those masses; they must be engulfed; fire upon the ice!' the order remained unexecuted for ten minutes. in vain several officers and myself were placed on the slope of a hill to produce the effect; their balls and mine rolled upon the ice, without breaking it up. seeing that, i tried a simple method of elevating light howitzers. the almost perpendicular fall of the heavy projectiles produced the desired effect. my method was immediately followed by the adjoining batteries, and in less than no time we buried 'some' [footnote: as i quote at second-hand, and cannot procure seruzier, i dare not adopt the high figure i find.] thousands of russians and austrians under the waters of the lake." in the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle seemed to vanish. "there shall be no alps," he said; and he built his perfect roads, climbing by graded galleries their steepest precipices, until italy was as open to paris as any town in france. he laid his bones to, and wrought for his crown. having decided what was to be done, he did that with might and main. he put out all his strength. he risked everything, and spared nothing, neither ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor generals, nor himself. we like to see everything do its office after its kind, whether it be a milch-cow or a rattlesnake; and, if fighting be the best mode of adjusting national differences (as large majorities of men seem to agree), certainly bonaparte was right in making it thorough. "the grand principle of war," he said, "was, that an army ought always to be ready, by day and by night, and at all hours, to make all the resistance it is capable of making." he never economized his ammunition, but, on a hostile position, rained a torrent of iron,--shells, balls, grape-shot,--to annihilate all defense. on any point of resistance, he concentrated squadron on squadron in overwhelming numbers, until it was swept out of existence. to a regiment of horse-chasseurs at lobenstein, two days before the battle of jena, napoleon said, "my lads, you must not fear death; when soldiers brave death, they drive him into the enemy's ranks." in the fury of assault, he no more spared himself. he went to the edge of his possibility. it is plain that in italy he did what he could, and all that he could. he came, several times, within an inch of ruin; and his own person was all but lost. he was flung into the marsh at arcola. the austrians were between him and his troops, in the melee, and he was brought off with desperate efforts. at lonato, and at other places, he was on the point of being taken prisoner. he fought sixty battles. he had never enough. each victory was a new weapon. "my power would fall, were i not to support it by new achievements. conquest has made me what i am, and conquest must maintain me." he felt, with every wise man, that as much life is needed for conservation as for creation. we are always in peril, always in a bad plight, just on the edge of destruction, and only to be saved by invention and courage. this vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and punctuality. a thunderbolt in the attack, he was found invulnerable in his intrenchments. his very attack was never the inspiration of courage, but the result of calculation. his idea of the best defense consists in being still the attacking party. "my ambition," he says, "was great, but was of a cold nature." in one of his conversations with las casas, he remarked, "as to moral courage, i have rarely met with the two-o'clock-in-the-morning kind; i mean unprepared courage, that which, is necessary on an unexpected occasion; and which, in spite of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and decision;" and he did not hesitate to declare that he was himself eminently endowed with this "two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, and that he had met with few persons equal to himself in this respect." everything depended on the nicety of his combinations, and the stars were not more punctual than his arithmetic. his personal attention descended to the smallest particulars. "at montebello, i ordered kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse, and with these he separated the six thousand hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes of the austrian cavalry. this cavalry was half a league off, and required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and i have observed, that it is always these quarters of an hour that decide the fate of a battle." "before he fought a battle, bonaparte thought little about what he should do in case of success, but a great deal about what he should do in case of a reverse of fortune. "the same prudence and good sense mark all his behavior. his instructions to his secretary at the tuilleries are worth remembering. "during the night, enter my chamber as seldom as possible. do not wake me when you have any good news to communicate; with that there is no hurry. but when you bring bad news, rouse me instantly, for then there is not a moment to be lost." it was a whimsical economy of the same kind which dictated his practice, when general in italy, in regard to his burdensome correspondence. he directed bourienne to leave all letters unopened for three weeks, and then observed with satisfaction how large a part of the correspondence had thus disposed of itself, and no longer required an answer. his achievement of business was immense, and enlarges the known powers of man. there have been many working kings, from ulysses to william of orange, but none who accomplished a tithe of this man's performance. to these gifts of nature, napoleon added the advantage of having been born to a private and humble fortune. in his latter days, he had the weakness of wishing to add to his crowns and badges the prescription of aristocracy; but he knew his debt to his austere education, and made no secret of his contempt for the born kings, and for "the hereditary asses," as he coarsely styled the bourbons. he said that, "in their exile, they had learned nothing, and forgot nothing." bonaparte had passed through all the degrees of military service, but also was citizen before he was emperor, and so had the key to citizenship. his remarks and estimates discover the information and justness of measurement of the middle class. those who had to deal with him found that he was not to be imposed upon, but could cipher as well as another man. this appears in all parts of his memoirs, dictated at st. helena. when the expenses of the empress, of his household, of his palaces, had accumulated great debts, napoleon examined the bills of the creditors himself, detected overcharges and errors, and reduced the claims by considerable sums. his grand weapon, namely, the millions whom he directed, he owed to the representative character which clothed him. he interests us as he stands for france and for europe; and he exists as captain and king, only as far as the revolution, or the interest of the industrious masses found an organ and a leader in him. in the social interests, he knew the meaning and value of labor, and threw himself naturally on that side. i like an incident mentioned by one of his biographers at st. helena. "when walking with mrs. balcombe, some servants, carrying heavy boxes, passed by on the road, and mrs. balcombe desired them, in rather an angry tone, to keep back. napoleon interfered, saying, 'respect the burden, madam.'" in the time of the empire, he directed attention to the improvement and embellishment of the market of the capital. "the market-place," he said, "is the louvre of the common people." the principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads. he filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his court never permitted between the officers and himself. they performed, under his eye, that which no others could do. the best document of his relation to his troops is the order of the day on the morning of the battle of austerlitz, in which napoleon promises the troops that he will keep his person out of reach of fire. this declaration, which is the reverse of that ordinarily made by generals and sovereigns on the eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devotion of the army to their leader. but though there is in particulars this identity between napoleon and the mass of the people, his real strength lay in their conviction that he was their representative in his genius and aims, not only when he courted, but when he controlled, and even when he decimated them by his conscriptions. he knew, as well as any jacobin in france, how to philosophize on liberty and equality; and, when allusion was made to the precious blood of centuries, which was spilled by the killing of the duc d'enghien, he suggested, "neither is my blood ditch-water" the people felt that no longer the throne was occupied, and the land sucked of its nourishment, by a small class of legitimates, secluded from all community with the children of the soil, and holding the ideas and superstitions of a long-forgotten state of society. instead of that vampire, a man of themselves held, in the tuilleries, knowledge and ideas like their own, opening, of course, to them and their children, all places of power and trust. the day of sleepy, selfish policy, ever narrowing the means and opportunities of young men, was ended, and a day of expansion and demand was come. a market for all the powers and productions of man was opened: brilliant prizes glittered in the eyes of youth and talent. the old, iron-bound, feudal france was changed into a young ohio or new york; and those who smarted under the immediate rigors of the new monarch, pardoned them as the necessary severities of the military system which had driven out the oppressor. and even when the majority of the people had begun to ask, whether they had really gained anything under the exhausting levies of men and money of the new master,--the whole talent of the country, in every rank and kindred, took his part, and defended him as its natural patron. in , when advised to rely on the higher classes, napoleon said to those around him, "gentlemen, in the situation in which i stand, my only nobility is the rabble of the faubourgs." napoleon met this natural expectation. the necessity of his position required a hospitality to every sort of talent, and its appointment to trusts; and his feelings went along with this policy. like every superior person, he undoubtedly felt a desire for men and compeers, and a wish to measure his power with other masters, and an impatience of fools and underlings. in italy, he sought for men, and found none. "good god!" he said, "how rare men are! there are eighteen millions in italy, and i have with difficulty found two,--dandolo and melzi." in later years, with larger experience, his respect for mankind was not increased. in a moment of bitterness, he said to one of his oldest friends, "men deserve the contempt with which they inspire me. i have only to put some gold lace on the coat of my virtuous republicans, and they immediately become just what i wish them." this impatience at levity was, however, an oblique tribute of respect to those able persons who commanded his regard, not only when he found them friends and coadjutors, but also when they resisted his will. he could not confound fox and pitt, carnot, lafayette, and bernadotte, with the danglers of his court; and, in spite of the detraction which his systematic egotism dictated toward the great captains who conquered with and for him, ample acknowledgements are made by him to lannes duroc, kleber, dessaix, massena, murat, ney, and augereau. if he felt himself their patron, and founder of their fortunes, as when he said, "i made my generals out of mud," he could not hide his satisfaction in receiving from them a seconding and support commensurate with the grandeur of his enterprise. in the russian campaign, he was so much impressed by the courage and resources of marshal ney, that he said, "i have two hundred millions in my coffers, and i would give them all for ney." the characters which he has drawn of several of his marshals are discriminating, and, though they did not content the insatiable vanity of french officers, are, no doubt, substantially just. and, in fact, every species of merit was sought and advanced under his government. "i know," he said, "the depth and draught of water of every one of my generals." natural power was sure to be well received at his court. seventeen men, in his time, were raised from common soldiers to the rank of king, marshal, duke, or general; and the crosses of his legion of honor were given to personal valor, and not to family connection. "when soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes." when a natural king becomes a titular king, everybody is pleased and satisfied. the revolution entitled the strong populace of the faubourg st. antoine, and every horse-boy and powder-monkey in the army, to look on napoleon as flesh of his flesh, and the creature of his party: but there is something in the success of grand talent which enlists an universal sympathy. for, in the prevalence of sense and spirit over stupidity and malversation, all reasonable men have an interest; and, as intellectual beings, we feel the air purified by the electric shock, when material force is overthrown by intellectual energies. as soon as we are removed out of the reach of local and accidental partialities, man feels that napoleon fights for him; these are honest victories; this strong steam-engine does our work. whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us. this capacious head, revolving and disposing sovereignly trains of affairs, and animating such multitudes of agents; this eye, which looked through europe; this prompt invention; this inexhaustible resource;--what events! what romantic pictures! what strange situations!--when spying the alps, by a sunset in the sicilian sea; drawing up his army for battle, in sight of the pyramids, and saying to his troops, "from the tops of those pyramids, forty centuries look down on you;" fording the red sea; wading in the gulf of the isthmus of suez. on the shore of ptolemais, gigantic projects agitated him. "had acre fallen, i should have changed the face of the world." his army, on the night of the battle of austerlitz, which was the anniversary of his inauguration as emperor, presented him with a bouquet of forty standards taken in the fight. perhaps it is a little puerile, the pleasure he took in making these contrasts glaring; as when he pleased himself with making kings wait in his antechambers, at tilsit, at paris, and at erfurt. we cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in less degrees; namely, by punctuality, by personal attention, by courage, and thoroughness. "the austrians," he said, "do not know the value of time." i should cite him, in his earlier years, as a model of prudence. his power does not consist in any wild or extravagant force; in any enthusiasm, like mahomet's; or singular power of persuasion; but in the exercise of common sense on each emergency, instead of abiding by rules and customs. the lesson he teaches is that which vigor always teaches,--that there is always room for it. to what heaps of cowardly doubts is not that man's life an answer. when he appeared, it was the belief of all military men that there could be nothing new in war; as it is the belief of men to-day, that nothing new can be undertaken in politics, or in church, or in letters, or in trade, or in farming, or in our social manners and customs; and as it is, at all times, the belief of society that the world is used up. but bonaparte knew better than society; and, moreover, knew that he knew better. i think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they dare not trust their presentiments. bonaparte relied on his own sense, and did not care a bean for other people's. the world treated his novelties just as it treats everybody's novelties,--made infinite objection: mustered all the impediments; but he snapped his finger at their objections. "what creates great difficulty," he remarks, "in the profession of the land commander, is the necessity of feeding so many men and animals. if he allows himself to be guided by the commissaries, he will never stir, and all his expeditions will fail." an example of his common sense is what he says of the passage of the alps in winter, which all writers, one repeating after the other, had described as impracticable. "the winter," says napoleon, "is not the most unfavorable season for the passage of lofty mountains. the snow is then firm, the weather settled, and there is nothing to fear from avalanches, the real and only danger to be apprehended in the alps. on those high mountains, there are often very fine days in december, of a dry cold, with extreme calmness in the air." read his account, too, of the way in which battles are gained. "in all battles, a moment occurs, when the bravest troops, after having made the greatest efforts, feel inclined to run. that terror proceeds from a want of confidence in their own courage; and it only requires a slight opportunity, a pretense, to restore confidence to them. the art is to give rise to the opportunity, and to invent the pretense. at arcola, i won the battle with twenty-five horsemen. i seized that moment of lassitude, gave every man a trumpet, and gained the day with this handful. you see that two armies are two bodies which meet, and endeavor to frighten each other: a moment of panic occurs, and that moment must be turned to advantage. when a man has been present in many actions, he distinguishes that moment without difficulty; it is as easy as casting up an addition." this deputy of the nineteenth century added to his gifts a capacity for speculation on general topics. he delighted in running through the range of practical, of literary, and of abstract questions. his opinion is always original, and to the purpose. on the voyage to egypt, he liked, after dinner, to fix on three or four persons to support a proposition, and as many to oppose it. he gave a subject, and the discussions turned on questions of religion, the different kinds of government, and the art of war. one day, he asked, whether the planets were inhabited? on another, what was the age of the world? then he proposed to consider the probability of the destruction of the globe, either by water or by fire; at another time, the truth or fallacy of presentiments, and the interpretation of dreams. he was very fond of talking of religion. in , he conversed with fournier, bishop of montpelier, on matters of theology. there were two points on which they could not agree, viz., that of hell, and that of salvation out of the pale of the church. the emperor told josephine, that he disputed like a devil on these two points, on which the bishop was inexorable. to the philosophers he readily yielded all that was proved against religion as the work of men and time; but he would not hear of materialism. one fine night, on deck, amid a clatter of materialism, bonaparte pointed to the stars, and said, "you may talk as long as you please, gentlemen, but who made all that?" he delighted in the conversation of men of science, particularly of monge and berthollet; but the men of letters he slighted; "they were manufacturers of phrases." of medicine, too, he was fond of talking, and with those of its practitioners whom he most esteemed,-with corvisart at paris, and with antonomarchi at st. helena. "believe me, "he said to the last, "we had better leave off all these remedies: life is a fortress which neither you nor i know anything about. why throw obstacles in the way of its defense? its own means are superior to all the apparatus of your laboratories. corvisart candidly agreed with me, that all your filthy mixtures are good for nothing. medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which, taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind. water, air, and cleanliness, are the chief articles in my pharmacopeia." his memoirs, dictated to count montholon and general gourgaud, at st. helena, have great value, after all the deduction that, it seems, is to be made from them, on account of his known disingenuousness. he has the goodnature of strength and conscious superiority. i admire his simple, clear narrative of his battles;--good as caesar's; his good-natured and sufficiently respectful account of marshal wurmser and his other antagonists, and his own equality as a writer to his varying subject. the most agreeable portion is the campaign in egypt. he had hours of thought and wisdom. in intervals of leisure, either in the camp or the palace, napoleon appears as a man of genius, directing on abstract questions the native appetite for truth, and the impatience of words, he was wont to show in war. he could enjoy every play of invention, a romance, a _bon mot_, as well as a stratagem in a campaign. he delighted to fascinate josephine and her ladies, in a dim-lighted apartment, by the terrors of a fiction, to which his voice and dramatic power lent every addition. i call napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. he was the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse. of course, the rich and aristocratic did not like him. england, the center of capital, and rome and austria, centers of tradition and genealogy, opposed him. the consternation of the dull and conservative classes, the terror of the foolish old men and old women of the roman conclave,--who in their despair took hold of anything, and would cling to red-hot iron,--the vain attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the emperor of austria to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, ardent, and active men, everywhere, which pointed him out as the giant of the middle class, make his history bright and commanding. he had the virtues of the masses of his constituents; he had also their vices. i am sorry that the brilliant picture has its reverse. but that is the fatal quality which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the sentiments; and it is inevitable that we should find the same fact in the history of this champion, who proposed to himself simply a brilliant career, without any stipulation or scruple concerning the means. bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. the highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and population of the world,--he has not the merit of common truth and honesty. he is unjust to his generals; egotistic, and monopolizing; meanly stealing the credit of their great actions from kellermann, from bernadotte; intriguing to involve his faithful junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in order to drive him to a distance from paris, because the familiarity of his manners offends the new pride of his throne. he is a boundless liar. the official paper, his "moniteurs," and all his bulletins, are proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed; and worse,--he sat, in his premature old age, in his lonely island, coldly falsifying facts, and dates, and characters, and giving to history, a theatrical eclat. like all frenchmen, he has a passion for stage effect. every action that breathes of generosity is poisoned by this calculation. his star, his love of glory, his doctrine of the immortality of the soul, are all french. "i must dazzle and astonish. if i were to give the liberty of the press, my power could not last three days." to make a great noise is his favorite design. "a great reputation is a great noise; the more there is made, the farther off it is heard. laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages." his doctrine of immortality is simply fame. his theory of influence is not flattering. "there are two levers for moving men,--interest and fear. love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. friendship is but a name. i love nobody. i do not even love my brothers; perhaps joseph, a little, from habit, and because he is my elder; and duroc, i love him too; but why?--because his character pleases me; he is stern and resolute, and, i believe, the fellow never shed a tear. for my part, i know very well that i have no true friends. as long as i continue to be what i am, i may have as many pretended friends as i please. leave sensibility to women; but men should be firm in heart and purpose, or they should have nothing to do with war and government." he was thoroughly unscrupulous. he would steal, slander, assassinate, drown, and poison, as his interest dictated. he had no generosity; but mere vulgar hatred; he was intensely selfish; he was perfidious; he cheated at cards; he was a prodigious gossip; and opened letters; and delighted in his infamous police; and rubbed his hands with joy when he had intercepted some morsel of intelligence concerning the men and women about him, boasting that "he knew everything;" and interfered with the cutting the dresses of the women; and listened after the hurrahs and the compliments of the street, incognito. his manners were coarse. he treated women with low familiarity. he had the habit of pulling their ears and pinching their cheeks, when he was in good humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers of men, and of striking and horse-play with them, to his last days. it does not appear that he listened at keyholes, or, at least, that he "was caught at it". in short, when you have penetrated through all the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing with a gentleman, at last; but with an impostor and a rogue; and he fully deserves the epithet of jupiter scapin, or a sort of scamp jupiter. in describing the two parties into which modern society divides itself,--the democrat and the conservative,--i said, bonaparte represents the democrat, or the party of men of business, against the stationary or conservative party. i omitted then to say, what is material to the statement, namely, that these two parties differ only as young and old. the democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. the aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,--because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep. bonaparte may be said to represent the whole history of this party, its youth and its age; yes, and with poetic justice, its fate, in his own. the counter-revolution, the counter-party, still waits for its organ and representative, in a lover and a man of truly public and universal aims. here was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of the powers of intellect without conscience. never was such a leader so endowed, and so weaponed; never leader found such aids and followers. and what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men, of this demoralized europe? it came to no result. all passed away, like the smoke of his artillery and left no trace. he left france smaller, poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole contest for freedom was to be begun again. the attempt was, in principle, suicidal. france served him with life, and limb, and estate, as long as it could identify its interest with him; but when men saw that after victory was another war; after the destruction of armies, new conscriptions; and they who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to the reward,--they could not spend what they had earned, nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux,--they deserted him. men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. it resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand, so that the man cannot open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. so, this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry of france, and of europe, in , was, "enough of him;" "assez de bonaparte." it was not bonaparte's fault. he did all that in him lay, to live and thrive without moral principle. it was the nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world, which baulked and ruined him; and the result, in a million experiments, will be the same. every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. the pacific fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious napoleon. as long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth. only that good profits, which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men. vii. goethe; or, the writer i find a provision in the constitution of the world for the writer or secretary, who is to report the doings of the miraculous spirit of life that everywhere throbs and works. his office is a reception of the facts into the mind, and then a selection of the eminent and characteristic experiences. nature will be reported. all things are engaged in writing their history. the planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. the rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal. the falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone. not a foot steps into the snow, or along the ground, but prints in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of his fellows, and in his own manners and face. the air is full of sounds; the sky, of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures; and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent. in nature, this self-registration is incessant, and the narrative is the print of the seal. it neither exceeds nor comes short of the fact. but nature strives upward; and, in man, the report is something more than print of the seal. it is a new and finer form of the original. the record is alive, as that which it recorded is alive. in man, the memory is a kind of looking-glass, which, having received the images of surrounding objects, is touched with life, and disposes them in a new order. the facts which transpired do not lie in it inert; but some subside, and others shine; so that soon we have a new picture, composed of the eminent experiences. the man cooperates. he loves to communicate; and that which is for him to say lies as a load on his heart until it is delivered. but, besides the universal joy of conversation, some men are born with exalted powers for this second creation. men are born to write. the gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone; his vocation is to be a planter of plants. not less does the writer attend his affairs. whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model, and sits for its picture. he counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. he believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the holy ghost, or attempt it. nothing so broad, so subtle, or so dear, but comes therefore commended to his pen,--and he will write. in his eyes, a man is the faculty of reporting, and the universe is the possibility of being reported. in conversation, in calamity, he finds new materials; as our german poet said, "some god gave me the power to paint what i suffer." he draws his rents from rage and pain. by acting rashly, he buys the power of talking wisely. vexations, and a tempest of passion, only fill his sails; as the good luther writes, "when i am angry i can pray well, and preach well;" and if we knew the genesis of fine-strokes of eloquence, they might recall the complaisance of sultan amurath, who struck off some persian heads, that his physician, vesalius, might see the spasms in the muscles of the neck. his failures are the preparation of his victories. a new thought, or a crisis of passion, apprises him that all that he has yet learned and written is exoteric--is not the fact, but some rumor of the fact. what then? does he throw away the pen? no; he begins again to describe in the new light which has shined on him,--if, by some means, he may yet save some true word. nature conspires. whatever can be thought can be spoken, and still rises for utterance, though to rude and stammering organs. if they cannot compass it, it waits and works, until, at last, it moulds them to its perfect will, and is articulated. this striving after imitative expression, which one meets everywhere, is significant of the aim of nature, but is mere stenography. there are higher degrees, and nature has more splendid endowments for those whom she elects to a superior office; for the class of scholars or writers, who see connection where the multitude see fragments, and who are impelled to exhibit the facts in order, and so to supply the axis on which the frame of things turns. nature has dearly at heart the formation of the speculative man, or scholar. it is an end never lost sight of, and is prepared in the original casting of things. he is no permissive or accidental appearance, but an organic agent, one of the estates of the realm, provided and prepared from of old and from everlasting, in the knitting and contexture of things. presentiments, impulses, cheer him. there is a certain heat in the breast, which attends the perception of a primary truth, which is the shining of the spiritual sun down into the shaft of the mine. every thought which dawns on the mind, in the moment of its emergency announces its own rank,--whether it is some whimsy, or whether it is a power. if he have his incitements, there is, on the other side, invitation and need enough of his gift. society has, at all times, the same want, namely, of one sane man with adequate powers of expression to held up each object of monomania in its right relation. the ambitious and mercenary bring their last new mumbo-jumbo, whether tariff, texas, railroad, romanism, mesmerism, or california; and, by detaching the object from its relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare; and a multitude go mad about it, and they are not to be reproved or cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this particular insanity by an equal frenzy on another crochet. but let one man have the comprehensive eye that can replace this isolated prodigy in its right neighborhood and bearings,--the illusion vanishes, and the returning reason of the community thanks the reason of the monitor. the scholar is the man of the ages, but he must also wish, with other men, to stand well with his contemporaries. but there is a certain ridicule, among superficial people, thrown on the scholars or clerisy, which is of no import, unless the scholars heed it. in this country, the emphasis of conversation, and of public opinion, commends the practical man; and the solid portion of the community is named with significant respect in every circle. our people are of bonaparte's opinion concerning ideologists. ideas are subversive of social order and comfort, and at last make a fool of the possessor. it is believed, the ordering a cargo of goods from new york to smyrna; or, the running up and down to procure a company of subscribers to set a-going five or ten thousand spindles; or, the negotiations of a caucus, and the practising on the prejudices and facility of country-people, to secure their votes in november,--is practical and commendable. if i were to compare action of a much higher strain with a life of contemplation, i should not venture to pronounce with much confidence in favor of the former. mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defense of his life of thought and prayer. a certain partiality, a headiness, and loss of balance, is the tax which all action must pay. act, if you like,--but you do it at your peril. men's actions are too strong for them. show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. what they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. the first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. the fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form and lose the aspiration. the quaker has established quakerism, the shaker has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is anti-spiritual. but where are his new things of today? in actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. the hindoos write in their sacred books, "children only, and not the learned, speak of the speculative and the practical faculties as two. they are but one, for both obtain the selfsame end, and the place which is gained by the followers of the one is gained by the followers of the other. that man seeth, who seeth that the speculative and the practical doctrines are one." for great action must draw on the spiritual nature. the measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. the greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstances. this disparagement will not come from the leaders, but from inferior persons. the robust gentlemen who stand at the head of the practical class, share the ideas of the time, and have too much sympathy with the speculative class. it is not from men excellent in any kind, that disparagement of any other is to be looked for. with such, talleyrand's question is ever the main one; not, is he rich? is he committed? is he well-meaning? has he this or that faculty? is he of the movement? is he of the establishment?--but, is he anybody? does he stand for something? he must be good of his kind. that is all that talleyrand, all that state-street, all that the common sense of mankind asks. be real and admirable, not as we know, but as you know. able men do not care in what kind a man is able, so only that he is able. a master likes a master, and does not stipulate whether it be orator, artist, craftsman, or king. society has really no graver interest than the well-being of the literary class. and it is not to be denied that men are cordial in their recognition and welcome of intellectual accomplishments. still the writer does not stand with us on any commanding ground. i think this to be his own fault. a pound passes for a pound. there have been times when he was a sacred person; he wrote bibles; the first hymns; the codes; the epics; tragic songs; sibylline verses; chaldean oracles; laconian sentences inscribed on temple walls. every word was true, and woke the nations to new life. he wrote without levity, and without choice. every word was carved, before his eyes, into the earth and sky; and the sun and stars were only letters of the same purport; and of no more necessity. but how can he be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public; when he must sustain with shameless advocacy some bad government, or must bark, all the year round, in opposition; or write conventional criticism, or profligate novels; or, at any rate, write without thought, and without recurrence, by day and night, to the sources of inspiration? some reply to these questions may be furnished by looking over the list of men of literary genius in our age. among these, no more instructive name occurs than that of goethe, to represent the power and duties of the scholar or writer. i described bonaparte as a representative of the popular external life and aims of the nineteenth century. its other half, its poet, is goethe, a man quite domesticated in the century, breathing its air, enjoying its fruits, impossible at any earlier time, and taking away, by his colossal parts, the reproach of weakness, which, but for him, would lie on the intellectual works of the period. he appears at a time when a general culture has spread itself, and has smoothed down all sharp individual traits; when, in the absence of heroic characters, a social comfort and cooperation have come in. there is no poet, but scores of poetic writers; no columbus, but hundreds of post-captains, with transit-telescope, barometer, and concentrated soup and pemmican; no demosthenes, no chatham, but any number of clever parliamentary and forensic debaters; no prophet or saint, but colleges of divinity; no learned man, but learned societies, a cheap press, reading-rooms, and book-clubs, without number. there was never such a miscellany of facts. the world extends itself like american trade. we conceive greek or roman life,--life in the middle ages--to be a simple and comprehensive affair; but modern life to respect a multitude of things, which is distracting. goethe was the philosopher of this multiplicity; hundred-handed, argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with this rolling miscellany of facts and sciences, and, by his own versatility, to dispose of them with ease; a manly mind, unembarrassed by the variety of coats of convention with which life had got encrusted, easily able by his subtlety to pierce these, and to draw his strength from nature, with which he lived in full communion. what is strange, too, he lived in a small town, in a petty state, in a defeated state, and in a time when germany played no such leading part in the world's affairs as to swell the bosom of her sons with any metropolitan pride, such as might have cheered a french, or english, or, once, a roman or attic genius. yet there is no trace of provincial limitation in his muse. he is not a debtor to his position, but was born with a free and controlling genius. the helena, or the second part of faust, is a philosophy of literature set in poetry; the work of one who found himself the master of histories, mythologies, philosophies, sciences, and national literatures, in the encyclopaedical manner in which modern erudition, with its international intercourse of the whole earth's population, researches into indian, etruscan, and all cyclopaean arts, geology, chemistry, astronomy; and every one of these kingdoms assuming a certain aerial and poetic character, by reason of the multitude. one looks at a king with reverence; but if one should chance to be at a congress of kings, the eye would take liberties with the peculiarities of each. these are not wild miraculous songs, but elaborate forms, to which the poet has confided the results of eighty years of observation. this reflective and critical wisdom makes the poem more truly the flower of this time. it dates itself. still he is a poet,--poet of a prouder laurel than any contemporary, and under this plague of microscopes (for he seems to see out of every pore of his skin), strikes the harp with a hero's strength and grace. the wonder of the book is its superior intelligence. in the menstruum of this man's wit, the past and the present ages, and their religions, politics, and modes of thinking, are dissolved into archetypes and ideas. what new mythologies sail through his head! the greeks said, that alexander went as far as chaos; goethe went, only the other day, as far; and one step farther he hazarded, and brought himself safe back. there is a heart-cheering freedom in his speculation. the immense horizon which journeys with us lends its majesties to trifles, and to matters of convenience and necessity, as to solemn and festal performances. he was the soul of his century. if that was learned, and had become, by population, compact organization, and drill of parts, one great exploring expedition, accumulating a glut of facts and fruits too fast for any hitherto-existing savants to classify, this man's mind had ample chambers for the distribution of all. he had a power to unite the detached atoms again by their own law. he has clothed our modern existence with poetry. amid littleness and detail, he detected the genius of life, the old cunning proteus, nestling close beside us, and showed that the dullness and prose we ascribe to the age was only another of his masks:--"his very flight is presence in disguise:" that he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue dress, and was not a whit less vivacious or rich in liverpool or the hague, than once in rome or antioch. he sought him in public squares and main streets, in boulevards and hotels; and, in the solidest kingdom of routine and the senses, he showed the lurking daemonic power; that, in actions of routine, a thread of mythology and fable spins itself; and this, by tracing the pedigree of every usage and practice, every institution, utensil, and means, home to its origin in the structure of man. he had an extreme impatience of conjecture, and of rhetoric. "i have guesses enough of my own; if a man write a book, let him set down only what he knows." he writes in the plainest and lowest tone, omitting a great deal more than he writes, and putting ever a thing for a word. he has explained the distinction between the antique and the modern spirit and art. he has defined art, its scope and laws. he has said the best things about nature that ever were said. he treats nature as the old philosophers, as the seven wise masters did,--and, with whatever loss of french tabulation and dissection, poetry and humanity remain to us; and they have some doctorial skill. eyes are better, on the whole, than telescopes or microscopes. he has contributed a key to many parts of nature, through the rare turn for unity and simplicity in his mind. thus goethe suggested the leading idea of modern botany, that a leaf, or the eye of a leaf, is the unit of botany, and that every part of the plant is only a transformed leaf to meet a new condition; and, by varying the conditions, a leaf may be converted into any other organ, and any other organ into a leaf. in like manner, in osteology, he assumed that one vertebra of the spine might be considered the unit of the skeleton; the head was only the uppermost vertebra transformed. "the plant goes from knot to knot, closing, at last, with the flower and the seed. so the tape-worm, the caterpillar, goes from knot to knot, and closes with the head. men and the higher animals are built up through the vertebrae, the powers being concentrated in the head." in optics, again, he rejected the artificial theory of seven colors, and considered that every color was the mixture of light and darkness in new proportions. it is really of very little consequence what topic he writes upon. he sees at every pore, and has a certain gravitation toward truth. he will realize what you say. he hates to be trifled with, and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable, that has had possession of men's faith these thousand years. he may as well see if it is true as another. he sifts it. i am here, he would say, to be the measure and judge of these things. why should i take them on trust? and, therefore, what he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, of manners, property, of paper money, of periods or beliefs, of omens, of luck, or whatever else, refuses to be forgotten. take the most remarkable example that could occur of this tendency to verify every term in popular use. the devil had played an important part in mythology in all times. goethe would have no word that does not cover a thing. the same measure will still serve: "i have never heard of any crime which i might not have committed." so he flies at the throat of this imp. he shall be real; he shall be modern; he shall be european; he shall dress like a gentleman, and accept the manner, and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the life of vienna, and of heidelberg, in ,--or he shall not exist. accordingly, he stripped him of mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail, brimstone, and blue-fire, and, instead of looking in books and pictures, looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of coldness, selfishness, and unbelief that, in crowds, or in solitude, darkens over the human thought,--and found that the portrait gained reality and terror by everything he added, and by everything he took away. he found that the essence of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow about the habitations of men, ever since they were men, was pure intellect, applied,--as always there is a tendency,--to the service of the senses: and he flung into literature, in his mephistopheles, the first organic figure that has been added for some ages, and which will remain as long as the prometheus. i have no design to enter into any analysis of his numerous works. they consist of translations, criticisms, dramas, lyric and every other description of poems, literary journals, and portraits of distinguished men. yet i cannot omit to specify the wilhelm meister. wilhelm meister is a novel in every sense, the first of its kind, called by its admirers the only delineation of modern society,--as if other novels, those of scott, for example, dealt with costume and condition, this with the spirit of life. it is a book over which some veil is still drawn. it is read by very intelligent persons with wonder and delight. it is preferred by some such to hamlet, as a work of genius. i suppose no book of this century can compare with it in its delicious sweetness, so new, so provoking to the mind, gratifying it with so many and so solid thoughts, just insights into life, and manners, and characters; so many good hints for the conduct of life, so many unexpected glimpses into a higher sphere, and never a trace of rhetoric or dullness. a very provoking book to the curiosity of young men of genius, but a very unsatisfactory one. lovers of light reading, those who look in it for the entertainment they find in a romance, are disappointed. on the other hand, those who begin it with the higher hope to read in it a worthy history of genius, and the just award of the laurels to its toils and denials, have also reason to complain. we had an english romance here, not long ago, professing to embody the hope of a new age, and to unfold the political hope of the party called "young england," in which the only reward of virtue is a seat in parliament, and a peerage. goethe's romance has a conclusion as lame and immoral. george sand, in consuelo and its continuation, has sketched a truer and more dignified picture. in the progress of the story, the characters of the hero and heroine expand at a rate that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic convention: they quit the society and habits of their rank; they lose their wealth; they become the servants of great ideas, and of the most generous social ends; until, at last, the hero, who is the center and fountain of an association for the rendering of the noblest benefits to the human race, no longer answers to his own titled name: it sounds foreign and remote in his ear. "i am only man," he says; "i breathe and work for man," and this in poverty and extreme sacrifices. goethe's hero, on the contrary, has so many weaknesses and impurities, and keeps such bad company, that the sober english public, when the book was translated, were disgusted. and yet it is so crammed with wisdom, with knowledge of the world, and with knowledge of laws; the persons so truly and subtly drawn, and with such few strokes, and not a word too much, the book remains ever so new and unexhausted, that we must even let it go its way, and be willing to get what good from it we can, assured that it has only begun its office, and has millions of readers yet to serve. the argument is the passage of a democrat to the aristocracy, using both words in their best sense. and this passage is not made in any mean or creeping way, but through the hall door. nature and character assist, and the rank is made real by sense and probity in the nobles. no generous youth can escape this charm of reality in the book, so that it is highly stimulating to intellect and courage. the ardent and holy novalis characterized the book as "thoroughly modern and prosaic; the romantic is completely leveled in it; so is the poetry of nature; the wonderful. the book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. the wonderful in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming:"--and yet, what is also characteristic, novalis soon returned to this book, and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life. what distinguishes goethe for french and english readers, is a property which he shares with his nation,--a habitual reference to interior truth. in england and in america there is a respect for talent; and, if it is exerted in support of any ascertained or intelligible interest or party, or in regular opposition to any, the public is satisfied. in france, there is even a greater delight in intellectual brilliancy, for its own sake. and, in all these countries, men of talent write from talent. it is enough if the understanding is occupied, the taste propitiated,--so many columns so many hours, filled in a lively and creditable way. the german intellect wants the french sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the english, and the american adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, to what end? a german public asks for a controlling sincerity. here is activity of thought; but what is it for? what does the man mean? whence, whence, all these thoughts? talent alone cannot make a writer. there must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise; holding things because they are things. if he cannot rightly express himself to-day, the same things subsist, and will open themselves to-morrow. there lies the burden on his mind--the burden of truth to be declared,--more or less understood; and it constitutes his business and calling in the world, to see those facts through, and to make them known. what signifies that he trips and stammers; that his voice is harsh or hissing; that this method or his tropes are inadequate? that message will find method and imagery, articulation and melody. though he were dumb, it would speak. if not,--if there be no such god's word in the man,--what care we how adroit, how fluent, how brilliant he is? it makes a great difference to the force of any sentence, whether there be a man behind it, or no. in the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, i discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corporation, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. but, through every clause and part of speech of a right book, i meet the eyes of the most determined of men: his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble,--can go far and live long. in england and america, one may be an adept in the writing of a greek or latin poet, without any poetic taste or fire. that a man has spent years on plato and proclus, does not afford a presumption that he holds heroic opinions, or undervalues the fashions of his town. but the german nation have the most ridiculous good faith on these subjects: the student, out of the lecture-room, still broods on the lessons; and the professor cannot divest himself of the fancy, that the truths of philosophy have some application to berlin and munich. this earnestness enables them to out-see men of much more talent. hence, almost all the valuable distinctions which are current in higher conversation, have been derived to us from germany. but, whilst men distinguished for wit and learning, in england and france, adopt their study and their side with a certain levity, and are not understood to be very deeply engaged, from grounds of character, to the topic or the part they espouse,--goethe, the head and body of the german nation, does not speak from talent, but the truth shines through: he is very wise, though his talent often veils his wisdom. however excellent his sentence is, he has somewhat better in view. it awakens my curiosity. he has the formidable independence which converse with truth gives: hear you, or forbear, his fact abides; and your interest in the writer is not confined to his story, and he dismissed from memory, when he has performed his task creditably, as a baker when he has left his loaf; but his work is the least part of him. the old eternal genius who built the world has confided himself more to this man than to any other. i dare not say that goethe ascended to the highest grounds from which genius has spoken. he has not worshipped the highest unity; he is incapable of a self-surrender to the moral sentiment. there are nobler strains in poetry than any he has sounded. there are writers poorer in talent, whose tone is purer, and more touches the heart. goethe can never be dear to men. his is not even the devotion to pure truth; but to truth for the sake of culture. he has no aims less large than the conquest of universal nature, of universal truth, to be his portion; a man not to be bribed, nor deceived, nor overawed; of a stoical self- command and self-denial, and having one test for all men,--what can you teach me? all possessions are valued by him for that only; rank, privileges, health, time, being itself. he is the type of culture, the amateur of all arts, and sciences, and events; artistic, but not artist; spiritual, but not spiritualist. there is nothing he had not right to know; there is no weapon in the army of universal genius he did not take into his hand, but with peremptory heed that he should not be for a moment prejudiced by his instruments. he lays a ray of light under every fact, and between himself and his dearest property. from him nothing was hid, nothing withholden. the lurking daemons sat to him, and the saint who saw the daemons; and the metaphysical elements took form. "piety itself is no aim, but only a means whereby, through purest inward peace, we may attain to highest culture." and his penetration of every secret of the fine arts will make goethe still more statuesque. his affections help him, like women employed by cicero to worm out the secret of conspirators. enmities he has none. enemy of him you may be,--if so you shall teach him aught which your good-will cannot,--were it only what experience will accrue from your ruin. enemy and welcome, but enemy on high terms. he cannot hate anybody; his time is worth too much. temperamental antagonisms may be suffered, but like feuds of emperors, who fight dignifiedly across kingdoms. his autobiography, under the title of "poetry and truth out of my life," is the expression of the idea,--now familiar to the world through the german mind, but a novelty to england, old and new, when that book appeared,--that a man exists for culture; not for what he can accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him. the reaction of things on the man is the only noteworthy result. an intellectual man can see himself as a third person; therefore his faults and delusions interest him equally with his successes. though he wishes to prosper in affairs, he wishes more to know the history and destiny of man; whilst the clouds of egotists drifting about him are only interested in a low success. this idea reigns in the _dichtung und wahrheit_, and directs the selection of the incidents; and nowise the external importance of events, the rank of the personages, or the bulk of incomes. of course, the book affords slender materials for what would be reckoned with us a "life of goethe;"--few dates; no correspondence; no details of offices or employments; no light on his marriage; and, a period of ten years, that should be the most active in his life, after his settlement at weimar, is sunk in silence. meantime, certain love-affairs, that came to nothing, as people say, have the strangest importance: he crowds us with detail:--certain whimsical opinions, cosmogonies, and religions of his own invention, and, especially his relations to remarkable minds, and to critical epochs of thought:--these he magnifies. his "daily and yearly journal," his "italian travels," his "campaign in france" and the historical part of his "theory of colors," have the same interest. in the last, he rapidly notices kepler, roger bacon, galileo, newton, voltaire, etc.; and the charm of this portion of the book consists in the simplest statement of the relation betwixt these grandees of european scientific history and himself; the mere drawing of the lines from goethe to kepler, from goethe to bacon, from goethe to newton. the drawing of the line is for the time and person, a solution of the formidable problem, and gives pleasure when iphigenia and faust do not, without any cost of invention comparable to that of iphigenia and faust. this law giver of art is not an artist. was it that he knew too much, that his sight was microscopic, and interfered with the just perspective, the seeing of the whole? he is fragmentary; a writer of occasional poems, and of an encyclopaedia of sentences. when he sits down to write a drama or a tale, he collects and sorts his observations from a hundred sides, and combines them into the body as fitly as he can. a great deal refuses to incorporate: this he adds loosely, as letters, of the parties, leaves from their journals, or the like. a great deal still is left that will not find any place. this the bookbinder alone can give any cohesion to: and, hence, notwithstanding the looseness of many of his works, we have volumes of detached paragraphs, aphorisms, xenien, etc. i suppose the worldly tone of his tales grew out of the calculations of self-culture. it was the infirmity of an admirable scholar, who loved the world out of gratitude; who knew where libraries, galleries, architecture, laboratories, savants, and leisure, were to be had, and who did not quite trust the compensations of poverty and nakedness. socrates loved athens; montaigne, paris; and madame de stael said, she was only vulnerable on that side (namely, of paris). it has its favorable aspect. all the geniuses are usually so ill-assorted and sickly, that one is ever wishing them somewhere else. we seldom see anybody who is not uneasy or afraid to live. there is a slight blush of shame on the cheek of good men and aspiring men, and a spice of caricature. but this man was entirely at home and happy in his century and the world. none was so fit to live, or more heartily enjoyed the game. in this aim of culture, which is the genius of his works, is their power. the idea of absolute, eternal truth, without reference to my own enlargement by it, is higher. the surrender to the torrent, of poetic inspiration is higher; but compared with any motives on which books are written in england and america, this is very truth, and has the power to inspire which belongs to truth. thus has he brought back to a book some of its ancient might and dignity. goethe, coming into an over-civilized time and country, when original talent was oppressed under the load of books, and mechanical auxiliaries, and the distracting variety of claims, taught men how to dispose of this mountainous miscellany, and make it subservient. i join napoleon with him, as being both representatives of the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue of conventions,--two stern realists, who, with their scholars, have severally set the axe at the root of the tree of cant and seeming, for this time, and for all time. this cheerful laborer, with no external popularity or provocation, drawing his motive and his plan from his own breast, tasked himself with stints for a giant, and, without relaxation or rest, except by alternating his pursuits, worked on for eighty years with the steadiness of his first zeal. it is the last lesson of modern science, that the highest simplicity of structure is produced, not by few elements, but by the highest complexity. man is the most composite of all creatures: the wheel-insect, volvox globator, is at the other extreme. we shall learn to draw rents and revenues from the immense patrimony of the old and recent ages. goethe teaches courage, and the equivalence of all times: that the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted. genius hovers with his sunshine and music close by the darkest and deafest eras. no mortgage, no attainder, will hold on men or hours. the world is young; the former great men call to us affectionately. we too must write bibles, to unite again the heavens and the earthly world. the secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know; in the high refinement of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality, and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honor every truth by use. the end. the works of johann wolfgang von goethe translators thomas carlyle henry w. longfellow sir walter scott bayard taylor edward chawner chas. j. sprague leopold noa henry dale john oxenford theodore martin w. e. aytoun e. a. bowring a. j. w. morrison g. h. lewes j. s. dwight anna swanwick the gottingen edition of johann wolfgang von goethe's works is limited to one thousand copies, of which this is number [illustration: picture of goethe] gottingen edition autobiography truth and fiction relating to my life johann wolfgang von goethe translated by john oxenford volume i. philadelphia and chicago j. h. moore and company introduction. by thomas carlyle. it would appear that for inquirers into foreign literature, for all men anxious to see and understand the european world as it lies around them, a great problem is presented in this goethe; a singular, highly significant phenomenon, and now also means more or less complete for ascertaining its significance. a man of wonderful, nay, unexampled reputation and intellectual influence among forty millions of reflective, serious and cultivated men, invites us to study him; and to determine for ourselves, whether and how far such influence has been salutary, such reputation merited. that this call will one day be answered, that goethe will be seen and judged of in his real character among us, appears certain enough. his name, long familiar everywhere, has now awakened the attention of critics in all european countries to his works: he is studied wherever true study exists: eagerly studied even in france; nay, some considerable knowledge of his nature and spiritual importance seems already to prevail there. [footnote: witness /le tasse, drame par duval,/ and the criticisms on it. see also the essays in the /globe,/ nos. , ( ).] for ourselves, meanwhile, in giving all due weight to so curious an exhibition of opinion, it is doubtless our part, at the same time, to beware that we do not give it too much. this universal sentiment of admiration is wonderful, is interesting enough; but it must not lead us astray. we english stand as yet without the sphere of it; neither will we plunge blindly in, but enter considerately, or, if we see good, keep aloof from it altogether. fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property, of a man; like light, it can give little or nothing, but at most may show what is given; often it is but a false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending by casual extrinsic splendour the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. a man is in all cases simply the man, of the same intrinsic worth and weakness, whether his worth and weakness lie hidden in the depths of his own consciousness, or be betrumpeted and beshouted from end to end of the habitable globe. these are plain truths, which no one should lose sight of; though, whether in love or in anger, for praise or for condemnation, most of us are too apt to forget them. but least of all can it become the critic to 'follow a multitude to do evil' even when that evil is excess of admiration; on the contrary, it will behoove him to lift up his voice, how feeble soever, how unheeded soever, against the common delusion; from which, if he can save, or help to save any mortal, his endeavours will have been repaid. with these things in some measure before us, we must remind our readers of another influence at work in this affair, and one acting, as we think, in the contrary direction. that pitiful enough desire for 'originality' which lurks and acts in all minds, will rather, we imagine, lead the critic of foreign literature to adopt the negative than the affirmative with regard to goethe. if a writer indeed feel that he is writing for england alone, invisibly and inaudibly to the rest of the earth, the temptations may be pretty equally balanced; if he write for some small conclave, which he mistakenly thinks the representative of england, they may sway this way or that, as it chances. but writing in such isolated spirit is no longer possible. traffic, with its swift ships, is uniting all nations into one; europe at large is becoming more and more one public; and in this public, the voices for goethe, compared with those against him, are in the proportion, as we reckon them, both as to the number and value, of perhaps a hundred to one. we take in, not germany alone, but france and italy; not the schlegels and schellings, but the manzonis and de staels. the bias of originality, therefore, may lie to the side of censure; and whoever among us shall step forward, with such knowledge as our common critics have of goethe, to enlighten the european public, by contradiction in this matter, displays a heroism, which, in estimating his other merits, ought nowise to be forgotten. our own view of the case coincides, we confess, in some degree with that of the majority. we reckon that goethe's fame has, to a considerable extent, been deserved; that his influence has been of high benefit to his own country; nay more, that it promises to be of benefit to us, and to all other nations. the essential grounds of this opinion, which to explain minutely were a long, indeed boundless task, we may state without many words. we find, then, in goethe, an artist, in the high and ancient meaning of that term; in the meaning which it may have borne long ago among the masters of italian painting, and the fathers of poetry in england; we say that we trace in the creations of this man, belonging in every sense to our own time, some touches of that old, divine spirit, which had long passed away from among us, nay which, as has often been laboriously demonstrated, was not to return to this world any more. or perhaps we come nearer our meaning, if we say that in goethe we discover by far the most striking instance, in our time, of a writer who is, in strict speech, what philosophy can call a man. he is neither noble nor plebeian, neither liberal nor servile, nor infidel nor devotee; but the best excellence of all these, joined in pure union; 'a clear and universal man.' goethe's poetry is no separate faculty, no mental handicraft; but the voice of the whole harmonious manhood: nay it is the very harmony, the living and life-giving harmony of that rich manhood which forms his poetry. all good men may be called poets in act, or in word; all good poets are so in both. but goethe besides appears to us as a person of that deep endowment, and gifted vision, of that experience also and sympathy in the ways of all men, which qualify him to stand forth, not only as the literary ornament, but in many respects too as the teacher and exemplar of his age. for, to say nothing of his natural gifts, he has cultivated himself and his art, he has studied how to live and to write, with a fidelity, an unwearied earnestness, of which there is no other living instance; of which, among british poets especially, wordsworth alone offers any resemblance. and this in our view is the result. to our minds, in these soft, melodious imaginations of his, there is embodied the wisdom which is proper to this time; the beautiful, the religious wisdom, which may still, with something of its old impressiveness, speak to the whole soul; still, in these hard, unbelieving utilitarian days, reveal to us glimpses of the unseen but not unreal world, that so the actual and the ideal may again meet together, and clear knowledge be again wedded to religion, in the life and business of men. such is our conviction or persuasion with regard to the poetry of goethe. could we demonstrate this opinion to be true, could we even exhibit it with that degree of clearness and consistency which it has attained in our own thoughts, goethe were, on our part, sufficiently recommended to the best attention of all thinking men. but, unhappily, it is not a subject susceptible of demonstration: the merits and characteristics of a poet are not to be set forth by logic; but to be gathered by personal, and as in this case it must be, by deep and careful inspection of his works. nay goethe's world is everyway so different from ours; it costs us such effort, we have so much to remember, and so much to forget, before we can transfer ourselves in any measure into his peculiar point of vision, that a right study of him, for an englishman, even of ingenuous, open, inquisitive mind, becomes unusually difficult; for a fixed, decided, contemptuous englishman, next to impossible. to a reader of the first class, helps may be given, explanations will remove many a difficulty; beauties that lay hidden may be made apparent; and directions, adapted to his actual position, will at length guide him into the proper tract for such an inquiry. all this, however, must be a work of progression and detail. to do our part in it, from time to time, must rank among the best duties of an english foreign review. meanwhile, our present endeavour limits itself within far narrower bounds. we cannot aim to make goethe known, but only to prove that he is worthy of being known; at most, to point out, as it were afar off, the path by which some knowledge of him may be obtained. a slight glance at his general literary character and procedure, and one or two of his chief productions which throw light on these, must for the present suffice. a french diplomatic personage, contemplating goethe's physiognomy, is said to have observed: /voila un homme qui a eu beaucoup de chagrins./ a truer version of the matter, goethe himself seems to think, would have been: here is a man who has struggled toughly; who has /es sich recht sauer werden lassen./ goethe's life, whether as a writer and thinker, or as a living active man, has indeed been a life of effort, of earnest toilsome endeavour after all excellence. accordingly, his intellectual progress, his spiritual and moral history, as it may be gathered from his successive works, furnishes, with us, no small portion of the pleasure and profit we derive from perusing them. participating deeply in all the influences of his age, he has from the first, at every new epoch, stood forth to elucidate the new circumstances of the time; to offer the instruction, the solace, which that time required. his literary life divides itself into two portions widely different in character: the products of the first, once so new and original, have long either directly or through the thousand thousand imitations of them, been familiar to us; with the products of the second, equally original, and in our day far more precious, we are yet little acquainted. these two classes of works stand curiously related with each other; at first view, in strong contradiction, yet, in truth, connected together by the strictest sequence. for goethe has not only suffered and mourned in bitter agony under the spiritual perplexities of his time; but he has also mastered these, he is above them, and has shown others how to rise above them. at one time, we found him in darkness, and now he is in light; he was once an unbeliever, and now he is a believer; and he believes, moreover, not by denying his unbelief, but by following it out; not by stopping short, still less turning back, in his inquiries, but by resolutely prosecuting them. this, it appears to us, is a case of singular interest, and rarely exemplified, if at all elsewhere, in these our days. how has this man, to whom the world once offered nothing but blackness, denial and despair, attained to that better vision which now shows it to him, not tolerable only, but full of solemnity and loveliness? how has the belief of a saint been united in this high and true mind with the clearness of a sceptic; the devout spirit of a fenelon made to blend in soft harmony with the gaiety, the sarcasm, the shrewdness of a voltaire? goethe's two earliest works are /götz von berlichingen/ and the /sorrows of werter/. the boundless influence and popularity they gained, both at home and abroad, is well known. it was they that established almost at once his literary fame in his own country; and even determined his subsequent private history, for they brought him into contact with the duke of weimar; in connection with whom, the poet, engaged in manifold duties, political as well as literary, has lived for fifty-four years. their effects over europe at large were not less striking than in germany. 'it would be difficult,' observes a writer on this subject, 'to name two books which have exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature of europe, than these two performances of a young author; his first-fruits, the produce of his twenty-fourth year. /werter/ appeared to seize the hearts of men in all quarters of the world, and to utter for them the word which they had long been waiting to hear. as usually happens, too, this same word, once uttered, was soon abundantly repeated; spoken in all dialects, and chaunted through all notes of the gamut, till the sound of it had grown a weariness rather than a pleasure. sceptical sentimentality, view-hunting, love, friendship, suicide, and desperation, became the staple of literary ware; and though the epidemic, after a long course of years, subsided in germany, it reappeared with various modifications in other countries, and everywhere abundant traces of its good and bad effects are still to be discerned. the fortune of /berlichingen with the iron hand,/ though less sudden, was by no means less exalted. in his own county, /götz,/ though he now stands solitary and childless, became the parent of an innumerable progeny of chivalry plays, feudal delineations, and poetico- antiquarian performances; which, though long ago deceased, made noise enough in their day and generation: and with ourselves, his influence has been perhaps still more remarkable. sir walter scott's first literary enterprise was a translation of /götz von berlichingen/; and, if genius could be communicated like instruction, we might call this work of goethe's the prime cause of /marmion/ and the /lady of the lake/, with all that has followed from the same creative hand. truly, a grain of seed that has lighted on the right soil! for if not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree; and all the nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its fruit. 'but overlooking these spiritual genealogies, which bring little certainty and little profit, it may be sufficient to observe of /berlichingen/ and /werter/, that they stand prominent among the causes, or, at the very least, among the signals of a great change in modern literature. the former directed men's attention with a new force to the picturesque effects of the past; and the latter, for the first time, attempted the more accurate delineation of a class of feelings deeply important to modern minds, but for which our elder poetry offered no exponent, and perhaps could offer none, because they are feelings that arise from passion incapable of being converted into action, and belong chiefly to an age as indolent, cultivated and unbelieving as our own. this, notwithstanding the dash of falsehood which may exist in /werter/ itself, and the boundless delirium of extravagance which it called forth in others, is a high praise which cannot justly be denied it.' to the same dark wayward mood, which, in /werter/, pours itself forth in bitter wailings over human life; and, in /berlichingen/, appears as a fond and sad looking back into the past, belong various other productions of goethe's; for example, the /mitschuldigen/, and the first idea of faust, which, however, was not realized in actual composition till a calmer period of his history. of this early harsh and crude, yet fervid and genial period, /werter/ may stand here as the representative; and, viewed in its external and internal relation, will help to illustrate both the writer and the public he was writing for. at the present day, it would be difficult for us, satisfied, nay sated to nausea, as we have been with the doctrines of sentimentality, to estimate the boundless interest which /werter/ must have excited when first given to the world. it was then new in all senses; it was wonderful, yet wished for, both in its own country and in every other. the literature of germany had as yet but partially awakened from its long torpor: deep learning, deep reflection, have at no time been wanting there; but the creative spirit had for above a century been almost extinct. of late, however, the ramlers, rabeners, gellerts, had attained to no inconsiderable polish of style; klopstock's /messias/ had called forth the admiration, and perhaps still more the pride, of the country, as a piece of art; a high enthusiasm was abroad; lessing had roused the minds of men to a deeper and truer interest in literature, had even decidedly begun to introduce a heartier, warmer and more expressive style. the germans were on the alert; in expectation, or at least in full readiness for some far bolder impulse; waiting for the poet that might speak to them from the heart to the heart. it was in goethe that such a poet was to be given them. nay, the literature of other countries, placid, self-satisfied as they might seem, was in an equally expectant condition. everywhere, as in germany, there was polish and languor, external glitter and internal vacuity; it was not fire, but a picture of fire, at which no soul could be warmed. literature had sunk from its former vocation: it no longer held the mirror up to nature; no longer reflected, in many-coloured expressive symbols, the actual passions, the hopes, sorrows, joys of living men; but dwelt in a remote conventional world in /castles of otranto/, in /epigoniads/ and /leonidases/, among clear, metallic heroes, and white, high, stainless beauties, in whom the drapery and elocution were nowise the least important qualities. men thought it right that the heart should swell into magnanimity with caractacus and cato, and melt into sorrow with many an eliza and adelaide; but the heart was in no haste either to swell or to melt. some pulses of heroical sentiment, a few /un/natural tears might, with conscientious readers, be actually squeezed forth on such occasions: but they came only from the surface of the mind; nay, had the conscientious man considered the matter, he would have found that they ought not to have come at all. our only english poet of the period was goldsmith; a pure, clear, genuine spirit, had he been of depth or strength sufficient; his /vicar of wakefield/ remains the best of all modern idyls; but it is and was nothing more. and consider our leading writers; consider the poetry of gray, and the prose of johnson. the first a laborious mosaic, through the hard stiff lineaments of which little life or true grace could be expected to look: real feeling, and all freedom of expressing it, are sacrificed to pomp, to cold splendour; for vigour we have a certain mouthing vehemence, too elegant indeed to be tumid, yet essentially foreign to the heart, and seen to extend no deeper than the mere voice and gestures. were it not for his /letters/, which are full of warm exuberant power, we might almost doubt whether gray was a man of genius; nay, was a living man at all, and not rather some thousand-times more cunningly devised poetical turning-loom, than that of swift's philosophers in laputa. johnson's prose is true, indeed, and sound, and full of practical sense: few men have seen more clearly into the motives, the interests, the whole walk and conversation of the living busy world as it lay before him; but farther than this busy, and to most of us, rather prosaic world, he seldom looked: his instruction is for men of business, and in regard to matters of business alone. prudence is the highest virtue he can inculcate; and for that finer portion of our nature, that portion of it which belongs essentially to literature strictly so called, where our highest feelings, our best joys and keenest sorrows, our doubt, our love, our religion reside, he has no word to utter; no remedy, no counsel to give us in our straits; or at most, if, like poor boswell, the patient is importunate, will answer: "my dear sir, endeavour to clear your mind of cant." the turn which philosophical speculation had taken in the preceding age corresponded with this tendency, and enhanced its narcotic influences; or was, indeed, properly speaking, the loot they had sprung from. locke, himself a clear, humble-minded, patient, reverent, nay religious man, had paved the way for banishing religion from the world. mind, by being modelled in men's imaginations into a shape, a visibility; and reasoned of as if it had been some composite, divisible and reunitable substance, some finer chemical salt, or curious piece of logical joinery,--began to lose its immaterial, mysterious, divine though invisible character: it was tacitly figured as something that might, were our organs fine enough, be /seen/. yet who had ever seen it? who could ever see it? thus by degrees it passed into a doubt, a relation, some faint possibility; and at last into a highly-probable nonentity. following locke's footsteps, the french had discovered that 'as the stomach secretes chyle, so does the brain secrete thought.' and what then was religion, what was poetry, what was all high and heroic feeling? chiefly a delusion; often a false and pernicious one. poetry, indeed, was still to be preserved; because poetry was a useful thing: men needed amusement, and loved to amuse themselves with poetry: the playhouse was a pretty lounge of an evening; then there were so many precepts, satirical, didactic, so much more impressive for the rhyme; to say nothing of your occasional verses, birthday odes, epithalamiums, epicediums, by which 'the dream of existence may be so highly sweetened and embellished.' nay, does not poetry, acting on the imaginations of men, excite them to daring purposes; sometimes, as in the case of tyrtaeus, to fight better; in which wise may it not rank as a useful stimulant to man, along with opium and scotch whisky, the manufacture of which is allowed by law? in heaven's name, then, let poetry be preserved. with religion, however, it fared somewhat worse. in the eyes of voltaire and his disciples, religion was a superfluity, indeed a nuisance. here, it is true, his followers have since found that he went too far; that religion, being a great sanction to civil morality, is of use for keeping society in order, at least the lower classes, who have not the feeling of honour in due force; and therefore, as a considerable help to the constable and hangman, /ought/ decidedly to be kept up. but such toleration is the fruit only of later days. in those times, there was no question but how to get rid of it, root and branch, the sooner the better. a gleam of zeal, nay we will call it, however basely alloyed, a glow of real enthusiasm and love of truth, may have animated the minds of these men, as they looked abroad on the pestilent jungle of superstition, and hoped to clear the earth of it forever. this little glow, so alloyed, so contaminated with pride and other poor or bad admixtures, was the last which thinking men were to experience in europe for a time. so it is always in regard to religious belief, how degraded and defaced soever: the delight of the destroyer and denier is no pure delight, and must soon pass away. with bold, with skilful hand, voltaire set his torch to the jungle: it blazed aloft to heaven; and the flame exhilarated and comforted the incendiaries; but, unhappily, such comfort could not continue. ere long this flame, with its cheerful light and heat, was gone: the jungle, it is true, had been consumed; but, with its entanglements, its shelter and its spots of verdure also; and the black, chill, ashy swamp, left in its stead, seemed for a time a greater evil than the other. in such a state of painful obstruction, extending itself everywhere over europe, and already master of germany, lay the general mind, when goethe first appeared in literature. whatever belonged to the finer nature of man had withered under the harmattan breath of doubt, or passed away in the conflagration of open infidelity; and now, where the tree of life once bloomed and brought fruit of goodliest savour there was only barrenness and desolation. to such as could find sufficient interest in the day-labour and day-wages of earthly existence; in the resources of the five bodily senses, and of vanity, the only mental sense which yet flourished, which flourished indeed with gigantic vigour, matters were still not so bad. such men helped themselves forward, as they will generally do; and found the world, if not an altogether proper sphere (for every man, disguise it as he may, has a /soul/ in him), at least a tolerable enough place; where, by one item or another, some comfort, or show of comfort, might from time to time be got up, and these few years, especially since they were so few, be spent without much murdering. but to men afflicted with the 'malady of thought,' some devoutness of temper was an inevitable heritage; to such the noisy forum of the world could appear but an empty, altogether insufficient concern; and the whole scene of life had become hopeless enough. unhappily, such feelings are yet by no means so infrequent with ourselves, that we need stop here to depict them. that state of unbelief from which the germans do seem to be in some measure delivered, still presses with incubus force on the greater part of europe; and nation after nation, each in its own way, feels that the first of all moral problems is how to cast it off, or how to rise above it. governments naturally attempt the first expedient; philosophers, in general, the second. the poet, says schiller, is a citizen not only of his country, but of his time. whatever occupies and interests men in general, will interest him still more. that nameless unrest, the blind struggle of a soul in bondage, that high, sad, longing discontent, which was agitating every bosom, had driven goethe almost to despair. all felt it; he alone could give it voice. and here lies the secret of his popularity; in his deep, susceptive heart, he felt a thousand times more keenly what every one was feeling; with the creative gift which belonged to him as a poet, he bodied it forth into visible shape, gave it a local habitation and a name; and so made himself the spokesman of his generation. /werter/ is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain, under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing: it paints the misery, it passionately utters the complaint; and heart and voice, all over europe, loudly and at once respond to it. true, it prescribes no remedy; for that was a far different, far harder enterprise, to which other years and a higher culture were required; but even this utterance of the pain, even this little, for the present, is ardently grasped at, and with eager sympathy appropriated in every bosom. if byron's life-weariness, his moody melancholy, and mad stormful indignation, borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless melody, could pierce so deep into many a british heart, now that the whole matter is no longer new,--is indeed old and trite,--we may judge with what vehement acceptance this /werter/ must have been welcomed, coming as it did like a voice from unknown regions; the first thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge, which, in country after country, men's ears have listened to, till they were deaf to all else. for /werter/ infusing itself into the core and whole spirit of literature, gave birth to a race of sentimentalists, who have raged and wailed in every part of the world, till better light dawned on them, or at worst, exhausted nature laid herself to sleep, and it was discovered that lamenting was an unproductive labour. these funereal choristers, in germany a loud, haggard, tumultuous, as well as tearful class, were named the /kraftmänner/ or power-men; but have all long since, like sick children, cried themselves to rest. byron was our english sentimentalist and power-man; the strongest of his kind in europe; the wildest, the gloomiest, and it may be hoped the last. for what good is it to 'whine, put finger i' the eye, and sob,' in such a case? still more, to snarl and snap in malignant wise, 'like dog distract, or monkey sick?' why should we quarrel with our existence, here as it lies before us, our field and inheritance, to make or mar, for better or for worse; in which, too, so many noblest men have, even from the beginning, warring with the very evils we war with, both made and been what will be venerated to all time? a wide and everyway most important interval divides /werter/, with its sceptical philosophy and 'hypochondriacal crotchets,' from goethe's next novel, /wilhelm meister's apprenticeship/, published some twenty years afterwards. this work belongs, in all senses, to the second and sounder period of goethe's life, and may indeed serve as the fullest, if perhaps not the purest, impress of it; being written with due forethought, at various times, during a period of no less than ten years. considered as a piece of art, there were much to be said on /meister/; all which, however, lies beyond our present purpose. we are here looking at the work chiefly as a document for the writer's history; and in this point of view, it certainly seems, as contrasted with its more popular precursor, to deserve our best attention: for the problem which had been stated in /werter/, with despair of its solution, is here solved. the lofty enthusiasm, which, wandering wildly over the universe, found no resting-place, has here reached its appointed home; and lives in harmony with what long appeared to threaten it with annihilation. anarchy has now become peace; the once gloomy and perturbed spirit is now serene, cheerfully vigorous, and rich in good fruits. neither, which is most important of all, has this peace been attained by a surrender to necessity, or any compact with delusion; a seeming blessing, such as years and dispiritment will of themselves bring to most men, and which is indeed no blessing, since even continued battle is better than destruction or captivity; and peace of this sort is like that of galgacus's romans, who 'called it peace when they had made a desert.' here the ardent high-aspiring youth has grown into the calmest man, yet with increase and not loss of ardour, and with aspirations higher as well as clearer. for he has conquered his unbelief; the ideal has been built on the actual; no longer floats vaguely in darkness and regions of dreams, but rests in light, on the firm ground of human interest and business, as in its true scene, on its true basis. it is wonderful to see with, what softness the scepticism of jarno, the commercial spirit of werner, the reposing polished manhood of lothario and the uncle, the unearthly enthusiasm of the harper, the gay animal vivacity of philina, the mystic, ethereal, almost spiritual nature of mignon, are blended together in this work; how justice is done to each, how each lives freely in his proper element, in his proper form; and how, as wilhelm himself, the mild-hearted, all-hoping, all-believing wilhelm, struggles forward towards his world of art through these curiously complected influences, all this unites itself into a multifarious, yet so harmonious whole; as into a clear poetic mirror, where man's life and business in this age, his passions and purposes, the highest equally with the lowest, are imaged back to us in beautiful significance. poetry and prose are no longer at variance; for the poet's eyes are opened; he sees the changes of many-colored existence, and sees the loveliness and deep purport which lies hidden under the very meanest of them; hidden to the vulgar sight, but clear to the poet's; because the 'open secret' is no longer a secret to him, and he knows that the universe is /full/ of goodness; that whatever has being has beauty. apart from its literary merits or demerits, such is the temper of mind we trace in goethe's /meister/, and, more or less expressly exhibited, in all his later works. we reckon it a rare phenomenon, this temper; and worthy, in our times, if it do exist, of best study from all inquiring men. how has such a temper been attained in this so lofty and impetuous mind, once too, dark, desolate and full of doubt, more than any other? how may we, each of us in his several sphere, attain it, or strengthen it, for ourselves? these are questions, this last is a question, in which no one is unconcerned. to answer these questions, to begin the answer of them, would lead us very far beyond our present limits. it is not, as we believe, without long, sedulous study, without learning much and unlearning much, that, for any man, the answer of such questions is even to be hoped. meanwhile, as regards goethe, there is one feature of the business, which, to us, throws considerable light on his moral persuasions, and will not, in investigating the secret of them, be overlooked. we allude to the spirit in which he cultivates his art; the noble, disinterested, almost religious love with which he looks on art in general, and strives towards it as towards the sure, highest, nay only good. for a man of goethe's talent to write many such pieces of rhetoric, setting forth the dignity of poets, and their innate independence on external circumstances, could be no very hard task; accordingly, we find such sentiments again and again expressed, sometimes with still more gracefulness, still clearer emphasis, in his various writings. but to adopt these sentiments into his sober practical persuasion; in any measure to feel and believe that such was still, and must always be, the high vocation of the poet; on this ground of universal humanity, of ancient and now almost forgotten nobleness, to take his stand, even in these trivial, jeering, withered, unbelieving days; and through all their complex, dispiriting, mean, yet tumultuous influences, to 'make his light shine before them,' that it might beautify even our 'rag- gathering age' with some beams of that mild, divine splendour, which had long left us, the very possibility of which was denied; heartily and in earnest to meditate all this, was no common proceeding; to bring it into practice, especially in such a life as his has been, was among the highest and hardest enterprises which any man whatever could engage in. we reckon this a greater novelty, than all the novelties which as a mere writer he ever put forth, whether for praise or censure. we have taken it upon us to say that if such is, in any sense, the state of the case with regard to goethe, he deserves not mere approval as a pleasing poet and sweet singer; but deep, grateful study, observance, imitation, as a moralist and philosopher. if there be any /probability/ that such is the state of the case, we cannot but reckon it a matter well worthy of being inquired into. and it is for this only that we are here pleading and arguing. meister is the mature product of the first genius of our times; and must, one would think, be different, in various respects, from the immature products of geniuses who are far from the first, and whose works spring from the brain in as many weeks as goethe's cost him years. it may deserve to be mentioned here that meister, at its first appearance in germany, was received very much as it has been in england. goethe's known character, indeed, precluded indifference there; but otherwise it was much the same. the whole guild of criticism was thrown into perplexity, into sorrow; everywhere was dissatisfaction open or concealed. official duty impelling them to speak, some said one thing, some another; all felt in secret that they knew not what to say. till the appearance of schlegel's /character/, no word, that we have seen, of the smallest chance to be decisive, or indeed to last beyond the day, had been uttered regarding it. some regretted that the fire of /werter/ was so wonderfully abated; whisperings there might be about 'lowness,' 'heaviness;' some spake forth boldly in behalf of suffering 'virtue.' novalis was not among the speakers, but he censured the work in secret, and this for a reason which to us will seem the strangest; for its being, as we should say, a benthamite work! many are the bitter aphorisms we find, among his fragments, directed against /meister/ for its prosaic, mechanical, economical, coldhearted, altogether utilitarian character. we english again call goethe a mystic; so difficult is it to please all parties! but the good, deep, noble novalis made the fairest amends; for notwithstanding all this, tieck tells us, if we remember rightly, he continually returned to /meister/, and could not but peruse and reperuse it. goethe's /wanderjahre/ was published in his seventy-second year; /werter/ in his twenty-fifth; thus in passing between these two works, and over /meister's lehrjahre/ which stands nearly midway, we have glanced over a space of almost fifty years, including within them, of course, whatever was most important in his public or private history. by means of these quotations, so diverse in their tone, we meant to make it visible that a great change had taken place in the moral disposition of the man; a change from inward imprisonment, doubt and discontent, into freedom, belief and clear activity; such a change as, in our opinion, must take place, more or less consciously, in every character that, especially in these times, attains to spiritual manhood, and in characters possessing any thoughtfulness and sensibility, will seldom take place without a too painful consciousness, without bitter conflicts, in which the character itself is too often maimed and impoverished, and which end too often not in victory, but in defeat, or fatal compromise with the enemy. too often, we may well say; for though many gird on the harness, few bear it warrior-like; still fewer put it off with triumph. among our own poets, byron was almost the only man we saw faithfully and manfully struggling, to the end, in this cause; and he died while the victory was still doubtful, or at best, only beginning to be gained. we have already stated our opinion, that goethe's success in this matter has been more complete than that of any other man in his age; nay, that, in the strictest sense, he may almost be called the only one that has so succeeded. on this ground, were it on no other, we have ventured to say that his spiritual history and procedure must deserve attention; that his opinions, his creations, his mode of thought, his whole picture of the world as it dwells within him, must to his contemporaries be an inquiry of no common interest; of an interest altogether peculiar, and not in this degree exampled in existing literature. these things can be but imperfectly stated here, and must be left, not in a state of demonstration, but at the utmost, of loose fluctuating probability; nevertheless, if inquired into, they will be found to have a precise enough meaning, and, as we believe, a highly important one. for the rest, what sort of mind it is that has passed through this change, that has gained this victory; how rich and high a mind; how learned by study in all that is wisest, by experience in all that is most complex, the brightest as well as the blackest, in man's existence; gifted with what insight, with what grace and power of utterance, we shall not for the present attempt discussing. all these the reader will learn, who studies his writings with such attention as they merit; and by no other means. of goethe's dramatic, lyrical, didactic poems, in their thousandfold expressiveness, for they are full of expressiveness, we can here say nothing. but in every department of literature, of art ancient and modern, in many provinces of science, we shall often meet him; and hope to have other occasions of estimating what, in these respects, we and all men owe him. two circumstances, meanwhile, we have remarked, which to us throw light on the nature of his original faculty for poetry, and go far to convince us of the mastery he has attained in that art: these we may here state briefly, for the judgment of such as already know his writings, or the help of such as are beginning to know them. the first is his singularly emblematic intellect; his perpetual never-failing tendency to transform into /shape/, into /life/, the opinion, the feeling that may dwell in him; which, in its widest sense, we reckon to be essentially the grand problem of the poet. we do not mean mere metaphor and rhetorical trope: these are but the exterior concern, often but the scaffolding of the edifice, which is to be built up (within our thoughts) by means of them. in allusions, in similitudes, though no one known to us is happier, many are more copious than goethe. but we find this faculty of his in the very essence of his intellect; and trace it alike in the quiet cunning epigram, the allegory, the quaint device, reminding us of some quarles or bunyan; and in the /fausts/, the /tassos/, the /mignons/, which in their pure and genuine personality, may almost remind us of the /ariels/ and /hamlets/ of shakespeare. everything has form, everything has visual existence; the poet's imagination /bodies forth/ the forms of things unseen, his pen turns them to /shape/. this, as a natural endowment, exists in goethe, we conceive, to a very high degree. the other characteristic of his mind, which proves to us his acquired mastery in art, as this shows us the extent of his original capacity for it, is his wonderful variety, nay universality; his entire freedom from the mannerism. we read goethe for years, before we come to see wherein the distinguishing peculiarity of his understanding, of his disposition, even of his way of writing, consists. it seems quite a simple style that of his; remarkable chiefly for its calmness, its perspicuity, in short its commonness; and yet it is the most uncommon of all styles: we feel as if every one might imitate it, and yet it is inimitable. as hard is it to discover in his writings,--though there also, as in every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded,--what sort of spiritual construction he has, what are his temper, his affections, his individual specialties. for all lives freely within him: philina and clanchen, mephistopheles and mignon, are alike indifferent, or alike dear to him; he is of no sect or caste: he seems not this man or that man, but a man. we reckon this to be the characteristic of a master in art of any sort; and true especially of all great poets. how true is it of shakespeare and homer! who knows, or can figure what the man shakespeare was, by the first, by the twentieth perusal of his works? he is a voice coming to us from the land of melody: his old brick dwelling- place, in the mere earthly burgh of stratford-on-avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma. and what is homer in the /ilias/? he is the witness; he has seen, and he reveals it; we hear and believe, but do not behold him. now compare, with these two poets, any other two; not of equal genius, for there are none such, but of equal sincerity, who wrote as earnestly and from the heart, like them. take, for instance, jean paul and lord byron. the good eichter begins to show himself, in his broad, massive, kindly, quaint significance, before we have read many pages of even his slightest work; and to the last he paints himself much better than his subject. byron may also be said to have painted nothing else than himself, be his subject what it might. yet as a test for the culture of a poet, in his poetical capacity, for his pretensions to mastery and completeness in his art, we cannot but reckon this among the surest. tried by this, there is no writer that approaches within many degrees of goethe. johann wolfgang von goethe johann wolfgang von goethe was born in frankfort on august , . his parents were citizens of that imperial town, and wolfgang was their only son. his father was born on july , . he married, on august , , at the age of thirty-eight, catherine elizabeth textor. in december, , was born a daughter, cornelia, who remained until her death, at the age of twenty-seven, her brother's most intimate friend. she was married in to john george schlosser. goethe's education was irregular. french culture gave at this time the prevailing tone to europe. goethe could not have escaped its influence, and he was destined to fall under it in a special manner. in the seven years' war, which was now raging, france took the side of the empire against frederick the great. frankfort was full of french soldiers, and a certain comte thorane, who was quartered in goethe's house, had an important influence on the boy. goethe, if we may believe his autobiography, experienced his first love about the age of fifteen in the person of gretchen, whom some have supposed to be the daughter of an innkeeper at offenbach. he worshipped her as dante worshipped beatrice. in the autumn of goethe traveled to leipsic. on the th of october he was admitted as a student. he was sent to leipsic to study law, in order that he might return to frankfort fitted for the regular course of municipal distinction. he intended to devote himself not to law, but to belles lettres. he attended gellert's lectures on literature, and even joined his private class. his real university education was derived from intercourse with his friends. first among these was j. g. schlosser, who afterwards married his sister. he had a great influence upon him, chiefly in introducing him to a wider circle of german, french, english and italian poetry. but the person who had the strongest effect on goethe's mental development was adam frederick oeser, at this time director of the academy of arts in leipsic. goethe, from his earliest years, was never without a passion, and at leipsic his passion was kitty schönkopf, the aennchen of the autobiography, the daughter of the host at whose house he dined. she often teased him with her inconstant ways, and to this experience is due his first drama, "die laune des verliebten," "lovers' quarrels," as it may be styled. a deeper chord is struck in "die mitschuldigen" (the fellow sinners), which forms a dismal and forbidding picture both of the time and of the experiences of the youth who wrote it. he had an opportunity of establishing his principles of taste during a short visit at dresden, in which he devoted himself to the pictures and the antiques. the end of goethe's stay at leipsic was saddened by illness. one morning at the beginning of the summer he was awakened by a violent hemorrhage. for several days he hung between life and death, and after that his recovery was slow. he left leipsic far from well on august , . goethe made an enforced stay of a year and a half. it was perhaps the least happy part of his life. his cure proceeded slowly, and he had several relapses. his family relations were not pleasant. his father showed but little sympathy with his aspirations for universal culture, and could imagine no career for him but that of a successful jurist. his sister had grown somewhat harsh and cold during his absence. goethe's mother was always the same to him--a bright, genial, sympathetic friend. goethe, during his illness, received great attention from fräulein von klettenberg, a friend of his mother's, a pietist of the moravian school. she initiated him into the mystical writings of those abstracted saints, and she engaged him in the study of alchemy, which served at once to prepare him for the conception of faust and for the scientific researches of his later days. he arrived at strasburg april , . goethe stayed in strasburg till august , , his twenty-second birthday, and these sixteen months are perhaps the most important of his life. during them he came into active contact with most of those impulses of which his after life was a development. if we would understand his mental growth, we must ask who were his friends. he took his meals at the house of the fräulein lauth in the kramergasse. the table was mainly filled with medical students. at the head of it sat salzmann, a grave man of fifty years of age. his experience and his refined taste were very attractive to goethe, who made him his intimate friend. the table of the fräulein lauth received some new guests. among these was jung-stilling, the self-educated charcoal-burner, who in his memoir has left a graphic account of goethe's striking appearance, in his broad brow, his flashing eye, his mastery of the company, and his generosity. another was lerse, a frank, open character, who became goethe's favorite, and whose name is immortalized in götz von berlichingen. goethe's stay at strasburg is generally connected still more closely with another circumstance--his passion for frederike brion of sesenheim. the village lies about twenty miles from strasburg, and her father was pastor there. goethe was introduced by his friend weyland, as a poor theological student. the father was a simple, worthy man, the eldest of the three daughters was married, the two younger remained--maria salome, and frederike, to whom the poet principally devoted himself. she was tall and slight, with fair hair and blue eyes, and just sixteen years of age. goethe gave himself up to the passion of the moment. during the winter of , goethe often rode over to sesenheim. neither storm, nor cold, nor darkness kept him back. as his time for leaving strasburg came nearer he felt that his love was merely a dream and could have no serious termination. frederike felt the same on her side. on august th goethe took his degree as a doctor of law. shortly afterwards he bade adieu to sesenheim. frederike lived till and died single. goethe's return to frankfort is marked by a number of songs, of which the "wanderer's sturmlied" is the most remarkable. he had outgrown many of the friends of his youth. those with whom he felt most sympathy were the two schlossers and his sister cornelia. he found in her one who sympathized with all his aspirations. the work into which he threw all his genius was the dramatization of the history of the imperial knight of the middle ages, gottfried or götz von berlichingen. the immediate cause of this enterprise was his enthusiasm for shakespeare. after reading him he felt, he said, like a blind man who suddenly receives his sight. the study of a dry and dull biography of götz, published in , supplied the subject for his awakened powers. from this miserable sketch he conceived within his mind a complete picture of germany in the sixteenth century. the chief characters of his play are creatures of his imagination, representing the principal types which made up the history of the time. every personage is made to live; they speak in short, sharp sentences like the powerful lines of a great master's drawing. the first sketch of götz was finished in six weeks, in the autumn of . it ran like wild-fire through the whole of germany. goethe left frankfort in the spring of for wetzlar, a quiet country town on the lahn, one of the seats of government of the holy roman empire. the emperors lived at vienna; they were crowned at frankfort; they held their parliaments at ratisbon, and at wetzlar their courts of justice. it was the custom for young lawyers to attend the sittings of these courts for a certain time before they could be admitted to practice on their own account. the company of these students, of the embassies from the component parts of the empire, and of various imperial officials, made the society a pleasant and lively one. goethe soon found friends. his favorite house was occupied by one of the officials of the order, by name buff, an honest man with a large family of children. the second daughter, lotte, blue-eyed, fair and just twenty years of age, was first met by goethe, shortly after his arrival, at a ball at wolpertshausen. she strongly attracted him; he became a constant visitor at the house. he found that lotte was a second mother to her brothers and sisters. lotte, was really, though not formally, engaged to kestner, a man of two-and-thirty, secretary to the hanoverian legation. the discovery of this relation made no difference to goethe; he remained the devoted friend to both. but the position was too critical to last. on september they met in the german house for the last time. goethe and schlosser went together to wetzlar in november. here he heard of the death of jerusalem, a young man attached to the brunswick legation. he had been with goethe at the university of leipsic. of a moody temperament, disheartened by failure in his profession, and soured by a hopeless passion for the wife of another, he had borrowed a pair of pistols under pretense of a journey, and had shot himself on the night of october . goethe immediately afterwards began his werther. goethe tells us that it was written in four weeks. in october it spread over the whole of germany. it was enthusiastically beloved or sternly condemned. it was printed, imitated, translated into every language of europe. götz and werther formed the solid foundation of goethe's fame. it is difficult to imagine that the same man can have produced both works, so different are they in matter and style. götz was the first manly appeal to the chivalry of german spirit, which, caught up by other voices, sounded throughout the fatherland like the call of a warder's trumpet, till it produced a national courage, founded on the recollection of an illustrious past, which overthrew the might of the conqueror at the moment when he seemed about to dominate the world. werther, as soft and melodious as plato, was the first revelation to the world of that marvelous style which, in the hands of a master, compels a language which is as rich as greek to be also as musical. the spring of , which witnessed the publication of götz, saw him actively employed as an advocate. in november, goethe's sister cornelia was married to schlosser and left strasburg. goethe felt the loss deeply. she lived but a short time. her married life was tortured with suffering, and she died in . the summer of was spent in a journey to the rhine. goethe returned to frankfort at the beginning of august. on december , goethe was surprised by the visit of a stranger. it was karl ludwig von knebel, who was traveling with the two princes of saxe-weimar, the reigning duke, karl august, then just seventeen, and his younger brother, constantine. this meeting decided the future course of goethe's life. he now came under the influence of lili schönemann, the daughter of a rich banker. this passion seemed to be of a more lasting nature than the others. neither family approved of the engagement between the youthful couple. goethe tore himself away, and went for a tour in switzerland. he returned to frankfort on july . august was spent delightfully with lili at offenbach; his letters speak of nothing but her. he wrote some scenes in faust--the walk in the garden, the first conversation with mephistopheles, the interview with the scholar, the scene in auerbach's cellar. egmont was also begun under the stimulus of the american rebellion. a way of escaping from his embarrassments was unexpectedly opened to him. the duke of weimar passed through frankfort both before and after his marriage, which took place on october . he invited goethe to stay at weimar. it was not for his happiness or for lili's that they should have married. she afterwards thanked him deeply for the firmness with which he overcame a temptation to which she would have yielded. at this time the smaller german courts were beginning to take an interest in german literature. before the seven years' war the whole of german culture had been french. even now german writers found but scant acceptance at berlin or vienna. the princes of the smaller states surrounded themselves with literature and art. the duke of brunswick had made lessing his librarian. the duke of würtemberg paid special attention to education; he promoted the views of schubart, and founded the school in which schiller was educated. hanover offered a home to zimmermann, and encouraged the development of schlegel. darmstadt was especially fortunate. caroline, the wife of the landgrave, had surrounded herself with a literary circle, of which merck was the moving spirit. she had collected and privately printed the odes of klopstock, and her death in seemed to leave darmstadt a desert. her daughter, louisa, seemed to have inherited something of her mother's qualities. she married, on october , , the young duke of weimar, who was just of age. she was of the house of brunswick, and after two years of marriage had been left a widow at nineteen, with two sons. she committed their education to count görz, a prominent character in the history of the time. she afterwards summoned wieland to instruct the elder, and knebel to instruct the younger. upon this society goethe rose like a star. from the moment of his arrival he became the inseparable companion of the grand-duke. the first months at weimar were spent in a wild round of pleasure. goethe was treated as a guest. in the autumn, journeys, rides, shooting parties; in the winter, balls, masquerades, skating parties by torch-light, dancing at peasants' feasts, filled up their time. evil reports flew about germany. we may believe that no decencies were disregarded except the artificial restrictions of courtly etiquette. in the spring he had to decide whether he would go or stay. in april the duke gave him the little garden by the side of the ilm. in june he invested him with the title, so important to germans, of /geheimlegationsrath/, with a seat and voice in the privy council and an income. goethe's life was at no time complete without the influence of a noble- hearted woman. this he found in charlotte von stein, a lady of the court, wife of the master of the horse. the close of was occupied by a winter journey to switzerland. two days were spent at frankfort with goethe's parents. sesenheim was visited, and left with satisfaction and contentment. at strasburg they found as to lessing. the repertoire of the weimar theater was stocked with pieces of solid merit, which long held their place. in august, , he accompanied the duke to the campaign in the ardennes. in he went with his master to the siege of mainz. goethe took the old german epic of reynard the fox, with which he had long been familiar, and which, under the guise of animals, represents the conflicting passions of men, and rewrote it. thus far he had produced but little since his return from italy. his friendship with schiller was now to begin, an alliance which, in the closeness of its intimacy and its deep effect on the character of both friends, has scarcely a parallel in literary history. if schiller was not at this time at the height of his reputation, he had written many of the works which have made his name famous. he was ten years younger than goethe. the räuber plays the same part in his literary history as götz plays in that of goethe. this had been followed by fiesco and kabale und liebe. in he settled at weimar. the first effect of schiller's influence on goethe was the completion of wilhelm meister's apprenticeship. it stands in the first rank of goethe's writings. a more solid result of the friendship between the poets was the production of hermann und dorothea. the latter half of was occupied with a tour in switzerland. before its commencement he visited his mother at frankfort for the last time, and presented to her his wife and his son. in the beginning of goethe was convinced that either he or schiller would die in that year. in january they were both seized with illness. schiller was the first to recover, and, visiting goethe in his sick room, fell on his neck and kissed him with intense emotion. on april they saw each other for the last time. schiller was on his way to the theater, whither goethe was too ill to accompany him. they parted at the door of schiller's house. schiller died on the evening of the th of may. no one dared to tell goethe the sad news, but he saw on the faces of those who surrounded him that schiller must be very ill. on the morrow of schiller's death, when his wife entered his room, he said, "is it not true that schiller was very ill yesterday?" she began to sob. he then cried, "he is dead!" "thou hast spoken it thyself," she answered. goethe turned aside and covered his weeping eyes with his hands. since that time schiller and goethe have been inseparable in the minds of their countrymen. on october , , the battle of jena was fought. the court had fled from weimar. on the th napoleon and goethe met. it was at the congress of erfurt, where the sovereigns and princes of europe were assembled. goethe's presence was commanded by the duke. he was invited to an audience on october . the emperor sat at a large round table eating his breakfast. he beckoned goethe to approach him. he asked how old he was, expressed his wonder at the freshness of his appearance, said that he had read werther through seven times, and made some acute remarks on the management of the plot. then, after an interruption, he said that tragedy ought to be the school of kings and peoples; that there was no subject worthier of treatment than the death of caesar, which voltaire had treated insufficiently. a great poet would have given prominence to caesar's plans for the regeneration of the world, and shown what a loss mankind had suffered by his murder. the idea of writing faust seems to have come to goethe in his earliest manhood. he was brooding over it at the same time with götz von berlichingen. faust justly stands at the head of all goethe's works. founded on a well-known popular tale, indebted for its interest and pathos to incidents of universal experience, it deals with the deepest problems which can engage the mind of man. in he finished the elective affinities. it was natural at the beginning of a new course of life that goethe should write an account of his past existence. the study of his collected poems made it apparent to him how necessary it was to furnish a key by which they might be understood. these various causes led to the composition of /dichtung und wahrheit/ (poetry and truth), an autobiographical history of the poet's life from his birth till his settlement at weimar. this work is the cause of much embarrassment to the poet's biographers. where it ought to be the most trustworthy source of information, it is most misleading. once more in his old age goethe came under the sovereignty of a woman. she was marianne von willemer, the newly married wife of a frankfort banker. goethe made her acquaintance in a journey which he took in the rhine country. the correspondence between goethe and marianne was published in . it extends almost to the day of his death, and includes letters from eckermann giving an account of his last moments. the last twelve years of goethe's life, when he had passed his seventieth birthday, were occupied by his criticisms on the literature of foreign countries, by the wanderjahre, and the second part of faust. he was the literary dictator of germany and of europe. the wanderjahre contains some of goethe's most beautiful conceptions, the flight into egypt, the description of the pedagogic province, the parable of the three reverences. the second part of faust has been a battlefield of controversy since its publication, and demands fuller attention. its fate may be compared with that of the latest works of beethoven. for a long time it was regarded as impossible to understand, and as not worth understanding, the production of a great artist whose faculties had been impaired by age. by degrees it has, by careful labor, become intelligible to us, and the conviction is growing that it is the deepest and most important work of the author's life. he had much to darken his latter days. his wife had died in . he felt her loss bitterly. the duchess amalia had died eight years before. he had now to undergo bitterer experiences when he was less able to bear them. frau von stein, with whom he had renewed his friendship, if not his love, died in january, ; and in june, , he lost the companion of his youth, the grand duke karl august, who died suddenly, away from weimar. we must pass to the closing scenes. on thursday, march , , he spent his last cheerful and happy day. he awoke the next morning with a chill. from this he gradually recovered, and on monday was so much better that he designed to begin his regular work on the next day. but in the middle of the night he woke with a deathly coldness, which extended from his hands over his body, and which took many hours to subdue. it then appeared that the lungs were attacked, and that there was no hope of his recovery. goethe did not anticipate death. he sat fully clothed in his arm chair, made attempts to reach his study, spoke confidently of his recovery, and of the walks he would take in the fine april days. his daughter-in-law ottilie tended him faithfully. on the morning of the d his strength gradually left him. he sat slumbering in his arm chair, holding ottilie's hand. her name was constantly on his lips. his mind occasionally wandered, at one time to his beloved schiller, at another to a fair female head with black curls, some passion of his youth. his last words were an order to his servant to open the second shutter to let in more light. after this he traced with his forefinger letters in the air. at half-past eleven in the day he drew himself, without any sign of pain, into the left corner of his arm chair, and went so peacefully to sleep that it was long before the watchers knew that his spirit was really gone. he is buried in the grand-ducal vault, where the bones of schiller are also laid. autobiography truth and fiction relating to my life author's preface. as a preface to the present work, which, perhaps, more than another, requires one, i adduce the letter of a friend, by which so serious an undertaking was occasioned. "we have now, my dear friend, collected the twelve parts of your poetical works, and, on reading them through, find much that is known, much that is unknown; while much that had been forgotten is revived by this collection. these twelve volumes standing before us in uniform appearance, we cannot refrain from regarding as a whole; and one would like to sketch therefrom some image of the author and his talents. but it cannot be denied, considering the vigor with which he began his literary career, and the length of time which has since elapsed, that a dozen small volumes must appear incommensurate. nor can one forget, that, with respect to the detached pieces, they have mostly been called forth by special occasions, and reflect particular external objects, as well as distinct grades of inward culture; while it is equally clear, that temporary moral and æsthetic maxims and convictions prevail in them. as a whole, however, these productions remain without connection; nay, it is often difficult to believe that they emanate from one and the same writer. "your friends, in the mean time, have not relinquished the inquiry, and try, as they become more closely acquainted with your mode of life and thought, to guess many a riddle, to solve many a problem; indeed, with the assistance of an old liking, and a connection of many years' standing, they find a charm even in the difficulties which present themselves. yet a little assistance here and there would not be unacceptable, and you cannot well refuse this to our friendly entreaties. "the first thing, then, we require, is that your poetical works, arranged in the late edition according to some internal relations, may be presented by you in chronological order, and that the states of life and feeling which afforded the examples that influenced you, and the theoretical principles by which you were governed, may be imparted in some kind of connection. bestow this labor for the gratification of a limited circle, and perhaps it may give rise to something that will be entertaining and useful to an extensive one. the author, to the most advanced period of his life, should not relinquish the advantage of communicating, even at a distance, with those whom affection binds to him; and if it is not granted to every one to step forth anew, at a certain age, with surprising and powerful productions, yet just at that period of life, when knowledge is most perfect, and consciousness most distinct, it must be a very agreeable and re-animating task to treat former creations as new matter, and work them up into a kind of last part, which may serve once more for the edification of those who have been previously edified with and by the artist." this desire, so kindly expressed, immediately awakened within me an inclination to comply with it: for if, in the early years of life, our passions lead us to follow our own course, and, in order not to swerve from it, we impatiently repel the demands of others; so, in our later days, it becomes highly advantageous to us, should any sympathy excite and determine us, cordially, to new activity. i therefore instantly undertook the preparatory labor of separating the poems, both great and small, of my twelve volumes, and of arranging them according to years. i strove to recall the times and circumstances under which each had been produced. but the task soon grew more difficult, as full explanatory notes and illustrations were necessary to fill up the chasms between those which had already been given to the world. for, in the first place, all on which i had originally exercised myself were wanting, many that had been begun and not finished were also wanting, and of many that were finished even the external form had completely disappeared, having since been entirely reworked and cast into a different shape. besides, i had also to call to mind how i had labored in the sciences and other arts, and what, in such apparently foreign departments, both individually and in conjunction with friends, i had practised in silence, or had laid before the public. all this i wished to introduce by degrees for the satisfaction of my well-wishers, but my efforts and reflections always led me farther on; since while i was anxious to comply with that very considerate request, and labored to set forth in succession my internal emotions, external influences, and the steps which, theoretically and practically, i had trod, i was carried out of my narrow private sphere into the wide world. the images of a hundred important men, who either directly or indirectly had influenced me, presented themselves to my view; and even the prodigious movements of the great political world, which had operated most extensively upon me, as well as upon the whole mass of my contemporaries, had to be particularly considered. for this seems to be the main object of biography,--to exhibit the man in relation to the features of his time, and to show to what extent they have opposed or favored his progress; what view of mankind and the world he has formed from them, and how far he himself, if an artist, poet, or author, may externally reflect them. but for this is required what is scarcely attainable; namely, that the individual should know himself and his age,--himself, so far as he has remained the same under all circumstances; his age, as that which carries along with it, determines and fashions, both the willing and the unwilling: so that one may venture to pronounce, that any person born ten years earlier or later would have been quite a different being, both as regards his own culture and his influence on others. in this manner, from such reflections and endeavors, from such recollections and considerations, arose the present delineation; and from this point of view, as to its origin, will it be the best enjoyed and used, and most impartially estimated. for any thing further it may be needful to say, particularly with respect to the half-poetical, half- historic, mode of treatment, an opportunity will, no doubt, frequently occur in the course of the narrative. contents. part the first. first book second book third book fourth book fifth book part the second. sixth book seventh book eighth book ninth book part the first first book. on the th of august, , at mid-day, as the clock struck twelve, i came into the world, at frankfort-on-the-main. my horoscope was propitious: the sun stood in the sign of the virgin, and had culminated for the day; jupiter and venus looked on him with a friendly eye, and mercury not adversely; while saturn and mars kept themselves indifferent; the moon alone, just full, exerted the power of her reflection all the more, as she had then reached her planetary hour. she opposed herself, therefore, to my birth, which could not be accomplished until this hour was passed. these good aspects, which the astrologers managed subsequently to reckon very auspicious for me, may have been the causes of my preservation; for, through the unskilfulness of the midwife, i came into the world as dead; and only after various efforts was i enabled to see the light. this event, which had put our household into sore straits, turned to the advantage of my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as my grandfather, the /schultheiss/ [footnote: a chief judge or magistrate of the town.], john wolfgang textor, took occasion from it to have an /accoucheur/ appointed, and to introduce, or revive, the tuition of midwives, which may have done some good to those who were born after me. when we desire to recall what happened to us in the earliest period of youth, it often happens that we confound what we have heard from others with that which we really possess from our own direct experience. without, therefore, instituting a very close investigation into the point, which, after all, could lead to nothing, i am conscious that we lived in an old house, which, in fact, consisted of two adjoining houses, that had been opened into each other. a winding staircase led to rooms on different levels, and the unevenness of the stories was remedied by steps. for us children,--a younger sister and myself,--the favorite resort was a spacious floor below, near the door of which was a large wooden lattice that allowed us direct communication with the street and open air. a bird-cage of this sort, with which many houses were provided, was called a frame (/geräms/). the women sat in it to sew and knit; the cook picked her salad there; female neighbors chatted with each other; and the streets consequently, in the fine season, wore a southern aspect. one felt at ease while in communication with the public. we children, too, by means of these frames, were brought into contact with our neighbors, of whom three brothers von ochsenstein, the surviving sons of the deceased /schultheiss/, living on the other side of the way, won my love, and occupied and diverted themselves with me in many ways. our family liked to tell of all sorts of waggeries to which i was enticed by these otherwise grave and solitary men. let one of these pranks suffice for all. a crockery-fair had just been held, from which not only our kitchen had been supplied for a while with articles for a long time to come, but a great deal of small gear of the same ware had been purchased as playthings for us children. one fine afternoon, when every thing was quiet in the house, i whiled away the time with my pots and dishes in the frame, and, finding that nothing more was to be got out of them, hurled one of them into the street. the von ochsensteins, who saw me so delighted at the fine smash it made, that i clapped my hands for joy, cried out, "another." i was not long in flinging out a pot; and, as they made no end to their calls for more, by degrees the whole collection, platters, pipkins, mugs and all, were dashed upon the pavement. my neighbors continued to express their approbation, and i was highly delighted to give them pleasure. but my stock was exhausted; and still they shouted, "more." i ran, therefore, straight to the kitchen, and brought the earthenware, which produced a still livelier spectacle in breaking; and thus i kept running backwards and forwards, fetching one plate after another, as i could reach it from where they stood in rows on the shelf. but, as that did not satisfy my audience, i devoted all the ware that i could drag out to similar destruction. it was not till afterwards that any one appeared to hinder and forbid. the mischief was done; and, in place of so much broken crockery, there was at least a ludicrous story, in which the roguish authors took special delight to the end of their days. my father's mother, for it was her house in which we dwelt, lived in a large back-room directly on the ground-floor; and we were accustomed to carry on our sports even up to her chair, and, when she was ill, up to her bedside. i remember her, as it were, a spirit,--a handsome, thin woman, always neatly dressed in white. mild, gentle, and kind, she has ever remained in my memory. the street in which our house was situated passed by the name of the stag-ditch; but, as neither stags nor ditches were to be seen, we wished to have the term explained. they told us that our house stood on a spot that was once outside the city, and that, where the street now was, there had formerly been a ditch, in which a number of stags were kept. these stags were preserved and fed here because the senate, every year, according to an ancient custom, feasted publicly on a stag, which was therefore always at hand in the ditch for such a festival, in case princes or knights interfered with the city's right of chase outside, or the walls were encompassed or besieged by an enemy. this pleased us much, and we wished that such a lair for tame animals could have been seen in our times. the back of the house, from the second story particularly, commanded a very pleasant prospect over an almost immeasurable extent of neighboring gardens, stretching to the very walls of the city. but, alas! in transforming what were once public grounds into private gardens, our house, and some others lying towards the corner of the street, had been much stinted; since the houses towards the horse-market had appropriated spacious out-houses and large gardens to themselves, while a tolerably high wall shut us out from these adjacent paradises. on the second floor was a room which was called the garden-room, because they had there endeavored to supply the want of a garden by means of a few plants placed before the window. as i grew older, it was there that i made my favorite, not melancholy, but somewhat sentimental, retreat. over these gardens, beyond the city's walls and ramparts, might be seen a beautiful and fertile plain, the same which stretches towards höchst. in the summer season i commonly learned my lessons there, and watched the thunderstorms, but could never look my fill at the setting sun, which went down directly opposite my windows. and when, at the same time, i saw the neighbors wandering through their gardens, taking care of their flowers, the children playing, parties of friends enjoying themselves, and could hear the bowls rolling and the ninepins dropping, it early excited within me a feeling of solitude, and a sense of vague longing resulting from it, which, conspiring with the seriousness and awe implanted in me by nature, exerted its influence at an early age, and showed itself more distinctly in after-years. the old, many-cornered, and gloomy arrangement of the house was, moreover, adapted to awaken dread and terror in childish minds. unfortunately, too, the principle of discipline, that young persons should be early deprived of all fear for the awful and invisible, and accustomed to the terrible, still prevailed. we children, therefore, were compelled to sleep alone; and when we found this impossible, and softly slipped from our beds, to seek the society of the servants and maids, our father, with his dressing-gown turned inside out, which disguised him sufficiently for the purpose, placed himself in the way, and frightened us back to our resting-places. the evil effect of this any one may imagine. how is he who is encompassed with a double terror to be emancipated from fear? my mother, always cheerful and gay, and willing to render others so, discovered a much better pedagogical expedient. she managed to gain her end by rewards. it was the season for peaches, the plentiful enjoyment of which she promised us every morning if we overcame our fears during the night. in this way she succeeded, and both parties were satisfied. in the interior of the house my eyes were chiefly attracted by a series of roman views, with which my father had ornamented an ante-room. they were engravings by some of the accomplished predecessors of piranesi, who well understood perspective and architecture, and whose touches were clear and excellent. there i saw every day the piazza del popolo, the colosseum, the piazza of st. peter's, and st. peter's church, within and without, the castle of st. angelo, and many other places. these images impressed themselves deeply upon me, and my otherwise very laconic father was often so kind as to furnish descriptions of the objects. his partiality for the italian language, and for every thing pertaining to italy, was very decided. a small collection of marbles and natural curiosities, which he had brought with him thence, he often showed to us; and he devoted a great part of his time to a description of his travels, written in italian, the copying and correction of which he slowly and accurately completed, in several parcels, with his own hand. a lively old teacher of italian, called giovinazzi, was of service to him in this work. the old man, moreover, did not sing badly, and my mother every day must needs accompany him and herself upon the clavichord; and thus i speedily learned the "solitario bosco ombroso," so as to know it by heart before i understood it. my father was altogether of a didactic turn, and in his retirement from business liked to communicate to others what he knew or was able to do. thus, during the first years of their marriage, he had kept my mother busily engaged in writing, playing the clavichord, and singing, by which means she had been laid under the necessity of acquiring some knowledge and a slight readiness in the italian tongue. generally we passed all our leisure hours with my grandmother, in whose spacious apartment we found plenty of room for our sports. she contrived to engage us with various trifles, and to regale us with all sorts of nice morsels. but, one christmas evening, she crowned all her kind deeds by having a puppet-show exhibited before us, and thus unfolding a new world in the old house. this unexpected drama attracted our young minds with great force; upon the boy particularly it made a very strong impression, which continued to vibrate with a great and lasting effect. the little stage, with its speechless personages, which at the outset had only been exhibited to us, but was afterwards given over for our own use and dramatic vivification, was prized more highly by us children, as it was the last bequest of our good grandmother, whom encroaching disease first withdrew from our sight, and death next tore away from our hearts forever. her departure was of still more importance to our family, as it drew after it a complete change in our condition. as long as my grandmother lived, my father had refrained from changing or renovating the house, even in the slightest particular; though it was known that he had pretty large plans of building, which were now immediately begun. in frankfort, as in many other old towns, when anybody put up a wooden structure, he ventured, for the sake of space, to make, not only the first, but each successive, story project over the lower one, by which means narrow streets especially were rendered somewhat dark and confined. at last a law was passed, that every one putting up a new house from the ground, should confine his projections to the first upper story, and carry the others up perpendicularly. my father, that he might not lose the projecting space in the second story, caring little for outward architectural appearance, and anxious only for the good and convenient arrangement of the interior, resorted to the expedient which others had employed before him, of propping the upper part of the house, until one part after another had been removed from the bottom upwards, and a new house, as it were, inserted in its place. thus, while comparatively none of the old structure remained, the new one merely passed for a repair. now, as the tearing down and building up was done gradually, my father determined not to quit the house, that he might better direct and give his orders; as he possessed a good knowledge of the technicalities of building. at the same time, he would not suffer his family to leave him. this new epoch was very surprising and strange for the children. to see the rooms in which they had so often been confined and pestered with wearisome tasks and studies, the passages they had played in, the walls which had always been kept so carefully clean, all falling before the mason's hatchet and the carpenter's axe,--and that from the bottom upwards; to float as it were in the air, propped up by beams, being, at the same time, constantly confined to a certain lesson or definite task,--all this produced a commotion in our young heads that was not easily settled. but the young people felt the inconvenience less, because they had somewhat more space for play than before, and had many opportunities of swinging on beams, and playing at see-saw with the boards. at first my father obstinately persisted in carrying out his plan; but when at last even the roof was partly removed, and the rain reached our beds, in spite of the carpets that had been taken up, converted into tarpaulin, and stretched over as a defense, he determined, though reluctantly, that the children should be intrusted for a time to some kind friends, who had already offered their services, and sent to a public school. this transition was rather unpleasant; for, when the children, who had all along been kept at home in a secluded, pure, refined, yet strict manner, were thrown among a rude mass of young creatures, they were compelled unexpectedly to suffer every thing from the vulgar, bad, and even base, since they lacked both weapons and skill to protect themselves. it was properly about this period that i first became acquainted with my native city, which i strolled over with more and more freedom, in every direction, sometimes alone, and sometimes in the company of lively companions. to convey to others in any degree the impression made upon me by these grave and revered spots, i must here introduce a description of my birthplace, as in its different parts it was gradually unfolded to me. what i liked more than any thing was, to promenade on the great bridge spanning the main. its length, its firmness, and its fine appearance, rendered it a notable structure; and it was, besides, almost the only memorial left from ancient times of the precautions due from the civil government to its citizens. the beautiful stream above and below bridge attracted my eye; and, when the gilt weathercock on the bridge-cross glittered in the sunshine, i always had a pleasant feeling. generally i extended my walk through sachsenhausen, and for a /kreutzer/ was ferried comfortably across the river. i was now again on this side of the stream, stole along to the wine-market, and admired the mechanism of the cranes when goods were unloaded. but it was particularly entertaining to watch the arrival of the market- boats, from which so many and such extraordinary figures were seen to disembark. on entering the city, the saalhof, which at least stood on the spot where the castle of emperor charlemagne and his successors was reported to have been, was greeted every time with profound reverence. one liked to lose one's self in the old trading-town, particularly on market-days, among the crowd collected about the church of st. bartholomew. from the earliest times, throngs of buyers and sellers had gathered there; and the place being thus occupied, it was not easy in later days to bring about a more roomy and cheerful arrangement. the booths of the so-called /pfarreisen/ were very important places for us children, and we carried many a /batzen</> to them in order to purchase sheets of colored paper stamped with gold animals; though one could but seldom make his way through the narrow, crowded, and dirty market-place. i call to mind, also, that i always flew past the adjoining meat-stalls, narrow and disgusting as they were, in perfect horror. on the other hand, the roman hill (/romerberg/) was a most delightful place for walking. the way to the new-town, along by the new shops, was always cheering and pleasant; yet we regretted that a street did not lead into the zeil by the church of our lady, and that we always had to go a roundabout way by the /hasengasse/ or the catherine gate. but what chiefly attracted the child's attention, were the many little towns within the town, the fortresses within the fortress; viz., the walled monastic enclosures, and several other precincts, remaining from earlier times, and more or less like castles,--as the nuremberg court, the compostella, the braunfels, the ancestral house of the family of stallburg, and several strongholds, in later days transformed into dwellings and warehouses. no architecture of an elevating kind was then to be seen in frankfort; and every thing pointed to a period long past and unquiet, both for town and district. gates and towers, which defined the bounds of the old city,--then, farther on again, gates, towers, walls, bridges, ramparts, moats, with which the new city was encompassed,--all showed, but too plainly, that a necessity for guarding the common weal in disastrous times had induced these arrangements, that all the squares and streets, even the newest, broadest, and best laid out, owed their origin to chance and caprice, and not to any regulating mind. a certain liking for the antique was thus implanted in the boy, and was specially nourished and promoted by old chronicles and woodcuts, as, for instance, those of grave relating to the siege of frankfort. at the same time a different taste was developed in him for observing the conditions of mankind in their manifold variety and naturalness, without regard to their importance or beauty. it was, therefore, one of our favorite walks, which we endeavored to take now and then in the course of a year, to follow the circuit of the path inside the city-walls. gardens, courts, and back buildings extend to the /zwinger/; and we saw many thousand people amid their little domestic and secluded circumstances. from the ornamental and show gardens of the rich, to the orchards of the citizen, anxious about his necessities; from thence to the factories, bleaching-grounds, and similar establishments, even to the burying-grounds,--for a little world lay within the limits of the city,--we passed a varied, strange spectacle, which changed at every step, and with the enjoyment of which our childish curiosity was never satisfied. in fact, the celebrated devil-upon-two-sticks, when he lifted the roofs of madrid at night, scarcely did more for his friend than was here done for us in the bright sunshine and open air. the keys that were to be made use of in this journey, to gain us a passage through many a tower, stair, and postern, were in the hands of the authorities, whose subordinates we never failed to coax into good humor. but a more important, and in one sense more fruitful, place for us, was the city-hall, named from the romans. in its lower vault-like rooms we liked but too well to lose ourselves. we obtained an entrance, too, into the large and very simple session-room of the council. the walls as well as the arched ceiling were white, though wainscoted to a certain height; and the whole was without a trace of painting, or any kind of carved work; only, high up on the middle wall, might be read this brief inscription:-- "one man's word is no man's word: justice needs that both be heard." after the most ancient fashion, benches were ranged around the wainscoting, and raised one step above the floor for the accommodation of the members of the assembly. this readily suggested to us why the order of rank in our senate was distributed by benches. to the left of the door, on the opposite corner, sat the /schöffen/; in the corner itself the /schultheiss/, who alone had a small table before him; those of the second bench sat in the space to his left as far as the wall to where the windows were; while along the windows ran the third bench, occupied by the craftsmen. in the midst of the hall stood a table for the registrar (/protoculführer/). once within the /römer/, we even mingled with the crowd at the audiences of the burgomasters. but whatever related to the election and coronation of the emperors possessed a greater charm. we managed to gain the favor of the keepers, so as to be allowed to mount the new gay imperial staircase, which was painted in fresco, and on other occasions closed with a grating. the election-chamber, with its purple hangings and admirably fringed gold borders, filled us with awe. the representations of animals, on which little children or genii, clothed in the imperial ornaments and laden with the insignia of the empire, made a curious figure, were observed by us with great attention; and we even hoped that we might live to see, some time or other, a coronation with our own eyes. they had great difficulty to get us out of the great imperial hall, when we had been once fortunate enough to steal in; and we reckoned him our truest friend, who, while we looked at the half- lengths of all the emperors painted around at a certain height, would tell us something of their deeds. we listened to many a legend of charlemagne. but that which was historically interesting for us began with rudolph of hapsburg, who by his courage put an end to such violent commotions. charles the fourth also attracted our notice. we had already heard of the golden bull, and of the statutes for the administration of criminal justice. we knew, too, that he had not made the frankforters suffer for their adhesion to his noble rival, emperor gunther of schwarzburg. we heard maximilian praised, both as a friend to mankind, and to the townsmen, his subjects, and were also told that it had been prophesied of him he would be the last emperor of a german house, which unhappily came to pass, as after his death the choice wavered only between the king of spain (/afterwards/), charles v., and the king of france, francis i. with some anxiety it was added, that a similar prophecy, or rather intimation, was once more in circulation; for it was obvious that there was room left for the portrait of only one more emperor,--a circumstance which, though seemingly accidental, filled the patriotic with concern. having once entered upon this circuit, we did not fail to repair to the cathedral, and there visit the grave of that brave gunther, so much prized both by friend and foe. the famous stone which formerly covered it is set up in the choir. the door close by, leading into the conclave, remained long shut against us, until we at last managed, through the higher authorities, to gain access to this celebrated place. but we should have done better had we continued as before to picture it merely in our imagination; for we found this room, which is so remarkable in german history, where the most powerful princes were accustomed to meet for an act so momentous, in no respect worthily adorned, and even disfigured with beams, poles, scaffolding, and similar lumber, which people had wanted to put out of the way. the imagination, for that very reason, was the more excited and the heart elevated, when we soon after received permission to be present in the city-hall, at the exhibition of the golden bull to some distinguished strangers. the boy then heard, with much curiosity, what his own family, as well as other older relations and acquaintances, liked to tell and repeat; viz., the histories of the two last coronations, which had followed close upon each other; for there was no frankforter of a certain age who would not have regarded these two events, and their attendant circumstances, as the crowning glory of his whole life. splendid as had been the coronation of charles seventh, during which particularly the french ambassador had given magnificent feasts at great cost and with distinguished taste, the results were all the more afflicting to the good emperor, who could not preserve his capital munich, and was compelled in some degree to implore the hospitality of his imperial towns. although the coronation of francis first was not so strikingly splendid as the former one, it was dignified by the presence of the empress maria theresa, whose beauty appears to have created as much impression on the men as the earnest and noble form and the blue eyes of charles seventh on the women. at any rate, both sexes vied with each other in giving to the attentive boy a highly favorable opinion of both these personages. all these descriptions and narratives were given in a serene and quiet state of mind; for the peace of aix-la-chapelle had, for the moment, put an end to all feuds: and they spoke at their ease of past contests, as well as of their former festivities,--the battle of dettingen for instance, and other remarkable events of by-gone years; and all that was important or dangerous seemed, as generally happens when a peace has been concluded, to have occurred only to afford entertainment to prosperous and unconcerned people. half a year had scarcely passed away in this narrow patriotism before the fairs began, which always produced an incredible ferment in the heads of all children. the erection, in so short a time, of so many booths, creating a new town within the old one; the roll and crush, the unloading and unpacking of wares,--excited from the very first dawn of consciousness an insatiable active curiosity, and a boundless desire for childish property, which the boy with increasing years endeavored to gratify, in one way or another, as far as his little purse permitted. at the same time, he obtained a notion of what the world produces, what it wants, and what the inhabitants of its different parts exchange with each other. these great epochs, which came round regularly in spring and autumn, were announced by curious solemnities, which seemed the more dignified because they vividly brought before us the old time, and what had come down from it to ourselves. on escort day, the whole population were on their legs, thronging to the /fahrgasse/, to the bridge, and beyond /sachsenhausen/; all the windows were occupied, though nothing unusual took place on that day; the crowd seeming to be there only for the sake of jostling each other, and the spectators merely to look at one another; for the real occasion of their coming did not begin till nightfall, and was then rather taken upon trust than seen with the eyes. the affair was thus: in those old, unquiet times, when every one did wrong according to his pleasure, or helped the right as his liking led him, traders on their way to the fairs were so wilfully beset and harassed by waylayers, both of noble and ignoble birth, the princes and other persons of power caused their people to be accompanied to frankfort by an armed escort. now, the burghers of the imperial city would yield no rights pertaining to themselves or their district: they went out to meet the advancing party; and thus contests often arose as to how far the escort should advance, or whether it had a right to enter the city at all. but as this took place, not only in regard to matters of trade and fairs, but also when high personages came, in times of peace or war, and especially on the days of election; and as the affair often came to blows when a train which was not to be endured in the city strove to make its way in along with its lord,--many negotiations had from time to time been resorted to, and many temporary arrangements concluded, though always with reservations of rights on both sides. the hope had not been relinquished of composing once for all a quarrel that had already lasted for centuries, inasmuch as the whole institution, on account of which it had been so long and often so hotly contested, might be looked upon as nearly useless, or at least as superfluous. meanwhile, on those days, the city cavalry in several divisions, each having a commander in front, rode forth from different gates, and found on a certain spot some troopers or hussars of the persons entitled to an escort, who, with their leaders, were well received and entertained. they staid till towards evening, and then rode back to the city, scarcely visible to the expectant crowd, many a city knight not being in a condition to manage his horse, or keep himself in the saddle. the most important bands returned by the bridge-gate, where the pressure was consequently the strongest. last of all, just as night fell, the nuremberg post-coach arrived, escorted in the same way, and always containing, as the people fancied, in pursuance of custom, an old woman. its arrival, therefore, was a signal for all the urchins to break out into an ear-splitting shout, though it was utterly impossible to distinguish any one of the passengers within. the throng that pressed after the coach through the bridge-gate was quite incredible, and perfectly bewildering to the senses. the houses nearest the bridge were those, therefore, most in demand among spectators. another more singular ceremony, by which the people were excited in broad daylight, was the piper's court (/pfeifergericht/). it commemorated those early times when important larger trading-towns endeavored, if not to abolish tolls altogether, at least to bring about a reduction of them, as they increased in proportion with trade and industry. they were allowed this privilege by the emperor, who needed their aid, when it was in his power to grant it, but commonly only for one year; so that it had to be annually renewed. this was effected by means of symbolical gifts, which were presented before the opening of st. bartholomew's fair to the imperial magistrate (/schultheiss/), who might have sometimes been the chief toll-gatherer; and, for the sake of a more imposing show, the gifts were offered when he was sitting in full court with the /schöffen/. but when the chief magistrate afterwards came to be no longer appointed by the emperor, and was elected by the city itself, he still retained these privileges; and thus both the immunities of the cities from toll, and the ceremonies by which the representatives from worms, nuremberg, and old bamberg, once acknowledged the ancient favor, had come down to our times. the day before lady day, an open court was proclaimed. in an enclosed space in the great imperial hall, the schöffen took their elevated seats; a step higher, sat the /schultheiss/ in the midst of them; while below, on the right hand, were the procurators of both parties invested with plenipotentiary powers. the /actuarius/ begins to read aloud the weighty judgments reserved for this day: the lawyers demand copies, appeal, or do whatever else seems necessary. all at once a singular sort of music announces, if we may so speak, the advent of former centuries. it proceeds from three pipers, one of whom plays an old /shawm/, another a /sackbut/, and the third a /pommer/, or oboe. they wear blue mantles trimmed with gold, having the notes made fast to their sleeves, and their heads covered. having thus left their inn at ten o'clock, followed by the deputies and their attendants, and stared at by all, natives and strangers, they enter the hall. the law proceedings are stayed, the pipers and their train halt before the railing, the deputy steps in and stations himself in front of the /schultheiss/. the emblematic presents, which were required to be precisely the same as in the old precedents, consisted commonly of the staple wares of the city offering them. pepper passed, as it were, for every thing else; and, even on this occasion, the deputy brought a handsomely turned wooden goblet filled with pepper. upon it lay a pair of gloves, curiously slashed, stitched, and tasselled with silk,--a token of a favor granted and received,--such as the emperor himself made use of in certain cases. along with this was a white staff, which in former times could not easily be dispensed with in judicial proceedings. some small pieces of silver money were added: and the city of worms brought an old felt hat, which was always redeemed again; so that the same one had been a witness of these ceremonies for many years. after the deputy had made his address, handed over his present, and received from the /schultheiss/ assurance of continued favor, he quitted the enclosed circle, the pipers blew, the train departed as it had come, the court pursued its business, until the second and at last the third deputy had been introduced. for each came some time after the other, partly that the pleasure of the public might thus be prolonged, and partly because they were always the same antiquated /virtuosi/ whom nuremburg, for itself and its co-cities, had undertaken to maintain, and produce annually at the appointed place. we children were particularly interested in this festival, because we were not a little flattered to see our grandfather in a place of so much honor; and because commonly, on the self-same day, we used to visit him, quite modestly, in order that we might, when my grandmother had emptied the pepper into her spice-box, lay hold of a cup or small rod, a pair of gloves, or an old /räder albus/. [footnote: an old silver coin.] these symbolical ceremonies, restoring antiquity as if by magic, could not be explained to us without leading us back into past times, and informing us of the manners, customs, and feelings of those early ancestors who were so strangely made present to us by pipers and deputies seemingly risen from the dead, and by tangible gifts which might be possessed by ourselves. these venerable solemnities were followed, in the fine season, by many festivals, delightful for us children, which took place in the open air, outside the city. on the right shore of the main, going down, about half an hour's walk from the gate, there rises a sulphur-spring, neatly enclosed, and surrounded by aged lindens. not far from it stands the good-people's-court, formerly a hospital erected for the sake of the waters. on the commons around, the herds of cattle from the neighborhood were collected on a certain day of the year; and the herdsmen, together with their sweethearts, celebrated a rural festival with dancing and singing, with all sorts of pleasure and clownishness. on the other side of the city lay a similar but larger common, likewise graced with a spring and still finer lindens. thither, at whitsuntide, the flocks of sheep were driven: and, at the same time, the poor, pale orphan children were allowed to come out of their walls into the open air; for the thought had not yet occurred that these destitute creatures, who must some time or other help themselves through the world, ought soon to be brought in contact with it; that, instead of being kept in dreary confinement, they should rather be accustomed to serve and to endure; and that there was every reason to strengthen them physically and morally from their infancy. the nurses and maids, always ready to take a walk, never failed to carry or conduct us to such places, even in our first years; so that these rural festivals belong to the earliest impressions that i can recall. meanwhile, our house had been finished, and that too in tolerably short time; because every thing had been judiciously planned and prepared, and the needful money provided. we now found ourselves all together again, and felt comfortable; for, when a well-considered plan is once carried out, we forget the various inconveniences of the means that were necessary to its accomplishment. the building, for a private residence, was roomy enough, light and cheerful throughout, with broad staircases, agreeable parlors, and a prospect of the gardens that could be enjoyed easily from several of the windows. the internal completion, and what pertained to mere ornament and finish, was gradually accomplished, and served at the same time for occupation and amusement. the first thing brought into order was my father's collection of books, the best of which, in calf and half-calf binding, were to ornament the walls of his office and study. he possessed the beautiful dutch editions of the latin classics, which, for the sake of outward uniformity, he had endeavored to procure all in quarto; and also many other works relating to roman antiquities and the more elegant jurisprudence. the most eminent italian poets were not wanting, and for tasso he showed a great predilection. there were also the best and most recent travels, and he took great delight in correcting and completing keyssler and nemeiz from them. nor had he omitted to surround himself with all needful aids to learning, such as dictionaries of various languages, and encyclopædias of science and art, which, with much else adapted to profit and amusement, might be consulted at will. the other half of this collection, in neat parchment bindings, with very beautifully written titles, was placed in a separate attic. the acquisition of new books, as well as their binding and arrangement, he pursued with great composure and love of order; and he was much influenced in his opinion by the critical notices that ascribed particular merit to any work. his collection of juridical treatises was annually increased by some volumes. next, the pictures, which in the old house had hung about promiscuously, were now collected, and symmetrically hung on the walls of a cheerful room near the study, all in black frames set off with gilt mouldings. it was my father's principle, to which he gave frequent and even passionate utterance, that one ought to employ the living masters, and to spend less upon the departed, in the estimation of whom prejudice greatly concurred. he had the notion that it was precisely the same with pictures as with rhenish wines, which, though age may impart to them a higher value, can be produced in any coming year of just as excellent quality as in years past. after the lapse of some time, the new wine also becomes old, quite as valuable and perhaps more delicious. this opinion he chiefly confirmed by the observation that many old pictures seemed to derive their chief value for lovers of art from the fact that they had become darker and browner, and that the harmony of tone in such pictures was often vaunted. my father, on the other hand, protested that he had no fear that the new pictures would not also turn black in time; though whether they were likely to gain any thing by this he was not so positive. in pursuance of these principles, he employed for many years the whole of the frankfort artists,--the painter hirt, who excelled in animating oak and beech woods, and other so-called rural scenes, with cattle; trautmann, who had adopted rembrandt as his model, and had attained great perfection in enclosed lights and reflections, as well as in effective conflagrations, so that he was once ordered to paint a companion piece to a rembrandt; schutz, who diligently elaborated landscapes of the rhine country, in the manner of sachtlebens; and junker, who executed with great purity flower and fruit pieces, still life, and figures quietly employed, after the models of the dutch. but now, by the new arrangement, by more convenient room, and still more by the acquaintance of a skilful artist, our love of art was again quickened and animated. this artist was seekatz, a pupil of brinkmann, court-painter at darmstadt, whose talent and character will be more minutely unfolded in the sequel. in this way the remaining rooms were finished, according to their several purposes. cleanliness and order prevailed throughout. above all, the large panes of plate-glass contributed towards a perfect lightness, which had been wanting in the old house for many causes, but chiefly on account of the panes, which were for the most part round. my father was cheerful on account of the success of his undertaking; and if his good humor had not been often interrupted because the diligence and exactness of the mechanics did not come up to his wishes, a happier life than ours could not have been conceived, since much good partly arose in the family itself, and partly flowed from without. but an extraordinary event deeply disturbed the boy's peace of mind for the first time. on the st of november, , the earthquake at lisbon took place, and spread a prodigious alarm over the world, long accustomed to peace and quiet. a great and magnificent capital, which was at the same time a trading and mercantile city, is smitten without warning by a most fearful calamity. the earth trembles and totters; the sea foams; ships dash together; houses fall in, and over them churches and towers; the royal palace is in part swallowed by the waters; the bursting land seems to vomit flames, since smoke and fire are seen everywhere amid the ruins. sixty thousand persons, a moment before in ease and comfort, fall together; and he is to be deemed most fortunate who is no longer capable of a thought or feeling about the disaster. the flames rage on; and with them rage a troop of desperadoes, before concealed, or set at large by the event. the wretched survivors are exposed to pillage, massacre, and every outrage; and thus on all sides nature asserts her boundless capriciousness. intimations of this event had spread over wide regions more quickly than the authentic reports: slight shocks had been felt in many places; in many springs, particularly those of a mineral nature, an unusual receding of the waters had been remarked; and so much the greater was the effect of the accounts themselves, which were rapidly circulated, at first in general terms, but finally with dreadful particulars. hereupon the religious were neither wanting in reflections, nor the philosophic in grounds for consolation, nor the clergy in warnings. so complicated an event arrested the attention of the world for a long time; and, as additional and more detailed accounts of the extensive effects of this explosion came from every quarter, the minds already aroused by the misfortunes of strangers began to be more and more anxious about themselves and their friends. perhaps the demon of terror had never so speedily and powerfully diffused his terrors over the earth. the boy, who was compelled to put up with frequent repetitions of the whole matter, was not a little staggered. god, the creator and preserver of heaven and earth, whom the explanation of the first article of the creed declared so wise and benignant, having given both the just and the unjust a prey to the same destruction, had not manifested himself by any means in a fatherly character. in vain the young mind strove to resist these impressions. it was the more impossible, as the wise and scripture-learned could not themselves agree as to the light in which such a phenomenon should be regarded. the next summer gave a closer opportunity of knowing directly that angry god, of whom the old testament records so much. a sudden hail-storm, accompanied by thunder and lightning, violently broke the new panes at the back of our house, which looked towards the west, damaged the new furniture, destroyed some valuable books and other things of worth, and was the more terrible to the children, as the whole household, quite beside themselves, dragged them into a dark passage, where, on their knees, with frightful groans and cries, they thought to conciliate the wrathful deity. meanwhile, my father, who was the only one self- possessed, forced open and unhinged the window-frames, by which we saved much glass, but made a broader inlet for the rain that followed the hail; so that, after we were finally quieted, we found ourselves in the rooms and on the stairs completely surrounded by floods and streams of water. these events, startling as they were on the whole, did not greatly interrupt the course of instruction which my father himself had undertaken to give us children. he had passed his youth in the coburg gymnasium, which stood as one of the first among german educational institutions. he had there laid a good foundation in languages, and other matters reckoned part of a learned education, had subsequently applied himself to jurisprudence at leipzig, and had at last taken his degree at giessen. his dissertation, "electa de aditione hereditatis," which had been earnestly and carefully written, is still cited by jurists with approval. it is a pious wish of all fathers to see what they have themselves failed to attain realized in their sons, as if in this way they could live their lives over again, and at last make a proper use of their early experience. conscious of his acquirements, with the certainty of faithful perseverance, and distrusting the teachers of the day, my father undertook to instruct his own children, allowing them to take particular lessons from particular masters only so far as seemed absolutely necessary. a pedagogical /dilettantism/ was already beginning to show itself everywhere. the pedantry and heaviness of the masters appointed in the public schools had probably given rise to this evil. something better was sought for, but it was forgotten how defective all instruction must be which is not given by persons who are teachers by profession. my father had prospered in his own career tolerably according to his wishes: i was to follow the same course, only more easily, and much farther. he prized my natural endowments the more, because he was himself wanting in them; for he had acquired every thing only by means of unspeakable diligence, pertinacity, and repetition. he often assured me, early and late, both in jest and earnest, that with my talents he would have deported himself very differently, and would not have turned them to such small account. by means of a ready apprehension, practice, and a good memory, i very soon outgrew the instructions which my father and the other teachers were able to give, without being thoroughly grounded in any thing. grammar displeased me, because i regarded it as a mere arbitrary law: the rules seemed ridiculous, inasmuch as they were invalidated by so many exceptions, which had all to be learned by themselves. and if the first latin work had not been in rhyme, i should have got on but badly in that; but, as it was, i hummed and sang it to myself readily enough. in the same way we had a geography in memory-verses, in which the most wretched doggerel best served to fix the recollection of that which was to be retained; e.g.,-- "upper-yssel has many a fen, which makes it hateful to all men." the forms and inflections of language i caught with ease; and i also quickly unravelled what lay in the conception of a thing. in rhetoric, composition, and such matters, no one excelled me; although i was often put back for faults of grammar. yet these were the attempts that gave my father particular pleasure, and for which he rewarded me with many presents of money, considerable for such a lad. my father taught my sister italian in the same room in which i had to commit cellarius to memory. as i was soon ready with my task, and was yet obliged to sit quiet, i listened with my book before me, and very readily caught the italian, which struck me as an agreeable softening of latin. other precocities, with respect to memory and the power to combine, i possessed in common with those children who thus acquire an early reputation. for that reason, my father could scarcely wait for me to go to college. he very soon declared that i must study jurisprudence in leipzig, for which he retained a strong predilection; and i was afterwards to visit some other university and take my degree. as for this second one he was indifferent as to which i might choose, except that he had for some reason or other a disinclination to göttingen, to my disappointment, since it was precisely there that i had placed such confidence and high hopes. he told me further, that i was to go to wetzlar and ratisbon, as well as to vienna, and thence towards italy; although he repeatedly mentioned that paris should first be seen, because after coming out of italy nothing else could be pleasing. these tales of my future youthful travels, often as they were repeated, i listened to eagerly, the more so as they always led to accounts of italy, and at last to a description of naples. his otherwise serious and dry manner seemed on these occasions to relax and quicken, and thus a passionate wish awoke in us children to participate in the paradise he described. private lessons, which now gradually multiplied, were shared with the children of the neighbors. this learning in common did not advance me: the teachers followed their routine; and the rudeness, sometimes the ill nature, of my companions, interrupted the brief hours of study with tumult, vexation, and disturbance. chrestomathies, by which learning is made pleasant and varied, had not yet reached us. cornelius nepos, so dry to young people; the new testament, which was much too easy, and which by preaching and religious instructions had been rendered even common-place; cellarius and pasor,--could impart no kind of interest: on the other hand, a certain rage for rhyme and versification, a consequence of reading the prevalent german poets, took complete possession of us. me it had seized much earlier, as i had found it agreeable to pass from the rhetorical to the poetical treatment of subjects. we boys held a sunday assembly where each of us was to produce original verses. and here i was struck by something strange, which long caused me uneasiness. my poems, whatever they might be, always seemed to me the best. but i soon remarked that my competitors, who brought forth very lame affairs, were in the same condition, and thought no less of themselves. nay, what appeared yet more suspicious, a good lad (though in such matters altogether unskilful), whom i liked in other respects, but who had his rhymes made by his tutor, not only regarded these as the best, but was thoroughly persuaded they were his own, as he always maintained in our confidential intercourse. now, as this illusion and error was obvious to me, the question one day forced itself upon me, whether i myself might not be in the same state, whether those poems were not really better than mine, and whether i might not justly appear to those boys as mad as they to me? this disturbed me much and long, for it was altogether impossible for me to find any external criterion of the truth: i even ceased from producing, until at length i was quieted by my own light temperament, and the feeling of my own powers, and lastly by a trial of skill,--started on the spur of the moment by our teachers and parents, who had noted our sport,--in which i came off well, and won general praise. no libraries for children had at that time been established. the old had themselves still childish notions, and found it convenient to impart their own education to their successors. except the "orbis pictus" of amos comenius, no book of the sort fell into our hands; but the large folio bible, with copperplates by merian, was diligently gone over leaf by leaf; gottfried's "chronicles," with plates by the same master, taught us the most notable events of universal history; the "acerra philologica" added thereto all sorts of fables, mythologies, and wonders; and, as i soon became familiar with ovid's "metamorphoses," the first books of which in particular i studied carefully, my young brain was rapidly furnished with a mass of images and events, of significant and wonderful shapes and occurrences; and i never felt time hang upon my hands, as i always occupied myself in working over, repeating, and reproducing these acquisitions. a more salutary moral effect than that of these rude and hazardous antiquities was produced by fenelon's "telemachus," with which i first became acquainted in neukirch's translation, and which, imperfectly as it was executed, had a sweet and beneficent influence on my mind. that "robinson crusoe" was added in due time, follows in the nature of things; and it may be imagined that the "island of falsenberg" was not wanting. lord anson's "voyage round the globe" combined the dignity of truth with the rich fancies of fable; and, while our thoughts accompanied this excellent seaman, we were conducted over all the world, and endeavored to follow him with our fingers on the globe. but a still richer harvest was to spring up before me, when i lighted on a mass of writings, which, in their present state, it is true, cannot be called excellent, but the contents of which, in a harmless way, bring near to us many a meritorious action of former times. the publication, or rather the manufacture, of those books, which have at a later day become so well known and celebrated under the name volkschriften, volksbucher (popular works or books), was carried on in frankfort. the enormous sales they met with led to their being almost illegibly printed from stereotypes on horrible blotting-paper. we children were so fortunate as to find these precious remains of the middle ages every day on a little table at the door of a dealer in cheap books, and to obtain them at the cost of a couple of kreutzer. "the eulenspiegel," "the four sons of haimon," "the emperor octavian," "the fair melusina," "the beautiful magelone," "fortunatus," with the whole race down to "the wandering jew," were all at our service, as often as we preferred the relish of these works to the taste of sweet things. the greatest benefit of this was, that, when we had read through or damaged such a sheet, it could soon be reprocured, and swallowed a second time. as a family picnic in summer is vexatiously disturbed by a sudden storm, which transforms a pleasant state of things into the very reverse: so the diseases of childhood fall unexpectedly on the most beautiful season of early life. and thus it happened with me. i had just purchased "fortunatus with his purse and wishing-hat," when i was attacked by a restlessness and fever which announced the small-pox. inoculation was still with us considered very problematical; and, although it had already been intelligibly and urgently recommended by popular writers, the german physicians hesitated to perform an operation that seemed to forestall nature. speculative englishmen, therefore, had come to the continent, and inoculated, for a considerable fee, the children of such persons as were opulent, and free from prejudices. still, the majority were exposed to the old disease: the infection raged through families, killed and disfigured many children; and few parents dared to avail themselves of a method, the probable efficacy of which had been abundantly confirmed by the result. the evil now invaded our house, and attacked me with unusual severity. my whole body was sown over with spots, and my face covered; and for several days i lay blind and in great pain. they tried the only possible alleviation, and promised me heaps of gold if i would keep quiet, and not increase the mischief by rubbing and scratching. i controlled myself, while, according to the prevailing prejudice, they kept me as warm as possible, and thus only rendered my suffering more acute. at last, after a woeful time, there fell, as it were, a mask from my face. the blotches had left no visible mark upon the skin, but the features were plainly altered. i myself was satisfied merely with seeing the light of day again, and gradually putting off my spotted skin; but others were pitiless enough to remind me often of my previous condition, especially a very lively aunt, who had formerly regarded me with idolatry, but in after-years could seldom look at me without exclaiming "the deuce, cousin, what a fright he's grown!" then she would tell me circumstantially how i had once been her delight, and what attention she had excited when she carried me about; and thus i early learned that people very often subject us to a severe atonement for the pleasure which we have afforded them. i escaped neither measles nor chicken-pox, nor any other of the tormenting demons of childhood; and i was assured each time that it was a great piece of good luck that this malady was now past forever. but alas! another again threatened in the background, and advanced. all these things increased my propensity to reflection; and as i had already practised myself in fortitude, in order to remove the torture of impatience, the virtues which i had heard praised in the stoics appeared to me highly worthy of imitation, and the more so, as something similar was commended by the christian doctrine of patience. while on the subject of these family diseases, i will mention a brother about three years younger than myself, who was likewise attacked by that infection, and suffered not a little from it. he was of a tender nature, quiet and capricious; and we were never on the most friendly terms. besides, he scarcely survived the years of childhood. among several other children born afterwards, who, like him, did not live long, i only remember a very pretty and agreeable girl, who also soon passed away; so that, after the lapse of some years, my sister and i remained alone, and were therefore the more deeply and affectionately attached to each other. these maladies, and other unpleasant interruptions, were in their consequences doubly grievous; for my father, who seemed to have laid down for himself a certain calendar of education and instruction, was resolved immediately to repair every delay, and imposed double lessons upon the young convalescent. these were not hard for me to accomplish, but were so far troublesome, that they hindered, and, to a certain extent, repressed, my inward development, which had taken a decided direction. from these didactic and pedagogic oppressions, we commonly fled to my grandfather and grandmother. their house stood in the friedberg street, and appeared to have been formerly a fortress; for, on approaching it, nothing was seen but a large gate with battlements, which were joined on either side to the two neighboring houses. on entering through a narrow passage, we reached at last a tolerably wide court, surrounded by irregular buildings, which were now all united into one dwelling. we usually hastened at once into the garden, which extended to a considerable length and breadth behind the buildings, and was very well kept. the walks were mostly skirted by vine-trellises: one part of the space was used for vegetables, and another devoted to flowers, which from spring till autumn adorned in rich succession the borders as well as the beds. the long wall, erected towards the south, was used for some well-trained espalier peach-trees, the forbidden fruit of which ripened temptingly before us through the summer. yet we rather avoided this side, because we here could not satisfy our dainty appetites; and we turned to the side opposite, where an interminable row of currant and gooseberry bushes furnished our voracity with a succession of harvests till autumn. not less important to us was an old, high, wide-spreading mulberry-tree, both on account of its fruits, and because we were told that the silk-worms fed upon its leaves. in this peaceful region my grandfather was found every evening, tending with genial care, and with his own hand, the finer growths of fruits and flowers; while a gardener managed the drudgery. he was never vexed by the various toils which were necessary to preserve and increase a fine show of pinks. the branches of the peach-trees were carefully tied to the espaliers with his own hands, in a fan-shape, in order to bring about a full and easy growth of the fruit. the sorting of the bulbs of tulips, hyacinths, and plants of a similar nature, as well as the care of their preservation, he intrusted to none; and i still with pleasure recall to my mind how diligently he occupied himself in inoculating the different varieties of roses. that he might protect himself from the thorns, he put on a pair of those ancient leather gloves, of which three pair were given him annually at the piper's court; so that there was no dearth of the article. he wore also a loose dressing-gown, and a folded black velvet cap upon his head; so that he might have passed for an intermediate person between alcinous and laertes. all this work in the garden he pursued as regularly and with as much precision as his official business; for, before he came down, he always arranged the list of cases for the next day, and read the legal papers. in the morning he proceeded to the city-hall, dined after his return, then took a nap in his easy-chair, and so went through the same routine every day. he conversed little, never exhibited any vehemence; and i do not remember ever to have seen him angry. all that surrounded him was in the fashion of the olden time. i never perceived any alteration in his wainscoted room. his library contained, besides law-works, only the earliest books of travels, sea-voyages, and discoveries of countries. altogether i can call to mind no situation more adapted than his to awaken the feeling of uninterrupted peace and eternal duration. but the reverence we entertained for this venerable old man was raised to the highest degree by a conviction that he possessed the gift of prophecy, especially in matters that pertained to himself and his destiny. it is true he revealed himself to no one distinctly and minutely, except to my grandmother; yet we were all aware that he was informed of what was going to happen by significant dreams. he assured his wife, for instance, at a time when he was still a junior councillor, that, on the first vacancy, he would obtain the place left open on the bench of the /schöffen/; and soon afterwards, when one of those officers actually died of apoplexy, my grandfather gave orders that his house should be quietly got ready prepared on the day of electing and balloting, to receive his guests and congratulators. sure enough, the decisive gold ball was drawn in his favor. the simple dream by which he had learned this, he confided to his wife as follows: he had seen himself in the ordinary full assembly of councilmen, where all went on just as usual. suddenly the late /schöff/ rose from his seat, descended the steps, pressed him in the most complimentary manner to take the vacant place, and then departed by the door. something similar occurred on the death of the /schultheiss/. they make no delay in supplying this place; as they always have to fear that the emperor will, at some time, resume his ancient right of nominating the officer. on this occasion, the messenger of the court came at midnight to summon an extraordinary session for the next morning; and, as the light in his lantern was about to expire, he asked for a candle's end to help him on his way. "give him a whole one," said my grandfather to the ladies: "he takes the trouble all on my account." this expression anticipated the result,--he was made /schultheiss/. and what rendered the circumstance particularly remarkable was, that, although his representative was the third and last to draw at the ballot, the two silver balls first came out, leaving the golden ball at the bottom of the bag for him. perfectly prosaic, simple, and without a trace of the fantastic or miraculous, were the other dreams, of which we were informed. moreover, i remember that once, as a boy, i was turning over his books and memoranda, and found, among some other remarks which related to gardening, such sentences as these: "to-night n. n. came to me, and said,"--the name and revelation being written in cipher; or, "this night i saw,"--all the rest being again in cipher, except the conjunctions and similar words, from which nothing could be learned. it is worthy of note also, that persons who showed no signs of prophetic insight at other times, acquired, for the moment, while in his presence, and that by means of some sensible evidence, presentiments of diseases or deaths which were then occurring in distant places. but no such gift has been transmitted to any of his children or grandchildren, who, for the most part, have been hearty people, enjoying life, and never going beyond the actual. while on this subject, i remember with gratitude many kindnesses i received from them in my youth. thus, for example, we were employed and entertained in many ways when we visited the second daughter, married to the druggist melber, whose house and shop stood near the market, in the midst of the liveliest and most crowded part of the town. there we could look down from the windows pleasantly enough upon the hurly-burly, in which we feared to lose ourselves; and though at first, of all the goods in the shop, nothing had much interest for us but the licorice, and the little brown stamped cakes made from it, we became in time better acquainted with the multitude of articles bought and sold in that business. this aunt was the most vivacious of all the family. whilst my mother, in her early years, took pleasure in being neatly dressed, working at some domestic occupation, or reading a book, the other, on the contrary, ran about the neighborhood to pick up neglected children, take care of them, comb them, and carry them about in the way she had done with me for a good while. at a time of public festivities, such as coronations, it was impossible to keep her at home. when a little child, she had already scrambled for the money scattered on such occasions; and it was related of her, that once when she had got a good many together, and was looking at them with great delight in the palm of her hand, it was struck by somebody, and all her well-earned booty vanished at a blow. there was another incident of which she was very proud. once, while standing on a post as the emperor charles vii. was passing, at a moment when all the people were silent, she shouted a vigorous "vivat!" into the coach, which made him take off his hat to her, and thank her quite graciously for her bold salutation. every thing in her house was stirring, lively, and cheerful; and we children owed her many a gay hour. in a more quiet situation, which was, however, suited to her character, was a second aunt, married to the pastor stark, incumbent of st. catharine's church. he lived much alone, in accordance with his temperament and vocation, and possessed a fine library. here i first became acquainted with homer, in a prose translation, which may be found in the seventh part of herr von loen's new collection of the most remarkable travels, under the title, "homer's description of the conquest of the kingdom of troy," ornamented with copperplates in the theatrical french taste. these pictures perverted my imagination to such a degree, that, for a long time, i could conceive the homeric heroes only under such forms. the incidents themselves gave me unspeakable delight; though i found great fault with the work for affording us no account of the capture of troy, and breaking off so abruptly with the death of hector. my uncle, to whom i mentioned this defect, referred me to virgil, who perfectly satisfied my demands. it will be taken for granted, that we children had among our other lessons a continued and progressive instruction in religion. but the church-protestantism imparted to us was, properly speaking, nothing but a kind of dry morality: ingenious exposition was not thought of, and the doctrine appealed neither to the understanding nor to the heart. for that reason, there were various secessions from the established church. separatists, pietists, herrnhuter (moravians), quiet-in-the-land, and others differently named and characterized, sprang up, all of whom are animated by the same purpose of approaching the deity, especially through christ, more closely than seemed to them possible under the forms of the established religion. the boy heard these opinions and sentiments constantly spoken of, for the clergy as well as the laity divided themselves into /pro/ and /con/. the minority were composed of those who dissented more or less broadly; but their modes of thinking attracted by originality, heartiness, perseverance, and independence. all sorts of stories were told of their virtues, and of the way in which they were manifested. the reply of a pious master-tinman was especially noted, who, when one of his craft attempted to shame him by asking, "who is really your confessor?" answered with great cheerfulness, and confidence in the goodness of his cause, "i have a famous one,--no less than the confessor of king david." things of this sort naturally made an impression on the boy, and led him into similar states of mind. in fact, he came to the thought that he might immediately approach the great god of nature, the creator and preserver of heaven and earth, whose earlier manifestations of wrath had been long forgotten in the beauty of the world, and the manifold blessings in which we participate while upon it. the way he took to accomplish this was very curious. the boy had chiefly kept to the first article of belief. the god who stands in immediate connection with nature, and owns and loves it as his work, seemed to him the proper god, who might be brought into closer relationship with man, as with every thing else, and who would take care of him, as of the motion of the stars, the days and seasons, the animals and plants. there were texts of the gospels which explicitly stated this. the boy could ascribe no form to this being: he therefore sought him in his works, and would, in the good old-testament fashion, build him an altar. natural productions were set forth as images of the world, over which a flame was to burn, signifying the aspirations of man's heart towards his maker. he brought out of the collection of natural objects which he possessed, and which had been increased as chance directed, the best ores and other specimens. but the next difficulty was, as to how they should be arranged and raised into a pile. his father possessed a beautiful red-lacquered music-stand, ornamented with gilt flowers, in the form of a four-sided pyramid, with different elevations, which had been found convenient for quartets, but lately was not much in use. the boy laid hands on this, and built up his representatives of nature one above the other in steps; so that it all looked quite pretty and at the same time sufficiently significant. on an early sunrise his first worship of god was to be celebrated, but the young priest had not yet settled how to produce a flame which should at the same time emit an agreeable odor. at last it occurred to him to combine the two, as he possessed a few fumigating pastils, which diffused a pleasant fragrance with a glimmer, if not with a flame. nay, this soft burning and exhalation seemed a better representation of what passes in the heart, than an open flame. the sun had already risen for a long time, but the neighboring houses concealed the east. at last it glittered above the roofs: a burning-glass was at once taken up and applied to the pastils, which were fixed on the summit in a fine porcelain saucer. every thing succeeded according to the wish, and the devotion was perfect. the altar remained as a peculiar ornament of the room which had been assigned him in the new house. every one regarded it only as a well-arranged collection of natural curiosities. the boy knew better, but concealed his knowledge. he longed for a repetition of the solemnity. but unfortunately, just as the most opportune sun arose, the porcelain cup was not at hand: he placed the pastils immediately on the upper surface of the stand; they were kindled; and so great was the devotion of the priest, that he did not observe, until it was too late, the mischief his sacrifice was doing. the pastils had burned mercilessly into the red lacquer and beautiful gold flowers, and, as if some evil spirit had disappeared, had left their black, ineffaceable footprints. by this the young priest was thrown into the most extreme perplexity. the mischief could be covered up, it was true, with the larger pieces of his show materials; but the spirit for new offerings was gone, and the accident might almost be considered a hint and warning of the danger there always is in wishing to approach the deity in such a way. second book. all that has been hitherto recorded indicates that happy and easy condition in which nations exist during a long peace. but nowhere probably is such a beautiful time enjoyed in greater comfort than in cities living under their own laws, and large enough to include a considerable number of citizens, and so situated as to enrich them by trade and commerce. strangers find it to their advantage to come and go, and are under a necessity of bringing profit in order to acquire profit. even if such cities rule but a small territory, they are the better qualified to advance their internal prosperity; as their external relations expose them to no costly undertakings or alliances. thus the frankforters passed a series of prosperous years during my childhood; but scarcely, on the th of august, , had i completed my seventh year, than that world-renowned war broke out which was also to exert great influence upon the next seven years of my life. frederick the second, king of prussia, had fallen upon saxony with sixty thousand men; and, instead of announcing his invasion by a declaration of war, he followed it up with a manifesto, composed by himself as it was said, which explained the causes that had moved and justified him in so monstrous a step. the world, which saw itself appealed to, not merely as spectator, but as judge, immediately split into two parties; and our family was an image of the great whole. my grandfather, who, as /schöff/ of frankfort, had carried the coronation canopy over francis the first, and had received from the empress a heavy gold chain with her likeness, took the austrian side along with some of his sons-in-law and daughters. my father having been nominated to the imperial council by charles the seventh, and sympathizing sincerely in the fate of that unhappy monarch, leaned towards prussia, with the other and smaller half of the family. our meetings, which had been held on sundays for many years uninterruptedly, were very soon disturbed. the misunderstandings so common among persons related by marriage, found only now a form in which they could be expressed. contention, discord, silence, and separation ensued. my grandfather, generally a cheerful, quiet man, and fond of ease, became impatient. the women vainly endeavored to smother the flames; and, after some unpleasant scenes, my father was the first to quit the society. at home we now rejoiced undisturbed at the prussian victories, which were commonly announced with great glee by our vivacious aunt. every other interest had to give way to this, and we passed the rest of the year in perpetual agitation. the occupation of dresden, the moderation of the king at the outset, his slow but secure advances, the victory at lowositz, the capture of the saxons, were so many triumphs for our party. every thing that could be alleged for the advantage of our opponents was denied or depreciated; and, as the members of the family on the other side did the same, they could not meet in the streets without disputes arising, as in "romeo and juliet." thus i also was then a prussian in my views, or, to speak more correctly, a fritzian; since what cared we for prussia? it was the personal character of the great king that worked upon all hearts. i rejoiced with my father in our conquests, readily copied the songs of triumph, and almost more willingly the lampoons directed against the other party, poor as the rhymes might be. being their eldest grandson and godchild, i had dined every sunday since my infancy with my grandfather and grandmother; and the hours so spent had been the most delightful of the whole week. but now i relished not a morsel, because i was compelled to hear the most horrible slanders of my hero. here blew another wind, here sounded another tone, than at home. my liking and even my respect for my grandfather and grandmother fell off. i could mention nothing of this to my parents, but avoided the matter, both on account of my own feelings, and because i had been warned by my mother. in this way i was thrown back upon myself; and as in my sixth year, after the earthquake at lisbon, the goodness of god had become to me in some measure suspicious: so i began now, on account of frederick the second, to doubt the justice of the public. my heart was naturally inclined to reverence, and it required a great shock to stagger my faith in any thing that was venerable. but alas! they had commended good manners and a becoming deportment to us, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the people. what will people say? was always the cry; and i thought that the people must be right good people, and would know how to judge of any thing and every thing. but my experience went just to the contrary. the greatest and most signal services were defamed and attacked; the noblest deeds, if not denied, were at least misrepresented and diminished; and this base injustice was done to the only man who was manifestly elevated above all his contemporaries, and who daily proved what he was able to do,--and that, not by the populace, but by distinguished men, as i took my grandfather and uncles to be. that parties existed, and that he himself belonged to a party, had never entered into the conceptions of the boy. he, therefore, believed himself all the more right, and dared hold his own opinion for the better one; since he and those of like mind appreciated the beauty and other good qualities of maria theresa, and even did not grudge the emperor francis his love of jewellery and money. that count daun was often called an old dozer, they thought justifiable. but, now that i look more closely into the matter, i here trace the germ of that disregard and even disdain of the public, which clung to me for a whole period of my life, and only in later days was brought within bounds by insight and cultivation. suffice it to say, that the perception of the injustice of parties had even then a very unpleasant, nay, an injurious, effect upon the boy; as it accustomed him to separate himself from beloved and highly valued persons. the quick succession of battles and events left the parties neither quiet nor rest. we ever found a malicious delight in reviving and resharpening those imaginary evils and capricious disputes; and thus we continued to tease each other, until the occupation of frankfort by the french some years afterwards brought real inconvenience into our homes. although to most of us the important events occurring in distant parts served only for topics of hot controversy, there were others who perceived the seriousness of the times, and feared that the sympathy of france might open a scene of war in our own vicinity. they kept us children at home more than before, and strove in many ways to occupy and amuse us. with this view, the puppet-show bequeathed by our grandmother was again brought forth, and arranged in such a way that the spectators sat in my gable-room; while the persons managing and performing, as well as the theatre itself as far as the proscenium, found a place in the room adjoining. we were allowed, as a special favor, to invite first one and then another of the neighbor's children as spectators; and thus at the outset i gained many friends, but the restlessness inherent in children did not suffer them to remain long a patient audience. they interrupted the play; and we were compelled to seek a younger public, which could at any rate be kept in order by the nurses and maids. the original drama, to which the puppets had been specially adapted, we had learned by heart; and in the beginning this was exclusively performed. soon growing weary of it, however, we changed the dresses and decorations, and attempted various other pieces, which were indeed on too grand a scale for so narrow a stage. although this presumption spoiled and finally quite destroyed what we performed, such childish pleasures and employments nevertheless exercised and advanced in many ways my power of invention and representation, my fancy, and a certain technical skill, to a degree which in any other way could not perhaps have been secured in so short a time, in so confined a space, and at so little expense. i had early learned to use compasses and ruler, because all the instructions they gave me in geometry were forthwith put into practice; and i occupied myself greatly with paste-board-work. i did not stop at geometrical figures, little boxes, and such things, but invented pretty pleasure-houses adorned with pilasters, steps, and flat roofs. however, but little of this was completed. far more persevering was i, on the other hand, in arranging, with the help of our domestic (a tailor by trade), an armory for the service of our plays and tragedies, which we ourselves performed with delight when we had outgrown the puppets. my playfellows, too, prepared for themselves such armories, which they considered to be quite as fine and good as mine; but i had made provision, not for the wants of one person only, and could furnish several of the little band with every requisite, and thus made myself more and more indispensable to our little circle. that such games tended to factions, quarrels, and blows, and commonly came to a sad end in tumult and vexation, may easily be supposed. in such cases certain of my companions generally took part with me, while others sided against me; though many changes of party occurred. one single boy, whom i will call pylades, urged by the others, once only left my party, but could scarcely for a moment maintain his hostile position. we were reconciled amid many tears, and for a long time afterwards kept faithfully together. to him, as well as other well-wishers, i could render myself very agreeable by telling tales, which they most delighted to hear when i was the hero of my own story. it greatly rejoiced them to know that such wonderful things could befall one of their own playfellows; nor was it any harm that they did not understand how i could find time and space for such adventures, as they must have been pretty well aware of all my comings and goings, and how i was occupied the entire day. not the less necessary was it for me to select the localities of these occurrences, if not in another world, at least in another spot; and yet all was told as having taken place only to-day or yesterday. they therefore had to form for themselves greater illusions than i could have palmed off upon them. if i had not gradually learned, in accordance with the instincts of my nature, to work up these visions and conceits into artistic forms, such vain-glorious beginnings could not have gone on without producing evil consequences for myself in the end. considering this impulse more closely, we may see in it that presumption with which the poet authoritatively utters the greatest improbabilities, and requires every one to recognize as real whatever may in any way seem to him, the inventor, as true. but what is here told only in general terms, and by way of reflection, will perhaps become more apparent and interesting by means of an example. i subjoin, therefore, one of these tales, which, as i often had to repeat it to my comrades, still hovers entire in my imagination and memory. the new paris. a boy's legend. on the night before whitsunday, not long since, i dreamed that i stood before a mirror engaged with the new summer clothes which my dear parents had given me for the holiday. the dress consisted, as you know, of shoes of polished leather, with large silver buckles, fine cotton stockings, black nether garments of serge, and a coat of green baracan with gold buttons. the waistcoat of gold cloth was cut out of my father's bridal waistcoat. my hair had been frizzled and powdered, and my curls stuck out from my head like little wings; but i could not finish dressing myself, because i kept confusing the different articles, the first always falling off as soon as i was about to put on the next. in this dilemma, a young and handsome man came to me, and greeted me in the friendliest manner. "oh! you are welcome," said i: "i am very glad to see you here."--"do you know me, then?" replied he, smiling. "why not?" was my no less smiling answer. "you are mercury--i have often enough seen you represented in pictures."--"i am, indeed," replied he, "and am sent to you by the gods on an important errand. do you see these three apples?" he stretched forth his hand and showed me three apples, which it could hardly hold, and which were as wonderfully beautiful as they were large, the one of a red, the other of a yellow, the third of a green, color. one could not help thinking they were precious stones made into the form of fruit. i would have snatched them; but he drew back, and said, "you must know, in the first place, that they are not for you. you must give them to the three handsomest youths of the city, who then, each according to his lot, will find wives to the utmost of their wishes. take them, and success to you!" said he, as he departed, leaving the apples in my open hands. they appeared to me to have become still larger. i held them up at once against the light, and found them quite transparent; but soon they expanded upward, and became three beautiful little ladies about as large as middle-sized dolls, whose clothes were of the colors of the apples. they glided gently up my fingers: and when i was about to catch them, to make sure of one at least, they had already soared high and far; and i had to put up with the disappointment. i stood there all amazed and petrified, holding up my hands, and staring at my fingers as if there were still something on them to see. suddenly i saw a most lovely girl dance upon the very tips. she was smaller, but pretty and lively; and as she did not fly away like the others, but remained dancing, now on one finger-point, now on another, i regarded her for a long while with admiration. and, as she pleased me so much, i thought in the end i could catch her, and made, as i fancied, a very adroit grasp. but at the moment i felt such a blow on my head that i fell down stunned, and did not awake from my stupor till it was time to dress myself and go to church. during the service i often called those images to mind, and also when i was eating dinner at my grandfather's table. in the afternoon i wished to visit some friends, partly to show myself in my new dress, with my hat under my arm and my sword by my side, and partly to return their visits. i found no one at home; and, as i heard that they were gone to the gardens, i resolved to follow them, and pass the evening pleasantly. my way led towards the intrenchments; and i came to the spot which is rightly called the bad wall, for it is never quite safe from ghosts there. i walked slowly, and thought of my three goddesses, but especially of the little nymph, and often held up my fingers in hopes she might be kind enough to balance herself there again. with such thoughts i was proceeding, when i saw in the wall on my left hand a little gate which i did not remember to have ever noticed before. it looked low, but its pointed arch would have allowed the tallest man to enter. arch and wall had been chiselled in the handsomest way, both by mason and sculptor; but it was the door itself which first properly attracted my attention. the old brown wood, though slightly ornamented, was crossed with broad bands of brass wrought both in relief and intaglio. the foliage on these, with the most natural birds sitting in it, i could not sufficiently admire. but, what seemed most remarkable, no keyhole could be seen, no latch, no knocker; and from this i conjectured that the door could be opened only from within. i was not in error; for, when i went nearer in order to touch the ornaments, it opened inwards; and there appeared a man whose dress was somewhat long, wide, and singular. a venerable beard enveloped his chin, so that i was inclined to think him a jew. but he, as if he had divined my thoughts, made the sign of the holy cross, by which he gave me to understand that he was a good catholic christian. "young gentleman, how came you here, and what are you doing?" he said to me, with a friendly voice and manner." i am admiring," i replied," the workmanship of this door; for i have never seen any thing like it, except in some small pieces in the collections of amateurs."--"i am glad," he answered, "that you like such works. the door is much more beautiful inside. come in, if you like." my heart, in some degree, failed me. the mysterious dress of the porter, the seclusion, and a something, i know not what, that seemed to be in the air, oppressed me. i paused, therefore, under the pretext of examining the outside still longer; and at the same time i cast stolen glances into the garden, for a garden it was which had opened before me. just inside the door i saw a space. old linden-trees, standing at regular distances from each other, entirely covered it with their thickly interwoven branches; so that the most numerous parties, during the hottest of the day, might have refreshed themselves in the shade. already i had stepped upon the threshold, and the old man contrived gradually to allure me on. properly speaking, i did not resist; for i had always heard that a prince or sultan in such a case must never ask whether there be danger at hand. i had my sword by my side too; and could i not soon have finished with the old man, in case of hostile demonstrations? i therefore entered perfectly re-assured: the keeper closed the door, which bolted so softly that i scarcely heard it. he now showed me the workmanship on the inside, which in truth was still more artistic than the outside, explained it to me, and at the same time manifested particular good will. being thus entirely at my ease, i let myself be guided in the shaded space by the wall, that formed a circle, where i found much to admire. niches tastefully adorned with shells, corals, and pieces of ore, poured a profusion of water from the mouths of tritons into marble basins. between them were aviaries and other lattice-work, in which squirrels frisked about, guinea-pigs ran hither and thither, with as many other pretty little creatures as one could wish to see. the birds called and sang to us as we advanced: the starlings, particularly, chattered the silliest stuff. one always cried, "paris, paris!" and the other, "narcissus, narcissus!" as plainly as a schoolboy can say them. the old man seemed to continue looking at me earnestly while the birds called out thus; but i feigned not to notice it, and had in truth no time to attend to him, for i could easily perceive that we went round and round, and that this shaded space was in fact a great circle, which enclosed another much more important. indeed, we had actually reached the small door again, and it seemed as though the old man would let me out. but my eyes remained directed towards a golden railing, which seemed to hedge round the middle of this wonderful garden, and which i had found means enough of observing in our walk; although the old man managed to keep me always close to the wall, and therefore pretty far from the centre. and now, just as he was going to the door, i said to him, with a bow, "you have been so extremely kind to me that i would fain venture to make one more request before i part from you. might i not look more closely at that golden railing, which appears to enclose in a very wide circle the interior of the garden?"--"very willingly," replied he, "but in that case you must submit to some conditions."--"in what do they consist?" i asked hastily. "you must leave here your hat and sword, and must not let go my hand while i accompany you."--"most willingly," i replied; and laid my hat and sword on the nearest stone bench. immediately he grasped my left hand with his right, held it fast, and led me with some force straight forwards. when we reached the railing, my wonder changed into amazement. on a high socle of marble stood innumerable spears and partisans, ranged beneath each other, joined by their strangely ornamented points, and forming a complete circle. i looked through the intervals, and saw just behind a gently flowing piece of water, bounded on both sides by marble, and displaying in its clear depths a multitude of gold and silver fish, which moved about now slowly and now swiftly, now alone and now in shoals. i would also fain have looked beyond the canal, to see what there was in the heart of the garden. but i found, to my great sorrow, that the other side of the water was bordered by a similar railing, and with so much art, that to each interval on this side exactly fitted a spear or partisan on the other. these, and the other ornaments, rendered it impossible for one to see through, stand as he would. besides, the old man, who still held me fast, prevented me from moving freely. my curiosity, meanwhile, after all i had seen, increased more and more; and i took heart to ask the old man whether one could not pass over. "why not?" returned he, "but on new conditions." when i asked him what these were, he gave me to understand that i must put on other clothes. i was satisfied to do so: he led me back towards the wall into a small, neat room, on the sides of which hung many kinds of garments, all of which seemed to approach the oriental costume. i soon changed my dress. he confined my powdered hair under a many-colored net, after having to my horror violently dusted it out. now, standing before a great mirror, i found myself quite handsome in my disguise, and pleased myself better than in my formal sunday clothes. i made gestures, and leaped, as i had seen the dancers do at the fair-theatre. in the midst of this i looked in the glass, and saw by chance the image of a niche which was behind me. on its white ground hung three green cords, each of them twisted up in a way which from the distance i could not clearly discern. i therefore turned round rather hastily, and asked the old man about the niche as well as the cords. he very courteously took a cord down, and showed it to me. it was a band of green silk of moderate thickness, the ends of which, joined by green leather with two holes in it, gave it the appearance of an instrument for no very desirable purpose. the thing struck me as suspicious, and i asked the old man the meaning. he answered me very quietly and kindly, "this is for those who abuse the confidence which is here readily shown them." he hung the cord again in its place, and immediately desired me to follow him; for this time he did not hold me, and so i walked freely beside him. my chief curiosity now was, to discover where the gate and bridge, for passing through the railing and over the canal, might be; since as yet i had not been able to find any thing of the kind. i therefore watched the golden fence very narrowly as we hastened towards it. but in a moment my sight failed: lances, spears, halberds, and partisans began unexpectedly to rattle and quiver; and the strange movement ended in all the points sinking towards each other just as if two ancient hosts, armed with pikes, were about to charge. the confusion to the eyes, the clatter to the ears, was hardly to be borne; but infinitely surprising was the sight, when, falling perfectly level, they covered the circle of the canal, and formed the most glorious bridge that one can imagine. for now a most variegated garden parterre met my sight. it was laid out in curvilinear beds, which, looked at together, formed a labyrinth of ornaments; all with green borders of a low, woolly plant, which i had never seen before; all with flowers, each division of different colors, which, being likewise low and close to the ground, allowed the plan to be easily traced. this delicious sight, which i enjoyed in the full sunshine, quite riveted my eyes. but i hardly knew where i was to set my foot; for the serpentine paths were most delicately laid with blue sand, which seemed to form upon the earth a darker sky, or a sky seen in the water: and so i walked for a while beside my conductor, with my eyes fixed upon the ground, until at last i perceived, that, in the middle of this round of beds and flowers, there was a great circle of cypresses or poplar-like trees, through which one could not see, because the lowest branches seemed to spring out of the ground. my guide, without taking me exactly the shortest way, led me nevertheless immediately towards that centre; and how was i astonished, when, on entering the circle of high trees, i saw before me the peristyle of a magnificent garden-house, which seemed to have similar prospects and entrances on the other sides! the heavenly music which streamed from the building transported me still more than this model of architecture. i fancied that i heard now a lute, now a harp, now a guitar, and now something tinkling which did not belong to any of these instruments. the door for which we made opened soon on being lightly touched by the old man. but how was i amazed when the porteress who came out perfectly resembled the delicate girl who had danced upon my fingers in the dream! she greeted me as if we were already acquainted, and invited me to walk in. the old man staid behind; and i went with her through a short passage, arched and finely ornamented, to the middle hall, the splendid, dome-like ceiling of which attracted my gaze on my entrance, and filled me with astonishment. yet my eye could not dwell on this long, being allured down by a more charming spectacle. on a carpet, directly under the middle of the cupola, sat three women in a triangle, clad in three different colors,-- one red, the other yellow, the third green. the seats were gilt, and the carpet was a perfect flower-bed. in their arms lay the three instruments which i had been able to distinguish from without; for, being disturbed by my arrival, they had stopped their playing. "welcome!" said the middle one, who sat with her face to the door, in a red dress, and with the harp. "sit down by alerte, and listen, if you are a lover of music." now only i remarked that there was a rather long bench placed obliquely before them, on which lay a mandolin. the pretty girl took it up, sat down, and drew me to her side. now also i looked at the second lady on my right. she wore the yellow dress, and had the guitar in her hand; and if the harp-player was dignified in form, grand in features, and majestic in her deportment, one might remark in the guitar-player an easy grace and cheerfulness. she was a slender blonde, while the other was adorned by dark-brown hair. the variety and accordance of their music could not prevent me from remarking the third beauty, in the green dress, whose lute-playing was for me at once touching and striking. she was the one who seemed to notice me the most, and to direct her music to me: only i could not make up my mind about her; for she appeared to me now tender, now whimsical, now frank, now self-willed, according as she changed her mien and mode of playing. sometimes she seemed to wish to excite my emotions, sometimes to tease me; but, do what she would, she got little out of me; for my little neighbor, by whom i sat elbow to elbow, had gained me entirely to herself: and while i clearly saw in those three ladies the sylphides of my dream, and recognized the colors of the apples, i conceived that i had no cause to detain them. i should have liked better to lay hold of the pretty little maiden if i had not but too well remembered the blow she had given me in my dream. hitherto she had remained quite quiet with her mandolin; but, when her mistresses had ceased, they commanded her to perform some pleasant little piece. scarcely had she jingled off some dance-tune, in a most exciting manner, than she sprang up: i did the same. she played and danced; i was hurried on to accompany her steps; and we executed a kind of little ballet, with which the ladies seemed satisfied; for, as soon as we had done, they commanded the little girl to refresh me with something nice till supper should come in. i had indeed forgotten that there was any thing in the world beyond this paradise. alerte led me back immediately into the passage by which i had entered. on one side of it she had two well- arranged rooms. in that in which she lived she set before me oranges, figs, peaches, and grapes; and i enjoyed with great gusto both the fruits of foreign lands and those of our own not yet in season. confectionery there was in profusion: she filled, too, a goblet of polished crystal with foaming wine; but i had no need to drink, as i had refreshed myself with the fruits. "now we will play," said she, and led me into the other room. here all looked like a christmas fair, but such costly and exquisite things were never seen in a christmas booth. there were all kinds of dolls, dolls' clothes, and dolls' furniture; kitchens, parlors, and shops, and single toys innumerable. she led me round to all the glass cases in which these ingenious works were preserved. but she soon closed again the first cases, and said, "that is nothing for you, i know well enough. here," she said, "we could find building- materials, walls and towers, houses, palaces, churches, to put together a great city. but this does not entertain me. we will take something else, which will be amusing to both of us." then she brought out some boxes, in which i saw an army of little soldiers piled one upon the other, of which i must needs confess that i had never seen any thing so beautiful. she did not leave me time to examine them in detail, but took one box under her arm, while i seized the other. "we will go," she said, "to the golden bridge. there one plays best with soldiers: the lances give at once the direction in which the armies are to be opposed to each other." we had now reached the golden, trembling floor; and below me i could hear the waters gurgle and the fishes splash, while i knelt down to range my columns. all, as i now saw, were cavalry. she boasted that she had the queen of the amazons as leader of her female host. i, on the contrary, found achilles and a very stately grecian cavalry. the armies stood facing each other, and nothing could have been seen more beautiful. they were not flat, leaden horsemen like ours; but man and horse were round and solid, and most finely wrought: nor could one conceive how they kept their balance; for they stood of themselves, without a support for their feet. both of us had inspected our hosts with much self-complacency, when she announced the onset. we had found ordnance in our chests; viz., little boxes full of well-polished agate balls. with these we were to fight against each other from a certain distance; while, however, it was an express condition that we should not throw with more force than was necessary to upset the figures, as none of them were to be injured. now the cannonade began on both sides, and at first it succeeded to the satisfaction of us both. but when my adversary observed that i aimed better than she, and might in the end win the victory, which depended on the majority of pieces remaining upright, she came nearer, and her girlish way of throwing had then the desired result. she prostrated a multitude of my best troops, and the more i protested the more eagerly did she throw. this at last vexed me, and i declared that i would do the same. in fact, i not only went nearer, but in my rage threw with much more violence; so that it was not long before a pair of her little centauresses flew in pieces. in her eagerness she did not instantly notice it, but i stood petrified when the broken figures joined together again of themselves: amazon and horse became again one, and also perfectly close, set up a gallop from the golden bridge under the lime- trees, and, running swiftly backwards and forwards, were lost in their career, i know not how, in the direction of the wall. my fair opponent had hardly perceived this, when she broke out into loud weeping and lamentation, and exclaimed that i had caused her an irreparable loss, which was far greater than could be expressed. but i, by this time provoked, was glad to annoy her, and blindly flung a couple of the remaining agate balls with force into the midst of her army. unhappily i hit the queen, who had hitherto, during our regular game, been excepted. she flew in pieces, and her nearest officers were also shivered. but they swiftly set themselves up again, and started off like the others, galloping very merrily about under the lime-trees, and disappearing against the wall. my opponent scolded and abused me; but, being now in full play, i stooped to pick up some agate balls which rolled about upon the golden lances. it was my fierce desire to destroy her whole army. she, on the other hand, not idle, sprang at me, and gave me a box on the ear, which made my head ring. having always heard that a hearty kiss was the proper response to a girl's box of the ear, i took her by the ears, and kissed her repeatedly. but she uttered such a piercing scream as frightened even me. i let her go; and it was fortunate that i did so, for in a moment i knew not what was happening to me. the ground beneath me began to shake and rattle. i soon remarked that the railings again set themselves in motion; but i had no time to consider, nor could i get a footing so as to fly. i feared every instant to be pierced; for the partisans and lances, which had lifted themselves up, were already slitting my clothes. it is sufficient to say, that, i know not how it was, hearing and sight failed me; and i recovered from my swoon and terror at the foot of a lime-tree, against which the pikes in springing up had thrown me. as i awoke, my anger awakened also, and violently increased when i heard from the other side the gibes and laughter of my opponent, who had probably reached the earth somewhat more softly than i. therefore i jumped up; and as i saw the little host with its leader achilles scattered around me, having been driven over with me by the rising of the rails, i seized the hero first, and threw him against a tree. his resuscitation and flight now pleased me doubly, a malicious pleasure combining with the prettiest sight in the world; and i was on the point of sending all the other greeks after him, when suddenly hissing waters spurted at me on all sides, from stones and wall, from ground and branches, and, wherever i turned, dashed against me crossways. in a short time my light garment was wet through. it was already rent, and i did not hesitate to tear it entirely off my body. i cast away my slippers, and one covering after another. nay, at last i found it very agreeable to let such a shower-bath play over me in the warm day. now, being quite naked, i walked gravely along between these welcome waters, where i thought to enjoy myself for some time. my anger cooled, and i wished for nothing more than a reconciliation with my little adversary. but, in a twinkling, the water stopped; and i stood drenched upon the saturated ground. the presence of the old man, who appeared before me unexpectedly, was by no means welcome. i could have wished, if not to hide, at least to clothe, myself. the shame, the shivering, the effort to cover myself in some degree, made me cut a most piteous figure. the old man employed the moment in venting the severest reproaches against me. "what hinders me," he exclaimed, "from taking one of the green cords, and fitting it, if not to your neck, to your back?" this threat i took in very ill part. "refrain," i cried, "from such words, even from such thoughts; for otherwise you and your mistresses will be lost."--" who, then, are you," he asked in defiance, "who dare speak thus?"--"a favorite of the gods," i said, "on whom it depends whether those ladies shall find worthy husbands and pass a happy life, or be left to pine and wither in their magic cell." the old man stepped some paces back. "who has revealed that to you?" he inquired, with astonishment and concern. "three apples," i said, "three jewels."--"and what reward do you require?" he exclaimed. "before all things, the little creature," i replied, "who has brought me into this accursed state." the old man cast himself down before me, without shrinking from the wet and miry soil: then he rose without being wetted, took me kindly by the hand, led me into the hall, clad me again quickly; and i was soon once more decked out and frizzled in my sunday fashion as before. the porter did not speak another word; but, before he let me pass the entrance, he stopped me, and showed me some objects on the wall over the way, while, at the same time, he pointed backwards to the door. i understood him: he wished to imprint the objects on my mind, that i might the more certainly find the door, which had unexpectedly closed behind me. i now took good notice of what was opposite me. above a high wall rose the boughs of extremely old nut-trees, and partly covered the cornice at the top. the branches reached down to a stone tablet, the ornamented border of which i could perfectly recognize, though i could not read the inscription. it rested on the top-stone of a niche, in which a finely wrought fountain poured water from cup to cup into a great basin, that formed, as it were, a little pond, and disappeared in the earth. fountain, inscription, nut-trees, all stood perpendicularly, one above another: i would paint it as i saw it. now, it may well be conceived how i passed this evening, and many following days, and how often i repeated to myself this story, which even i could hardly believe. as soon as it was in any degree possible, i went again to the bad wall, at least to refresh my remembrance of these signs, and to look at the precious door. but, to my great amazement, i found all changed. nut-trees, indeed, overtopped the wall; but they did not stand immediately in contact. a tablet also was inserted in the wall, but far to the right of the trees, without ornament, and with a legible inscription. a niche with a fountain was found far to the left, but with no resemblance whatever to that which i had seen; so that i almost believed that the second adventure was, like the first, a dream, for of the door there is not the slightest trace. the only thing that consoles me is the observation, that these three objects seem always to change their places. for, in repeated visits to the spot, i think i have noticed that the nut-trees have moved somewhat nearer together, and that the tablet and the fountain seem likewise to approach each other. probably, when all is brought together again, the door, too, will once more be visible; and i will do my best to take up the thread of the adventure. whether i shall be able to tell you what further happens, or whether i shall be expressly forbidden to do so, i cannot say. this tale, of the truth of which my playfellows vehemently strove to convince themselves, received great applause. each of them visited alone the place described, without confiding it to me or the others, and discovered the nut-trees, the tablet, and the spring, though always at a distance from each other; as they at last confessed to me afterwards, because it is not easy to conceal a secret at that early age. but here the contest first arose. one asserted that the objects did not stir from the spot, and always maintained the same distance; a second averred that they did move, and that, too, away from each other; a third agreed with the latter as to the first point of their moving, though it seemed to him that the nut-trees, tablet, and fountain rather drew near together; while a fourth had something still more wonderful to announce, which was, that the nut-trees were in the middle, but that the tablet and the fountain were on sides opposite to those which i had stated. with respect to the traces of the little door, they also varied. and thus they furnished me an early instance of the contradictory views men can hold and maintain in regard to matters quite simple and easily cleared up. as i obstinately refused the continuation of my tale, a repetition of the first part was often desired. i took good care not to change the circumstances much; and, by the uniformity of the narrative, i converted the fable into truth in the minds of my hearers. yet i was averse to falsehood and dissimulation, and altogether by no means frivolous. rather, on the contrary, the inward earnestness, with which i had early begun to consider myself and the world, was seen, even in my exterior; and i was frequently called to account, often in a friendly way, and often in raillery, for a certain dignity which i had assumed. for, although good and chosen friends were certainly not wanting to me, we were always a minority against those who found pleasure in assailing us with wanton rudeness, and who indeed often awoke us in no gentle fashion from that legendary and self-complacent dreaming in which we--i by inventing, and my companions by sympathizing- -were too readily absorbed. thus we learned once more, that, instead of sinking into effeminacy and fantastic delights, there was reason rather for hardening ourselves, in order either to bear or to counteract inevitable evils. among the stoical exercises which i cultivated, as earnestly as it was possible for a lad, was even the endurance of bodily pain. our teachers often treated us very unkindly and unskilfully, with blows and cuffs, against which we hardened ourselves all the more as obstinacy was forbidden under the severest penalties. a great many of the sports of youth depend on a rivalry in such endurances: as, for instance, when they strike each other alternately with two fingers or the whole fist, till the limbs are numbed; or when they bear the penalty of blows incurred in certain games, with more or less firmness; when, in wrestling or scuffling, they do not let themselves be perplexed by the pinches of a half-conquered opponent; or, finally, when they suppress the pain inflicted for the sake of teasing, and even treat with indifference the nips and ticklings with which young persons are so active toward each other. thus we gain a great advantage, of which others cannot speedily deprive us. but, as i made a sort of boast of this impassiveness, the importunity of the others was increased; and, since rude barbarity knows no limits, it managed to force me beyond my bounds. let one case suffice for several. it happened once that the teacher did not come for the usual hour of instruction. as long as we children were all together, we entertained ourselves quite agreeably; but when my adherents, after waiting long enough, had left, and i remained alone with three of my enemies, these took it into their heads to torment me, to shame me, and to drive me away. having left me an instant in the room, they came back with switches, which they had made by quickly cutting up a broom. i noted their design; and, as i supposed the end of the hour near, i at once resolved not to resist them till the clock struck. they began, therefore, without remorse, to lash my legs and calves in the cruellest fashion. i did not stir, but soon felt that i had miscalculated, and that such pain greatly lengthened the minutes. my wrath grew with my endurance; and, at the first stroke of the hour, i grasped the one who least expected it by the hair behind, hurled him to the earth in an instant, pressing my knee upon his back; the second, a younger and weaker one, who attacked me from behind, i drew by the head under my arm, and almost throttled him with the pressure. the last, and not the weakest, still remained; and my left hand only was left for my defense. but i seized him by the clothes; and, with a dexterous twist on my part and an over-precipitate one on his, i brought him down and struck his face on the ground. they were not wanting in bites, pinches, and kicks; but i had nothing but revenge in my limbs as well as in my heart. with the advantage which i had acquired, i repeatedly knocked their heads together. at last they raised a dreadful shout of murder, and we were soon surrounded by all the inmates of the house. the switches scattered around, and my legs, which i had bared of the stockings, soon bore witness for me. they put off the punishment, and let me leave the house; but i declared, that in future, on the slightest offence, i would scratch out the eyes, tear off the ears, of any one of them, if not throttle him. though, as usually happens in childish affairs, this event was soon forgotten, and even laughed at, it was the cause that these joint instructions became fewer, and at last entirely ceased. i was thus again, as formerly, kept more at home; where i found my sister cornelia, who was only one year younger than myself, a companion always growing more agreeable. still, i will not leave this topic without telling some more stories of the many vexations caused me by my playfellows; for this is the instructive part of such moral communications, that a man may learn how it has gone with others, and what he also has to expect from life; and that, whatever comes to pass, he may consider that it happens to him as a man, and not as one specially fortunate or unfortunate. if such knowledge is of little use for avoiding evils, it is very serviceable so far as it qualifies us to understand our condition, and bear or even to overcome it. another general remark will not be out of place here, which is, that, as the children of the cultivated classes grow up, a great contradiction appears. i refer to the fact, that they are urged and trained by parents and teachers to deport themselves moderately, intelligently, and even wisely; to give pain to no one from petulance or arrogance; and to suppress all the evil impulses which may be developed in them; but yet, on the other hand, while the young creatures are engaged in this discipline, they have to suffer from others that which in them is reprimanded and punished. in this way the poor things are brought into a sad strait between the natural and civilized states, and, after restraining themselves for a while, break out, according to their characters, into cunning or violence. force may be warded off by force; but a well-disposed child, inclined to love and sympathy, has little to oppose to scorn and ill-will. though i managed pretty well to keep off the assaults of my companions, i was by no means equal to them in sarcasm and abuse; because he who merely defends himself in such cases is always a loser. attacks of this sort consequently, when they went so far as to excite anger, were repelled with physical force, or at least excited strange reflections in me which could not be without results. among other advantages which my ill- wishers saw with envy, was the pleasure i took in the relations that accrued to the family from my grandfather's position of /schultheiss/; since, as he was the first of his class, this had no small effect on those belonging to him. once when, after the holding of the piper's court, i appeared to pride myself on having seen my grandfather in the midst of the council, one step higher than the rest, enthroned, as it were, under the portrait of the emperor, one of the boys said to me in derision, that, like the peacock contemplating his feet, i should cast my eyes back to my paternal grandfather, who had been keeper of the willow inn, and would never have aspired to thrones and coronets. i replied, that i was in no wise ashamed of that, as it was the glory and honor of our native city that all its citizens might consider each other equal, and every one derive profit and honor from his exertions in his own way. i was sorry only that the good man had been so long dead; for i had often yearned to know him in person, had many times gazed upon his likeness, nay, had visited his tomb, and had at least derived pleasure from the inscription on the simple monument of that past existence to which i was indebted for my own. another ill- wisher, who was the most malicious of all, took the first aside, and whispered something in his ear; while they still looked at me scornfully. my gall already began to rise, and i challenged them to speak out. "what is more, then, if you will have it," continued the first, "this one thinks you might go looking about a long time before you could find your grandfather." i now threatened them more vehemently if they did not more clearly explain themselves. thereupon they brought forward an old story, which they pretended to have overheard from their parents, that my father was the son of some eminent man, while that good citizen had shown himself willing to take outwardly the paternal office. they had the impudence to produce all sorts of arguments: as, for example, that our property came exclusively from our grandmother; that the other collateral relations who lived in friedburg and other places were alike destitute of property; and other reasons of the sort, which could merely derive their weight from malice. i listened to them more composedly than they expected, for they stood ready to fly the very moment that i should make a gesture as if i would seize their hair. but i replied quite calmly, and in substance, "that even this was no great injury to me. life was such a boon, that one might be quite indifferent as to whom one had to thank for it; since at least it must be derived from god, before whom we all were equals." as they could make nothing of it, they let the matter drop for this time: we went on playing together as before, which among children is an approved mode of reconciliation. still, these spiteful words inoculated me with a sort of moral disease, which crept on in secret. it would not have displeased me at all to have been the grandson of any person of consideration, even if it had not been in the most lawful way. my acuteness followed up the scent, my imagination was excited, and my sagacity put in requisition. i began to investigate the allegation, and invented or found for it new grounds of probability. i had heard little said of my grandfather, except that his likeness, together with my grandmother's, had hung in a parlor of the old house; both of which, after the building of the new one, had been kept in an upper chamber. my grandmother must have been a very handsome woman, and of the same age as her husband. i remembered also to have seen in her room the miniature of a handsome gentleman in uniform, with star and order, which after her death, and during the confusion of house-building, had disappeared, with many other small pieces of furniture. these and many other things i put together in my childish head, and exercised that modern poetical talent which contrives to obtain the sympathies of the whole cultivated world by a marvellous combination of the important events of human life. but as i did not venture to trust such an affair to any one, or even to ask the most remote questions concerning it, i was not wanting in a secret diligence, in order to get, if possible, somewhat nearer to the matter. i had heard it explicitly maintained, that sons often bore a decided resemblance to their fathers or grandfathers. many of our friends, especially councillor schneider, a friend of the family, were connected by business with all the princes and noblemen of the neighborhood, of whom, including both the ruling and the younger branches, not a few had estates on the rhine and main, and in the intermediate country, and who at times honored their faithful agents with their portraits. these, which i had often seen on the walls from my infancy, i now regarded with redoubled attention; seeking whether i could not detect some resemblance to my father or even to myself, which too often happened to lead me to any degree of certainty. for now it was the eyes of this, now the nose of that, which seemed to indicate some relationship. thus these marks led me delusively backward and forward: and though in the end i was compelled to regard the reproach as a completely empty tale, the impression remained; and i could not from time to time refrain from privately calling up and testing all the noblemen whose images had remained very distinct in my imagination. so true is it that whatever inwardly confirms man in his self-conceit, or flatters his secret vanity, is so highly desirable to him, that he does not ask further, whether in other respects it may turn to his honor or disgrace. but, instead of mingling here serious and even reproachful reflections, i rather turn my look away from those beautiful times; for who is able to speak worthily of the fulness of childhood? we cannot behold the little creatures which flit about before us otherwise than with delight, nay, with admiration; for they generally promise more than they perform: and it seems that nature, among the other roguish tricks that she plays us, here also especially designs to make sport of us. the first organs she bestows upon children coming into the world, are adapted to the nearest immediate condition of the creature, which, unassuming and artless, makes use of them in the readiest way for its present purposes. the child, considered in and for himself, with his equals, and in relations suited to his powers, seems so intelligent and rational, and at the same time so easy, cheerful, and clever, that one can hardly wish it further cultivation. if children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses; but growth is not merely development: the various organic systems which constitute one man spring one from another, follow each other, change into each other, supplant each other, and even consume each other; so that after a time scarcely a trace is to be found of many aptitudes and manifestations of ability. even when the talents of the man have on the whole a decided direction, it will be hard for the greatest and most experienced connoisseur to declare them beforehand with confidence; although afterwards it is easy to remark what has pointed to a future. by no means, therefore, is it my design wholly to comprise the stories of my childhood in these first books; but i will rather afterwards resume and continue many a thread which ran through the early years unnoticed. here, however, i must remark what an increasing influence the incidents of the war gradually exercised upon our sentiments and mode of life. the peaceful citizen stands in a wonderful relation to the great events of the world. they already excite and disquiet him from a distance; and, even if they do not touch him, he can scarcely refrain from an opinion and a sympathy. soon he takes a side, as his character or external circumstances may determine. but when such grand fatalities, such important changes, draw nearer to him, then with many outward inconveniences remains that inward discomfort, which doubles and sharpens the evil, and destroys the good which is still possible. then he has really to suffer from friends and foes, often more from the former than from the latter; and he knows not how to secure and preserve either his interests or his inclinations. the year , which still passed in perfectly civic tranquillity, kept us, nevertheless, in great uneasiness of mind. perhaps no other was more fruitful of events than this. conquests, achievements, misfortunes, restorations, followed one upon another, swallowed up and seemed to destroy each other; yet the image of frederick, his name and glory, soon hovered again above all. the enthusiasm of his worshippers grew always stronger and more animated; the hatred of his enemies more bitter; and the diversity of opinion, which separated even families, contributed not a little to isolate citizens, already sundered in many ways and on other grounds. for in a city like frankfort, where three religions divide the inhabitants into three unequal masses; where only a few men, even of the ruling faith, can attain to political power,--there must be many wealthy and educated persons who are thrown back upon themselves, and, by means of studies and tastes, form for themselves an individual and secluded existence. it will be necessary for us to speak of such men, now and hereafter, if we are to bring before us the peculiarities of a frankfort citizen of that time. my father, immediately after his return from his travels, had in his own way formed the design, that, to prepare himself for the service of the city, he would undertake one of the subordinate offices, and discharge its duties without emolument, if it wore conferred upon him without balloting. in the consciousness of his good intentions, and according to his way of thinking and the conception he had of himself, he believed that he deserved such a distinction, which, indeed, was not conformable to law or precedent. consequently, when his suit was rejected, he fell into ill humor and disgust, vowed that he would never accept of any place, and, in order to render it impossible, procured the title of imperial councillor, which the /schultheiss/ and elder /schöffen/ bear as a special honor. he had thus made himself an equal of the highest, and could not begin again at the bottom. the same impulse induced him also to woo the eldest daughter of the /schultheiss/, so that he was excluded from the council on this side also. he was now of that number of recluses who never form themselves into a society. they are as much isolated in respect to each other as they are in regard to the whole, and the more so as in this seclusion the character becomes more and more uncouth. my father, in his travels and in the world which he had seen, might have formed some conception of a more elegant and liberal mode of life than was, perhaps, common among his fellow-citizens. in this respect, however, he was not entirely without predecessors and associates. the name of uffenbach is well known. at that time, there was a schöff von uffenbach, who was generally respected. he had been in italy; had applied himself particularly to music; sang an agreeable tenor; and, having brought home a fine collection of pieces, concerts and oratorios were performed at his house. now, as he sang in these himself, and held musicians in great favor, it was not thought altogether suitable to his dignity; and his invited guests, as well as the other people of the country, allowed themselves many a jocose remark on the matter. i remember, too, a baron von hakel, a rich nobleman, who, being married, but childless, occupied a charming house in the antonius street, fitted up with all the appurtenances of a dignified position in life. he also possessed good pictures, engravings, antiques, and much else which generally accumulates with collectors and lovers of art. from time to time he asked the more noted personages to dinner, and was beneficent in a careful way of his own; since he clothed the poor in his own house, but kept back their old rags, and gave them a weekly charity, on condition that they should present themselves every time clean and neat in the clothes bestowed on them. i can recall him but indistinctly, as a genial, well-made man; but more clearly his auction, which i attended from beginning to end, and, partly by command of my father, partly from my own impulse, purchased many things that are still to be found in my collections. at an earlier date than this,--so early that i scarcely set eyes upon him,--john michael von loen gained considerable repute in the literary world as well as at frankfort. not a native of frankfort, he settled there, and married a sister of my grandmother textor, whose maiden name was lindheim. familiar with the court and political world, and rejoicing in a renewed title of nobility, he had acquired reputation by daring to take part in the various excitements which arose in church and state. he wrote "the count of rivera," a didactic romance, the subject of which is made apparent by the second title, "or, the honest man at court." this work was well received, because it insisted on morality, even in courts, where prudence only is generally at home; and thus his labor brought him applause and respect. a second work, for that very reason, would be accompanied by more danger. he wrote "the only true religion," a book designed to advance tolerance, especially between lutherans and calvinists. but here he got in a controversy with the theologians: one dr. benner of giessen, in particular, wrote against him. von loen rejoined; the contest grew violent and personal, and the unpleasantness which arose from it caused him to accept the office of president at lingen, which frederick ii. offered him; supposing that he was an enlightened, unprejudiced man, and not averse to the new views that more extensively obtained in france. his former countrymen, whom he had left in some displeasure, averred that he was not contented there, nay, could not be so, as a place like lingen was not to be compared with frankfort. my father also doubted whether the president would be happy, and asserted that the good uncle would have done better not to connect himself with the king, as it was generally hazardous to get too near him, extraordinary sovereign as he undoubtedly was; for it had been seen how disgracefully the famous voltaire had been arrested in frankfort, at the requisition of the prussian resident freitag, though he had formerly stood so high in favor, and had been regarded as the king's teacher in french poetry. there was, on such occasions, no want of reflections and examples to warn one against courts and princes' service, of which a native frankforter could scarcely form a conception. an excellent man, dr. orth, i will only mention by name; because here i have not so much to erect a monument to the deserving citizens of frankfort, but rather refer to them only in as far as their renown or personal character had some influence upon me in my earliest years. dr. orth was a wealthy man, and was also of that number who never took part in the government, although perfectly qualified to do so by his knowledge and penetration. the antiquities of germany, and more especially of frankfort, have been much indebted to him: he published remarks on the so-called "reformation of frankfort," a work in which the statutes of the state are collected. the historical portions of this book i diligently read in my youth. von ochsenstein, the eldest of the three brothers whom i have mentioned above as our neighbors, had not been remarkable during his lifetime, in consequence of his recluse habits, but became the more remarkable after his death, by leaving behind him a direction that common workingmen should carry him to the grave, early in the morning, in perfect silence, and without an attendant or follower. this was done; and the affair caused great excitement in the city, where they were accustomed to the most pompous funerals. all who discharged the customary offices on such occasions rose against the innovation. but the stout patrician found imitators in all classes; and, though such ceremonies were derisively called ox-burials,[footnote: a pun upon the name of ochsenstein.-- trans.] they came into fashion, to the advantage of many of the more poorly provided families; while funeral parades were less and less in vogue. i bring forward this circumstance, because it presents one of the earlier symptoms of that tendency to humility and equality, which, in the second half of the last century, was manifested in so many ways, from above downward, and broke out in such unlooked-for effects. nor was there any lack of antiquarian amateurs. there were cabinets of pictures, collections of engravings; while the curiosities of our own country especially were zealously sought and hoarded. the older decrees and mandates of the imperial city, of which no collection had been prepared, were carefully searched for in print and manuscript, arranged in the order of time, and preserved with reverence, as a treasure of native laws and customs. the portraits of frankforters, which existed in great number, were also brought together, and formed a special department of the cabinets. such men my father appears generally to have taken as his models. he was wanting in none of the qualities that pertain to an upright and respectable citizen. thus, after he had built his house, he put his property of every sort into order. an excellent collection of maps by schenck and other geographers at that time eminent, the aforesaid decrees and mandates, the portraits, a chest of ancient weapons, a case of remarkable venetian glasses, cups and goblets, natural curiosities, works in ivory, bronzes, and a hundred other things, were separated and displayed; and i did not fail, whenever an auction occurred, to get some commission for the increase of his possessions. i must still speak of one important family, of which i had heard strange things since my earliest years, and of some of whose members i myself lived to see a great deal that was wonderful,--i mean the senkenbergs. the father, of whom i have little to say, was an opulent man. he had three sons, who, even in their youth, uniformly distinguished themselves as oddities. such things are not well received in a limited city, where no one is suffered to render himself conspicuous, either for good or evil. nicknames and odd stories, long kept in memory, are generally the fruit of such singularity. the father lived at the corner of hare street (/hasengasse/), which took its name from a sign on the house, that represented one hare at least, if not three hares. they consequently called these three brothers only the three hares, which nickname they could not shake off for a long while. but as great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness, so was it also in this case. the eldest of the brothers was the /reichshofrath/ (imperial councillor) von senkenberg, afterwards so celebrated. the second was admitted into the magistracy, and displayed eminent abilities, which, however, he subsequently abused in a pettifogging and even infamous way, if not to the injury of his native city, certainty to that of his colleagues. the third brother, a physician and man of great integrity, but who practised little, and that only in high families, preserved even in his old age a somewhat whimsical exterior. he was always very neatly dressed, and was never seen in the street otherwise than in shoes and stockings, with a well- powdered, curled wig, and his hat under his arm. he walked on rapidly, but with a singular sort of stagger; so that he was sometimes on one and sometimes on the other side of the way, and formed a complete zigzag as he went. the wags said that he made this irregular step to get out of the way of the departed souls, who might follow him in a straight line, and that he imitated those who are afraid of a crocodile. but all these jests and many merry sayings were transformed at last into respect for him, when he devoted his handsome dwelling-house in eschenheimer street, with court, garden, and all other appurtenances, to a medical establishment, where, in addition to a hospital designed exclusively for the citizens of frankfort, a botanic garden, an anatomical theatre, a chemical laboratory, a considerable library, and a house for the director, were instituted in a way of which no university need have been ashamed. another eminent man, whose efficiency in the neighborhood and whose writings, rather than his presence, had a very important influence upon me, was charles frederick von moser, who was perpetually referred to in our district for his activity in business. he also had a character essentially moral, which, as the vices of human nature frequently gave him trouble, inclined him to the so-called pious. thus, what von loen had tried to do in respect to court-life, he would have done for business-life; introducing into it a more conscientious mode of proceeding. the great number of small german courts gave rise to a multitude of princes and servants, the former of whom desired unconditional obedience; while the latter, for the most part, would work or serve only according to their own convictions. thus arose an endless conflict, and rapid changes and explosions; because the effects of an unrestricted course of proceeding become much sooner noticeable and injurious on a small scale than on a large one. many families were in debt, and imperial commissions of debts were appointed; others found themselves sooner or later on the same road: while the officers either reaped an unconscionable profit, or conscientiously made themselves disagreeable and odious. moser wished to act as a statesman and man of business; and here his hereditary talent, cultivated to a profession, gave him a decided advantage: but he at the same time wished to act as a man and a citizen, and surrender as little as possible of his moral dignity. his "prince and servant," his "daniel in the lions' den," his "relics," paint throughout his own condition, in which he felt himself, not indeed tortured, but always cramped. they all indicate impatience in a condition, to the bearings of which one cannot reconcile one's self, yet from which one cannot get free. with this mode of thinking and feeling, he was, indeed, often compelled to seek other employments, which, on account of his great cleverness, were never wanting. i remember him as a pleasing, active, and, at the same time, gentle man. the name of klopstock had already produced a great effect upon us, even at a distance. in the outset, people wondered how so excellent a man could be so strangely named; but they soon got accustomed to this, and thought no more of the meaning of the syllables. in my father's library i had hitherto found only the earlier poets, especially those who in his day had gradually appeared and acquired fame. all these had written in rhyme, and my father held rhyme as indispensable in poetical works. canitz, hagedorn, drollinger, gellert creuz, haller, stood in a row, in handsome calf bindings: to these were added neukirch's "telemachus," koppen's "jerusalem delivered," and other translations. i had from my childhood diligently perused the whole of these works, and committed portions of them to memory, whence i was often called upon to amuse the company. a vexatious era on the other hand opened upon my father, when, through klopstock's "messiah," verses, which seemed to him no verses, became an object of public admiration.[footnote: the messiah is written in hexameter verse.--trans.] he had taken good care not to buy this book; but the friend of the family, councillor schneider, smuggled it in, and slipped it into the hands of my mother and her children. on this man of business, who read but little, "the messiah," as soon as it appeared, made a powerful impression. those pious feelings, so naturally expressed, and yet so beautifully elevated; that pleasant diction, even if considered merely as harmonious prose,--had so won the otherwise dry man of business, that he regarded the first ten cantos, of which alone we are properly speaking, as the finest book of devotion, and once every year in passion week, when he managed to escape from business, read it quietly through by himself, and thus refreshed himself for the entire year. in the beginning he thought to communicate his emotions to his old friend; but he was much shocked when forced to perceive an incurable dislike cherished against a book of such valuable substance, merely because of what appeared to him an indifferent external form. it may readily be supposed that their conversation often reverted to this topic; but both parties diverged more and more widely from each other, there were violent scenes: and the compliant man was at last pleased to be silent on his favorite work, that he might not lose, at the same time, a friend of his youth, and a good sunday meal. it is the most natural wish of every man to make proselytes; and how much did our friend find himself rewarded in secret, when he discovered in the rest of the family hearts so openly disposed for his saint. the copy which he used only one week during the year was given over to our edification all the remaining time. my mother kept it secret; and we children took possession of it when we could, that in leisure hours, hidden in some nook, we might learn the most striking passages by heart, and particularly might impress the most tender as well as the most violent parts on our memory as quickly as possible. porcia's dream we recited in a sort of rivalry, and divided between us the wild dialogue of despair between satan and adramelech, who have been cast into the red sea. the first part, as the strongest, had been assigned to me; and the second, as a little more pathetic, was undertaken by my sister. the alternate and horrible but well-sounding curses flowed only thus from our mouths, and we seized every opportunity to accost each other with these infernal phrases. one saturday evening in winter,--my father always had himself shaved over night, that on sunday morning he might dress for church at his ease,--we sat on a footstool behind the stove, and muttered our customary imprecations in a tolerably low voice, while the barber was putting on the lather. but now adramelech had to lay his iron hands on satan: my sister seized me with violence, and recited, softly enough, but with increasing passion,-- "give me thine aid, i entreat thee: i'll worship thee if thou demandest, thee, thou reprobate monster, yes, thee, of all criminals blackest! aid me. i suffer the tortures of death, everlasting, avenging! once, in the times gone by, i with furious hatred could hate thee: now i can hate thee no more! e'en this is the sharpest of tortures." thus far all went on tolerably; but loudly, with a dreadful voice, she cried the following words:-- "oh, how utterly crushed i am now!" the good surgeon was startled, and emptied the lather-basin into my father's bosom. there was a great uproar; and a severe investigation was held, especially with respect to the mischief which might have been done if the shaving had been actually going forward. in order to relieve ourselves of all suspicions of mischievousness, we pleaded guilty of having acted these satanic characters; and the misfortune occasioned by the hexameters was so apparent, that they were again condemned and banished. thus children and common people are accustomed to transform the great and sublime into a sport, and even a farce; and how indeed could they otherwise abide and endure it? third book. at that time the general interchange of personal good wishes made the city very lively on new-year's day. those who otherwise did not easily leave home, donned their best clothes, that for a moment they might be friendly and courteous to their friends and patrons. the festivities at my grandfather's house on this day were pleasures particularly desired by us children. at early dawn the grandchildren had already assembled there to hear the drums, oboes, clarinets, trumpets, and cornets played upon by the military, the city musicians, and whoever else might furnish his tones. the new-year's gifts, sealed and superscribed, were divided by us children among the humbler congratulators; and, as the day advanced, the number of those of higher rank increased. the relations and intimate friends appeared first, then the subordinate officials; even the gentlemen of the council did not fail to pay their respects to the /schultheiss/, and a select number were entertained in the evening in rooms which were else scarcely opened throughout the year. the tarts, biscuits, marchpane, and sweet wine had the greatest charm for the children; and, besides, the /schultheiss/ and the two burgomasters annually received from some institutions some article of silver, which was then bestowed upon the grandchildren and godchildren in regular gradation. in fine, this small festival was not wanting in any of those things which usually glorify the greatest. the new-year's day of approached, as desirable and pleasant to us children as any preceding one, but full of import and foreboding to older persons. to the passage of the french troops people certainly had become accustomed; and they happened often, but they had been most frequent in the last days of the past year. according to the old usage of an imperial town, the warder of the chief tower sounded his trumpet whenever troops approached; and on this new-year's day he would not leave off, which was a sign that large bodies were in motion on several sides. they actually marched through the city in greater masses on this day, and the people ran to see them pass by. we had generally been used to see them go through in small parties; but these gradually swelled, and there was neither power nor inclination to stop them. in short, on the d of january, after a column had come through sachsenhausen over the bridge, through the fahrgasse, as far as the police guard-house, it halted, overpowered the small company which escorted it, took possession of the before-mentioned guard-house, marched down the zeil, and, after a slight resistance, the main guard were also obliged to yield. in a moment the peaceful streets were turned into a scene of war. the troops remained and bivouacked there until lodgings were provided for them by regular billeting. this unexpected, and, for many years, unheard-of, burden weighed heavily upon the comfortable citizens; and to none could it be more cumbersome than to my father, who was obliged to take foreign military inhabitants into his scarcely finished house, to open for them his well-furnished reception-rooms, which were generally closed, and to abandon to the caprices of strangers all that he had been used to arrange and keep so carefully. siding as he did with the prussians, he was now to find himself besieged in his own chambers by the french: it was, according to his way of thinking, the greatest misfortune that could happen to him. had it, however, been possible for him to have taken the matter more easily, he might have saved himself and us many sad hours; since he spoke french well, and could deport himself with dignity and grace in the daily intercourse of life. for it was the king's lieutenant who was quartered on us; and he, although a military person, had only to settle civil occurrences, disputes between soldiers and citizens, and questions of debt and quarrels. this was the count thorane, a native of grasse in provence, not far from antibes: a tall, thin, stern figure, with a face much disfigured by the small-pox; black, fiery eyes; and a dignified, reserved demeanor. his first entrance was at once favorable for the inmates of the house. they spoke of the different apartments, some of which were to be given up, and others retained by the family; and, when the count heard a picture-room mentioned, he immediately requested permission, although it was already night, at least to give a hasty look at the pictures by candlelight. he took extreme pleasure in these things, behaved in the most obliging manner to my father, who accompanied him; and when he heard that the greater part of the artists were still living, and resided in frankfurt and its neighborhood, he assured us that he desired nothing more than to know them as soon as possible, and to employ them. but even this sympathy in respect to art could not change my father's feelings nor bend his character. he permitted what he could not prevent, but kept at a distance in inactivity; and the uncommon state of things around him was intolerable to him, even in the veriest trifle. count thorane behaved himself, meanwhile, in an exemplary manner. he would not even have his maps nailed on the walls, that he might not injure the new hangings. his people were skilful, quiet, and orderly: but in truth, as, during the whole day and a part of the night there was no quiet with him, one complainant quickly following another, arrested persons being brought in and led out, and all officers and adjutants being admitted to his presence,--as, moreover, the count kept an open table every day, it made, in the moderately sized house, arranged only for a family, and with but one open staircase running from top to bottom, a movement and a buzzing like that in a beehive; although every thing was managed with moderation, gravity, and severity. as mediator between the irritable master of the house--who became daily more of a hypochondriac self-tormentor--and his well-intentioned, but stern and precise, military guest, there was a pleasant interpreter, a handsome, corpulent, lively man, who was a citizen of frankfort, spoke french well, knew how to adapt himself to every thing, and only made a jest of many little annoyances. through him my mother had sent to the count a representation of the situation in which she was placed, owing to her husband's state of mind. he had explained the matter so skilfully,--had laid before him the new and scarcely furnished house, the natural reserve of the owner, his occupation in the education of his family, and all that could be said to the same effect,--that the count, who in his capacity took the greatest pride in the utmost justice, integrity, and honorable conduct, resolved here also to behave in an exemplary manner to those upon whom he was quartered, and, indeed, never swerved from this resolution under varying circumstances, during the several years he staid with us. my mother possessed some knowledge of italian, a language not altogether unknown to any of the family: she therefore resolved to learn french immediately; for which purpose the interpreter, for whose child she had stood godmother during these stormy times, and who now, therefore, as a gossip,[footnote: the obsolete word, "gossip," has been revived as an equivalent for the german, "/gevatter/." but it should be observed that this word not only signifies godfather, but that the person whose child has another person for godfather (or godmother) is that person's /gevatter/, or /gevatterin/ (feminine).] felt a redoubled interest in our house, devoted every spare moment to his child's godmother (for he lived directly opposite); and, above all, he taught her those phrases which she would be obliged to use in her personal intercourse with the count. this succeeded admirably. the count was flattered by the pains taken by the mistress of the house at her age: and as he had a cheerful, witty vein in his character, and he liked to exhibit a certain dry gallantry, a most friendly relation arose between them; and the allied godmother and father could obtain from him whatever they wanted. if, as i said before, it had been possible to cheer up my father, this altered state of things would have caused little inconvenience. the count practised the severest disinterestedness; he even declined receiving gifts which pertained to his situation; the most trifling thing which could have borne the appearance of bribery, he rejected angrily, and even punished. his people were most strictly forbidden to put the proprietor of the house to the least expense. we children, on the contrary, were bountifully supplied from the dessert. to give an idea of the simplicity of those times, i must take this opportunity to mention that my mother grieved us excessively one day, by throwing away the ices which had been sent us from the table, because she would not believe it possible for the stomach to bear real ice, however it might be sweetened. besides these dainties, which we gradually learned to enjoy and to digest with perfect ease, it was very agreeable for us children to be in some measure released from fixed hours of study and strict discipline. my father's ill humor increased: he could not resign himself to the unavoidable. how he tormented himself, my mother, the interpreter, the councillors, and all his friends, only to rid him of the count! in vain they represented to him, that, under existing circumstances, the presence of such a man in the house was an actual benefit, and that the removal of the count would be followed by a constant succession of officers or of privates. none of these arguments had any effect. to him the present seemed so intolerable, that his indignation prevented his conceiving any thing worse that could follow. in this way his activity, which he had been used chiefly to devote to us, was crippled. the lessons he gave us were no longer required with the former exactness; and we tried to gratify our curiosity for military and other public proceedings as much as possible, not only at home, but also in the streets, which was the more easily done, as the front door, open day and night, was guarded by sentries who paid no attention to the running to and fro of restless children. the many affairs which were settled before the tribunal of the royal lieutenant had quite a peculiar charm, from his making it a point to accompany his decisions with some witty, ingenious, or lively turn. what he decreed was strictly just, his manner of expressing it whimsical and piquant. he seemed to have taken the duke of ossuna as his model. scarcely a day passed in which the interpreter did not tell some anecdote or other of this kind to amuse us and my mother. this lively man had made a little collection of such solomonian decisions; but i only remember the general impression, and cannot recall to my mind any particular case. by degrees we became better acquainted with the strange character of the count. this man clearly understood his own peculiarities; and as there were times in which he was seized with a sort of dejection, hypochondria, or by whatever name we may call the evil demon, he withdrew into his room at such hours, which were often lengthened into days, saw no one but his /valet/, and in urgent cases could not even be prevailed upon to receive any one. but, as soon as the evil spirit had left him, he appeared as before, active, mild, and cheerful. it might be inferred from the talk of his /valet/, saint jean, a small, thin man of lively good nature, that in his earlier years he had caused a great misfortune when overcome by this temper; and that, therefore, in so important a position as his, exposed to the eyes of all the world, he had earnestly resolved to avoid similar aberrations. during the very first days of the count's residence with us, all the frankfort artists, as hirt, schütz, trautmann, nothnagel, and junker, were called to him. they showed their finished pictures, and the count bought such as were for sale. my pretty, light room in the gable-end of the attic was given up to him, and immediately turned into a cabinet and studio; for he designed to keep all the artists at work for a long time, especially seekatz of darmstadt, whose pencil, particularly in simple and natural representations, highly pleased him. he therefore caused to be sent from grasse, where his elder brother possessed a handsome house, the dimensions of all the rooms and cabinets; then considered, with the artists, the divisions of the walls, and fixed accordingly upon the size of the large oil-pictures, which were not to be set in frames, but to be fastened upon the walls like pieces of tapestry. and now the work went on zealously. seekatz undertook country scenes, and succeeded extremely well in his old people and children, which were copied directly from nature. his young men did not answer so well,--they were almost all too thin; and his women failed from the opposite cause. for as he had a little, fat, good, but unpleasant-looking, wife, who would let him have no model but herself, he could produce nothing agreeable. he was also obliged to exceed the usual size of his figures. his trees had truth, but the foliage was over minute. he was a pupil of brinkmann, whose pencil in easel pictures is not contemptible. schütz, the landscape painter, had perhaps the best of the matter. he was thoroughly master of the rhine country, and of the sunny tone which animates it in the fine season. nor was he entirely unaccustomed to work on a larger scale, and then he showed no want of execution or keeping. his paintings were of a cheerful cast. trautmann /rembrandtized/ some resurrection miracles out of the new testament, and alongside of them set fire to villages and mills. one cabinet was entirely allotted to him, as i found from the designs of the rooms. hirt painted some good oak and beech forests. his cattle were praiseworthy. junker, accustomed to the imitation of the most elaborate dutch, was least able to manage this tapestry-work; but he condescended to ornament many compartments with flowers and fruits for a handsome price. as i had known all these men from my earliest youth, and had often visited them in their studios, and as the count also liked to have me with him, i was present at the suggestions, consultations, and orders, as well as at the deliveries, of the pictures, and ventured to speak my opinion freely when sketches and designs were handed in. i had already gained among amateurs, particularly at auctions, which i attended diligently, the reputation of being able to tell at once what any historical picture represented, whether taken from biblical or profane history, or from mythology; and, even if i did not always hit upon the meaning of allegorical pictures, there was seldom any one present who understood it better than i. often had i persuaded the artists to represent this or that subject, and i now joyfully made use of these advantages. i still remember writing a circumstantial essay, in which i described twelve pictures which were to exhibit the history of joseph: some of them were executed. after these achievements, which were certainly laudable in a boy, i will mention a little disgrace which happened to me within this circle of artists. i was well acquainted with all the pictures which had from time to time been brought into that room. my youthful curiosity left nothing unseen or unexplored. i once found a little black box behind the stove: i did not fail to investigate what might be concealed in it, and drew back the bolt without long deliberation. the picture contained was certainly of a kind not usually exposed to view; and, although i tried to bolt it again immediately, i was not quick enough. the count entered, and caught me. "who allowed you to open that box?" he asked, with all his air of a royal lieutenant. i had not much to say for myself, and he immediately pronounced my sentence in a very stern manner: "for eight days," said he, "you shall not enter this room." i made a bow, and walked out. even this order i obeyed most punctually; so that the good seekatz, who was then at work in the room, was very much annoyed, for he liked to have me about him: and, out of a little spite, i carried my obedience so far, that i left seekatz's coffee, which i generally brought him, upon the threshold. he was then obliged to leave his work and fetch it, which he took so ill, that he well nigh began to dislike me. it now seems necessary to state more circumstantially, and to make intelligible, how, under the circumstances, i made my way with more or less ease through the french language, which, however, i had never learned. here, too, my natural gift was of service to me; enabling me easily to catch the sound of a language, its movement, accent, tone, and all other outward peculiarities. i knew many words from the latin; italian suggested still more; and by listening to servants and soldiers, sentries and visitors, i soon picked up so much, that, if i could not join in conversation, i could at any rate manage single questions and answers. all this, however, was little compared to the profit i derived from the theatre. my grandfather had given me a free ticket, which i used daily, in spite of my father's reluctance, by dint of my mother's support. there i sat in the pit, before a foreign stage, and watched the more narrowly the movement and the expression, both of gesture and speech; as i understood little or nothing of what was said, and therefore could only derive entertainment from the action and the tone of voice. i understood least of comedy; because it was spoken rapidly, and related to the affairs of common life, of the phrases of which i knew nothing. tragedy was not so often played; and the measured step, the rhythm of the alexandrines, the generality of the expression, made it more intelligible to me in every way. it was not long before i took up racine, which i found in my father's library, and declaimed the plays to myself, in the theatrical style and manner, as the organ of my ear, and the organ of speech, so nearly akin to that, had caught it, and this with considerable animation; although i could not yet understand a whole connected speech. i even learned entire passages by rote like a trained talking-bird, which was easier to me, from having previously committed to memory passages from the bible which are generally unintelligible to a child, and accustomed myself to reciting them in the tone of the protestant preachers. the versified french comedy was then much in vogue: the pieces of destouches, marivaux, and la chaussée were often produced; and i still remember distinctly many characteristic figures. of those of molière i recollect less. what made the greatest impression upon me was "the hypermnestra" of lemière, which, as a new piece, was brought out with care and often repeated. "the devin du village," "rose et colas," "annette et lubin," made each a very pleasant impression upon me. i can even now recall the youths and maidens decorated with ribbons, and their gestures. it was not long before the wish arose in me to see the interior of the theatre, for which many opportunities were offered me. for as i had not always patience to stay and listen to the entire plays, and often carried on all sorts of games with other children of my age in the corridors, and in the milder season even before the door, a handsome, lively boy joined us, who belonged to the theatre, and whom i had seen in many little parts, though only casually. he came to a better understanding with me than with the rest, as i could turn my french to account with him; and he the more attached himself to me because there was no boy of his age or his nation at the theatre, or anywhere in the neighborhood. we also went together at other times, as well as during the play; and, even while the representations went on, he seldom left me in peace. he was a most delightful little braggart, chattered away charmingly and incessantly, and could tell so much of his adventures, quarrels, and other strange incidents, that he amused me wonderfully; and i learned from him in four weeks more of the language, and of the power of expressing myself in it, than can be imagined: so that no one knew how i had attained the foreign tongue all at once, as if by inspiration. in the very earliest days of our acquaintance, he took me with him upon the stage, and led me especially to the /foyers/, where the actors and actresses remained during the intervals of the performance, and dressed and undressed. the place was neither convenient nor agreeable; for they had squeezed the theatre into a concert-room, so that there were no separate chambers for the actors behind the stage. a tolerably large room adjoining, which had formerly served for card-parties, was now mostly used by both sexes in common, who appeared to feel as little ashamed before each other as before us children, if there was not always the strictest propriety in putting on or changing the articles of dress. i had never seen any thing of the kind before; and yet from habit, after repeated visits, i soon found it quite natural. it was not long before a very peculiar interest of my own arose. young derones, for so i will call the boy whose acquaintance i still kept up, was, with the exception of his boasting, a youth of good manners and very courteous demeanor. he made me acquainted with his sister, a girl who was a few years older than we were, and a very pleasant, well-grown girl, of regular form, brown complexion, black hair and eyes: her whole deportment had about it something quiet, even sad. i tried to make myself agreeable to her in every way, but i could not attract her notice. young girls think themselves much more advanced than younger boys; and, while aspiring to young men, they assume the manner of an aunt towards the boy whose first inclination is turned towards them.-- with a younger brother of his, i had no acquaintance. sometimes, when their mother had gone to rehearsals, or was out visiting, we met at her house to play and amuse ourselves. i never went there without presenting the fair one with a flower, a fruit, or something else; which she always received very courteously, and thanked me for most politely: but i never saw her sad look brighten, and found no trace of her having given me a further thought. at last i fancied i had discovered her secret. the boy showed me a crayon-drawing of a handsome man, behind his mother's bed, which was hung with elegant silk curtains; remarking at the same time, with a sly look, that this was not papa, but just the same as papa: and as he glorified this man, and told me many things in his circumstantial and ostentatious manner, i thought i had discovered that the daughter might belong to the father, but the other two children to the intimate friend. i thus explained to myself her melancholy look, and loved her for it all the more. my liking for this girl assisted me in bearing the braggadocio of her brother, who did not always keep within bounds. i had often to endure prolix accounts of his exploits,--how he had already often fought, without wishing to injure the other, all for the mere sake of honor. he had always contrived to disarm his adversary, and had then forgiven him; nay, he was such a good fencer, that he was once very much perplexed by striking the sword of his opponent up into a high tree, so that it was not easy to be got again. what much facilitated my visits to the theatre was, that my free ticket, coming from the hands of the /schultheiss/, gave me access to any of the seats, and therefore also to those in the proscenium. this was very deep, after the french style, and was bordered on both sides with seats, which, surrounded by a low rail, ascended in several rows one behind another, so that the first seats were but a little elevated above the stage. the whole was considered a place of special honor, and was generally used only by officers; although the nearness of the actors destroyed, i will not say all illusion, but, in a measure, all enjoyment. i have thus experienced and seen with my own eyes the usage or abuse of which voltaire so much complains. if, when the house was very full at such time as troops were passing through the town, officers of distinction strove for this place of honor, which was generally occupied already, some rows of benches and chairs were placed in the proscenium on the stage itself, and nothing remained for the heroes and heroines but to reveal their secrets in the very limited space between the uniforms and orders. i have even seen the "hypermnestra" performed under such circumstances. the curtain did not fall between the acts: and i must yet mention a strange custom, which i thought quite extraordinary; as its inconsistency with art was to me, as a good german boy, quite unendurable. the theatre was considered the greatest sanctuary, and any disturbance occurring there would have been instantly resented as the highest crime against the majesty of the public. therefore, in all comedies, two grenadiers stood with their arms grounded, in full view, at the two sides of the back scene, and were witnesses of all that occurred in the bosom of the family. since, as i said before, the curtain did not fall between the acts, two others, while music struck up, relieved guard, by coming from the wings, directly in front of the first, who retired in the same measured manner. now, if such a practice was well fitted to destroy all that is called illusion on the stage, it is the more striking, because it was done at a time when, according to diderot's principles and examples, the most /natural naturalness/ was required upon the stage, and a perfect deception was proposed as the proper aim of theatrical art. tragedy, however, was absolved from any such military-police regulations; and the heroes of antiquity had the right of guarding themselves: nevertheless, the same grenadiers stood near enough behind the side scenes. i will also mention that i saw diderot's "father of a family," and "the philosophers" of palissot, and still perfectly remember the figure of the philosopher in the latter piece going upon all fours, and biting into a raw head of lettuce. all this theatrical variety could not, however, keep us children always in the theatre. in fine weather we played in front of it, and in the neighborhood, and committed all manner of absurdities, which, especially on sundays and festivals, by no means corresponded to our personal appearance; for i and my comrades then appeared dressed as i described myself in the tale, with the hat under the arm, and a little sword, the hilt of which was ornamented with a large silk knot. one day when we had long gone in this way, and derones had joined us, he took it into his head to affirm that i had insulted him, and must give him satisfaction. i could not, in truth, conceive what was the cause of this; but i accepted his challenge, and was going to draw my sword. however, he assured me, that in such cases it was customary to go to secluded spots, in order to be able to settle the matter more conveniently. we therefore went behind some barns, and placed ourselves in the proper position. the duel took place in a somewhat theatrical style,--the blades clashed, and the thrusts followed close upon each other; but in the heat of the combat he remained with the point of his sword lodged in the knot of my hilt. this was pierced through; and he assured me that he had received the most complete satisfaction, then embraced me, also theatrically: and we went to the next coffee-house to refresh ourselves with a glass of almond-milk after our mental agitation, and to knit more closely the old bond of friendship. on this occasion i will relate another adventure which also happened to me at the theatre, although at a later time. i was sitting very quietly in the pit with one of my playmates; and we looked with pleasure at a /pas seul/, which was executed with much skill and grace by a pretty boy about our own age,--the son of a french dancing-master, who was passing through the city. after the fashion of dancers, he was dressed in a close vest of red silk, which, ending in a short hoop- petticoat, like a runner's apron, floated above the knee. we had given our meed of applause to this young artist with the whole public, when, i know not how, it occurred to me to make a moral reflection. i said to my companion, "how handsomely this boy was dressed, and how well he looked! who knows in how tattered a jacket he may sleep to-night!" all had already risen, but the crowd prevented our moving. a woman who had sat by me, and who was now standing close beside me, chanced to be the mother of the young artist, and felt much offended by my reflection. unfortunately, she knew german enough to understand me, and spoke it just as much as was necessary to scold. she abused me violently. who was i, she would like to know, that had a right to doubt the family and respectability of this young man? at all events, she would be bound he was as good as i; and his talents might probably procure him a fortune, of which i could not even venture to dream. this moral lecture she read me in the crowd, and made those about me wonder what rudeness i had committed. as i could neither excuse myself, nor escape from her, i was really embarrassed, and, when she paused for a moment, said without thinking, "well! why do you make such a noise about it?--to-day red, to- morrow dead." [footnote: a german proverb, "heute roth, morgen todt."] these words seemed to strike the woman dumb. she stared at me, and moved away from me as soon as it was in any degree possible. i thought no more of my words; only, some time afterwards, they occurred to me, when the boy, instead of continuing to perform, became ill, and that very dangerously. whether he died, or not, i cannot say. such intimations, by an unseasonably or even improperly spoken word, were held in repute, even by the ancients; and it is very remarkable that the forms of belief and of superstition have always remained the same among all people and in all times. from the first day of the occupation of our city, there was no lack of constant diversion, especially for children and young people. plays and balls, parades, and marches through the town, attracted our attention in all directions. the last particularly were always increasing, and the soldiers' life seemed to us very merry and agreeable. the residence of the king's lieutenant at our house procured us the advantage of seeing by degrees all the distinguished persons in the french army, and especially of beholding close at hand the leaders whose names had already been made known to us by reputation. thus we looked from stairs and landing-places, as if from galleries, very conveniently upon the generals who passed by. more than all the rest do i remember the prince soubise as a handsome, courteous gentleman; but most distinctly, the maréchal de broglio, who was a younger man, not tall, but well built, lively, nimble, and abounding in keen glances, betraying a clever mind. he repeatedly came to see the king's lieutenant, and it was easily noticed that they were conversing on weighty matters. we had scarcely become accustomed to having strangers quartered upon us in the first three months, when a rumor was obscurely circulated that the allies were on the march, and that duke ferdinand of brunswick was coming to drive the french from the main. of these, who could not boast of any special success in war, no high opinion was held; and, after the battle of rossbach, it was thought they might be dispersed. the greatest confidence was placed in duke ferdinand, and all those favorable to prussia awaited with eagerness their delivery from the yoke hitherto borne. my father was in somewhat better spirits: my mother was apprehensive. she was wise enough to see that a small present evil might easily be exchanged for a great affliction; since it was but too plain that the french would not advance to meet the duke, but would wait an attack in the neighborhood of the city. a defeat of the french, a flight, a defense of the city, if it were only to cover their rear and hold the bridge, a bombardment, a sack,--all these presented themselves to the excited imagination, and gave anxiety to both parties. my mother, who could bear every thing but suspense, imparted her fears to the count through the interpreter. she received the answer usual in such cases: she might be quite easy, for there was nothing to fear; and should keep quiet, and mention the matter to no one. many troops passed through the city: we learned that they halted at bergen. the coming and going, the riding and running, constantly increased; and our house was in an uproar day and night. at this time i often saw marshal de broglio, always cheerful, always the same in look and manner; and i was afterwards pleased to find a man, whose form had made such a good and lasting impression upon me, so honorably mentioned in history. thus, after an unquiet passion week, the good friday of arrived. a profound stillness announced the approaching storm. we children were forbidden to quit the house: my father had no quiet, and went out. the battle began: i ascended to the garret, where indeed i was prevented seeing the country round, but could very well hear the thunder of cannon and the general discharge of musketry. after some hours we saw the first symptoms of the battle in a line of wagons, in which the wounded, with various sad mutilations and gestures, were slowly drawn by us, to be taken to the convent of st. mary, now transformed into a hospital. the compassion of the citizens was instantly moved. beer, wine, bread, and money were distributed to those who were yet able to take them. but when, some time after, wounded and captive germans were seen in the train, the pity knew no limits; and it seemed as if everybody would strip himself of every movable that he possessed to assist his suffering countrymen. the prisoners, however, were an evidence of a battle unfavorable to the allies. my father, whose party feelings made him quite certain that these would come off victorious, had the violent temerity to go forth to meet the expected victors, without thinking that the beaten party must pass over him in their flight. he first repaired to his garden before the friedberg gate, where he found every thing lonely and quiet; then ventured to the bornheim heath, where he soon descried various stragglers of the army, who were scattered, and amused themselves by shooting at the boundary-stones, so that the rebounding lead whizzed round the head of the inquisitive wanderer. he therefore considered it more prudent to go back, and learned on inquiry what the report of the firing might have before informed him, that all stood well for the french, and that there was no thought of retreating. reaching home in an ill humor, the sight of his wounded and captured countrymen brought him altogether out of his usual self-command. he also caused various donations to be given to the passers-by; but only the germans were to have them, which was not always possible, as fate had packed together both friend and foe. my mother and we children, who had already relied on the count's word, and had therefore passed a tolerably quiet day, were highly rejoiced; and my mother doubly consoled the next day, when, having consulted the oracle of her treasure-box, by the prick of a needle, she received a very comfortable answer, both for present and future. we wished our father similar faith and feelings; we flattered him as much as we could; we entreated him to take some food, from which he had abstained all day; but he repulsed our caresses and every enjoyment, and betook himself to his chamber. our joy, however, was not interrupted; the affair was decided: the king's lieutenant, who, against his habit, had been on horseback that day, at last returned home, where his presence was more necessary than ever. we sprang to meet him, kissed his hands, and testified our delight. this seemed much to please him. "well," said he more kindly than usual, "i am glad also for your sakes, my dear children." he immediately ordered that sweetmeats, sweet wine, and the best of every thing should be given us, and went to his room, already surrounded by a crowd of the urging, demanding, supplicating. we had now a fine collation, pitied our poor father who would not partake of it, and pressed our mother to call him in; but she, more prudent than we, well knew how distasteful such gifts would be to him. in the mean time she had prepared some supper, and would readily have sent a portion up to his room; but he never tolerated such an irregularity, even in the most extreme cases: and, after the sweet things were removed, we endeavored to persuade him to come down into the ordinary dining-room. at last he allowed himself to be persuaded unwillingly, and we had no notion of the mischief which we were preparing for him and ourselves. the stair-case ran through the whole house, along all the ante-rooms. my father, in coming down, had to go directly past the count's apartment. this ante-room was so full of people, that the count, to get through much at once, resolved to come out; and this happened unfortunately at the moment when my father descended. the count met him cheerfully, greeted him, and remarked, "you will congratulate yourselves and us that this dangerous affair is so happily terminated."--"by no means!" replied my father in a rage: "would that it had driven you to the devil, even if i had gone with you!" the count restrained himself for a moment, and then broke out with wrath, "you shall pay for this," cried he: "you shall find that you have not thus insulted the good cause and myself for nothing!" my father, meanwhile, came down very calmly, seated himself near us, seemed more cheerful than before, and began to eat. we were glad of this, unconscious of the dangerous method in which he had rolled the stone from his heart. soon afterwards my mother was called out, and we had great pleasure in chattering to our father about the sweet things the count had given us. our mother did not return. at last the interpreter came in. at a hint from him we were sent to bed: it was already late, and we willingly obeyed. after a night quietly slept through, we heard of the violent commotion which had shaken the house the previous evening. the king's lieutenant had instantly ordered my father to be led to the guard-house. the subalterns well knew that he was never to be contradicted, yet they had often earned thanks by delaying the execution of his orders. the interpreter, whose presence of mind never forsook him, contrived to excite this disposition in them very strongly. the tumult, moreover, was so great, that a delay brought with it its own concealment and excuse. he had called out my mother, and put the adjutant, as it were, into her hands, that, by prayers and representations, she might gain a brief postponement of the matter. he himself hurried up to the count, who with great self-command had immediately retired into the inner room, and would rather allow the most urgent affair to stand still, than wreak on an innocent person the ill humor once excited in him, and give a decision derogatory to his dignity. the address of the interpreter to the count, the train of the whole conversation, were often enough repeated to us by the fat interpreter, who prided himself not a little on the fortunate result, so that i can still describe it from recollection. the interpreter had ventured to open the cabinet and enter, an act which was severely prohibited. "what do you want?" shouted the count angrily. "out with you!--no one but st. jean has a right to enter here." "well, suppose i am st. jean for a moment," answered the interpreter. "it would need a powerful imagination for that! two of him would not make one such as you. retire!" "count, you have received a great gift from heaven; and to that i appeal." "you think to flatter me! do not fancy you will succeed." "you have the great gift, count, of listening to the opinions of others, even in moments of passion--in moments of rage." "well, well! the question now is just about opinions, to which i have listened too long. i know but too well that we are not liked here, and that these citizens look askance at us." "not all!" "very many. what! these towns will be imperial towns, will they? they saw their emperor elected and crowned: and when, being unjustly attacked, he is in danger of losing his dominions and surrendering to an usurper; when he fortunately finds faithful allies who pour out their blood and treasure in his behalf,--they will not put up with the slight burden that falls to their share towards humbling the enemy." "but you have long known these sentiments, and have endured them like a wise man: they are, besides, held only by a minority. a few, dazzled by the splendid qualities of the enemy, whom you yourself prize as an extraordinary man,--a few only, as you are aware." "yes, indeed! i have known and suffered it too long! otherwise this man would not have presumed to utter such insults to my face, and at the most critical moment. let them be as many as they please, they shall be punished in the person of this their audacious representative, and perceive what they have to expect." "only delay, count." "in certain things one cannot act too promptly." "only a little delay, count." "neighbor, you think to mislead me into a false step: you shall not succeed." "i would neither lead you into a false step nor restrain you from one: your resolution is just,--it becomes the frenchman and the king's lieutenant; but consider that you are also count thorane." "he has no right to interfere here." "but the gallant man has a right to be heard." "what would he say, then?" "'king's lieutenant,' he would begin, 'you have so long had patience with so many gloomy, untoward, bungling men, if they were not really too bad. this man has certainly been too bad: but control yourself, king's lieutenant; and every one will praise and extol you on that account.'" "you know i can often endure your jests, but do not abuse my good will. these men--are they, then, completely blinded? suppose we had lost the battle: what would have been their fate at this moment? we fight up to the gates, we shut up the city, we halt, we defend ourselves to cover our retreat over the bridge. think you the enemy would have stood with his hands before him? he throws grenades, and what he has at hand; and they catch where they can. this house-holder--what would he have? here, in these rooms, a bomb might now have burst, and another have followed it;--in these rooms, the cursed china-paper of which i have spared, incommoding myself by not nailing up my maps! they ought to have spent the whole day on their knees." "how many would have done that!" "they ought to have prayed for a blessing on us, and to have gone out to meet the generals and officers with tokens of honor and joy, and the wearied soldiers with refreshments. instead of this, the poison of party-spirit destroys the fairest and happiest moments of my life, won by so many cares and efforts." "it is party-spirit, but you will only increase it by the punishment of this man. those who think with him will proclaim you a tyrant and a barbarian; they will consider him a martyr, who has suffered for the good cause; and even those of the other opinion, who are now his opponents, will see in him only their fellow-citizen, will pity him, and, while they confess your justice, will yet feel that you have proceeded too severely." "i have listened to you too much already,--now, away with you!" "hear only this. remember, this is the most unheard-of thing that could befall this man, this family. you have had no reason to be edified by the good will of the master of the house; but the mistress has anticipated all your wishes, and the children have regarded you as their uncle. with this single blow, you will forever destroy the peace and happiness of this dwelling. indeed, i may say, that a bomb falling into the house would not have occasioned greater desolation. i have so often admired your self-command, count: give me this time opportunity to adore you. a warrior is worthy of honor, who considers himself a guest in the house of an enemy; but here there is no enemy, only a mistaking man. control yourself, and you will acquire an everlasting fame." "that would be odd," replied the count, with a smile. "merely natural," continued the interpreter: "i have not sent the wife and children to your feet, because i know you detest such scenes; but i will depict to you this wife and these children, how they will thank you. i will depict them to you conversing all their lives of the battle of bergen, and of your magnanimity on this day, relating it to their children, and children's children, and inspiring even strangers with their own interest for you: an act of this kind can never perish." "but you do not hit my weak side yet, interpreter. about posthumous fame i am not in the habit of thinking; that is for others, not for me: but to do right at the moment, not to neglect my duty, not to prejudice my honor,--that is my care. we have already had too many words; now go--and receive the thanks of the thankless, whom i spare." the interpreter, surprised and moved by this unexpectedly favorable issue, could not restrain his tears, and would have kissed the count's hands. the count motioned him off, and said severely and seriously, "you know i cannot bear such things." and with these words he went into the ante-room to attend to his pressing affairs, and hear the claims of so many expectant persons. so the matter was disposed of; and the next morning we celebrated, with the remnants of the yesterday's sweetmeats, the passing over of an evil through the threatenings of which we had happily slept. whether the interpreter really spoke so wisely, or merely so painted the scene to himself, as one is apt to do after a good and fortunate action, i will not decide; at least he never varied it in repeating it. indeed, this day seemed to him both the most anxious and the most glorious in his life. one little incident will show how the count in general rejected all false parade, never assumed a title which did not belong to him, and how witty he was in his more cheerful moods. a man of the higher class, who was one of the abstruse, solitary frankforters, thought he must complain of the quartering of the soldiers upon him. he came in person; and the interpreter proffered him his services, but the other supposed that he did not need them. he came before the count with a most becoming bow, and said, "your excellency!" the count returned the bow, as well as the "excellency." struck by this mark of honor, and not supposing but that the title was too humble, he stooped lower, and said, "monseigneur."--"sir," said the count very seriously, "we will not go farther, or else we may easily bring it to majesty." the other gentleman was extremely confused, and had not a word to utter. the interpreter, standing at some distance, and apprised of the whole affair, was wicked enough not to move; but the count, with much cheerfulness, continued, "well, now, for instance, sir, what is your name?"--"spangenberg," replied the other. "and mine," said the count, "is thorane. spangenberg, what is your business with thorane? now, then, let us sit down: the affair shall at once be settled." and thus the affair was indeed settled at once, to the great satisfaction of the person i have here named spangenberg; and the same evening, in our family circle, the story was not only told by the waggish interpreter, but was given with all the circumstances and gestures. after these confusions, disquietudes, and grievances, the former security and thoughtlessness soon returned, in which the young particularly live from day to day, if it be in any degree possible. my passion for the french theatre grew with every performance. i did not miss an evening; though on every occasion, when, after the play, i sat down with the family to supper,--often putting up with the remains,--i had to endure my father's constant reproaches, that theatres were useless, and would lead to nothing. in these cases i adduced all and every argument which is at hand for the apologists of the stage when they fall into a difficulty like mine. vice in prosperity, and virtue in misfortune, are in the end set right by poetical justice. those beautiful examples of misdeeds punished, "miss sarah sampson," and "the merchant of london," were very energetically cited on my part: but, on the other hand, i often came off worst when the "fouberies de scapin," and others of the sort, were in the bill; and i was forced to bear reproaches for the delight felt by the public in the deceits of intriguing servants, and the successful follies of prodigal young men. neither party was convinced; but my father was very soon reconciled to the theatre when he saw that i advanced with incredible rapidity in the french language. men are so constituted that everybody would rather undertake himself what he sees done by others, whether he has aptitude for it or not. i had soon exhausted the whole range of the french stage; several plays were performed for the third and fourth times; all had passed before my eyes and mind, from the stateliest tragedy to the most frivolous afterpiece; and, as when a child i had presumed to imitate terence, i did not fail now as a boy, on a much more inciting occasion, to copy the french forms to the best of my ability and want of ability. there were then performed some half-mythological, half-allegorical pieces in the taste of piron: they partook somewhat of the nature of parody, and were much liked. these representations particularly attracted me: the little gold wings of a lively mercury, the thunderbolt of a disguised jupiter, an amorous danaë, or by whatever name a fair one visited by the gods might be called, if indeed it were not a shepherdess or huntress to whom they descended. and as elements of this kind, from "ovid's metamorphoses," or the "pantheon mythicum" of pomey, were humming in swarms about my head, i had soon put together in my imagination a little piece of the kind, of which i can only say that the scene was rural, and that there was no lack in it of king's daughters, princes, or gods. mercury, especially, made so vivid an impression on me, that i could almost be sworn that i had seen him with my own eyes. i presented my friend derones with a very neat copy, made by myself; which he accepted with quite a special grace, and with a truly patronizing air, glanced hastily over the manuscript, pointed out a few grammatical blunders, found some speeches too long, and at last promised to examine and judge the work more attentively when he had the requisite leisure. to my modest question, whether the piece could by any chance be performed, he assured me that it was not altogether impossible. in the theatre, he said, a great deal went by favor; and he would support me with all his heart: only the affair must be kept private; for he had himself once on a time surprised the directors with a piece of his own, and it would certainly have been acted if it had not been too soon detected that he was the author. i promised him all possible silence, and already saw in my mind's eye the name of my piece posted up in large letters on the corners of the streets and squares. light-minded as my friend generally was, the opportunity of playing the master was but too desirable. he read the piece through with attention, and, while he sat down with me to make some trivial alterations, turned the whole thing, in the course of the conversation, completely topsy- turvy, so that not one stone remained on another. he struck out, added, took away one character, substituted another,--in short, went on with the maddest wantonness in the world, so that my hair stood on end. my previous persuasion that he must surely understand the matter, allowed him to have his way; for he had often laid before me so much about the three unities of aristotle, the regularity of the french drama, the probability, the harmony of the verse, and all that belongs to these, that i was forced to regard him, not merely as informed, but thoroughly grounded. he abused the english and scorned the germans; in short, he laid before me the whole dramaturgic litany which i have so often in my life been compelled to hear. like the boy in the fable, i carried my mangled offspring home, and strove in vain to bring it to life. as, however, i would not quite abandon it, i caused a fair copy of my first manuscript, after a few alterations, to be made by our clerk, which i presented to my father, and thus gained so much, that, for a long time, he let me eat my supper in quiet after the play was over. this unsuccessful attempt had made me reflective; and i resolved now to learn, at the very sources, these theories, these laws, to which every one appealed, but which had become suspicious to me chiefly through the impoliteness of my arrogant master. this was not indeed difficult, but laborious. i immediately read corneille's "treatise on the three unities," and learned from that how people would have it, but why they desired it so was by no means clear to me; and, what was worst of all, i fell at once into still greater confusion when i made myself acquainted with the disputes on the "cid," and read the prefaces in which corneille and racine are obliged to defend themselves against the critics and public. here at least i plainly saw that no man knew what he wanted; that a piece like the "cid," which had produced the noblest effect, was to be condemned at the command of an all-powerful cardinal; that racine, the idol of the french living in my day, who had now also become my idol (for i had got intimately acquainted with him when schöff von olenschlager made us children act "britannicus," in which the part of nero fell to me),--that racine, i say, even in his own day, was not able to get on with the amateurs nor critics. through all this i became more perplexed than ever; and after having pestered myself a long time with this talking backwards and forwards, and theoretical quackery of the previous century, threw them to the dogs, and was the more resolute in casting all the rubbish away, the more i thought i observed that the authors themselves who had produced excellent things, when they began to speak about them, when they set forth the grounds of their treatment, when they desired to defend, justify, or excuse themselves, were not always able to hit the proper mark. i hastened back again, therefore, to the living present, attended the theatre far more zealously, read more scrupulously and connectedly, so that i had perseverance enough this time to work through the whole of racine and molière and a great part of corneille. the king's lieutenant still lived at our house. he in no respect had changed his deportment, especially towards us; but it was observable, and the interpreter made it still more evident to us, that he no longer discharged his duties with the same cheerfulness and zeal as at the outset, though always with the same rectitude and fidelity. his character and habits, which showed the spaniard rather than the frenchman; his caprices, which were not without their influence on his business; his unbending will under all circumstances; his susceptibility as to whatever had reference to his person or reputation,--all this together might perhaps sometimes bring him into conflict with his superiors. add to this, that he had been wounded in a duel, which had arisen in the theatre, and it was deemed wrong that the king's lieutenant, himself chief of police, should have committed a punishable offence. as i have said, all this may have contributed to make him live more retired, and here and there perhaps to act with less energy. [illustration: a woman spinning and another reading while a child plays nearby.] meanwhile, a considerable part of the pictures he had ordered had been delivered. count thorane passed his leisure hours in examining them; while in the aforesaid gable-room he had them nailed up, canvas after canvas, large and small, side by side, and, because there was want of space, even one over another, and then taken down and rolled up. the works were constantly inspected anew, the parts that were considered the most successful were repeatedly enjoyed, but there was no want of wishes that this or that had been differently done. hence arose a new and very singular operation. as one painter best executed figures, another middle-grounds and distances, a third trees, a fourth flowers, it struck the count that these talents might perhaps be combined in the paintings, and that in this way perfect works might be produced. a beginning was made at once, by having, for instance, some beautiful cattle painted into a finished landscape. but because there was not always adequate room for all, and a few sheep more or less was no great matter to the cattle-painter, the largest landscape proved in the end too narrow. now also the painter of figures had to introduce the shepherd and some travellers: these deprived each other of air, as we may say; and we marvelled that they were not all stifled, even in the most open country. no one could anticipate what was to come of the matter, and when it was finished it gave no satisfaction. the painters were annoyed. they had gained something by their first orders, but lost by these after-labors; though the count paid for them also very liberally. and, as the parts worked into each other in one picture by several hands produced no good effect after all the trouble, every one at last fancied that his own work had been spoiled and destroyed by that of the others; hence the artists were within a hair's-breadth of falling out, and becoming irreconcilably hostile to each other. these alterations, or rather additions, were made in the before-mentioned studio, where i remained quite alone with the artists; and it amused me to hunt out from the studies, particularly of animals, this or that individual or group, and to propose it for the foreground or the distance, in which respect they many times, either from conviction or kindness, complied with my wishes. the partners in this affair were therefore greatly discouraged, especially seekatz, a very hypochondriacal, retired man, who, indeed, by his incomparable humor, was the best of companions among friends, but who, when he worked, desired to work alone, abstracted and perfectly free. this man, after solving difficult problems, and finishing them with the greatest diligence and the warmest love, of which he was always capable, was forced to travel repeatedly from darmstadt to frankfort, either to change something in his own pictures, or to touch up those of others, or even to allow, under his superintendence, a third person to convert his pictures into a variegated mess. his peevishness augmented, his resistance became more decided, and a great deal of effort was necessary on our part to guide this "gossip;" for he was one also, according to the count's wishes. i still remember, that when the boxes were standing ready to pack up all the pictures, in the order in which the upholsterer might hang them up at once, at their place of destination, a small but indispensable bit of afterwork was demanded; but seekatz could not be moved to come over. he had, by way of conclusion, done the best he could, having represented, in paintings to be placed over the doors, the four elements as children and boys, after life, and having expended the greatest care, not only on the figures, but on the accessories. these were delivered and paid for, and he thought he was quit of the business forever; but now he was to come over again, that he might enlarge, by a few touches of his pencil, some figures, the size of which was too small. another, he thought, could do it just as well; he had already set about some new work; in short, he would not come. the time for sending off the pictures was at hand; they had, moreover, to get dry; every delay was untoward; and the count, in despair, was about to have him fetched in military fashion. we all wished to see the pictures finally gone, and found at last no expedient than for the gossip interpreter to seat himself in a wagon, and fetch over the refractory subject, with his wife and child. he was kindly received by the count, well treated, and at last dismissed with liberal payment. after the pictures had been sent away, there was great peace in the house. the gable-room in the attic was cleaned, and given up to me; and my father, when he saw the boxes go, could not refrain from wishing to send off the count after them. for much as the tastes of the count coincided with his own, much as he must have rejoiced to see his principle of patronizing living artists so generously followed out by a man richer than himself, much as it may have flattered him that his collection had been the occasion of bringing so considerable a profit to a number of brave artists in a pressing time, he nevertheless felt such a repugnance to the foreigner who had intruded into his house, that he could not think well of any of his doings. one ought to employ painters, but not degrade them to paper-stainers; one ought to be satisfied with what they have done, according to their conviction and ability, even if it does not thoroughly please one, and not be perpetually carping at it. in short, in spite of all the count's own generous endeavors, there could, once for all, be no mutual understanding. my father only visited that room when the count was at table; and i can recall but one instance, when, seekatz having excelled himself, and the wish to see these pictures having brought the whole house together, my father and the count met, and manifested a common pleasure in these works of art, which they could not take in each other. scarcely, therefore, had the house been cleared of the chests and boxes, than the plan for removing the count, which had formerly been begun, but was afterwards interrupted, was resumed. the endeavor was made to gain justice by representations, equity by entreaties, favor by influence; and the quarter-masters were prevailed upon to decide thus: the count was to change his lodgings; and our house, in consideration of the burden borne day and night for several years uninterruptedly, was to be exempt for the future from billetting. but, to furnish a plausible pretext for this, we were to take in lodgers on the first floor, which the count had occupied, and thus render a new quartering, as it were, impossible. the count, who, after the separation from his dear pictures, felt no further peculiar interest in the house, and hoped, moreover, to be soon recalled and placed elsewhere, was pleased to move without opposition to another good residence, and left us in peace and good will. soon afterwards he quitted the city, and received different appointments in gradation, but, it was rumored, not to his own satisfaction. meantime, he had the pleasure of seeing the pictures which he had preserved with so much care felicitously arranged in his brother's chateau: he wrote sometimes, sent dimensions, and had different pieces executed by the artists so often named. at last we heard nothing further about him, except after several years we were assured that he had died as governor of one of the french colonies in the west indies. fourth book. however much inconvenience the quartering of the french had caused us, we had become so accustomed to it, that we could not fail to miss it; nor could we children fail to feel as if the house were deserted. moreover, it was not decreed that we should again attain perfect family unity. new lodgers were already bespoken; and after some sweeping and scouring, planing, and rubbing with beeswax, painting and varnishing, the house was completely restored again. the chancery-director moritz, with his family, very worthy friends of my parents, moved in. he was not a native of frankfort, but an able jurist and man of business, and managed the legal affairs of many small princes, counts, and lords. i never saw him otherwise than cheerful and pleasant, and diligent with his law-papers. his wife and children, gentle, quiet, and benevolent, did not indeed increase the sociableness of our house; for they kept to themselves: but a stillness, a peace, returned, which we had not enjoyed for a long time. i now again occupied my attic-room, in which the ghosts of the many pictures sometimes hovered before me; while i strove to frighten them away by labor and study. the counsellor of legation, moritz, a brother of the chancellor, came from this time often to our house. he was even more a man of the world, had a handsome figure, while his manners were easy and agreeable. he also managed the affairs of different persons of rank, and on occasions of meetings of creditors and imperial commissions frequently came into contact with my father. they had a high opinion of each other, and commonly stood on the side of the creditors; though they were generally obliged to perceive, much to their vexation, that a majority of the agents on such occasions are usually gained over to the side of the debtors. the counsellor of legation readily communicated his knowledge, was fond of mathematics; and, as these did not occur in his present course of life, he made himself a pleasure by helping me on in this branch of study. i was thus enabled to finish my architectural sketches more accurately than heretofore, and to profit more by the instruction of a drawing-master, who now also occupied us an hour every day. this good old man was indeed only half an artist. we were obliged to draw and combine strokes, from which eyes and noses, lips and ears, nay, at last, whole faces and heads, were to arise; but of natural or artistic forms there was no thought. we were tormented a long while with this /quid pro quo/ of the human figure; and when the so-called passions of le brun were given us to copy, it was supposed at last that we had made great progress. but even these caricatures did not improve us. then we went off to landscapes, foliage, and all the things which in ordinary instruction are practised without consistency or method. finally we dropped into close imitation and neatness of strokes, without troubling ourselves about the merit or taste of the original. in these endeavors our father led the way in an exemplary manner. he had never drawn; but he was unwilling to remain behind, now that his children pursued this art, and would give, even in his old age, an example how they should proceed in their youth. he therefore copied several heads of piazetta, from his well-known sheets in small octavo, with an english lead-pencil upon the finest dutch paper. in these he not only observed the greatest clearness of outline, but most accurately imitated the hatching of the copperplate with a light hand--only too slightly, as in his desire to avoid hardness he brought no keeping into his sketches. yet they were always soft and accurate. his unrelaxing and untiring assiduity went so far, that he drew the whole considerable collection number by number; while we children jumped from one head to another, and chose only those that pleased us. about this time the long-debated project, long under consideration, for giving us lessons in music, was carried into effect; and the last impulse to it certainly deserves mention. it was settled that we should learn the harpsichord, but there was always a dispute about the choice of a master. at last i went once accidentally into the room of one of my companions, who was just taking his lesson on the harpsichord, and found the teacher a most charming man: for each finger of the right and left hand he had a nickname, by which he indicated in the merriest way when it was to be used. the black and white keys were likewise symbolically designated, and even the tones appeared under figurative names. such a motley company worked most pleasantly together. fingering and time seemed to become perfectly easy and obvious; and, while the scholar was put into the best humor, every thing else succeeded beautifully. scarcely had i reached home, than i importuned my parents to set about the matter in good earnest at last, and give us this incomparable man for our master on the harpsichord. they hesitated, and made inquiries: they indeed heard nothing bad of the teacher, but, at the same time, nothing particularly good. meanwhile, i had informed my sister of all the droll names: we could hardly wait for the lesson, and succeeded in having the man engaged. the reading of the notes began first; but, as no jokes occurred here, we comforted ourselves with the hope, that when we went to the harpsichord, and the fingers were needed, the jocular method would commence. but neither keys nor fingering seemed to afford opportunity for any comparisons. dry as the notes were, with their strokes on and between the five lines, the black and white keys were no less so: and not a syllable was heard, either of "thumbling," "pointerling," or "gold finger;" while the countenance of the man remained as imperturbable during his dry teaching as it had been before during his dry jests. my sister reproached me most bitterly for having deceived her, and actually believed that it was all an invention of mine. but i was myself confounded and learned little, though the man at once went regularly enough to work; for i kept always expecting that the former jokes would make their appearance, and so consoled my sister from one day to another. they did not re-appear, however; and i should never have been able to explain the riddle if another accident had not solved it for me. one of my companions came in during a lesson, and at once all the pipes of the humorous /jet d'eau/ were opened: the "thumblings" and "pointerlings," the "pickers" and "stealers," as he used to call the fingers; the "falings" and "galings," meaning "f" and "g;" the "fielings" and "gielings," meaning "f" and "g" sharp, [footnote: the names of the sharp notes in german terminate in "is," and hence "f" and "g" sharp are called "fis" and "gis."]--became once more extant, and made the most wonderful manikins. my young friend could not leave off laughing, and was rejoiced that one could learn in such a merry manner. he vowed that he would give his parents no peace until they had given him such an excellent man for a teacher. and thus the way to two arts was early enough opened to me, according to the principles of a modern theory of education, merely by good luck, and without any conviction that i should be furthered therein by a native talent. my father maintained that everybody ought to learn drawing; for which reason he especially venerated the emperor maximilian, by whom this had been expressly commanded. he therefore held me to it more steadily than to music; which, on the other hand, he especially recommended to my sister, and even out of the hours for lessons kept her fast, during a good part of the day, at her harpsichord. but the more i was in this way made to press on, the more i wished to press forward of myself; and my hours of leisure were employed in all sorts of curious occupations. from my earliest years i felt a love for the investigation of natural things. it is often regarded as an instinct of cruelty that children like at last to break, tear, and devour objects with which for a long time they have played, and which they have handled in various manners. yet even in this way is manifested the curiosity, the desire of learning how such things hang together, how they look within. i remember, that, when a child, i pulled flowers to pieces to see how the leaves were inserted into the calyx, or even plucked birds to observe how the feathers were inserted into the wings. children are not to be blamed for this, when even our naturalists believe they get their knowledge oftener by separation and division than by union and combination,--more by killing than by making alive. an armed loadstone, very neatly sewed up in scarlet cloth, was one day destined to experience the effects of this spirit of inquiry. for the secret force of attraction which it exercised, not only on the little iron bar attached to it, but which was of such a kind that it could gain strength and could daily bear a heavier weight,--this mysterious virtue had so excited my admiration, that for a long time i was pleased with merely staring at its operation. but at last i thought i might arrive at some nearer revelation by tearing away the external covering. this was done; but i became no wiser in consequence, as the naked iron taught me nothing further. this also i took off; and i held in my hand the mere stone, with which i never grew weary of making experiments of various kinds on filings and needles,--experiments from which my youthful mind drew no further advantage beyond that of a varied experience. i could not manage to reconstruct the whole arrangement: the parts were scattered, and i lost the wondrous phenomenon at the same time with the apparatus. nor was i more fortunate in putting together an electrical machine. a friend of the family, whose youth had fallen in the time when electricity occupied all minds, often told us how, when a child, he had desired to possess such a machine: he got together the principal requisites, and, by the aid of an old spinning-wheel and some medicine bottles, had produced tolerable results. as he readily and frequently repeated the story, and imparted to us some general information on electricity, we children found the thing very plausible, and long tormented ourselves with an old spinning-wheel and some medicine bottles, without producing even the smallest result. we nevertheless adhered to our belief, and were much delighted, when at the time of the fair, among other rarities, magical and legerdemain tricks, an electrical machine performed its marvels, which, like those of magnetism, were at that time already very numerous. the want of confidence in the public method of instruction was daily increasing. people looked about for private tutors; and, because single families could not afford the expense, several of them united to attain their object. yet the children seldom agreed; the young man had not sufficient authority; and, after frequently repeated vexations, there were only angry partings. it is not surprising, therefore, that other arrangements were thought of which should be more permanent as well as more advantageous. the thought of establishing boarding-schools (/pensionen/) had arisen from the necessity, which every one felt, of having the french language taught and communicated orally. my father had brought up a young person, who had been his footman, valet, secretary, and in short successively all in all. this man, whose name was pfeil, spoke french well. after he had married, and his patrons had to think of a situation for him, they hit upon the plan of making him establish a boarding- school, which extended gradually into a small academy, in which every thing necessary, and at last even greek and latin, were taught. the extensive connections of frankfort caused young french and english men to be brought to this establishment, that they might learn german and acquire other accomplishments. pfeil, who was a man in the prime of life, and of the most wonderful energy and activity, superintended the whole very laudably; and as he could never be employed enough, and was obliged to keep music-teachers for his scholars, he set about music on the occasion, and practised the harpsichord with such zeal, that, without having previously touched a note, he very soon played with perfect readiness and spirit. he seemed to have adopted my father's maxim, that nothing can more cheer and excite young people, than when at mature years one declares one's self again a learner; and at an age when new accomplishments are acquired with difficulty, one endeavors, nevertheless, by zeal and perseverance, to excel the younger, who are more favored by nature. by this love of playing the harpsichord, pfeil was led to the instruments themselves, and, while he hoped to obtain the best, came into connection with frederici of gera, whose instruments were celebrated far and wide. he took a number of them on sale, and had now the joy of seeing, not only one piano, but many, set up in his residence, and of practising and being heard upon them. the vivacity of this man brought a great rage for music into our house. my father remained on lasting good terms with him up to certain points of dispute. a large piano of frederici was purchased also for us, which i, adhering to my harpsichord, hardly touched; but which so much increased my sister's troubles, as, to duly honor the new instrument, she had to spend some time longer every day in practice; while my father, as overseer, and pfeil, as a model and encouraging friend, alternately took their positions at her side. a singular taste of my father's caused much inconvenience to us children. this was the cultivation of silk, of the advantages of which, if it were more widely extended, he had a high opinion. some acquaintances at hanau, where the breeding of the worms was carried on with great care, gave him the immediate impulse. at the proper season, the eggs were sent to him from that place: and, as soon as the mulberry- trees showed sufficient leaves, they had to be stripped; and the scarcely visible creatures were most diligently tended. tables and stands with boards were set up in a garret-chamber, to afford them more room and sustenance; for they grew rapidly, and, after their last change of skin, were so voracious that it was scarcely possible to get leaves enough to feed them,--nay, they had to be fed day and night, as every thing depends upon there being no deficiency of nourishment when the great and wondrous change is about to take place in them. when the weather was favorable, this business could indeed be regarded as a pleasant amusement; but, if the cold set in so that the mulberry-trees suffered, it was exceedingly troublesome. still more unpleasant was it when rain fell during the last epoch; for these creatures cannot at all endure moisture, and the wet leaves had to be carefully wiped and dried, which could not always be done quite perfectly: and for this, or perhaps some other reason also, various diseases came among the flock, by which the poor things were swept off in thousands. the state of corruption which ensued produced a smell really pestilential; and, because the dead and diseased had to be taken away and separated from the healthy, the business was indeed extremely wearisome and repulsive, and caused many an unhappy hour to us children. after we had one year passed the finest weeks of the spring and summer in tending the silk-worms, we were obliged to assist our father in another business, which, though simpler, was no less troublesome. the roman views, which, bound by black rods at the top and bottom, had hung for many years on the walls of the old house, had become very yellow through the light, dust, and smoke, and not a little unsightly through the flies. if such uncleanliness was not to be tolerated in the new house, yet, on the other hand, these pictures had gained in value to my father, in consequence of his longer absence from the places represented. for at the outset such copies serve only to renew and revive the impressions received shortly before. they seem trifling in comparison, and at the best only a melancholy substitute. but, as the remembrance of the original forms fades more and more, the copies imperceptibly assume their place: they become as dear to us as those once were, and what we at first contemned now gains esteem and affection. thus it is with all copies, and particularly with portraits. no one is easily satisfied with the counterfeit of an object still present, but how we value every /silhouette/ of one who is absent or departed. in short, with this feeling of his former extravagance, my father wished that these engravings might be restored as much as possible. it was well known that this could be done by bleaching: and the operation, always critical with large plates, was undertaken under rather unfavorable circumstances; for the large boards, on which the smoked engravings were moistened and exposed to the sun, stood in the gutters before the garret windows, leaning against the roof, and were therefore liable to many accidents. the chief point was, that the paper should never thoroughly dry, but must be kept constantly moist. this was the duty of my sister and myself; and the idleness, which would have been otherwise so desirable, was excessively annoying on account of the tedium and impatience, and the watchfulness which allowed of no distraction. the end, however, was attained; and the bookbinder, who fixed each sheet upon thick paper, did his best to match and repair the margins, which had been here and there torn by our inadvertence. all the sheets together were bound in a volume, and for this time preserved. that we children might not be wanting in every variety of life and learning, a teacher of the english language had to announce himself just at this time, who pledged himself to teach anybody not entirely raw in languages, english in four weeks, and to advance him to such a degree, that, with some diligence, he could help himself farther. his price was moderate, and he was indifferent as to the number of scholars at one lesson. my father instantly determined to make the attempt, and took lessons, together with my sister and myself, of this expeditious master. the hours were faithfully kept; there was no want of repeating our lessons; other exercises were neglected rather than this during the four weeks; and the teacher parted from us, and we from him, with satisfaction. as he remained longer in the town, and found many employers, he came from time to time to look after us and to help us, grateful that we had been among the first who placed confidence in him, and proud to be able to cite us as examples to the others. my father, in consequence of this, entertained a new anxiety, that english might neatly stand in the series of my other studies in languages. now, i will confess that it became more and more burdensome for me to take my occasions for study now from this grammar or collection of examples, now from that; now from one author, now from another,--and thus to divert my interest in a subject every hour. it occurred to me, therefore, that i might despatch all at the same time; and i invented a romance of six or seven brothers and sisters, who, separated from each other and scattered over the world, should communicate with each other alternately as to their conditions and feelings. the eldest brother gives an account, in good german, of all the manifold objects and incidents of his journey. the sister, in a ladylike style, with short sentences and nothing but stops, much as "siegwart" was afterwards written, answers now him, now the other brothers, partly about domestic matters, and partly about affairs of the heart. one brother studies theology, and writes a very formal latin, to which he often adds a greek postscript. to another brother, holding the place of mercantile clerk at hamburg, the english correspondence naturally falls; while a still younger one at marseilles has the french. for the italian was found a musician, on his first trip into the world; while the youngest of all, a sort of pert nestling, had applied himself to jew-german,--the other languages having been cut off from him,--and, by means of his frightful ciphers, brought the rest of them into despair, and my parents into a hearty laugh at the good notion. to obtain matter for filling up this singular form, i studied the geography of the countries in which my creations resided, and by inventing for those dry localities all sorts of human incidents which had some affinity with the characters and employments of my heroes. thus my exercise-books became much more voluminous, my father was better satisfied, and i was much sooner made aware of my deficiency in both what i had acquired and possessed of my own. now, as such things, once begun, have no end nor limits, so it happened in the present case; for while i strove to attain the odd jew-german, and to write it as well as i could read it, i soon discovered that i ought to know hebrew, from which alone the modern corrupted dialect could be derived, and handled with any certainty. i consequently explained the necessity of my learning hebrew to my father, and earnestly besought his consent; for i had a still higher object. everywhere i heard it said, that, to understand the old as well as the new testament, the original languages were requisite. the latter i could read quite easily; because, that there might be no want of exercise, even on sundays, the so-called epistles and gospels had, after church, to be recited, translated, and in some measure explained. i now purposed doing the same thing with the old testament, the peculiarities of which had always especially interested me. my father, who did not like to do any thing by halves, determined to request the rector of our gymnasium, one dr. albrecht, to give me private lessons weekly, until i should have acquired what was most essential in so simple a language; for he hoped, that, if it would not be despatched as soon as english was learned, it could at least be managed in double the time. rector albrecht was one of the most original figures in the world,-- short, broad, but not fat, ill-shaped without being deformed; in short, an aesop in gown and wig. his more than seventy-years-old face was completely twisted into a sarcastic smile; while his eyes always remained large, and, though red, were always brilliant and intelligent. he lived in the old cloister of the barefoot friars, the seat of the gymnasium. even as a child, i had often visited him in company with my parents, and had, with a kind of trembling delight, glided through the long, dark passages, the chapels transformed into reception-rooms, the place broken up and full of stairs and corners. without making me uncomfortable, he questioned me familiarly whenever we met, and praised and encouraged me. one day, on the changing of the pupils' places after a public examination, he saw me standing, as a mere spectator, not far from his chair, while he distributed the silver /proemia virtulis et diligentioe/. i was probably gazing very eagerly upon the little bag out of which he drew the medals: he nodded to me, descended a step, and handed me one of the silver pieces. my joy was great; although others thought that this gift, bestowed upon a boy not belonging to the school, was out of all order. but for this the good old man cared but little, having always played the eccentric, and that in a striking manner. he had a very good reputation as a schoolmaster, and understood his business; although age no more allowed him to practise it thoroughly. but almost more than by his own infirmities was he hindered by greater circumstances; and, as i already knew, he was satisfied neither with the consistory, the inspectors, the clergy, nor the teachers. to his natural temperament, which inclined to satire, and the watching for faults and defects, he allowed free play, both in his programmes and his public speeches; and, as lucian was almost the only writer whom he read and esteemed, he spiced all that he said and wrote with biting ingredients. fortunately for those with whom he was dissatisfied, he never went directly to work, but only jeered at the defects which he wanted to reprove, with hints, allusions, classic passages, and scripture-texts. his delivery, moreover,--he always read his discourses,--was unpleasant, unintelligible, and, above all, was often interrupted by a cough, but more frequently by a hollow, paunch-convulsing laugh, with which he was wont to announce and accompany the biting passages. this singular man i found to be mild and obliging when i began to take lessons of him. i now went to his house daily at six o'clock in the evening, and always experienced a secret pleasure when the outer door closed behind me, and i had to thread the long, dark cloister-passage. we sat in his library, at a table covered with oil-cloth, a much-read lucian never quitting his side. in spite of all my willingness, i did not get at the matter without difficulty; for my teacher could not suppress certain sarcastic remarks as to the real truth about hebrew. i concealed from him my designs upon jew-german, and spoke of a better understanding of the original text. he smiled at this, and said i should be satisfied if i only learned to read. this vexed me in secret, and i concentrated all my attention when we came to the letters. i found an alphabet something like the greek, of which the forms were easy, and the names, for the most part, not strange to me. all this i had soon comprehended and retained, and supposed we should now take up reading. that this was done from right to left i was well aware. but now all at once appeared a new army of little characters and signs, of points and strokes of all sorts, which were in fact to represent vowels. at this i wondered the more, as there were manifestly vowels in the larger alphabet; and the others only appeared to be hidden under strange appellations. i was also taught that the jewish nation, as long as it flourished, actually were satisfied with the former signs, and knew no other way of writing and reading. most willingly, then, would i have gone on along this ancient and, as it seemed to me, easier path; but my worthy declared rather sternly that we must go by the grammar as it had been approved and composed. reading without these points and strokes, he said, was a very hard undertaking, and could be accomplished only by the learned and those who were well practised. i must, therefore, make up my mind to learn these little characters; but the matter became to me more and more confused. now, it seemed, some of the first and larger primitive letters had no value in their places, in order that their little after-born kindred might not stand there in vain. now they indicated a gentle breathing, now a guttural more or less rough, and now served as mere equivalents. but finally, when one fancied that he had well noted every thing, some of these personages, both great and small, were rendered inoperative; so that the eyes always had very much, and the lips very little, to do. as that of which i already knew the contents had now to be stuttered in a strange gibberish, in which a certain snuffle and gargle were not a little commended as something unattainable, i in a certain degree deviated from the matter, and diverted myself, in a childish way, with the singular names of these accumulated signs. there were "emperors," "kings," and "dukes," [footnote: these are the technical names for classes of accents in the hebrew grammar.--trans.] which, as accents governing here and there, gave me not a little entertainment. but even these shallow jests soon lost their charm. nevertheless i was indemnified, inasmuch as by reading, translating, repeating, and committing to memory, the substance of the book came out more vividly; and it was this, properly, about which i desired to be enlightened. even before this time, the contradiction between tradition, and the actual and possible, had appeared to me very striking; and i had often put my private tutors to a non-plus with the sun which stood still on gibeon, and the moon in the vale of ajalon, to say nothing of other improbabilities and incongruities. every thing of this kind was now awakened; while, in order to master the hebrew, i occupied myself exclusively with the old testament, and studied it, though no longer in luther's translation, but in the literal version of sebastian schmid, printed under the text, which my father had procured for me. here, i am sorry to say, our lessons began to be defective in regard to practice in the language. reading, interpreting, grammar, transcribing, and the repetition of words, seldom lasted a full half-hour; for i immediately began to aim at the sense of the matter, and, though we were still engaged in the first book of moses, to utter several things suggested to me by the later books. at first the good old man tried to restrain me from such digressions, but at last they seemed to entertain him also. it was impossible for him to suppress his characteristic cough and chuckle: and, although he carefully avoided giving me any information that might have compromised himself, my importunity was not relaxed; nay, as i cared more to set forth my doubts than to learn their solution, i grew constantly more vivacious and bold, seeming justified by his deportment. yet i could get nothing out of him, except that ever and anon he would exclaim with his peculiar, shaking laugh, "ah! mad fellow! ah! mad boy!" still, my childish vivacity, which scrutinized the bible on all sides, may have seemed to him tolerably serious and worthy of some assistance. he therefore referred me, after a time, to the large english biblical work which stood in his library, and in which the interpretation of difficult and doubtful passages was attempted in an intelligent and judicious manner. by the great labors of german divines the translation had obtained advantages over the original. the different opinions were cited; and at last a kind of reconciliation was attempted, so that the dignity of the book, the ground of religion, and the human understanding, might in some degree co-exist. now, as often as towards the end of the lesson i came out with my usual questions and doubts, so often did he point to the repository. i took the volume, he let me read, turned over his lucian; and, when i made any remarks on the book, his ordinary laugh was the only answer to my sagacity. in the long summer days he let me sit as long as i could read, many times alone; after a time he suffered me to take one volume after another home with me. man may turn which way he please, and undertake any thing whatsoever, he will always return to the path which nature has once prescribed for him. thus it happened also with me in the present case. the trouble i took with the language, with the contents of the sacred scriptures themselves, ended at last in producing in my imagination a livelier picture of that beautiful and famous land, its environs and its vicinities, as well as of the people and events by which that little spot of earth was made glorious for thousands of years. this small space was to see the origin and growth of the human race; thence we were to derive our first and only accounts of primitive history; and such a locality was to lie before our imagination, no less simple and comprehensible than varied, and adapted to the most wonderful migrations and settlements. here, between four designated rivers, a small, delightful spot was separated from the whole habitable earth, for youthful man. here he was to unfold his first capacities, and here at the same time was the lot to befall him, which was appointed for all his posterity; namely, that of losing peace by striving after knowledge. paradise was trifled away; men increased and grew worse; and the elohim, not yet accustomed to the wickedness of the new race, became impatient, and utterly destroyed it. only a few were saved from the universal deluge; and scarcely had this dreadful flood ceased, than the well-known ancestral soil lay once more before the grateful eyes of the preserved. two rivers out of four, the euphrates and tigris, still flowed in their beds. the name of the first remained: the other seemed to be pointed out by its course. minuter traces of paradise were not to be looked for after so great a revolution. the renewed race of man went forth hence a second time: it found occasion to sustain and employ itself in all sorts of ways, but chiefly to gather around it large herds of tame animals, and to wander with them in every direction. this mode of life, as well as the increase of the families, soon compelled the people to disperse. they could not at once resolve to let their relatives and friends go forever: they hit upon the thought of building a lofty tower, which should show them the way back from the far distance. but this attempt, like their first endeavor, miscarried. they could not be at the same time happy and wise, numerous and united. the elohim confounded their minds; the building remained unfinished; the men were dispersed; the world was peopled, but sundered. but our regards, our interests, continue fixed on these regions. at last the founder of a race again goes forth from hence, and is so fortunate as to stamp a distinct character upon his descendants, and by that means to unite them for all time to come into a great nation, inseparable through all changes of place or destiny. from the euphrates, abraham, not without divine guidance, wanders towards the west. the desert opposes no invincible barrier to his march. he attains the jordan, passes over its waters, and spreads himself over the fair southern regions of palestine. this land was already occupied, and tolerably well inhabited. mountains, not extremely high, but rocky and barren, were severed by many watered vales favorable to cultivation. towns, villages, and solitary settlements lay scattered over the plain, and on the slopes of the great valley, the waters of which are collected in jordan. thus inhabited, thus tilled, was the land: but the world was still large enough; and the men were not so circumspect, necessitous, and active, as to usurp at once the whole adjacent country. between their possessions were extended large spaces, in which grazing herds could freely move in every direction. in one of these spaces abraham resides; his brother lot is near him: but they cannot long remain in such places. the very condition of a land, the population of which is now increasing, now decreasing, and the productions of which are never kept in equilibrium with the wants, produces unexpectedly a famine; and the stranger suffers alike with the native, whose own support he has rendered difficult by his accidental presence. the two chaldean brothers move onward to egypt; and thus is traced out for us the theatre on which, for some thousands of years, the most important events of the world were to be enacted. from the tigris to the euphrates, from the euphrates to the nile, we see the earth peopled; and this space also is traversed by a well-known, heaven-beloved man, who has already become worthy to us, moving to and fro with his goods and cattle, and, in a short time, abundantly increasing them. the brothers return; but, taught by the distress they have endured, they determine to part. both, indeed, tarry in southern canaan; but while abraham remains at hebron, near the wood of mamre, lot departs for the valley of siddim, which, if our imagination is bold enough to give jordan a subterranean outlet, so that, in place of the present dead sea, we should have dry ground, can and must appear like a second paradise,--a conjecture all the more probable, because the residents about there, notorious for effeminacy and wickedness, lead us to infer that they led an easy and luxurious life. lot lives among them, but apart. but hebron and the wood of mamre appear to us as the important place where the lord speaks with abraham, and promises him all the land as far as his eye can reach in four directions. from these quiet districts, from these shepherd-tribes, who can associate with celestials, entertain them as guests, and hold many conversations with them, we are compelled to turn our glance once more towards the east, and to think of the condition of the surrounding world, which, on the whole, perhaps, may have been like that of canaan. families hold together: they unite, and the mode of life of the tribes is determined by the locality which they have appropriated or appropriate. on the mountains which send down their waters to the tigris, we find warlike populations, who even thus early foreshadow those world-conquerors and world-rulers, and in a campaign, prodigious for those times, give us a prelude of future achievements. chedor laomer, king of elam, has already a mighty influence over his allies. he reigns a long while; for twelve years before abraham's arrival in canaan, he had made all the people tributary to him as far as the jordan. they revolted at last, and the allies equipped for war. we find them unawares upon a route by which, probably, abraham also reached canaan. the people on the left and lower side of the jordan were subdued. chedor laomer directs his march southwards towards the people of the desert; then, wending north, he smites the amalekites; and, when he has also overcome the amorites, he reaches canaan, falls upon the kings of the valley of siddim, smites and scatters them, and marches with great spoil up the jordan, in order to extend his conquests as far as lebanon. among the captives, despoiled, and dragged along with their property, is lot, who shares the fate of the country in which he lives a guest. abraham learns this, and here at once we behold the patriarch a warrior and hero. he hurriedly gathers his servants, divides them into troops, attacks and falls upon the luggage of booty, confuses the victors, who could not suspect another enemy in the rear, and brings back his brother and his goods, with a great deal more belonging to the conquered kings. abraham, by means of this brief contest, acquires, as it were, the whole land. to the inhabitants he appears as a protector, savior, and, by his disinterestedness, a king. gratefully the kings of the valley receive him; melchisedek, the king and priest, with blessings. now the prophecies of an endless posterity are renewed; nay, they take a wider and wider scope. from the waters of the euphrates to the river of egypt all the lands are promised him, but yet there seems a difficulty with respect to his next heirs. he is eighty years of age, and has no son. sarai, less trusting in the heavenly powers than he, becomes impatient: she desires, after the oriental fashion, to have a descendant, by means of her maid. but no sooner is hagar given up to the master of the house, no sooner is there hope of a son, than dissensions arise. the wife treats her own dependant ill enough, and hagar flies to seek a happier position among other tribes. she returns, not without a higher intimation, and ishmael is born. abraham is now ninety-nine years old, and the promises of a numerous posterity are constantly repeated: so that, in the end, the pair regard them as ridiculous. and yet sarai becomes at last pregnant, and brings forth a son, to whom the name of isaac is given. history, for the most part, rests upon the legitimate propagation of the human race. the most important events of the world require to be traced to the secrets of families, and thus the marriages of the patriarchs give occasion for peculiar considerations. it is as if the divinity, who loves to guide the destiny of mankind, wished to prefigure here connubial events of every kind. abraham, so long united by childless marriage to a beautiful woman whom many coveted, finds himself, in his hundredth year, the husband of two women, the father of two sons; and at this moment his domestic peace is broken. two women, and two sons by different mothers, cannot possibly agree. the party less favored by law, usage, and opinion must yield. abraham must sacrifice his attachment to hagar and ishmael. both are dismissed; and hagar is compelled now, against her will, to go upon a road which she once took in voluntary flight, at first, it seems, to the destruction of herself and child; but the angel of the lord, who had before sent her back, now rescues her again, that ishmael also may become a great people, and that the most improbable of all promises may be fulfilled beyond its limits. two parents in advanced years, and one son of their old age--here, at last, one might expect domestic quiet and earthly happiness. by no means. heaven is yet preparing the heaviest trial for the patriarch. but of this we cannot speak without premising several considerations. if a natural universal religion was to arise, and a special revealed one to be developed from it, the countries in which our imagination has hitherto lingered, the mode of life, the race of men, were the fittest for the purpose. at least, we do not find in the whole world any thing equally favorable and encouraging. even to natural religion, if we assume that it arose earlier in the human mind, there pertains much of delicacy of sentiment; for it rests upon the conviction of an universal providence, which conducts the order of the world as a whole. a particular religion, revealed by heaven to this or that people, carries with it the belief in a special providence, which the divine being vouchsafes to certain favored men, families, races, and people. this faith seems to develop itself with difficulty from man's inward nature. it requires tradition, usage, and the warrant of a primitive time. beautiful is it, therefore, that the israelitish tradition represents the very first men who confide in this particular providence as heroes of faith, following all the commands of that high being on whom they acknowledge themselves dependent, just as blindly as, undisturbed by doubts, they are unwearied in awaiting the later fulfilments of his promises. as a particular revealed religion rests upon the idea that one man may be more favored by heaven than another, so it also arises pre-eminently from the separation of classes. the first men appeared closely allied, but their employments soon divided them. the hunter was the freest of all: from him was developed the warrior and the ruler. those who tilled the field bound themselves to the soil, erected dwellings and barns to preserve what they had gained, and could estimate themselves pretty highly, because their condition promised durability and security. the herdsman in his position seemed to have acquired the most unbounded condition and unlimited property. the increase of herds proceeded without end, and the space which was to support them widened itself on all sides. these three classes seemed from the very first to have regarded each other with dislike and contempt; and as the herdsman was an abomination to the townsman, so did he in turn separate from the other. the hunters vanish from our sight among the hills, and reappear only as conquerors. the patriarchs belonged to the shepherd class. their manner of life upon the ocean of deserts and pastures gave breadth and freedom to their minds; the vault of heaven, under which they dwelt, with all its nightly stars, elevated their feelings; and they, more than the active, skilful huntsman, or the secure, careful, householding husbandman, had need of the immovable faith that a god walked beside them, visited them, cared for them, guided and saved them. we are compelled to make another reflection in passing to the rest of the history. humane, beautiful, and cheering as the religion of the patriarchs appears, yet traits of savageness and cruelty run through it, out of which man may emerge, or into which he may again be sunk. that hatred should seek to appease itself by the blood, by the death, of the conquered enemy, is natural; that men concluded a peace upon the battle-field among the ranks of the slain may easily be conceived; that they should in like manner think to give validity to a contract by slain animals, follows from the preceding. the notion also that slain creatures could attract, propitiate, and gain over the gods, whom they always looked upon as partisans, either opponents or allies, is likewise not at all surprising. but if we confine our attention to the sacrifices, and consider the way in which they were offered in that primitive time, we find a singular, and, to our notions, altogether repugnant, custom, probably derived from the usages of war; viz., that the sacrificed animals of every kind, and whatever number was devoted, had to be hewn in two halves, and laid out on two sides: so that in the space between them were those who wished to make a covenant with the deity. another dreadful feature wonderfully and portentously pervades that fair world; namely, that whatever had been consecrated or vowed must die. this also was probably a usage of war transferred to peace. the inhabitants of a city which forcibly defends itself are threatened with such a vow: it is taken by storm or otherwise. nothing is left alive; men never: and often women, children, and even cattle, share a similar fate. such sacrifices are rashly and superstitiously and with more or less distinctness promised to the gods; and those whom the votary would willingly spare, even his nearest of kin, his own children, may thus bleed, the expiatory victims of such a delusion. in the mild and truly patriarchal character of abraham, such a savage kind of worship could not arise; but the godhead, [footnote: it should be observed, that in this biblical narrative, when we have used the expressions, "deity," "godhead," or "divinity," goethe generally has "die götter," or "the gods."--trans.] which often, to tempt us, seems to put forth those qualities which man is inclined to assign to it, imposes a monstrous task upon him. he must offer up his son as a pledge of the new covenant, and, if he follows the usage, not only kill and burn him, but cut him in two, and await between the smoking entrails a new promise from the benignant deity. abraham, blindly and without lingering, prepares to execute the command: to heaven the will is sufficient. abraham's trials are now at an end, for they could not be carried farther. but sarai dies, and this gives abraham an opportunity for taking typical possession of the land of canaan. he requires a grave, and this is the first time he looks out for a possession in this earth. he had before this probably sought out a twofold cave by the grove of mamre. this he purchases, with the adjacent field; and the legal form which he observes on the occasion shows how important this possession is to him. indeed, it was more so, perhaps, than he himself supposed: for there he, his sons and his grandsons, were to rest; and by this means the proximate title to the whole land, as well as the everlasting desire of his posterity to gather themselves there, was most properly grounded. from this time forth the manifold incidents of the family life become varied. abraham still keeps strictly apart from the inhabitants; and though ishmael, the son of an egyptian woman, has married a daughter of that land, isaac is obliged to wed a kinswoman of equal birth with himself. abraham despatches his servant to mesopotamia, to the relatives whom he had left behind there. the prudent eleazer arrives unknown, and, in order to take home the right bride, tries the readiness to serve of the girls at the well. he asks to be permitted to drink; and rebecca, unasked, waters his camels also. he gives her presents, he demands her in marriage, and his suit is not rejected. he conducts her to the home of his lord, and she is wedded to isaac. in this case, too, issue has to be long expected. rebecca is not blessed until after some years of probation; and the same discord, which, in abraham's double marriage, arose through two mothers, here proceeds from one. two boys of opposite characters wrestle already in their mother's womb. they come to light, the elder lively and vigorous, the younger gentle and prudent. the former becomes the father's, the latter the mother's, favorite. the strife for precedence, which begins even at birth, is ever going on. esau is quiet and indifferent as to the birthright which fate has given him: jacob never forgets that his brother forced him back. watching every opportunity of gaining the desirable privilege, he buys the birthright of his brother, and defrauds him of their father's blessing. esau is indignant, and vows his brother's death: jacob flees to seek his fortune in the land of his forefathers. now, for the first time, in so noble a family appears a member who has no scruple in attaining by prudence and cunning the advantages which nature and circumstances have denied him. it has often enough been remarked and expressed, that the sacred scriptures by no means intend to set up any of the patriarchs and other divinely favored men as models of virtue. they, too, are persons of the most different characters, with many defects and failings. but there is one leading trait, in which none of these men after god's own heart can be wanting: that is, unshaken faith that god has them and their families in his special keeping. general, natural religion, properly speaking, requires no faith; for the persuasion that a great producing, regulating, and conducting being conceals himself, as it were, behind nature, to make himself comprehensible to us--such a conviction forces itself upon every one. nay, if we for a moment let drop this thread, which conducts us through life, it may be immediately and everywhere resumed. but it is different with a special religion, which announces to us that this great being distinctly and pre-eminently interests himself for one individual, one family, one people, one country. this religion is founded on faith, which must be immovable if it would not be instantly destroyed. every doubt of such a religion is fatal to it. one may return to conviction, but not to faith. hence the endless probation, the delay in the fulfilment of so often repeated promises, by which the capacity for faith in those ancestors is set in the clearest light. it is in this faith also that jacob begins his expedition; and if, by his craft and deceit, he has not gained our affections, he wins them by his lasting and inviolable love for rachel, whom he himself wooes on the instant, as eleazar had courted rebecca for his father. in him the promise of a countless people was first to be fully unfolded: he was to see many sons around him, but through them and their mothers was to endure manifold sorrows of heart. seven years he serves for his beloved, without impatience and without wavering. his father-in-law, crafty like himself, and disposed, like him, to consider legitimate this means to an end, deceives him, and so repays him for what he has done to his brother. jacob finds in his arms a wife whom he does not love. laban, indeed, endeavors to appease him, by giving him his beloved also after a short time, and this but on the condition of seven years of further service. vexation arises out of vexation. the wife he does not love is fruitful: the beloved one bears no children. the latter, like sarai, desires to become a mother through her handmaiden: the former grudges her even this advantage. she also presents her husband with a maid, but the good patriarch is now the most troubled man in the world. he has four women, children by three, and none from her he loves. finally she also is favored; and joseph comes into the world, the late fruit of the most passionate attachment. jacob's fourteen years of service are over; but laban is unwilling to part with him, his chief and most trusty servant. they enter into a new compact, and portion the flocks between them. laban retains the white ones, as most numerous: jacob has to put up with the spotted ones, as the mere refuse. but he is able here, too, to secure his own advantage: and as by a paltry mess (/of pottage/) he had procured the birthright, and, by a disguise, his father's blessing, he manages by art and sympathy to appropriate to himself the best and largest part of the herds; and on this side also he becomes the truly worthy progenitor of the people of israel, and a model for his descendants. laban and his household remark the result, if not the stratagem. vexation ensues: jacob flees with his family and goods, and partly by fortune, partly by cunning, escapes the pursuit of laban. rachel is now about to present him another son, but dies in the travail; benjamin, the child of sorrow, survives her; but the aged father is to experience a still greater sorrow from the apparent loss of his son joseph. perhaps some one may ask why i have so circumstantially narrated histories so universally known, and so often repeated and explained. let the inquirer be satisfied with the answer, that i could in no other way exhibit how, with my life full of diversion, and with my desultory education, i concentrated my mind and feelings in quiet action on one point; that i was able in no other way to depict the peace that prevailed about me, even when all without was so wild and strange. when an ever busy imagination, of which that tale may bear witness, led me hither and thither; when the medley of fable and history, mythology and religion, threatened to bewilder me,--i liked to take refuge in those oriental regions, to plunge into the first books of moses, and to find myself there, amid the scattered shepherd-tribes, at the same time in the greatest solitude and the greatest society. these family scenes, before they were to lose themselves in a history of the jewish nation, show us now, in conclusion, a form by which the hopes and fancies of the young in particular are agreeably excited,--joseph, the child of the most passionate wedded love. he seems to us tranquil and clear, and predicts to himself the advantages which are to elevate him above his family. cast into misfortune by his brothers, he remains steadfast and upright in slavery, resists the most dangerous temptations, rescues himself by prophecy, and is elevated according to his deserts to high honors. he shows himself first serviceable and useful to a great kingdom, then to his own kindred. he is like his ancestor abraham in repose and greatness, his grandfather isaac in silence and devotedness. the talent for traffic, inherited from his father, he exercises on a large scale. it is no longer flocks which are gained for himself from a father-in-law, but nations, with all their possessions, which he knows how to purchase for a king. extremely graceful is this natural story, only it appears too short; and one feels called upon to paint it in detail. such a filling-up of biblical characters and events given only in outline, was no longer strange to the germans. the personages of both the old and new testaments had received through klopstock a tender and affectionate nature, highly pleasing to the boy, as well as to many of his contemporaries. of bodmer's efforts in this line, little or nothing came to him; but "daniel in the lion's den," by moser, made a great impression on the young heart. in that work, a right-minded man of business, and courtier, arrives at high honors through manifold tribulations; and the piety for which they threatened to destroy him became, early and late, his sword and buckler. it had long seemed to me desirable to work out the history of joseph; but i could not get on with the form, particularly as i was conversant with no kind of versification which would have been adapted to such a work. but now i found a treatment of it in prose very suitable, and i applied all my strength to its execution. i now endeavored to discriminate and paint the characters, and, by the interpolation of incidents and episodes, to make the old simple history a new and independent work. i did not consider, what, indeed, youth cannot consider, that subject-matter was necessary to such a design, and that this could only arise by the perceptions of experience. suffice it to say, that i represented to myself all the incidents down to the minutest details, and narrated them accurately to myself in their succession. what greatly lightened this labor was a circumstance which threatened to render this work, and my authorship in general, exceedingly voluminous. a well-gifted young man, who, however, had become imbecile from over- exertion and conceit, resided as a ward in my father's house, lived quietly with the family, and, if allowed to go on in his usual way, was contented and agreeable. he had, with great care, written out notes of his academical course, and acquired a rapid, legible hand. he liked to employ himself in writing better than in any thing else, and was pleased when something was given him to copy; but still more when he was dictated to, because he then felt carried back to his happy academical years. to my father, who was not expeditious in writing, and whose german letters were small and tremulous, nothing could be more desirable; and he was consequently accustomed, in the conduct of his own and other business, to dictate for some hours a day to this young man. i found it no less convenient, during the intervals, to see all that passed through my head fixed upon paper by the hand of another; and my natural gift of feeling and imitation grew with the facility of catching up and preserving. as yet, i had not undertaken any work so large as that biblical prose- epic. the times were tolerably quiet, and nothing recalled my imagination from palestine and egypt. thus my manuscripts swelled more and more every day, as the poem, which i recited to myself, as it were, in the air, stretched along the paper; and only a few pages from time to time needed to be re-written. when the work was done,--for, to my own astonishment, it really came to an end,--i reflected, that from former years many poems were extant, which did not even now appear to me utterly despicable, and which, if written together in the same size with "joseph," would make a very neat quarto, to which the title "miscellaneous poems" might be given. i was pleased with this, as it gave me an opportunity of quietly imitating well-known and celebrated authors. i had composed a good number of so- called anacreontic poems, which, on account of the convenience of the metre, and the lightness of the subject, flowed forth readily enough. but these i could not well take, as they were not in rhyme; and my desire before all things was to show my father something that would please him. so much the more, therefore, did the spiritual odes seem suitable, which i had very zealously attempted in imitation of the "last judgment" of elias schlegel. one of these, written to celebrate the descent of christ into hell, received much applause from my parents and friends, and had the good fortune to please myself for some years afterwards. the so-called texts of the sunday church-music, which were always to be had printed, i studied with diligence. they were, indeed, very weak; and i could well believe that my verses, of which i had composed many in the prescribed manner, were equally worthy of being set to music, and performed for the edification of the congregation. these, and many like them, i had for more than a year before copied with my own hand; because through this private exercise i was released from the copies of the writing-master. now all were corrected and put in order, and no great persuasion was needed to have them neatly copied by the young man who was so fond of writing. i hastened with them to the book- binder: and when, very soon after, i handed the nice-looking volume to my father, he encouraged me with peculiar satisfaction to furnish a similar quarto every year; which he did with the greater conviction, as i had produced the whole in my spare moments alone. another circumstance increased my tendency to these theological, or, rather, biblical, studies. the senior of the ministry, john philip fresenius, a mild man, of handsome, agreeable appearance, who was respected by his congregation and the whole city as an exemplary pastor and good preacher, but who, because he stood forth against the herrnhüters, was not in the best odor with the peculiarly pious; while, on the other hand, he had made himself famous, and almost sacred, with the multitude, by the conversion of a free-thinking general who had been mortally wounded,--this man died; and his successor, plitt, a tall, handsome, dignified man, who brought from his /chair/ (he had been a professor in marburg) the gift of teaching rather than of edifying, immediately announced a sort of religious course, to which his sermons were to be devoted in a certain methodical connection. i had already, as i was compelled to go to church, remarked the distribution of the subject, and could now and then show myself off by a pretty complete recitation of a sermon. but now, as much was said in the congregation, both for and against the new senior, and many placed no great confidence in his announced didactic sermons, i undertook to write them out more carefully; and i succeeded the better from having made smaller attempts in a seat very convenient for hearing, but concealed from sight. i was extremely attentive and on the alert: the moment he said amen, i hastened from church, and spent a couple of hours in rapidly dictating what i had fixed in my memory and on paper, so that i could hand in the written sermon before dinner. my father was very proud of this success; and the good friend of the family, who had just come in to dinner, also shared in the joy. indeed, this friend was very well disposed towards me, because i had made his "messiah" so much my own, that in my repeated visits, paid to him with a view of getting impressions of seals for my collection of coats-of-arms, i could recite long passages from it till the tears stood in his eyes. the next sunday i prosecuted the work with equal zeal; and, as the mechanical part of it mainly interested me, i did not reflect upon what i wrote and preserved. during the first quarter these efforts may have continued pretty much the same; but as i fancied at last, in my self- conceit, that i found no particular enlightenment as to the bible, nor clearer insight into dogmas, the small vanity which was thus gratified seemed to me too dearly purchased for me to pursue the matter with the same zeal. the sermons, once so many-leaved, grew more and more lean: and before long i should have relinquished this labor altogether, if my father, who was a fast friend to completeness, had not, by words and promises, induced me to persevere till the last sunday in trinity; though, at the conclusion, scarcely more than the text, the statement, and the divisions were scribbled on little pieces of paper. my father was particularly pertinacious on this point of completeness. what was once undertaken had to be finished, even if the inconvenience, tedium, vexation, nay, uselessness, of the thing begun were plainly manifested in the mean time. it seemed as if he regarded completeness as the only end, and perseverance as the only virtue. if in our family circle, in the long winter evenings, we had begun to read a book aloud, we were compelled to finish, though we were all in despair about it, and my father himself was the first to yawn. i still remember such a winter, when we had thus to work our way through bower's "history of the popes." it was a terrible time, as little or nothing that occurs in ecclesiastical affairs can interest children and young people. still, with all my inattention and repugnance, so much of that reading remained in my mind that i was able, in after times, to take up many threads of the narrative. amid all these heterogeneous occupations and labors, which followed each other so rapidly that one could hardly reflect whether they were permissible and useful, my father did not lose sight of the main object. he endeavored to direct my memory and my talent for apprehending and combining to objects of jurisprudence, and therefore gave me a small book by hopp, in the shape of a catechism, and worked up according to the form and substance of the institutions. i soon learned questions and answers by heart, and could represent the catechist as well as the catechumen; and, as in religious instruction at that time, one of the chief exercises was to find passages in the bible as readily as possible; so here a similar acquaintance with the "corpus juris" was found necessary, in which, also, i soon became completely versed. my father wished me to go on, and the little "struve" was taken in hand; but here affairs did not proceed so rapidly. the form of the work was not so favorable for beginners, that they could help themselves on; nor was my father's method of illustration so liberal as greatly to interest me. not only by the warlike state in which we lived for some years, but also by civil life itself, and the perusal of history and romances, was it made clear to me that there were many cases in which the laws are silent, and give no help to the individual, who must then see how to get out of the difficulty by himself. we had now reached the period when, according to the old routine, we were to learn, besides other things, fencing and riding, that we might guard our skins upon occasion, and present no pedantic appearance on horseback. as to the first, the practice was very agreeable to us; for we had already, long ago, contrived to make broad-swords out of hazel-sticks, with basket-hilts neatly woven of willow, to protect the hands. now we might get real steel blades, and the clash we made with them was very merry. there were two fencing-masters in the city: an old, earnest german, who went to work in a severe and solid style; and a frenchman, who sought to gain his advantage by advancing and retreating, and by light, fugitive thrusts, which he always accompanied by cries. opinions varied as to whose manner was the best. the little company with which i was to take lessons sided with the frenchman; and we speedily accustomed ourselves to move backwards and forwards, make passes and recover, always breaking out into the usual exclamations. but several of our acquaintance had gone to the german teacher, and practised precisely the opposite. these distinct modes of treating so important an exercise, the conviction of each that his master was the best, really caused a dissension among the young people, who were of about the same age: and the fencing-schools occasioned serious battles, for there was almost as much fighting with words as with swords; and, to decide the matter in the end, a trial of skill between the two teachers was arranged, the consequences of which i need not circumstantially describe. the german stood in his position like a wall, watched his opportunity, and contrived to disarm his opponent over and over again with his cut and thrust. the latter maintained that this mattered not, and proceeded to exhaust the other's wind by his agility. he fetched the german several lunges too, which, however, if they had been in earnest, would have sent him into the next world. on the whole, nothing was decided or improved, except that some went over to our countryman, of whom i was one. but i had already acquired too much from the first master; and hence a considerable time elapsed before the new one could break me of it, who was altogether less satisfied with us renegades than with his original pupils. with riding i fared still worse. it happened that they sent me to the course in the autumn, so that i commenced in the cool and damp season. the pedantic treatment of this noble art was highly repugnant to me. from first to last, the whole talk was about sitting the horse: and yet no one could say in what a proper sitting consisted, though all depended on that; for they went to and fro on the horse without stirrups. moreover, the instruction seemed contrived only for cheating and degrading the scholars. if one forgot to hook or loosen the curb-chain, or let his switch fall down, or even his hat,--every delay, every misfortune, had to be atoned for by money; and one was laughed at into the bargain. this put me in the worst of humors, particularly as i found the place of exercise itself quite intolerable. the wide, nasty space, either wet or dusty, the cold, the mouldy smell, all together was in the highest degree repugnant to me; and since the stable-master always gave the others the best and me the worst horses to ride,--perhaps because they bribed him by breakfasts and other gifts, or even by their own cleverness; since he kept me waiting, and, as it seemed, slighted me,--i spent the most disagreeable hours in an employment that ought to have been the most pleasant in the world. nay, the impression of that time and of these circumstances has remained with me so vividly, that although i afterwards became a passionate and daring rider, and for days and weeks together scarcely got off my horse, i carefully shunned covered riding-courses, and at least passed only a few moments in them. the case often happens, that, when the elements of an exclusive art are taught us, this is done in a painful and revolting manner. the conviction that this is both wearisome and injurious has given rise, in later times, to the educational maxim, that the young must be taught every thing in an easy, cheerful, and agreeable way: from which, however, other evils and disadvantages have proceeded. with the approach of spring, times became again more quiet with us; and if in earlier days i had endeavored to obtain a sight of the city, its ecclesiastical, civil, public, and private structures, and especially found great delight in the still prevailing antiquities, i afterwards endeavored, by means of "lersner's chronicle," and other frankfortian books and pamphlets belonging to my father, to revive the persons of past times. this seemed to me to be well attained by great attention to the peculiarities of times and manners and of distinguished individuals. among the ancient remains, that which, from my childhood, had been remarkable to me, was the skull of a state criminal, fastened up on the tower of the bridge, who, out of three or four, as the naked iron spikes showed, had, since , been preserved in spite of the encroachments of time and weather. whenever one returned from sachsenhausen to frankfort, one had this tower before one; and the skull was directly in view. as a boy, i liked to hear related the history of these rebels,--fettmilch and his confederates,--how they had become dissatisfied with the government of the city, had risen up against it, plotted a mutiny, plundered the jews' quarter, and excited a fearful riot, but were at last captured, and condemned to death by a deputy of the emperor. afterwards i felt anxious to know the most minute circumstance, and to hear what sort of people they were. when from an old contemporary book, ornamented with wood-cuts, i learned, that, while these men had indeed been condemned to death, many councillors had at the same time been deposed, because various kinds of disorder and very much that was unwarrantable was then going on; when i heard the nearer particulars how all took place,--i pitied the unfortunate persons who might be regarded as sacrifices made for a future better constitution. for from that time was dated the regulation which allows the noble old house of limpurg, the frauenstein- house, sprung from a club, besides lawyers, trades-people, and artisans, to take part in a government, which, completed by a system of ballot, complicated in the venetian fashion, and restricted by the civil colleges, was called to do right, without acquiring any special privilege to do wrong. among the things which excited the misgivings of the boy, and even of the youth, was especially the state of the jewish quarter of the city (/judenstadt/), properly called the jew street (/judengasse/); as it consisted of little more than a single street, which in early times may have been hemmed in between the walls and trenches of the town, as in a prison (/zwinger/). the closeness, the filth, the crowd, the accent of an unpleasant language, altogether made a most disagreeable impression, even if one only looked in as one passed the gate. it was long before i ventured in alone; and i did not return there readily, when i had once escaped the importunities of so many men unwearied in demanding and offering to traffic. at the same time, the old legends of the cruelty of the jews towards christian children, which we had seen hideously illustrated in "gottfried's chronicle," hovered gloomily before my young mind. and although they were thought better of in modern times, the large caricature, still to be seen, to their disgrace, on an arched wall under the bridge-tower, bore extraordinary witness against them; for it had been made, not through private ill- will, but by public order. however, they still remained the chosen people of god, and passed, no matter how it came about, as a memorial of the most ancient times. besides, they also were men, active and obliging; and, even to the tenacity with which they clung to their peculiar customs, one could not refuse one's respect. the girls, moreover, were pretty, and were far from displeased when a christian lad, meeting them on the sabbath in the fischerfeld, showed himself kindly and attentive. i was consequently extremely curious to become acquainted with their ceremonies. i did not desist until i had frequently visited their school, had assisted at a circumcision and a wedding, and formed a notion of the feast of the tabernacles. everywhere i was well received, pleasantly entertained, and invited to come again; for it was through persons of influence that i had been either introduced or recommended. thus, as a young resident in a large city, i was thrown about from one object to another; and horrible scenes were not wanting in the midst of the municipal quiet and security. sometimes a more or less remote fire aroused us from our domestic peace: sometimes the discovery of a great crime, with its investigation and punishment, set the whole city in an uproar for many weeks. we were forced to be witnesses of different executions; and it is worth remembering, that i was also once present at the burning of a book. the publication was a french comic romance, which indeed spared the state, but not religion and manners. there was really something dreadful in seeing punishment inflicted on a lifeless thing. the packages burst asunder in the fire, and were raked apart by an oven- fork, to be brought in closer contact with the flames. it was not long before the kindled sheets were wafted about in the air, and the crowd caught at them with eagerness. nor could we rest until we had hunted up a copy, while not a few managed likewise to procure the forbidden pleasure. nay, if it had been done to give the author publicity, he could not himself have made a more effectual provision. but there were also more peaceable inducements which took me about in every part of the city. my father had early accustomed me to manage for him his little affairs of business. he charged me particularly to stir up the laborers whom he set to work, as they commonly kept him waiting longer than was proper; because he wished every thing done accurately, and was used in the end to lower the price for a prompt payment. in this way, i gained access to all the workshops: and as it was natural to me to enter into the condition of others, to feel every species of human existence, and sympathize in it with pleasure, these commissions were to me the occasion of many most delightful hours; and i learned to know every one's method of proceeding, and what joy and sorrow, what advantages and hardships, were incident to the indispensable conditions of this or that mode of life. i was thus brought nearer to that active class which connects the lower and upper classes. for if on the one side stand those who are employed in the simple and rude products, and on the other those who desire to enjoy something that has been already worked up, the manufacturer, with his skill and hand, is the mediator through whom the other two receive something from each other: each is enabled to gratify his wishes in his own way. the household economy of many crafts, which took its form and color from the occupation, was likewise an object of my quiet attention; and thus was developed and strengthened in me the feeling of the equality, if not of all men, yet of all human conditions,--the mere fact of existence seeming to me the main point, and all the rest indifferent and accidental. as my father did not readily permit himself an expense which would be consumed at once in some momentary enjoyment,--as i can scarcely call to mind that we ever took a walk together, and spent any thing in a place of amusement,--he was, on the other hand, not niggardly in procuring such things as had a good external appearance in addition to inward value. no one could desire peace more than he, although he had not felt the smallest inconvenience during the last days of the war. with this feeling, he had promised my mother a gold snuff-box, set with diamonds, which she was to receive as soon as peace should be publicly declared. in the expectation of the happy event, they had labored now for some years on this present. the box, which was tolerably large, had been executed in hanau; for my father was on good terms with the gold-workers there, as well as with the heads of the silk establishments. many designs were made for it: the cover was adorned by a basket of flowers, over which hovered a dove with the olive-branch. a vacant space was left for the jewels, which were to be set partly in the dove and partly on the spot where the box is usually opened. the jeweller, to whom the execution and the requisite stones were intrusted, was named lautensak, and was a brisk, skilful man, who, like many artists, seldom did what was necessary, but usually works of caprice, which gave him pleasure. the jewels were very soon set, in the shape in which they were to be put upon the box, on some black wax, and looked very well; but they would not come off to be transferred to the gold. in the outset, my father let the matter rest: but as the hope of peace became livelier, and finally when the stipulations,--particularly the elevation of the archduke joseph to the roman throne,--seemed more precisely known, he grew more and more impatient; and i had to go several times a week, nay, at last, almost daily, to visit the tardy artist. owing to my unremitted teasing and exhortation, the work went on, though slowly enough; for, as it was of that kind which can be taken in hand or laid aside at will, there was always something by which it was thrust out of the way, and put aside. the chief cause of this conduct, however, was a task which the artist had undertaken on his own account. everybody knew that the emperor francis cherished a strong liking for jewels, and especially for colored stones. lautensak had expended a considerable sum, and, as it afterwards turned out, larger than his means, on such gems, out of which he had begun to shape a nosegay, in which every stone was to be tastefully disposed, according to its shape and color, and the whole form a work of art worthy to stand in the treasure-vaults of an emperor. he had, in his desultory way, labored at it for many years, and now hastened--because after the hoped-for peace the arrival of the emperor, for the coronation of his son, was expected in frankfort--to complete it and finally to put it together. my desire to become acquainted with such things he used very dexterously to divert my attention by sending me forth as his dun, and to turn me away from my intention. he strove to impart a knowledge of these stones to me, and made me attentive to their properties and value; so that in the end i knew his whole bouquet by heart, and quite as well as he could have demonstrated its virtues to a customer. it is even now present to my mind; and i have since seen more costly, but not more graceful, specimens of show and magnificence in this sort. he possessed, moreover, a pretty collection of engravings, and other works of art, with which he liked to amuse himself; and i passed many hours with him, not without profit. finally, when the congress of hubertsburg was finally fixed, he did for my sake more than was due; and the dove and flowers actually reached my mother's hands on the festival in celebration of the peace. i then received also many similar commissions to urge on painters with respect to pictures which had been ordered. my father had confirmed himself in the notion--and few men were free from it--that a picture painted on wood was greatly to be preferred to one that was merely put on canvas. it was therefore his great care to possess good oak boards, of every shape; because he well knew that just on this important point the more careless artists trusted to the joiners. the oldest planks were hunted up, the joiners were obliged to go accurately to work with gluing, painting, and arranging; and they were then kept for years in an upper room, where they could be sufficiently dried. a precious board of this kind was intrusted to the painter junker, who was to represent on it an ornamental flower-pot, with the most important flowers drawn after nature in his artistic and elegant manner. it was just about the spring- time; and i did not fail to take him several times a week the most beautiful flowers that fell in my way, which he immediately put in, and by degrees composed the whole out of these elements with the utmost care and fidelity. on one occasion i had caught a mouse, which i took to him, and which he desired to copy as a very pretty animal; nay, really represented it, as accurately as possible, gnawing an ear of corn at the foot of the flower-pot. many such inoffensive natural objects, such as butterflies and chafers, were brought in and represented; so that finally, as far as imitation and execution were concerned, a highly valuable picture was put together. hence i was not a little astonished when the good man formally declared one day, when the work was just about to be delivered, that the picture no longer pleased him,--since, while it had turned out quite well in its details, it was not well composed as a whole, because it had been produced in this gradual manner; and he had committed a blunder at the outset, in not at least devising a general plan for light and shade, as well as for color, according to which the single flowers might have been arranged. he scrutinized, in my presence, the minutest parts of the picture, which had arisen before my eyes during six months, and had pleased me in many respects, and, much to my regret, managed to thoroughly convince me. even the copy of the mouse he regarded as a mistake; for many persons, he said, have a sort of horror of such animals: and they should not be introduced where the object is to excite pleasure. as it commonly happens with those who are cured of a prejudice, and think themselves much more knowing than they were before, i now had a real contempt for this work of art, and agreed perfectly with the artist when he caused to be prepared another tablet of the same size, on which, according to his taste, he painted a better-formed vessel and a more artistically arranged nosegay, and also managed to select and distribute the little living accessories in an ornamental and agreeable way. this tablet also he painted with the greatest care, though altogether after the former copied one, or from memory, which, through a very long and assiduous practice, came to his aid. both paintings were now ready; and we were thoroughly delighted with the last, which was certainly the more artistic and striking of the two. my father was surprised with two pictures instead of one, and to him the choice was left. he approved of our opinion, and of the reasons for it, and especially of our good will and activity; but, after considering both pictures some days, decided in favor of the first, without saying much about the motives of his choice. the artist, in an ill humor, took back his second well-meant picture, and could not refrain from the remark that the good oaken tablet on which the first was painted had certainly had its effect on my father's decision. now that i am again speaking of painting, i am reminded of a large establishment, where i passed much time, because both it and its managers especially attracted me. it was the great oil-cloth factory which the painter nothnagel had erected,--an expert artist, but one who by his mode of thought inclined more to manufacture than to art. in a very large space of courts and gardens, all sorts of oil-cloths were made, from the coarsest, that are spread with a trowel, and used for baggage-wagons and similar purposes, and the carpets impressed with figures, to the finer and the finest, on which sometimes chinese and grotesque, sometimes natural flowers, sometimes figures, sometimes landscapes, were represented by the pencils of accomplished workmen. this multiplicity, to which there was no end, amused me vastly. the occupation of so many men, from the commonest labor to that in which a certain artistic worth could not be denied, was to me extremely attractive. i made the acquaintance of this multitude of younger and older men, working in several rooms one behind the other, and occasionally lent a hand myself. the sale of these commodities was extraordinarily brisk. whoever at that time was building or furnishing a house, wished to provide for his lifetime; and this oil-cloth carpeting was certainly quite indestructible. nothnagel had enough to do in managing the whole, and sat in his office surrounded by factors and clerks. the remainder of his time he employed in his collection of works of art, consisting chiefly of engravings, in which, as well as in the pictures he possessed, he traded occasionally. at the same time he had acquired a taste for etching: he etched a variety of plates, and prosecuted this branch of art even into his latest years. as his dwelling lay near the eschenheim gate, my way when i had visited him led me out of the city to some pieces of ground which my father owned beyond the gates. one was a large orchard, the soil of which was used as a meadow, and in which my father carefully attended the transplanting of trees, and whatever else pertained to their preservation; though the ground itself was leased. still more occupation was furnished by a very well-preserved vineyard beyond the friedberg gate, where, between the rows of vines, rows of asparagus were planted and tended with great care. scarcely a day passed in the fine season in which my father did not go there; and as on these occasions we might generally accompany him, we were provided with joy and delight from the earliest productions of spring to the last of autumn. we now also acquired a knowledge of gardening matters, which, as they were repeated every year, became in the end perfectly known and familiar to us. but, after the manifold fruits of summer and autumn, the vintage at last was the most lively and the most desirable; nay, there is no question, that as wine gives a freer character to the very places and districts where it is grown and drunk, so also do these vintage-days, while they close summer and at the same time open the winter, diffuse an incredible cheerfulness. joy and jubilation pervade a whole district. in the daytime, huzzas and shoutings are heard from every end and corner; and at night rockets and fire-balls, now here, now there, announce that the people, everywhere awake and lively, would willingly make this festival last as long as possible. the subsequent labor at the wine-press, and during the fermentation in the cellar, gave us also a cheerful employment at home; and thus we ordinarily reached winter without being properly aware of it. these rural possessions delighted us so much the more in the spring of , as the th of february in that year was celebrated as a festival day, on account of the conclusion of the hubertsberg peace, under the happy results of which the greater part of my life was to flow away. but, before i go farther, i think i am bound to mention some men who exerted an important influence on my youth. von olenschlager, a member of the frauenstein family, a schöff, and son- in-law of the above-mentioned dr. orth, a handsome, comfortable, sanguine man. in his official holiday costume he could well have personated the most important french prelate. after his academical course, he had employed himself in political and state affairs, and directed even his travels to that end. he greatly esteemed me, and often conversed with me on matters which chiefly interested him. i was with him when he wrote his "illustration of the golden bull," when he managed to explain to me very clearly the worth and dignity of that document. my imagination was led back by it to those wild and unquiet times; so that i could not forbear representing what he related historically, as if it were present, by pictures of characters and circumstances, and often by mimicry. in this he took great delight, and by his applause excited me to repetition. i had from childhood the singular habit of always learning by heart the beginnings of books, and the divisions of a work, first of the five books of moses, and then of the "aeneid" and ovid's "metamorphoses." i now did the same thing with the "golden bull," and often provoked my patron to a smile, when i quite seriously and unexpectedly exclaimed, "/omne regnum in se divisum desolabitur; nam principes ejus facti sunt socii furum./" [footnote: every kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation, for the princes thereof have become the associates of robbers.--trans.] the knowing man shook his head, smiling, and said doubtingly, "what times those must have been, when, at a grand diet, the emperor had such words published in the face of his princes!" there was a great charm in von olenschlager's society. he received little company, but was strongly inclined to intellectual amusement, and induced us young people from time to time to perform a play; for such exercises were deemed particularly useful to the young. we acted "canute" by schlegel, in which the part of the king was assigned to me, elfrida to my sister, and ulfo to the younger son of the family. we then ventured on the "britannicus;" [footnote: racine's tragedy.--trans.] for, besides our dramatic talents, we were to bring the language into practice. i took nero, my sister agrippina, and the younger son britannicus. we were more praised than we deserved, and fancied we had done it even beyond the amount of praise. thus i stood on the best terms with this family, and have been indebted to them for many pleasures and a speedier development. von reineck, of an old patrician family, able, honest, but stubborn, a meagre, swarthy man, whom i never saw smile. the misfortune befell him that his only daughter was carried off by a friend of the family. he pursued his son-in-law with the most vehement prosecution: and because the tribunals, with their formality, were neither speedy nor sharp enough to gratify his desire of vengeance, he fell out with them; and there arose quarrel after quarrel, suit after suit. he retired completely into his own house and its adjacent garden, lived in a spacious but melancholy lower room, into which for many years no brush of a whitewasher, and perhaps scarcely the broom of a maid-servant, had found its way. he was very fond of me, and had especially commended to me his younger son. he many times asked his oldest friends, who knew how to humor him, his men of business and agents, to dine with him, and on these occasions never omitted inviting me. there was good eating and better drinking at his house. but a large stove, that let out the smoke from many cracks, caused his guests the greatest pain. one of the most intimate of these once ventured to remark upon this, by asking the host whether he could put up with such an inconvenience all the winter. he answered, like a second timon or heautontimoroumenos, "would to god this was the greatest evil of those which torment me!" it was long before he allowed himself to be persuaded to see his daughter and grandson. the son-in-law never again dared to come into his presence. on this excellent but unfortunate man my visits had a very favorable effect; for while he liked to converse with me, and particularly instructed me on world and state affairs, he seemed to feel himself relieved and cheered. the few old friends who still gathered round him, often, therefore, made use of me when they wished to soften his peevish humor, and persuade him to any diversion. he now really rode out with us many times, and again contemplated the country, on which he had not cast an eye for so many years. he called to mind the old landowners, and told stories of their characters and actions, in which he showed himself always severe, but often cheerful and witty. we now tried also to bring him again among other men, which, however, nearly turned out badly. about the same age, if indeed not older, was one herr von malapert, a rich man, who possessed a very handsome house by the horse-market, and derived a good income from salt-pits. he also lived quite secluded; but in summer he was a great deal in his garden, near the bockenheim gate, where he watched and tended a very fine plot of pinks. von reineck was likewise an amateur of pinks: the season of flowering had come, and suggestions were made as to whether these two could not visit each other. we introduced the matter, and persisted in it; till at last von reineck resolved to go out with us one sunday afternoon. the greeting of the two old gentlemen was very laconic, indeed almost pantomimic; and they walked up and down by the long pink frames with true diplomatic strides. the display was really extraordinarily beautiful: and the particular forms and colors of the different flowers, the advantages of one over the other, and their rarity, gave at last occasion to a sort of conversation which appeared to get quite friendly; at which we others rejoiced the more because we saw the most precious old rhine wine in cut decanters, fine fruits, and other good things spread upon a table in a neighboring bower. but these, alas! we were not to enjoy. for von reineck unfortunately saw a very fine pink with its head somewhat hanging down: he therefore took the stalk near the calyx very cautiously between his fore and middle fingers, and lifted the flower so that he could well inspect it. but even this gentle handling vexed the owner. von malapert courteously, indeed, but stiffly enough, and somewhat self-complacently, reminded him of the /oculis, non manibus/.[footnote: eyes, not hands.--trans.] von reineck had already let go the flower, but at once took fire at the words, and said in his usual dry, serious manner, that it was quite consistent with an amateur to touch and examine them in such a manner. whereupon he repeated the act, and took the flower again between his fingers. the friends of both parties--for von malapert also had one present--were now in the greatest perplexity. they set one hare to catch another (that was our proverbial expression, when a conversation was to be interrupted, and turned to another subject), but it would not do; the old gentleman had become quite silent: and we feared every moment that von reineck would repeat the act, when it would be all over with us. the two friends kept their principals apart by occupying them, now here, now there, and at last we found it most expedient to make preparation for departure. thus, alas! we were forced to turn our backs on the inviting side-board, yet unenjoyed. hofrath huesgen, not born in frankfort, of the reformed [footnote: that is to say, he was a calvinist, as distinguished from a lutheran.-- trans.] religion, and therefore incapable of public office, including the profession of advocate, which, however, because much confidence was placed in him as an excellent jurist, he managed to exercise quietly, both in the frankfort and the imperial courts, under assumed signatures, was already sixty years old when i took writing-lessons with his son, and so came into his house. his figure was tall without being thin, and broad without corpulency. you could not look, for the first time, on his face, which was not only disfigured by small-pox, but deprived of an eye, without apprehension. he always wore on his bald head a perfectly white bell-shaped cap, tied at the top with a ribbon. his morning-gowns, of calamanco or damask, were always very clean. he dwelt in a very cheerful suite of rooms on the ground-floor by the /allée/, and the neatness of every thing about him corresponded with this cheerfulness. the perfect arrangement of his papers, books, and maps produced a favorable impression. his son, heinrich sebastian, afterwards known by various writings on art, gave little promise in his youth. good-natured but dull, not rude but blunt, and without any special liking for instruction, he rather sought to avoid the presence of his father, as he could get all he wanted from his mother. i, on the other hand, grew more and more intimate with the old man, the more i knew of him. as he attended only to important cases, he had time enough to occupy and amuse himself in another manner. i had not long frequented his house, and heard his doctrines, before i could well perceive that he stood in opposition to god and the world. one of his favorite books was "agrippa de vanitate scientiarum," which he especially commended to me, and so set my young brains in a considerable whirl for a long time. in the happiness of youth i was inclined to a sort of optimism, and had again pretty well reconciled myself with god or the gods; for the experience of a series of years had taught me that there was much to counterbalance evil, that one can well recover from misfortune, and that one may be saved from dangers and need not always break one's neck. i looked with tolerance, too, on what men did and pursued, and found many things worthy of praise which my old gentleman could not by any means abide. indeed, once when he had sketched the world to me, rather from the distorted side, i observed from his appearance that he meant to close the game with an important trump-card. he shut tight his blind left eye, as he was wont to do in such cases, looked sharp out of the other, and said in a nasal voice, "even in god i discover defects." my timonic mentor was also a mathematician; but his practical turn drove him to mechanics, though he did not work himself. a clock, wonderful indeed in those days, which indicated, not only the days and hours, but the motions of the sun and moon, he caused to be made according to his own plan. on sunday, about ten o'clock in the morning, he always wound it up himself; which he could do the more regularly, as he never went to church. i never saw company nor guests at his house; and only twice in ten years do i remember to have seen him dressed, and walking out of doors. my various conversations with these men were not insignificant, and each of them influenced me in his own way. from every one i had as much attention as his own children, if not more; and each strove to increase his delight in me as in a beloved son, while he aspired to mould me into his moral counterpart. olenschlager would have made me a courtier, von reineck a diplomatic man of business: both, the latter particularly, sought to disgust me with poetry and authorship. huisgen wished me to be a timon after his fashion, but, at the same time, an able jurisconsult, --a necessary profession, as he thought, with which one could, in a regular manner, defend one's self and friends against the rabble of mankind, succor the oppressed, and, above all, pay off a rogue; though the last is neither especially practicable nor advisable. but if i liked to be at the side of these men to profit by their counsels and directions, younger persons, only a little older than myself, roused me to immediate emulation. i name here, before all others, the brothers schlosser and griesbach. but as, subsequently, there arose between us greater intimacy, which lasted for many years uninterruptedly, i will only say, for the present, that they were then praised as being distinguished in languages, and other studies which opened the academical course, and held up as models, and that everybody cherished the certain expectation that they would once do something uncommon in church and state. with respect to myself, i also had it in my mind to produce something extraordinary; but in what it was to consist was not clear. but as we are apt to look rather to the reward which may be received than to the merit which is to be acquired; so, i do not deny, that if i thought of a desirable piece of good fortune, it appeared to me most fascinating in the shape of that laurel garland which is woven to adorn the poet. fifth book. every bird has its decoy, and every man is led and misled in a way peculiar to himself. nature, education, circumstances, and habit kept me apart from all that was rude; and though i often came into contact with the lower classes of people, particularly mechanics, no close connection grew out of it. i had indeed boldness enough to undertake something uncommon and perhaps dangerous, and many times felt disposed to do so; but i was without the handle by which to grasp and hold it. meanwhile i was quite unexpectedly involved in an affair which brought me near to a great hazard, and at least for a long time into perplexity and distress. the good terms on which i before stood with the boy whom i have already named pylades was maintained up to the time of my youth. we indeed saw each other less often, because our parents did not stand on the best footing with each other; but, when we did meet, the old raptures of friendship broke out immediately. once we met in the alleys which offer a very agreeable walk between the outer and inner gate of saint gallus. we had scarcely returned greetings when he said to me, "i hold to the same opinion as ever about your verses. those which you recently communicated to me, i read aloud to some pleasant companions; and not one of them will believe that you have made them."--"let it pass," i answered: "we will make and enjoy them, and the others may think and say of them what they please." "there comes the unbeliever now," added my friend. "we will not speak of it," i replied: "what is the use of it? one cannot convert them."--"by no means," said my friend: "i cannot let the affair pass off in this way." after a short, insignificant conversation, my young comrade, who was but too well disposed towards me, could not suffer the matter to drop, without saying to the other, with some resentment, "here is my friend who made those pretty verses, for which you will not give him credit!"-- "he will certainly not take it amiss," answered the other; "for we do him an honor when we suppose that more learning is required to make such verses than one of his years can possess." i replied with something indifferent; but my friend continued, "it will not cost much labor to convince you. give him any theme, and he will make you a poem on the spot." i assented; we were agreed; and the other asked me whether i would venture to compose a pretty love-letter in rhyme, which a modest young woman might be supposed to write to a young man, to declare her inclination. "nothing is easier than that," i answered, "if i only had writing materials." he pulled out his pocket almanac, in which there were a great many blank leaves; and i sat down upon a bench to write. they walked about in the mean while, but always kept me in sight. i immediately brought the required situation before my mind, and thought how agreeable it must be if some pretty girl were really attached to me, and would reveal her sentiments to me, either in prose or verse. i therefore began my declaration with delight, and in a little while executed it in a flowing measure, between doggerel and madrigal, with the greatest possible /naiveté/, and in such a way that the sceptic was overcome with admiration, and my friend with delight. the request of the former to possess the poem i could the less refuse, as it was written in his almanac; and i liked to see the documentary evidence of my capabilities in his hands. he departed with many assurances of admiration and respect, and wished for nothing more than that we should often meet; so we settled soon to go together into the country. our excursion actually took place, and was joined by several more young people of the same rank. they were men of the middle, or, if you please, of the lower, class, who were not wanting in brains, and who, moreover, as they had gone through school, were possessed of various knowledge and a certain degree of culture. in a large, rich city, there are many modes of gaining a livelihood. these eked out a living by copying for the lawyers, and by advancing the children of the lower order more than is usual in common schools. with grown-up children, who were about to be confirmed, they went through the religious courses; then, again, they assisted factors and merchants in some way, and were thus enabled to enjoy themselves frugally in the evenings, and particularly on sundays and festivals. on the way there, while they highly extolled my love-letter, they confessed to me that they had made a very merry use of it; viz., that it had been copied in a feigned hand, and, with a few pertinent allusions, had been sent to a conceited young man, who was now firmly persuaded that a lady to whom he had paid distant court was excessively enamored of him, and sought an opportunity for closer acquaintance. they at the same time told me in confidence, that he desired nothing more now than to be able to answer her in verse; but that neither he nor they were skilful enough, so that they earnestly solicited me to compose the much- desired reply. mystifications are and will continue to be an amusement for idle people, whether more or less ingenious. a venial wickedness, a self-complacent malice, is an enjoyment for those who have neither resources in themselves nor a wholesome external activity. no age is quite exempt from such pruriences. we had often tricked each other in our childish years: many sports turn upon mystification and trick. the present jest did not seem to me to go farther: i gave my consent. they imparted to me many particulars which the letter ought to contain, and we brought it home already finished. a little while afterwards i was urgently invited, through my friend, to take part in one of the evening-feasts of that society. the lover, he said, was willing to bear the expense on this occasion, and desired expressly to thank the friend who had shown himself so excellent a poetical secretary. we came together late enough, the meal was most frugal, the wine drinkable; while, as for the conversation, it turned almost entirely on jokes upon the young man, who was present, and certainly not very bright, and who, after repeated readings of the letter, almost believed that he had written it himself. my natural good nature would not allow me to take much pleasure in such a malicious deception, and the repetition of the same subject soon disgusted me. i should certainly have passed a tedious evening, if an unexpected apparition had not revived me. on our arrival we found the table already neatly and orderly set, and sufficient wine served on it: we sat down and remained alone, without requiring further service. as there was, however, a scarcity of wine at last, one of them called for the maid; but, instead of the maid, there came in a girl of uncommon, and, when one saw her with all around her, of incredible, beauty. "what do you desire?" she asked, after having cordially wished us a good- evening: "the maid is ill in bed. can i serve you?"--"the wine is out," said one: "if you would fetch us a few bottles, it would be very kind."-- "do it, gretchen," [footnote: the diminutive of margaret.--trans.] said another: "it is but a cat's leap from here."--"why not?" she answered; and, taking a few empty bottles from the table, she hastened out. her form, as seen from behind, was almost more elegant. the little cap sat so neatly upon her little head, which a slender throat united very gracefully to her neck and shoulders. every thing about her seemed choice; and one could survey her whole form the more at ease, as one's attention was no more exclusively attracted and fettered by the quiet, honest eyes and lovely mouth. i reproved my comrades for sending the girl out alone at night, but they only laughed at me; and i was soon consoled by her return, as the publican lived only just across the way. "sit down with us, in return," said one. she did so; but, alas! she did not come near me. she drank a glass to our health, and speedily departed, advising us not to stay very long together, and not to be so noisy, as her mother was just going to bed. it was not, however, her own mother, but the mother of our hosts. the form of that girl followed me from that moment on every path; it was the first durable impression which a female being had made upon me: and as i could find no pretext to see her at home, and would not seek one, i went to church for love of her, and had soon traced out where she sat. thus, during the long protestant service, i gazed my fill at her. when the congregation left the church, i did not venture to accost her, much less to accompany her, and was perfectly delighted if she seemed to have remarked me and to have returned my greeting with a nod. yet i was not long denied the happiness of approaching her. they had persuaded the lover, whose poetical secretary i had been, that the letter written in his name had been actually despatched to the lady, and had strained to the utmost his expectations that an answer must come soon. this, also, i was to write; and the waggish company entreated me earnestly, through pylades, to exert all my wit and employ all my art, in order that this piece might be quite elegant and perfect. in the hope of again seeing my beauty, i immediately set to work, and thought of every thing that would be in the highest degree pleasing if gretchen were writing it to me. i thought i had composed every thing so completely according to her form, her nature, her manner, and her mind, that i could not refrain from wishing that it were so in reality, and lost myself in rapture at the mere thought that something similar could be sent from her to me. thus i mystified myself, while i intended to impose upon another; and much joy and much trouble was yet to arise out of the affair. when i was once more summoned, i had finished, promised to come, and did not fail at the appointed hour. there was only one of the young people at home; gretchen sat at the window spinning; the mother was going to and fro. the young man desired that i should read it over to him: i did so, and read, not without emotion, as i glanced over the paper at the beautiful girl; and when i fancied that i remarked a certain uneasiness in her deportment, and a gentle flush on her cheeks, i uttered better and with more animation that which i wished to hear from herself. the lover, who had often interrupted me with commendations, at last entreated me to make some alterations. these affected some passages which indeed were rather suited to the condition of gretchen than to that of the lady, who was of a good family, wealthy, and known and respected in the city. after the young man had designated the desired changes, and had brought me an inkstand, but had taken leave for a short time on account of some business, i remained sitting on the bench against the wall, behind the large table, and essayed the alterations that were to be made, on the large slate, which almost covered the whole table, with a pencil that always lay in the window; because upon this slate reckonings were often made, and various memoranda noted down, and those coming in or going out even communicated with each other. i had for a while written different things and rubbed them out again, when i exclaimed impatiently, "it will not do!"--"so much the better," said the dear girl in a grave tone: "i wished that it might not do! you should not meddle in such matters." she arose from the distaff, and, stepping towards the table, gave me a severe lecture, with a great deal of good sense and kindliness. "the thing seems an innocent jest: it is a jest, but it is not innocent. i have already lived to see several cases, in which our young people, for the sake of such mere mischief, have brought themselves into great difficulty."--"but what shall i do?" i asked: "the letter is written, and they rely upon me to alter it."-- "trust me," she replied, "and do not alter it; nay, take it back, put it in your pocket, go away, and try to make the matter straight through your friend. i will also put in a word; for look you, though i am a poor girl, and dependent upon these relations,--who indeed do nothing bad, though they often, for the sake of sport or profit, undertake a good deal that is rash,--i have resisted them, and would not copy the first letter, as they requested. they transcribed it in a feigned hand; and, if it is not otherwise, so may they also do with this. and you, a young man of good family, rich, independent, why will you allow yourself to be used as a tool in a business which can certainly bring no good to you, and may possibly bring much that is unpleasant? "it made me very happy to hear her speak thus continuously, for generally she introduced but few words into conversation. my liking for her grew incredibly. i was not master of myself, and replied, "i am not so independent as you suppose; and of what use is wealth to me, when the most precious thing i can desire is wanting?" she had drawn my sketch of the poetic epistle towards her, and read it half aloud in a sweet and graceful manner. "that is very pretty," said she, stopping at a sort of /naïve/ point; "but it is a pity that it is not destined for a real purpose."-- "that were indeed very desirable," i cried; "and, oh! how happy must he be, who receives from a girl he infinitely loves, such an assurance of her affection."--"there is much required for that," she answered, "and yet many things are possible."--"for example," i continued, "if any one who knew, prized, honored, and adored you, laid such a paper before you, what would you do?" i pushed the paper nearer to her, which she had previously pushed back to me. she smiled, reflected for a moment, took the pen, and subscribed her name. i was beside myself with rapture, jumped up, and was going to embrace her. "no kissing!" said she, "that is so vulgar; but let us love if we can." i had taken up the paper, and thrust it into my pocket. "no one shall ever get it," said i: "the affair is closed. you have saved me."--"now complete the salvation," she exclaimed, "and hurry off, before the others arrive, and you fall into trouble and embarrassment!" i could not tear myself away from her; but she asked me in so kindly a manner, while she took my right hand in both of hers, and lovingly pressed it! the tears stood in my eyes: i thought hers looked moist. i pressed my face upon her hands, and hastened away. never in my life had i found myself in such perplexity. the first propensities to love in an uncorrupted youth take altogether a spiritual direction. nature seems to desire that one sex may by the senses perceive goodness and beauty in the other. and thus to me, by the sight of this girl,--by my strong inclination for her,--a new world of the beautiful and the excellent had arisen. i perused my poetical epistle a hundred times, gazed at the signature, kissed it, pressed it to my heart, and rejoiced in this amiable confession. but the more my transports increased, the more did it pain me not to be able to visit her immediately, and to see and converse with her again; for i dreaded the reproofs and importunities of her cousins. the good pylades, who might have arranged the affair, i could not contrive to meet. the next sunday, therefore, i set out for niederrad, where these associates generally used to go, and actually found them there. i was, however, greatly surprised, when, instead of behaving in a cross, distant manner, they came up to me with joyful countenances. the youngest particularly was very kind, took me by the hand, and said, "you have lately played us a sorry trick, and we were very angry with you; but your absconding and taking away the poetical epistle has suggested a good thought to us, which otherwise might never have occurred. by way of atonement, you may treat us to-day; and you shall learn at the same time the notion we have, which will certainly give you pleasure." this harangue caused me no small embarrassment, for i had about me only money enough to regale myself and a friend: but to treat a whole company, and especially one which did not always stop at the right time, i was by no means prepared; nay, the proposal astonished me the more, as they had always insisted, in the most honorable manner, that each one should pay only his own share. they smiled at my distress; and the youngest proceeded, "let us first take a seat in the bower, and then you shall learn more." we sat down; and he said, "when you had taken the love-letter with you, we talked the whole affair over again, and came to a conclusion that we had gratuitously misused your talent to the vexation of others and our own danger, for the sake of a mere paltry love of mischief, when we could have employed it to the advantage of all of us. see, i have here an order for a wedding-poem, as well as for a dirge. the second must be ready immediately, the other can wait a week. now, if you make these, which is easy for you, you will treat us twice; and we shall long remain your debtors." this proposal pleased me in every respect; for i had already in my childhood looked with a certain envy on the occasional poems, [footnote: that is to say, a poem written for a certain occasion, as a wedding, funeral, etc. the german word is /gelegenheitsgedicht/."--trans.]--of which then several circulated every week, and at respectable marriages especially came to light by the dozen,--because i thought i could make such things as well, nay, better than others. now an opportunity was offered me to show myself, and especially to see myself in print. i did not appear disinclined. they acquainted me with the personal particulars and the position of the family: i went somewhat aside, made my plan, and produced some stanzas. however, when i returned to the company, and the wine was not spared, the poem began to halt; and i could not deliver it that evening. "there is still time till to-morrow evening," they said; "and we will confess to you that the fee which we receive for the dirge is enough to get us another pleasant evening to-morrow. come to us; for it is but fair that gretchen, too, should sup with us, as it was she properly who gave us the notion." my joy was unspeakable. on my way home i had only the remaining stanzas in my head, wrote down the whole before i went to sleep, and the next morning made a very neat, fair copy. the day seemed infinitely long to me; and scarcely was it dusk, than i found myself again in the narrow little dwelling beside the dearest of girls. the young people, with whom in this way i formed a closer and closer connection, were not exactly of a low, but of an ordinary, type. their activity was commendable, and i listened to them with pleasure when they spoke of the manifold ways and means by which one could gain a living: above all, they loved to tell of people, now very rich, who had begun with nothing. others to whom they referred had, as poor clerks, rendered themselves indispensable to their employers, and had finally risen to be their sons-in-law; while others had so enlarged and improved a little trade in matches and the like, that they were now prosperous merchants and tradesmen. but above all, to young men who were active on their feet, the trade of agent and factor, and the undertaking of all sorts of commissions and charges for helpless rich men was, they said, a most profitable means of gaining a livelihood. we all liked to hear this; and each one fancied himself somebody, when he imagined, at the moment, that there was enough in him, not only to get on in the world, but to acquire an extraordinary fortune. but no one seemed to carry on this conversation more earnestly than pylades, who at last confessed that he had an extraordinary passion for a girl, and was actually engaged to her. the circumstances of his parents would not allow him to go to universities; but he had endeavored to acquire a fine handwriting, a knowledge of accounts and the modern languages, and would now do his best in hopes of attaining that domestic felicity. his fellows praised him for this, although they did not approve of a premature engagement; and they added, that while forced to acknowledge him to be a fine, good fellow, they did not consider him active or enterprising enough to do any thing extraordinary. while he, in vindication of himself, circumstantially set forth what he thought himself fit for, and how he was going to begin, the others were also incited; and each one began to tell what he was now able to do, doing, or carrying on, what he had already accomplished, and what he saw immediately before him. the turn at last came to me. i was to set forth my course of life and prospects; and, while i was considering, pylades said, "i make this one proviso, lest we be at too great a disadvantage, that he does not bring into the account the external advantages of his position. he should rather tell us a tale how he would proceed if at this moment he were thrown entirely upon his own resources, as we are." gretchen, who till this moment had kept on spinning, rose, and seated herself as usual at the end of the table. we had already emptied some bottles, and i began to relate the hypothetical history of my life in the best humor. "first of all, then, i commend myself to you," said i, "that you may continue the custom you have begun to bestow on me. if you gradually procure me the profit of all the occasional poems, and we do not consume them in mere feasting, i shall soon come to something. but then, you must not take it ill if i dabble also in your handicraft." upon this, i told them what i had observed in their occupations, and for which i held myself fit at any rate. each one had previously rated his services in money, and i asked them to assist me also in completing my establishment. gretchen had listened to all hitherto very attentively, and that in a position which well suited her, whether she chose to hear or to speak. with both hands she clasped her folded arms, and rested them on the edge of the table. thus she could sit a long while without moving any thing but her head, which was never done without some occasion or meaning. she had several times put in a word, and helped us on over this and that, when we halted in our projects, and then was again still and quiet as usual. i kept her in my eye, and it may readily be supposed that i had not devised and uttered my plan without reference to her. my passion for her gave to what i said such an air of truth and probability, that, for a moment, i deceived myself, imagined myself as lonely and helpless as my story supposed, and felt extremely happy in the prospect of possessing her. pylades had closed his confession with marriage; and the question arose among the rest of us, whether our plans went as far as that. "i have not the least doubt on that score," said i; "for properly a wife is necessary to every one of us, in order to preserve at home, and enable us to enjoy as a whole, what we rake together abroad in such an odd way." i then made a sketch of a wife, such as i wished; and it must have turned out strangely if she had not been a perfect counterpart of gretchen. the dirge was consumed; the epithalamium now stood beneficially at hand: i overcame all fear and care, and contrived, as i had many acquaintances, to conceal my actual evening entertainments from my family. to see and to be near the dear girl was soon an indispensable condition of my being. the friends had grown just as accustomed to me, and we were almost daily together, as if it could not be otherwise. pylades had, in the mean time, introduced his fair one into the house; and this pair passed many an evening with us. they, as bride and bridegroom, though still very much in the bud, did not conceal their tenderness: gretchen's deportment towards me was only suited to keep me at a distance. she gave her hand to no one, not even to me; she allowed no touch: yet she many times seated herself near me, particularly when i wrote, or read aloud, and then, laying her arm familiarly upon my shoulder, she looked over the book or paper. if, however, i ventured to take on a similar liberty with her, she withdrew, and did not return very soon. this position she often repeated; and, indeed, all her attitudes and motions were very uniform, but always equally becoming, beautiful, and charming. but such a familiarity i never saw her practise towards anybody else. one of the most innocent, and, at the same time, amusing, parties of pleasure in which i engaged with different companies of young people, was this,--that we seated ourselves in the höchst market-ship, observed the strange passengers packed away in it, and bantered and teased, now this one, now that, as pleasure or caprice prompted. at höchst we got out at the time when the market-boat from mentz arrived. at a hotel there was a well-spread table, where the better sort of travellers, coming and going, ate with each other, and then proceeded, each on his way, as both ships returned. every time, after dining, we sailed up to frankfort, having, with a very large company, made the cheapest water- excursion that was possible. once i had undertaken this journey with gretchen's cousins, when a young man joined us at table in hochst, who might be a little older than we were. they knew him, and he got himself introduced to me. he had something very pleasing in his manner, though he was not otherwise distinguished. coming from mentz, he now went back with us to frankfort, and conversed with me of every thing that related to the internal arrangements of the city, and the public offices and places, on which he seemed to me to be very well informed. when we separated, he bade me farewell, and added, that he wished i might think well of him, as he hoped on occasion to avail himself of my recommendation. i did not know what he meant by this, but the cousins enlightened me some days after. they spoke well of him, and asked me to intercede with my grandfather, as a moderate appointment was just now vacant, which this friend would like to obtain. i at first wished to be excused, as i had never meddled in such affairs; but they went on urging me until i resolved to do it. i had already many times remarked, that in these grants of offices, which unfortunately were regarded as matters of favor, the mediation of my grandmother or an aunt had not been without effect. i was now so advanced as to arrogate some influence to myself. for that reason, to gratify my friends, who declared themselves under every sort of obligation for such a kindness, i overcame the timidity of a grandchild, and undertook to deliver a written application that was handed in to me. one sunday, after dinner, while my grandfather was busy in his garden, all the more because autumn was approaching, and i tried to assist him on every side, i came forward with my request and the petition, after some hesitation. he looked at it, and asked me whether i knew the young man. i told him in general terms what was to be said, and he let the matter rest there. "if he has merit, and, moreover, good testimonials, i will favor him for your sake and his own." he said no more, and for a long while i heard nothing of the matter. for some time i had observed that gretchen was no longer spinning, but instead was employed in sewing, and that, too, on very fine work, which surprised me the more, as the days were already shortening, and winter was coming on. i thought no further about it; only it troubled me that several times i had not found her at home in the morning as formerly, and could not learn, without importunity, whither she had gone. yet i was destined one day to be surprised in a very odd manner. my sister, who was getting herself ready for a ball, asked me to fetch her some so- called italian flowers, at a fashionable milliner's. they were made in convents, and were small and pretty: myrtles especially, dwarf-roses, and the like, came out quite beautifully and naturally. i did her the favor, and went to the shop where i had been with her often already. hardly had i entered, and greeted the proprietress, than i saw sitting in the window a lady, who, in a lace cap, looked very young and pretty, and in a silk mantilla seemed very well shaped. i could easily recognize that she was an assistant, for she was occupied in fastening a ribbon and feathers upon a hat. the milliner showed me the long box with single flowers of various sorts. i looked them over, and, as i made my choice, glanced again towards the lady in the window; but how great was my astonishment when i perceived an incredible similarity to gretchen, nay, was forced to be convinced at last that it was gretchen herself. nor could i doubt any longer, when she winked with her eyes, and gave me a sign that i must not betray our acquaintance. i now, with my choosing and rejecting, drove the milliner into despair more than even a lady could have done. i had, in fact, no choice; for i was excessively confused, and at the same time liked to linger, because it kept me near the girl, whose disguise annoyed me, though in that disguise she appeared to me more enchanting than ever. finally the milliner seemed to lose all patience, and with her own hands selected for me a whole bandbox full of flowers, which i was to place before my sister, and let her choose for herself. thus i was, as it were, driven out of the shop, she sending the box in advance by one of her girls. scarcely had i reached home than my father caused me to be called, and communicated to me that it was now quite certain that the archduke joseph would be elected and crowned king of rome. an event so highly important was not to be expected without preparation, nor allowed to pass with mere gaping and staring. he wished, therefore, he said, to go through with me the election and coronation diaries of the two last coronations, as well as through the last capitulations of election, in order to remark what new conditions might be added in the present instance. the diaries were opened, and we occupied ourselves with them the whole day till far into the night; while the pretty girl, sometimes in her old house-dress, sometimes in her new costume, ever hovered before me, backwards and forwards among the most august objects of the holy roman empire. this evening it was impossible to see her, and i lay awake through a very restless night. the study of yesterday was the next day zealously resumed; and it was not till towards evening that i found it possible to visit my fair one, whom i met again in her usual house- dress. she smiled when she saw me, but i did not venture to mention any thing before the others. when the whole company sat quietly together again, she began, and said, "it is unfair that you do not confide to our friend what we have lately resolved upon." she then continued to relate, that after our late conversation, in which the discussion was how any one could get on in the world, something was also said of the way in which a woman could enhance the value of her talent and labor, and advantageously employ her time. the cousin had consequently proposed that she should make an experiment at a milliner's, who was just then in want of an assistant. they had, she said, arranged with the woman: she went there so many hours a day, and was well paid; but she would there be obliged, for propriety's sake, to conform to a certain dress, which, however, she left behind her every time, as it did not at all suit her other modes of life and employment. i was indeed set at rest by this declaration; but it did not quite please me to know that the pretty girl was in a public shop, and at a place where the fashionable world found a convenient resort. but i betrayed nothing, and strove to work off my jealous care in silence. for this the younger cousin did not allow me a long time, as he once more came forward with a proposal for an occasional poem, told me all the personalities, and at once desired me to prepare myself for the invention and disposition of the work. he had spoken with me several times already concerning the proper treatment of such a theme; and, as i was voluble in these cases, he readily asked me to explain to him, circumstantially, what is rhetorical in these things, to give him a notion of the matter, and to make use of my own and others' labors in this kind for examples. the young man had some brains, but not a trace of a poetical vein; and now he went so much into particulars, and wished to have such an account of every thing, that i gave utterance to the remark, "it seems as if you wanted to encroach upon my trade, and take away my customers!"--"i will not deny it," said he, smiling, "as i shall do you no harm by it. this will only continue to the time when you go to the university, and till then you must allow me still to profit something by your society."--"most cordially," i replied; and i encouraged him to draw out a plan, to choose a metre according to the character of his subject, and to do whatever else might seem necessary. he went to work in earnest, but did not succeed. i was in the end compelled to re-write so much of it, that i could more easily and better have written it all from the beginning myself. yet this teaching and learning, this mutual labor, afforded us good entertainment. gretchen took part in it, and had many a pretty notion; so that we were all pleased, we may, indeed, say happy. during the day she worked at the milliner's: in the evenings we generally met together, and our contentment was not even disturbed when at last the commissions for occasional poems began to leave off. still we felt hurt once, when one of them came back under protest, because it did not suit the party who ordered it. we consoled ourselves, however, as we considered it our very best work, and could, therefore, declare the other a bad judge. the cousin, who was determined to learn something at any rate, resorted to the expedient of inventing problems, in the solution of which we always found amusement enough; but, as they brought in nothing, our little banquets had to be much more frugally managed. that great political object, the election and coronation of a king of rome, was pursued with more and more earnestness. the assembling of the electoral college, originally appointed to take place at augsburg in the october of , was now transferred to frankfort; and both at the end of this year and in the beginning of the next, preparations went forward which should usher in this important business. the beginning was made by a parade never yet seen by us. one of our chancery officials on horseback, escorted by four trumpeters likewise mounted, and surrounded by a guard of infantry, read in a loud, clear voice at all the corners of the city, a prolix edict, which announced the forthcoming proceedings, and exhorted the citizens to a becoming deportment suitable to the circumstances. the council was occupied with weighty considerations; and it was not long before the imperial quartermaster, despatched by the hereditary grand marshal, made his appearance, in order to arrange and designate the residences of the ambassadors and their suites, according to the old custom. our house lay in the palatine district, and we had to provide for a new but agreeable billetting. the middle story, which count thorane had formerly occupied, was given up to a cavalier of the palatinate; and as baron von königsthal, the nuremburg /chargé-d'affaires/, occupied the upper floor, we were still more crowded than in the time of the french. this served me as a new pretext for being out of doors, and to pass the greater part of the day in the streets, that i might see all that was open to public view. after the preliminary alteration and arrangement of the rooms in the town-house had seemed to us worth seeing; after the arrival of the ambassadors one after another, and their first solemn ascent in a body, on the th of february, had taken place,--we admired the coming in of the imperial commissioners, and their ascent also to the /romer/, which was made with great pomp. the dignified person of the prince of lichtenstein made a good impression; yet connoisseurs maintained that the showy liveries had already been used on another occasion, and that this election and coronation would hardly equal in brilliancy that of charles the seventh. we younger folks were content with what was before our eyes: all seemed to us very fine, and much of it perfectly astonishing. the electoral congress was fixed at last for the d of march. new formalities again set the city in motion, and the alternate visits of ceremony on the part of the ambassadors kept us always on our legs. we were, moreover, compelled to watch closely; as we were not only to gape about, but to note every thing well, in order to give a proper report at home, and even to make out many little memoirs, on which my father and herr von königsthal had deliberated, partly for our exercise and partly for their own information. and certainly this was of peculiar advantage to me; as i was enabled very tolerably to keep a living election and coronation diary, as far as regarded externals. the person who first of all made a durable impression upon me was the chief ambassador from the electorate of mentz, baron von erthal, afterwards elector. without having any thing striking in his figure, he was always highly pleasing to me in his black gown trimmed with lace. the second ambassador, baron von groschlag, was a well-formed man of the world, easy in his exterior, but conducting himself with great decorum. he everywhere produced a very agreeable impression. prince esterhazy, the bohemian envoy, was not tall, though well formed, lively, and at the same time eminently decorous, without pride or coldness. i had a special liking for him, because he reminded me of marshal de broglio. yet the form and dignity of these excellent persons vanished, in a certain degree, before the prejudice that was entertained in favor of baron von plotho, the brandenburg ambassador. this man, who was distinguished by a certain parsimony, both in his own clothes and in his liveries and equipages, had been greatly renowned, from the time of the seven years' war, as a diplomatic hero. at ratisbon, when the notary april thought, in the presence of witnesses, to serve him with the declaration of outlawry which had been issued against his king, he had, with the laconic exclamation, "what! you serve?" thrown him, or caused him to be thrown, down stairs. we believed the first, because it pleased us best; and we could readily believe it of the little compact man, with his black, fiery eyes glancing here and there. all eyes were directed towards him, particularly when he alighted. there arose every time a sort of joyous whispering; and but little was wanting to a regular explosion, or a shout of /vivat! bravo!/ so high did the king, and all who were devoted to him, body and soul, stand in favor with the crowd, among whom, besides the frankforters, were germans from all parts. on the one hand these things gave me much pleasure; as all that took place, no matter of what nature it might be, concealed a certain meaning, indicated some internal relation: and such symbolic ceremonies again, for a moment, represented as living the old empire of germany, almost choked to death by so many parchments, papers, and books. but, on the other hand, i could not suppress a secret displeasure, when at home, i had, on behalf of my father, to transcribe the internal transactions, and at the same time to remark that here several powers, which balanced each other, stood in opposition, and only so far agreed, as they designed to limit the new ruler even more than the old one; that every one valued his influence only so far as he hoped to retain or enlarge his privileges, and better to secure his independence. nay, on this occasion they were more attentive than usual, because they began to fear joseph the second, his vehemence, and probable plans. with my grandfather and other members of the council, whose families i used to visit, this was no pleasant time, they had so much to do with meeting distinguished guests, complimenting, and the delivery of presents. no less had the magistrate, both in general and in particular, to defend himself, to resist, and to protest, as every one on such occasions desires to extort something from him, or burden him with something; and few of those to whom he appeals support him, or lend him their aid. in short, all that i had read in "lersner's chronicle" of similar incidents on similar occasions, with admiration of the patience and perseverance of those good old councilmen, came once more vividly before my eyes. many vexations arise also from this, that the city is gradually overrun with people, both useful and needless. in vain are the courts reminded, on the part of the city, of prescriptions of the golden bull, now, indeed, obsolete. not only the deputies with their attendants, but many persons of rank, and others who come from curiosity or for private objects, stand under protection; and the question as to who is to be billetted out, and who is to hire his own lodging, is not always decided at once. the tumult constantly increases; and even those who have nothing to give, or to answer for, begin to feel uncomfortable. even we young people, who could quietly contemplate it all, ever found something which did not quite satisfy our eyes or our imagination. the spanish mantles, the huge plumed hats of the ambassadors, and other objects here and there, had indeed a truly antique look; but there was a great deal, on the other hand, so half-new or entirely modern, that the affair assumed throughout a motley, unsatisfactory, often tasteless, appearance. we were, therefore, very happy to learn that great preparations were made on account of the journey to frankfort of the emperor and future king; that the proceedings of the college of electors, which were based on the last electoral capitulation, were now going forward rapidly; and that the day of election had been appointed for the th of march. now there was a thought of fetching the insignia of the empire from nuremburg and aix-la-chation; while gretchen, by her unbroken attention, had highly encouraged me. at last she thanked me, and envied, as she said, all who were informed of the affairs of this world, and knew how this and that came about and what it signified. she wished she were a boy, and managed to acknowledge, with much kindness, that she was indebted to me for a great deal of instruction. "if i were a boy," said she, "we would learn something good together at the university." the conversation continued in this strain: she definitively resolved to take instruction in french, of the absolute necessity of which she had become well aware in the milliner's shop. i asked her why she no longer went there; for during the latter times, not being able to go out much in the evening, i had often passed the shop during the day for her sake, merely to see her for a moment. she explained that she had not liked to expose herself there in these unsettled times. as soon as the city returned to its former condition, she intended to go there again. then the impending day of election was the topic of conversation. i contrived to tell, at length, what was going to happen, and how, and to support my demonstrations in detail by drawings on the tablet; for i had the place of conclave, with its altars, thrones, seats, and chairs, perfectly before my mind. we separated at the proper time, and in a particularly comfortable frame of mind. for, with a young couple who are in any degree harmoniously formed by nature, nothing can conduce to a more beautiful union than when the maiden is anxious to learn, and the youth inclined to teach. there arises from it a well-grounded and agreeable relation. she sees in him the creator of her spiritual existence; and he sees in her a creature that ascribes her perfection, not to nature, not to chance, nor to any one-sided inclination, but to a mutual will: and this reciprocation is so sweet, that we cannot wonder, if, from the days of the old and the new [footnote: the "/new/ abelard" is st. preux, in the nouvelle héloise of rousseau.--trans.] abelard, the most violent passions, and as much happiness as unhappiness, have arisen from such an intercourse of two beings. with the next day began great commotion in the city, on account of the visits paid and returned, which now took place with the greatest ceremony. but what particularly interested me, as a citizen of frankfort, and gave rise to a great many reflections, was the taking of the oath of security (/sicherheitseides/) by the council, the military, and the body of citizens, not through representatives, but personally and in mass: first, in the great hall of the römer, by the magistracy and staff-officers; then in the great square (/platz/), the römerberg, by all the citizens, according to their respective ranks, gradations, or quarterings; and, lastly, by the rest of the military. here one could survey at a single glance the entire commonwealth, assembled for the honorable purpose of swearing security to the head and members of the empire, and unbroken peace during the great work now impending. the electors of treves and of cologne had now also arrived. on the evening before the day of election, all strangers are sent out of the city, the gates are closed, the jews are confined to their quarter, and the citizen of frankfort prides himself not a little that he alone may witness so great a solemnity. all that had hitherto taken place was tolerably modern: the highest and high personages moved about only in coaches, but now we were going to see them in the primitive manner on horseback. the concourse and rush were extraordinary. i managed to squeeze myself into the römer, which i knew as familiarly as a mouse does the private corn-loft, till i reached the main entrance, before which the electors and ambassadors, who had first arrived in their state-coaches, and had assembled above, were now to mount their horses. the stately, well-trained steeds were covered with richly laced housings, and ornamented in every way. the elector emeric joseph, a handsome, portly man, looked well on horseback. of the other two i remember less, excepting that the red princes' mantles, trimmed with ermine, which we had been accustomed to see only in pictures before, seemed to us very romantic in the open air. the ambassadors of the absent temporal electors, with their spanish dresses of gold brocade, embroidered over with gold, and trimmed with gold lace, likewise did our eyes good; and the large feathers particularly, that waved most splendidly from the hats, which were cocked in the antique style. but what did not please me were the short modern breeches, the white silk stockings, and the fashionable shoes. we should have liked half-boots,--gilded as much as they pleased,--sandals, or something of the kind, that we might have seen a more consistent costume. in deportment the ambassador von plotho again distinguished himself from all the rest. he appeared lively and cheerful, and seemed to have no great respect for the whole ceremony. for when his front-man, an elderly gentleman, could not leap immediately on his horse, and he was therefore forced to wait some time in the grand entrance, he did not refrain from laughing, till his own horse was brought forward, upon which he swung himself very dexterously, and was again admired by us as a most worthy representative of frederick the second. now the curtain was for us once more let down. i had, indeed, tried to force my way into the church; but that place was more inconvenient than agreeable. the voters had withdrawn into the /sanctum/, where prolix ceremonies usurped the place of a deliberate consideration as to the election. after long delay, pressure, and bustle, the people at last heard the name of joseph the second, who was proclaimed king of rome. the thronging of strangers into the city became greater and greater. everybody went about in his holiday clothes, so that at last none but dresses entirely of gold were found worthy of note. the emperor and king had already arrived at /heusenstamm/, a castle of the counts of schönborn, and were there in the customary manner greeted and welcomed; but the city celebrated this important epoch by spiritual festivals of all the religions, by high masses and sermons; and, on the temporal side, by incessant firing of cannon as an accompaniment to the "te deums." if all these public solemnities, from the beginning up to this point, had been regarded as a deliberate work of art, not much to find fault with would have been found. all was well prepared. the public scenes opened gradually, and went on increasing in importance; the men grew in number, the personages in dignity, their appurtenances, as well as themselves, in splendor,--and thus it advanced with every day, till at last even a well-prepared and firm eye became bewildered. the entrance of the elector of mentz, which we have refused to describe more completely, was magnificent and imposing enough to suggest to the imagination of an eminent man the advent of a great prophesied world- ruler: even we were not a little dazzled by it. but now our expectation was stretched to the utmost, as it was said that the emperor and the future king were approaching the city. at a little distance from sachsenhausen, a tent had been erected in which the entire magistracy remained, to show the appropriate honor, and to proffer the keys of the city to the chief of the empire. farther out, on a fair, spacious plain, stood another, a state pavilion, whither the whole body of electoral princes and ambassadors repaired; while their retinues extended along the whole way, that gradually, as their turns came, they might again move towards the city, and enter properly into the procession. by this time the emperor reached the tent, entered it; and the princes and ambassadors, after a most respectful reception, withdrew, to facilitate the passage of the chief ruler. we who remained in the city, to admire this pomp within the walls and streets still more than could have been done in the open fields, were very well entertained for a while by the barricade set up by the citizens in the lanes, by the throng of people, and by the various jests and improprieties which arose, till the ringing of bells and the thunder of cannon announced to us the immediate approach of majesty. what must have been particularly grateful to a frankforter was, that on this occasion, in the presence of so many sovereigns and their representatives, the imperial city of frankfort also appeared as a little sovereign: for her equerry opened the procession; chargers with armorial trappings, upon which the white eagle on a red field looked very fine, followed him; then came attendants and officials, drummers and trumpeters, and deputies of the council, accompanied by the clerks of the council, in the city livery, on foot. immediately behind these were the three companies of citizen cavalry, very well mounted,--the same that we had seen from our youth, at the reception of the escort, and on other public occasions. we rejoiced in our participation of the honor, and in our one hundred-thousandth part of a sovereignty which now appeared in its full brilliancy. the different trains of the hereditary imperial marshal, and of the envoys deputed by the six temporal electors, marched after these step by step. none of them consisted of less than twenty attendants and two state-carriages,--some, even, of a greater number. the retinue of the spiritual electors was ever on the increase,--their servants and domestic officers seemed innumerable: the elector of cologne and the elector of treves had above twenty state- carriages, and the elector of mentz quite as many alone. the servants, both on horseback and on foot, were clothed most splendidly throughout: the lords in the equipages, spiritual and temporal, had not omitted to appear richly and venerably dressed, and adorned with all the badges of their orders. the train of his imperial majesty now, as was fit, surpassed all the rest. the riding-masters, the led horses, the equipages, the shabracks and caparisons, attracted every eye; and the sixteen six-horse gala-wagons of the imperial chamberlains, privy councillors, high chamberlain, high stewards, and high equerry, closed, with great pomp, this division of the procession, which, in spite of its magnificence and extent, was still only to be the vanguard. but now the line became concentrated more and more, while the dignity and parade kept on increasing. for in the midst of a chosen escort of their own domestic attendants, the most of them on foot, and a few on horseback, appeared the electoral ambassadors, as well as the electors in person, in ascending order, each one in a magnificent state-carriage. immediately behind the elector of mentz, ten imperial footmen, one and forty lackeys, and eight /heyducks/ [footnote: a class of attendants dress in hungarian costume.--trans.] announced their majesties. the most magnificent state-carriage, furnished even at the back part with an entire window of plate-glass, ornamented with paintings, lacquer, carved work, and gilding, covered with red embroidered velvet on the top and inside, allowed us very conveniently to behold the emperor and king, the long-desired heads, in all their glory. the procession was led a long, circuitous route, partly from necessity, that it might be able to unfold itself, and partly to render it visible to the great multitude of people. it had passed through sachsenhausen, over the bridge, up the fahrgasse, then down the zeile, and turned towards the inner city through the katharinenpforte, formerly a gate, and, since the enlargement of the city, an open thoroughfare. here it had been happily considered, that, for a series of years, the external grandeur of the world had gone on expanding, both in height and breadth. measure had been taken; and it was found that the present imperial state-carriage could not, without striking its carved work and other outward decorations, get through this gateway, through which so many princes and emperors had gone backwards and forwards. they debated the matter, and, to avoid an inconvenient circuit, resolved to take up the pavements, and to contrive a gentle descent and ascent. with the same view, they had also removed all the projecting eaves from the shops and booths in the street, that neither crown nor eagle nor the genii should receive any shock or injury. eagerly as we directed our eyes to the high personages when this precious vessel with such precious contents approached us, we could not avoid turning our looks upon the noble horses, their harness, and its embroidery; but the strange coachmen and outriders, both sitting on the horses, particularly struck us. they looked as if they had come from some other nation, or even from another world, with their long black and yellow velvet coats, and their caps with large plumes of feathers, after the imperial-court fashion. now the crowd became so dense that it was impossible to distinguish much more. the swiss guard on both sides of the carriage; the hereditary marshal holding the saxon sword upwards in his right hand; the field-marshals, as leaders of the imperial guard, riding behind the carriage; the imperial pages in a body; and, finally, the imperial horse-guard (/hatschiergarde/) itself, in black velvet frocks (/flügelröck/), with all the seams edged with gold, under which were red coats and leather-colored camisoles, likewise richly decked with gold. one scarcely recovered one's self from sheer seeing, pointing, and showing, so that the scarcely less splendidly clad body- guards of the electors were barely looked at; and we should, perhaps, have withdrawn from the windows, if we had not wished to take a view of our own magistracy, who closed the procession in their fifteen two-horse coaches; and particularly the clerk of the council, with the city keys on red velvet cushions. that our company of city grenadiers should cover the rear seemed to us honorable enough, and we felt doubly and highly edified as germans and as fraukforters by this great day, we had taken our place in a house which the procession had to pass again when it returned from the cathedral. of religious services, of music, of rites and solemnities, of addresses and answers, of propositions and readings aloud, there was so much in church, choir, and conclave, before it came to the swearing of the electoral capitulation, that we had time enough to partake of an excellent collation, and to empty many bottles to the health of our old and young ruler. the conversation, meanwhile, as is usual on such occasions, reverted to the time past; and there were not wanting aged persons who preferred that to the present,--at least, with respect to a certain human interest and impassioned sympathy which then prevailed. at the coronation of francis the first all had not been so settled as now; peace had not yet been concluded; france and the electors of brandenburg and the palatinate were opposed to the election; the troops of the future emperor were stationed at heidelberg, where he had his headquarters; and the insignia of the empire, coming from aix, were almost carried off by the inhabitants of the palatinate. meanwhile, negotiations went on; and on neither side was the affair conducted in the strictest manner. maria theresa, though then pregnant, comes in person to see the coronation of her husband, which is at last earned into effect. she arrived at aschaffenburg, and went on board a yacht in order to repair to frankfort. francis, coming from heidelberg, thinks to meet his wife, but arrives too late: she has already departed. unknown, he jumps into a little boat, hastens alter her, reaches her ship; and the loving pair is delighted at this surprising meeting. the story spreads immediately; and all the world sympathizes with this tender pair, so richly blessed with children, who have been so inseparable since their union, that once, on a journey from vienna to florence, they are forced to keep quarantine together on the venetian border. maria theresa is welcomed in the city with rejoicings: she enters the roman emperor inn, while the great tent for the reception of her husband is erected on the bornheim heath. there, of the spiritual electors, only mentz is found; and, of the ambassadors of the temporal electors, only saxony, bohemia, and hanover. the entrance begins, and what it may lack of completeness and splendor is richly compensated by the presence of a beautiful lady. she stands upon the balcony of the well-situated house, and greets her husband with cries of "vivat!" and clapping of hands: the people joined, excited to the highest enthusiasm. as the great are, after all, men, the citizen deems them big equals when he wishes to love them; and that he can best do when he can picture them to himself as loving husbands, tender parents, devoted brothers, and true friends. at that time all happiness had been wished and prophesied; and to-day it was seen fulfilled in the first-born son, to whom everybody was well inclined on account of his handsome, youthful form, and upon whom the world set the greatest hopes, on account of the great qualities that he showed. we had become quite absorbed in the past and future, when some friends who came in recalled us to the present. they were of that class of people who know the value of novelty, and therefore hasten to announce it first. they were even able to tell of a fine humane trait in those exalted personages whom we had seen go by with the greatest pomp. it had been concerted, that on the way, between heusenstamm and the great tent, the emperor and king should find the landgrave of darmstadt in the forest. this old prince, now approaching the grave, wished to see once more the master to whom he had been devoted in former times. both might remember the day when the landgrave brought over to heidelberg the decree of the electors, choosing francis as emperor, and replied to the valuable presents he received with protestations of unalterable devotion. these eminent persons stood in a grove of firs; and the landgrave, weak with old age, supported himself against a pine, to continue the conversation, which was not without emotion on both sides. the place was afterwards marked in an innocent way, and we young people sometimes wandered to it. thus several hours had passed in remembrance of the old and consideration of the new, when the procession, though curtailed and more compact, again passed before our eyes; and we were enabled to observe and mark the detail more closely, and imprint it on our minds for the future. from that moment the city was in uninterrupted motion; for until each and every one whom it behooved, and of whom it was required, had paid their respects to the highest dignities, and exhibited themselves one by one, there was no end to the marching to and fro: and the court of each one of the high persons present could be very conveniently repeated in detail. now, too, the insignia of the empire arrived. but, that no ancient usage might be omitted even in this respect, they had to remain half a day till late at night in the open field, on account of a dispute about territory and escort between the elector of mentz and the city. the latter yielded: the people of mentz escorted the insignia as far as the barricade, and so the affair terminated for this time. in these days i did not come to myself. at home i had to write and copy; every thing had to be seen: and so ended the month of march, the second half of which had been so rich in festivals for us. i had promised gretchen a faithful and complete account of what had lately happened, and of what was to be expected on the coronation-day. this great day approached; i thought more of how i should tell it to her than of what properly was to be told: all that came under my eyes and my pen i merely worked up rapidly for this sole and immediate use. at last i reached her residence somewhat late one evening, and was not a little proud to think how my discourse on this occasion would be much more successful than the first unprepared one. but a momentary incitement often brings us, and others through us, more joy than the most deliberate purpose can afford. i found, indeed, pretty nearly the same company; but there were some unknown persons among them. they sat down to play, all except gretchen and her younger cousin, who remained with me at the slate. the dear girl expressed most gracefully her delight that she, though a stranger, had passed for a citizen on the election-day, and had taken part in that unique spectacle. she thanked me most warmly for having managed to take care of her, and for having been so attentive as to procure her, through pylades, all sorts of admissions by means of billets, directions, friends, and intercessions. she liked to hear about the jewels of the empire. i promised her that we should, if possible, see these together. she made some jesting remarks when she learned that the garments and crown had been tried on the young king. i knew where she would be, to see the solemnities of the coronation-day, and directed her attention to every thing that was impending, and particularly to what might be minutely inspected from her place of view. thus we forgot to think about time: it was already past midnight, and i found that i unfortunately had not the house-key with me. i could not enter the house without making the greatest disturbance. i communicated my embarrassment to her. "after all," said she, "it will be best for the company to remain together." the cousins and the strangers had already had this in mind, because it was not known where they would be lodged for the night. the matter was soon decided: gretchen went to make some coffee, after bringing in and lighting a large brass lamp, furnished with oil and wick, because the candles threatened to burn out. the coffee served to enliven us for several hours, but the game gradually slackened; conversation failed; the mother slept in the great chair; the strangers, weary from travelling, nodded here and there; and pylades and his fair one sat in a corner. she had laid her head on his shoulder, and had gone to sleep; and he did not keep long awake. the younger cousin, sitting opposite to us by the slate, had crossed his arms before him, and slept with his face resting upon them. i sat in the window-corner, behind the table, and gretchen by me. we talked in a low voice: but at last sleep overcame her also; she leaned her head on my shoulder, and sank at once into a slumber. thus i now sat, the only one awake, in a most singular position, in which the kind brother of death soon put me also to rest. i went to sleep; and, when i awoke, it was already bright day. gretchen was standing before the mirror arranging her little cap: she was more lovely than ever, and, when i departed, cordially pressed my hands. i crept home by a roundabout way; for, on the side towards the little /stag-ditch/, my father had opened a sort of little peep-hole in the wall, not without the opposition of his neighbor. this side we avoided when we wanted not to be observed by him in coming home. my mother, whose mediation always came in well for us, had endeavored to palliate my absence in the morning at breakfast, by the supposition that i had gone out early; and i experienced no disagreeable effects from this innocent night. taken as a whole, this infinitely various world which surrounded me produced upon me but a very simple impression. i had no interest but to mark closely the outside of the objects, no business but that with which i had been charged by my father and herr von königsthal, by which, indeed, i perceived the inner course of things. i had no liking but for gretchen, and no other view than to see and take in every thing properly, that i might be able to repeat it with her, and explain it to her. often when a train was going by, i described it half aloud to myself, to assure myself of all the particulars, and to be praised by my fair one for this attention and accuracy: the applause and acknowledgments of the others i regarded as a mere appendix. i was indeed presented to many exalted and distinguished persons; but partly, no one had time to trouble himself about others, and partly, older people do not know at once how they should converse with a young man and try him. i, on my side, was likewise not particularly skilful in adapting myself to people. i generally won their favor, but not their approbation. whatever occupied me was completely present to me, but i did not ask whether it might be also suitable to others. i was mostly too lively or too quiet, and appeared either importunate or sullen, just as persons attracted or repelled me; and thus i was considered to be indeed full of promise, but at the same time was declared eccentric. the coronation-day dawned at last on the d of april, : the weather was favorable, and everybody was in motion. i, with several of my relations and friends, had been provided with a good place in one of the upper stories of the römer itself, where we might completely survey the whole. we betook ourselves to the spot very early in the morning, and from above, as in a bird's-eye view, contemplated the arrangements which we had inspected more closely the day before. there was the newly erected fountain, with two large tubs on the left and right, into which the double-eagle on the post was to pour from its two beaks white wine on this side, and red wine on that. there, gathered into a heap, lay the oats: here stood the large wooden hut, in which we had several days since seen the whole fat ox roasted and basted on a huge spit before a charcoal fire. all the avenues leading out from the römer, and from other streets back to the römer, were secured on both sides by barriers and guards. the great square was gradually filled; and the waving and pressure grew every moment stronger and more in motion, as the multitude always, if possible, endeavored to reach the spot where some new scene arose, and something particular was announced. all this time there reigned a tolerable stillness; and, when the alarm- bells were sounded, all the people seemed struck with terror and amazement. what first attracted the attention of all who could overlook the square from above, was the train in which the lords of aix and nuremberg brought the crown-jewels to the cathedral. these, as palladia, had been assigned the first place in the carriage; and the deputies sat before them on the back-seat with becoming reverence. now the three electors betake themselves to the cathedral. after the presentation of the insignia to the elector of mentz, the crown and sword are immediately carried to the imperial quarters. the further arrangements and manifold ceremonies occupied, in the interim, the chief persons, as well as the spectators, in the church, as we other well-informed persons could well imagine. in the mean time the ambassadors drove before our eyes up to the römer, from which the canopy is carried by the under-officers into the imperial quarters. the hereditary marshal, count von pappenheim, instantly mounts his horse: he was a very handsome, slender gentleman, whom the spanish costume, the rich doublet, the gold mantle, the high, feathered hat, and the loose, flying hair, became very well. he puts himself in motion; and, amid the sound of all the bells, the ambassadors follow him on horseback to the quarters of the emperor in still greater magnificence than on the day of election. one would have liked to be there too; as indeed, on this day, it would hare been altogether desirable to multiply one's self. however, we told each other what was going on there. now the emperor is putting on his domestic robes, we said, a new dress, made after the old carolingian pattern. the hereditary officers receive the insignia, and with them get on horseback. the emperor in his robes, the roman king in the spanish habit, immediately mount their steeds; and, while this is done, the endless procession which precedes them has already announced them. the eye was already wearied by the multitude of richly dressed attendants and magistrates, and by the nobility, who, in stately fashion, were moving along; but when the electoral envoys, the hereditary officers, and at last, under the richly embroidered canopy, borne by twelve /schöffen/ and senators, the emperor, in romantic costume, and to the left, a little behind him, in the spanish dress, his son, slowly floated along on magnificently adorned horses, the eye was no more sufficient for the sight. one would have liked to fix the scene, but for a moment, by a magic charm; but the glory passed on without stopping: and the space that was scarcely quitted was immediately filled again by the crowd, which poured in like billows. but now a new pressure ensued; for another approach from the market to the römer gate had to be opened, and a road of planks to be bridged over it, on which the train returning from the cathedral was to walk. what passed within the cathedral, the endless ceremonies which precede and accompany the anointing, the crowning, the dubbing of knighthood,-- all this we were glad to hear told afterwards by those who had sacrificed much else to be present in the church. the rest of us, in the interim, partook of a frugal repast; for in this festal day we had to be contented with cold meat. but, on the other hand, the best and oldest wine had been brought out of all the family cellars; so that, in this respect at least, we celebrated the ancient festival in ancient style. in the square, the sight most worth seeing was now the bridge, which had been finished, and covered with orange and white cloth; and we who had stared at the emperor, first in his carriage and then on horseback, were now to admire him walking on foot. singularly enough, the last pleased us the most; for we thought that in this way he exhibited himself both in the most natural and in the most dignified manner. older persons, who were present at the coronation of francis the first, related that maria theresa, beautiful beyond measure, had looked on this solemnity from a balcony window of the frauenstein house, close to the römer. as her consort returned from the cathedral in his strange costume, and seemed to her, so to speak, like a ghost of charlemagne, he had, as if in jest, raised both his hands, and shown her the imperial globe, the sceptre, and the curious gloves, at which she had broken out into immoderate laughter, which served for the great delight and edification of the crowd, which was thus honored with a sight of the good and natural matrimonial understanding between the most exalted couple of christendom. but when the empress, to greet her consort, waved her handkerchief, and even shouted a loud /vivat/ to him, the enthusiasm and exultation of the people was raised to the highest, so that there was no end to the cheers of joy. now the sound of bells, and the van of the long train which gently made its way over the many-colored bridge, announced that all was done. the attention was greater than ever, and the procession more distinct than before, particularly for us, since it now came directly up to us. we saw both, and the whole of the square, which was thronged with people, almost as if on a ground-plan. only at the end the magnificence was too much crowded: for the envoys; the hereditary officers; the emperor and king, under the canopy (/baldachin/); the three spiritual electors, who immediately followed; the /schöffen/ and senators, dressed in black; the gold-embroidered canopy (/himmel/),--all seemed only one mass, which, moved by a single will, splendidly harmonious, and thus stepping from the temple amid the sound of the bells, beamed towards us as something holy. a politico-religious ceremony possesses an infinite charm. we behold earthly majesty before our eyes, surrounded by all the symbols of its power; but, while it bends before that of heaven, it brings to our minds the communion of both. for even the individual can only prove his relationship with the deity by subjecting himself and adoring. the rejoicings which resounded from the market-place now spread likewise over the great square; and a boisterous /vivat/ burst forth from thousands upon thousands of throats, and doubtless from as many hearts. for this grand festival was to be the pledge of a lasting peace, which indeed for many a long year actually blessed germany. several days before, it had been made known by public proclamation, that neither the bridge nor the eagle over the fountain was to be exposed to the people, and they were therefore not, as at other times, to be touched. this was done to prevent the mischief inevitable with such a rush of persons. but, in order to sacrifice in some degree to the genius of the mob, persons expressly appointed went behind the procession, loosened the cloth from the bridge, wound it up like a flag, and threw it into the air. this gave rise to no disaster, but to a laughable mishap; for the cloth unrolled itself in the air, and, as it fell, covered a larger or smaller number of persons. those now who took hold of the ends and drew them towards them, pulled all those in the middle to the ground, enveloped them and teased them till they tore or cut themselves through; and everybody, in his own way, had borne off a corner of the stuff made sacred by the footsteps of majesty. i did not long contemplate this rough sport, but hastened from my high position through all sorts of little steps and passages, down to the great römer-stairs, where the distinguished and majestic mass, which had been stared at from the distance, was to ascend in its undulating course. the crowd was not great, because the entrances to the city-hall were well garrisoned; and i fortunately reached at once the iron balustrades above. now the chief personages ascended past me, while their followers remained behind in the lower arched passages; and i could observe them on the thrice-broken stairs from all sides, and at last quite close. finally both their majesties came up. father and son were altogether dressed like menaechmi. the emperor's domestic robes, of purple-colored silk, richly adorned with pearls and stones, as well as his crown, sceptre, and imperial orb, struck the eye with good effect. for all in them was new, and the imitation of the antique was tasteful. he moved, too, quite easily in his attire; and his true-hearted, dignified face, indicated at once the emperor and the father. the young king, on the contrary, in his monstrous articles of dress, with the crown-jewels of charlemagne, dragged himself along as if he had been in a disguise; so that he himself, looking at his father from time to time, could not refrain from laughing. the crown, which it had been necessary to line a great deal, stood out from his head like an overhanging roof. the dalmatica, the stole, well as they had been fitted and taken in by sewing, presented by no means an advantageous appearance. the sceptre and imperial orb excited some admiration; but one would, for the sake of a more princely effect, rather have seen a strong form, suited to the dress, invested and adorned with it. scarcely were the gates of the great hall closed behind these figures, than i hurried to my former place, which, being already occupied by others, i only regained with some trouble. it was precisely at the right time that i again took possession of my window, for the most remarkable part of all that was to be seen in public was just about to take place. all the people had turned towards the römer; and a reiterated shout of /vivat/ gave us to understand that the emperor and king, in their vestments, were showing themselves to the populace from the balcony of the great hall. but they were not alone to serve as a spectacle, since another strange spectacle occurred before their eyes. first of all, the handsome, slender hereditary marshal flung himself upon his steed: he had laid aside his sword; in his right hand he held a silver-handled vessel, and a tin spatula in his left. he rode within the barriers to the great heap of oats, sprang in, filled the vessel to overflow, smoothed it off, and carried it back again with great dignity. the imperial stable was now provided for. the hereditary chamberlain then rode likewise to the spot, and brought back a basin with ewer and towel. but more entertaining for the spectators was the hereditary carver, who came to fetch a piece of the roasted ox. he also rode, with a silver dish, through the barriers, to the large wooden kitchen, and came forth again with his portion covered, that he might go back to the römer. now it was the turn of the hereditary cup- bearer, who rode to the fountain and fetched wine. thus now was the imperial table furnished; and every eye waited upon the hereditary treasurer, who was to throw about the money. he, too, mounted a fine steed, to the sides of whose saddle, instead of holsters, a couple of splendid bags, embroidered with the arms of the palatinate, were suspended. scarcely had he put himself in motion than he plunged his hands into these pockets, and generously scattered, right and left, gold and silver coins, which, on every occasion, glittered merrily in the air like metallic rain. a thousand hands waved instantly in the air to catch the gifts; but hardly had the coins fallen when the crowd tumbled over each other on the ground, and struggled violently for the pieces which might have reached the earth. as this agitation was constantly repeated on both sides as the giver rode forwards, it afforded the spectators a very diverting sight. it was most lively at the close, when he threw out the bags themselves, and everybody tried to catch this highest prize. their majesties had retired from the balcony; and another offering was to be made to the mob, who, on such occasions, would rather steal the gifts than receive them tranquilly and gratefully. the custom prevailed, in more rude and uncouth times, of giving up to the people on the spot the oats, as soon as the hereditary marshal had taken away his share; the fountain and the kitchen, after the cup-bearer and the carver had performed their offices. but this time, to guard against all mischief, order and moderation were preserved as far as possible. but the old malicious jokes, that when one filled a sack with oats another cut a hole in it, with sallies of the kind, were revived. about the roasted ox, a more serious battle was, as usual, waged on this occasion. this could only be contested /en masse/. two guilds, the butchers and the wine-porters, had, according to ancient custom, again stationed themselves so that the monstrous roast must fall to one of the two. the butchers believed that they had the best right to an ox which they provided entire for the kitchen: the wine-porters, on the other hand, laid claim because the kitchen was built near the abode of their guild, and because they had gained the victory the last time, the horns of the captured steer still projecting from the latticed gable-window of their guild and meeting-house as a sign of victory. both these companies had very strong and able members; but which of them conquered this time, i no longer remember. but, as a festival of this kind must always close with something dangerous and frightful, it was really a terrible moment when the wooden kitchen itself was made a prize. the roof of it swarmed instantly with men, no one knowing how they got there: the boards were torn loose, and pitched down; so that one could not help supposing, particularly at a distance, that each would kill a few of those pressing to the spot. in a trice the hut was unroofed; and single individuals hung to the beams and rafters, in order to pull them also out of their joinings: nay, many floated above upon the posts which had been already sawn off below; and the whole skeleton, moving backwards and forwards, threatened to fall in. sensitive persons turned their eyes away, and everybody expected a great calamity; but we did not hear of any mischief: and the whole affair, though impetuous and violent, had passed off happily. everybody knew now that the emperor and king would return from the cabinet, whither they had retired from the balcony, and feast in the great hall of the romer. we had been able to admire the arrangements made for it, the day before; and my most anxious wish was, if possible, to look in to-day. i repaired, therefore, by the usual path, to the great staircase, which stands directly opposite the door of the hall. here i gazed at the distinguished personages who this day acted as the servants of the head of the empire. forty-four counts, all splendidly dressed, passed me, carrying the dishes from the kitchen; so that the contrast between their dignity and their occupation might well be bewildering to a boy. the crowd was not great, but, considering the little space, sufficiently perceptible. the hall-door was guarded, while those who were authorized went frequently in and out. i saw one of the palatine domestic officials, whom i asked whether he could not take me in with him. he did not deliberate long, but gave me one of the silver vessels he just then bore, which he could do so much the more, as i was neatly clad; and thus i reached the sanctuary. the palatine buffet stood to the left, directly by the door; and with some steps i placed myself on the elevation of it, behind the barriers. at the other end of the hall, immediately by the windows, raised on the steps of the throne, and under canopies, sat the emperor and king in their robes; but the crown and sceptre lay at some distance behind them on gold cushions. the three spiritual electors, their buffets behind them, had taken their places on single elevations; the elector of mentz opposite their majesties, the elector of treves at the right, and the elector of cologne at the left. this upper part of the hall was imposing and cheerful to behold, and excited the remark that the spiritual power likes to keep as long as possible with the ruler. on the contrary, the buffets and tables of all the temporal electors, which were, indeed, magnificently ornamented, but without occupants, made one think of the misunderstanding which had gradually arisen for centuries between them and the head of the empire. their ambassadors had already withdrawn to eat in a side-chamber; and if the greater part of the hall assumed a sort of spectral appearance, by so many invisible guests being so magnificently attended, a large unfurnished table in the middle was still more sad to look upon; for there, also, many covers stood empty, because all those who had certainly a right to sit there had, for appearance' sake, kept away, that on the greatest day of honor they might not renounce any of their honor, if, indeed, they were then to be found in the city. neither my years nor the mass of present objects allowed me to make many reflections. i strove to see all as much as possible; and when the dessert was brought in, and the ambassadors re-entered to pay their court, i sought the open air, and contrived to refresh myself with good friends in the neighborhood, after a day's half-fasting, and to prepare for the illumination in the evening. this brilliant night i purposed celebrating in a right hearty way; for i had agreed with gretchen, and pylades and his mistress, that we should meet somewhere at nightfall. the city was already resplendent at every end and corner when i met my beloved. i offered gretchen my arm: we went from one quarter to another, and found ourselves very happy in each other's society. the cousins at first were also of our party, but were afterwards lost in the multitude of people. before the houses of some of the ambassadors, where magnificent illuminations were exhibited,--those of the elector-palatine were pre-eminently distinguished,--it was as clear as day. lest i should be recognized, i had disguised myself to a certain extent; and gretchen did not find it amiss. we admired the various brilliant representations and the fairy-like structures of flame by which each ambassador strove to outshine the others. but prince esterhazy's arrangements surpassed all the rest. our little company were enraptured, both with the invention and the execution; and we were just about to enjoy this in detail, when the cousins again met us, and spoke to us of the glorious illumination with which the brandenburg ambassador had adorned his quarters. we were not displeased at taking the long way from the ross-markt (horse-market) to the saalhof, but found that we had been vlllanously hoaxed. the saalhof is, towards the main, a regular and handsome structure; but the part in the direction of the city is exceedingly old, irregular, and unsightly. small windows, agreeing neither in form nor size, neither in a line nor placed at equal distances; gates and doors arranged without symmetry; a ground-floor mostly turned into shops,--it forms a confused outside, which is never observed by any one. now, here this accidental, irregular, unconnected architecture had been followed; and every window, every door, every opening, was surrounded by lamps,--as indeed can be done with a well-built house; but here the most wretched and ill-formed of all facades was thus quite incredibly placed in the clearest light. did one amuse one's self with this as with the jests of the /pagliasso/, [footnote: a sort of buffoon.] though not without scruple, since everybody must recognize something intentional in it,-- just as people had before glossed on the previous external deportment of von plotho, so much prized in other respects, and, when once inclined towards him, had admired him as a wag, who, like his king, would place himself above all ceremonies,--one nevertheless gladly returned to the fairy kingdom of esterhazy. this eminent envoy, to honor the day, had quite passed over his own unfavorably situated quarters, and in their stead had caused the great esplanade of linden-trees in the horse-market to be decorated in the front with a portal illuminated with colors, and at the back with a still more magnificent prospect. the entire enclosure was marked by lamps. between the trees, stood pyramids and spheres of light upon transparent pedestals; from one tree to another were stretched glittering garlands, on which floated suspended lights. in several places bread and sausages were distributed among the people, and there was no want of wine. here now, four abreast, we walked very comfortably up and down; and i, by gretchen's side, fancied that i really wandered in those happy elysian fields where they pluck from the trees crystal cups that immediately fill themselves with the wine desired, and shake down fruits that change into every dish at will. at last we also felt such a necessity; and, conducted by pylades, we found a neat, well-arranged eating-house. when we encountered no more guests, since everybody was going about the streets, we were all the better pleased, and passed the greatest part of the night most happily and cheerfully, in the feeling of friendship, love, and attachment. when i had accompanied gretchen as far as her door, she kissed me on the forehead. it was the first and last time that she granted me this favor; for, alas! i was not to see her again. the next morning, while i was yet in bed, my mother entered, in trouble and anxiety. it was easy to see when she was at all distressed. "get up," she said, "and prepare yourself for something unpleasant. it has come out that you frequent very bad company, and have involved yourself in very dangerous and bad affairs. your father is beside himself; and we have only been able to get thus much from him, that he will investigate the affair by means of a third party. remain in your chamber, and await what may happen. councillor schneider will come to you: he has the commission both from your father and from the authorities; for the matter is already prosecuted, and may take a very bad turn." i saw that they took the affair for much worse than it was; yet i felt myself not a little disquieted, even if only the actual state of things should be detected. my old "messiah"-loving friend finally entered, with the tears standing in his eyes: he took me by the arm, and said, "i am heartily sorry to come to you on such an affair. i could not have supposed that you could go astray so far. but what will not wicked companions and bad example do! thus can a young, inexperienced man be led step by step into crime!"--"i am conscious of no crime," i replied, "and as little of having frequented bad company."--"the question now is not one of defense," said he, interrupting me, "but of investigation, and on your part of an upright confession."--"what do you want to know?" retorted i. he seated himself, drew out a paper, and began to question me: "have you not recommended n. n. to your grandfather as a candidate for the ... place?" i answered "yes."--"where did you become acquainted with him?"--"in my walks."--"in what company?" i hesitated, for i would not willingly betray my friends. "silence will not do now." he continued, "for all is sufficiently known."--"what is known, then?" said i. "that this man has been introduced to you by others like him--in fact, by. ..." here he named three persons whom i had never seen nor known, which i immediately explained to the questioner. "you pretend," he resumed, "not to know these men, and have yet had frequent meetings with them."--"not in the least," i replied; "for, as i have said, except the first, i do not know one of them, and even him i have never seen in a house."--"have you not often been in ... street?"--"never," i replied. this was not entirely conformable to the truth. i had once accompanied pylades to his sweetheart, who lived in that street; but we had entered by the back-door, and remained in the summer-house. i therefore supposed that i might permit myself the subterfuge that i had not been in the street itself. the good man put more questions, all of which i could answer with a denial; for of all that he wished to learn i knew nothing. at last he seemed to become vexed, and said, "you repay my confidence and good will very badly: i come to save you. you cannot deny that you have composed letters for these people themselves or for their accomplices, have furnished them writings, and have thus been accessory to their evil acts; for the question is of nothing less than of forged papers, false wills, counterfeit bonds, and things of the sort. i have come, not only as a friend of the family, i come in the name and by order of the magistrates, who, in consideration of your connections and youth, would spare you and some other young persons, who, like you, have been lured into the net." i had thought it strange, that, among the persons he named, none of those with whom i had been intimate were found. the circumstances touched, without agreeing; and i could still hope to save my young friends. but the good man grew more and more urgent. i could not deny that i had come home late many nights, that i had contrived to have a house-key made, that i had been seen at public places more than once with persons of low rank and suspicious looks, that some girls were mixed up in the affair,--in short, every thing seemed to be discovered but the names. this gave me courage to persist steadfastly in my silence. "do not," said my excellent friend, "let me go away from you; the affair admits of no delay; immediately after me another will come, who will not grant you so much scope. do not make the matter, which is bad enough, worse by your obstinacy." i represented very vividly to myself the good cousins, and particularly gretchen: i saw them arrested, tried, punished, disgraced; and then it went through my soul like a flash of lightning, that the cousins, though they always observed integrity towards me, might have engaged in such bad affairs, at least the oldest, who never quite pleased me, who came home later and later, and had little to tell of a cheerful sort. still i kept back my confession. "personally," said i, "i am conscious of nothing evil, and can rest satisfied on that side; but it is not impossible that those with whom i have associated may have been guilty of some daring or illegal act. they may be sought, found, convicted, punished: i have hitherto nothing to reproach myself with, and will not do any wrong to those who have behaved well and kindly to me." he did not let me finish, but exclaimed, with some agitation, "yes, they will be found out. these villains met in three houses. (he named the streets, he pointed out the houses, and, unfortunately, among them was the one i used to frequent.) the first nest is already broken up, and at this moment so are the two others. in a few hours the whole will be clear. avoid, by a frank confession, a judicial inquiry, a confrontation, and all other disagreeable matters." the house was known and marked. now i deemed silence useless; nay, considering the innocence of our meetings, i could hope to be still more useful to them than to myself. "sit down!" i exclaimed, fetching him back from the door: "i will tell all, and at once lighten your heart and mine; only one thing i ask,--henceforth let there be no doubt of my veracity." i soon told my friend the whole progress of the affair, and was at first calm and collected; but the more i brought to mind and pictured to myself the persons, objects, and events, so many innocent pleasures and charming enjoyments, and was forced to depose as before a criminal court, the more did the most painful feeling increase, so that at last i burst forth in tears, and gave myself up to unrestrained passion. the family friend, who hoped that now the real secret was coming to light (for he regarded my distress as a symptom that i was on the point of confessing with repugnance something monstrous), sought to pacify me; as with him the discovery was the all-important matter. in this he only partly succeeded; but so far, however, that i could eke out my story to the end. though satisfied of the innocence of the proceedings, he was still doubtful to some extent, and put further questions to me, which excited me afresh, and transported me with pain and rage. i asserted, finally, that i had nothing more to say, and well knew that i need fear nothing, for i was innocent, of a good family, and well reputed; but that they might be just as guiltless without having it recognized, or being otherwise favored. i declared at the same time, that if they were not spared like myself, that if their follies were not regarded with indulgence, and their faults pardoned, that if any thing in the least harsh or unjust happened to them, i would do some violence to myself, and no one should prevent me. in this, too, my friend tried to pacify me; but i did not trust him, and was, when he quitted me at last, in a most terrible state. i now reproached myself for having told the affair, and brought all the positions to light. i foresaw that our childlike actions, our youthful inclinations and confidences, would be quite differently interpreted, and that i might perhaps involve the excellent pylades in the matter, and render him very unhappy. all these images pressed vividly one after the other before my soul, sharpened and spurred my distress, so that i did not know what to do for sorrow. i cast myself at full length upon the floor, and moistened it with my tears. i know not how long i may have lain, when my sister entered, was frightened at my gestures, and did all that she could to comfort me. she told me that a person connected with the magistracy had waited below with my father for the return of the family friend, and that, after they had been closeted together for some time, both the gentlemen had departed, had talked to each other with apparent satisfaction, and had even laughed. she believed that she had heard the words, "it is all right: the affair is of no consequence."--"indeed!" i broke out, "the affair is of no consequence for me,--for us: for i have committed no crime; and, if i had, they would contrive to help me through: but the others, the others," i cried, "who will stand by them?" my sister tried to comfort me by circumstantially arguing that if those of higher rank were to be saved, a veil must also be cast over the faults of the more lowly. all this was of no avail. she had scarcely left than i again abandoned myself to my grief, and ever recalled alternately the images, both of my affection and passion, and of the present and possible misfortune. i repeated to myself tale after tale, saw only unhappiness following unhappiness, and did not fail in particular to make gretchen and myself truly wretched. the family friend had ordered me to remain in my room, and have nothing to do with any one but the family. this was just what i wanted, for i found myself best alone. my mother and sister came to see me from time to time, and did not fail to assist me vigorously with all sorts of good consolation; nay, even on the second day they came in the name of my father, who was now better informed, to offer me a perfect amnesty, which indeed i gratefully accepted: but the proposal that i should go out with him and look at the insignia of the empire, which were now exposed to the curious, i stubbornly rejected; and i asserted that i wanted to know nothing, either of the world or of the roman empire, till i was informed how that distressing affair, which for me could have no further consequences, had turned out for my poor acquaintance. they had nothing to say on this head, and left me alone. yet the next day some further attempts were made to get me out of the house, and excite in me a sympathy for the public ceremonies. in vain! neither the great galaday, nor what happened on the occasion of so many elevations of rank, nor the public table of the emperor and king,--in short, nothing could move me. the elector of the palatinate might come and wait on both their majesties; these might visit the electors; the last electoral sitting might be attended for the despatch of business in arrear, and the renewal of the electoral union,--nothing could call me forth from my passionate solitude. i let the bells ring for the rejoicings, the emperor repair to the capuchin church, the electors and emperor depart, without on that account moving one step from my chamber. the final cannonading, immoderate as it might be, did not arouse me; and as the smoke of the powder dispersed, and the sound died away, so had all this glory vanished from my soul. i now experienced no satisfaction except in ruminating on my misery, and in a thousand-fold imaginary multiplication of it. my whole inventive faculty, my poetry and rhetoric, had pitched on this diseased spot, and threatened, precisely by means of this vitality, to involve body and soul into an incurable disorder. in this melancholy condition nothing more seemed to me worth a desire, nothing worth a wish. an infinite yearning, indeed, seized me at times to know how it had gone with my poor friends and my beloved, what had been the result of a stricter scrutiny, how far they were implicated in those crimes, or had been found guiltless. this also i circumstantially painted to myself in the most various ways, and did not fail to hold them as innocent and truly unfortunate. sometimes i longed to see myself freed from this uncertainty, and wrote vehemently threatening letters to the family friend, insisting that he should not withhold from me the further progress of the affair. sometimes i tore them up again, from the fear of learning my unhappiness quite distinctly, and of losing the principal consolation with which hitherto i had alternately tormented and supported myself. thus i passed both day and night in great disquiet, in raving and lassitude; so that i felt happy at last when a bodily illness seized me with considerable violence, when they had to call in the help of a physician, and think of every way to quiet me. they supposed that they could do it generally by the sacred assurance that all who were more or less involved in the guilt had been treated with the greatest forbearance; that my nearest friends, being as good as innocent, had been dismissed with a slight reprimand; and that gretchen had retired from the city, and had returned to her own home. they lingered the most over this last point, and i did not take it in the best part; for i could discover in it, not a voluntary departure, but only a shameful banishment. my bodily and mental condition was not improved by this: my distress now only augmented; and i had time enough to torment myself by picturing the strangest romance of sad events, and an inevitably tragical catastrophe. part the second. of what one wishes in youth, when old he has in abundance. sixth book. thus i felt urged alternately to promote and to retard my recovery; and a certain secret chagrin was now added to my other sensations, for i plainly perceived that i was watched, that they were loath to hand me any sealed paper without taking notice what effect it produced, whether i kept it secret, whether i laid it down open and the like. i therefore conjectured that pylades, or one of the cousins, or even gretchen herself, might have attempted to write to me, either to give or to obtain information. in addition to my sorrow, i was now more cross than hitherto, and had again fresh opportunities to exercise my conjectures, and to mislead myself into the strangest combinations. it was not long before they gave me a special overseer. fortunately it was a man whom i loved and valued. he had held the place of tutor in the family of one of our friends, and his former pupil had gone alone to the university. he often visited me in my sad condition; and they at last found nothing more natural than to give him a chamber next to mine, as he was then to provide me with employment, pacify me, and, as i was well aware, keep his eye on me. still, as i esteemed him from my heart, and had already confided many things to him, though not my affection for gretchen, i determined so much the more to be perfectly candid and straightforward with him; as it was intolerable to me to live in daily intercourse with any one, and at the same time to stand on an uncertain, constrained footing with him. it was not long, then, before i spoke to him about the matter, refreshed myself by the relation and repetition of the minutest circumstances of my past happiness, and thus gained so much, that he, like a sensible man, saw it would be better to make me acquainted with the issue of the story, and that, too, in its details and particulars, so that i might be clear as to the whole, and that, with earnestness and zeal, i might be persuaded of the necessity of composing myself, throwing the past behind me, and beginning a new life. first he confided to me who the other young people of quality were who had allowed themselves to be seduced, at the outset, into daring hoaxes, then into sportive breaches of police, afterwards into frolicsome impositions on others, and other such dangerous matters. thus actually had arisen a little conspiracy, which unprincipled men had joined, who, by forging papers and counterfeiting signatures, had perpetrated many criminal acts, and had still more criminal matters in preparation. the cousins, for whom i at last impatiently inquired, had been found to be quite innocent, only very generally acquainted with those others, and not at all implicated with them. my client, owing to my recommendation of whom i had been tracked, was one of the worst, and had sued for that office chiefly that he might undertake or conceal certain villanies. after all this, i could at last contain myself no longer, and asked what had become of gretchen, for whom i, once for all, confessed the strongest attachment. my friend shook his head and smiled. "make yourself easy," replied he: "this girl has passed her examination very well, and has borne off honorable testimony to that effect. they could discover nothing in her but what was good and amiable: she even won the favor of those who questioned her, and could not refuse her desire of removing from the city. even what she has confessed regarding you, my friend, does her honor: i have read her deposition in the secret reports myself, and seen her signature."--"the signature!" exclaimed i, "which makes me so happy and so miserable. what has she confessed, then? what has she signed?" my friend delayed answering, but the cheerfulness of his face showed me that he concealed nothing dangerous." if you must know, then," replied he at last, "when she was asked about you, and her intercourse with you, she said quite frankly, 'i cannot deny that i have seen him often and with pleasure; but i have always treated him as a child, and my affection for him was truly that of a sister. in many cases i have given him good advice; and, instead of instigating him to any equivocal action, i have hindered him from taking part in wanton tricks, which might have brought him into trouble.'" my friend still went on making gretchen speak like a governess; but i had already for some time ceased to listen to him, for i was terribly affronted that she had set me down in the reports as a child, and believed myself at once cured of all passion for her. i even hastily assured my friend that all was now over. i also spoke no more of her, named her no more: but i could not leave off the bad habit of thinking about her, and of recalling her form, her air, her demeanor; though now, in fact, all appeared to me in quite another light. i felt it intolerable that a girl, at the most only a couple of years older than me, should regard me as a child; while i conceived i passed with her for a very sensible and clever youth. her cold and repelling manner, which had before so charmed me, now seemed to me quite repugnant: the familiarities which she had allowed herself to take with me, but had not permitted me to return, were altogether odious. yet all would have been well enough, if by signing that poetical love-letter, in which she had confessed a formal attachment to me, she had not given me a right to regard her as a sly and selfish coquette. her masquerading it at the milliner's, too, no longer seemed to me so innocent; and i turned these annoying reflections over and over within myself until i had entirely stripped her of all her amiable qualities. my judgment was convinced, and i thought i must cast her away; but her image!--her image gave me the lie as often as it again hovered before me, which indeed happened often enough. nevertheless, this arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my heart; and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of youth could be brought to one's aid? i really put on the man; and the first thing instantly laid aside was the weeping and raving, which i now regarded as childish in the highest degree. a great stride for the better! for i had often, half the night through, given myself up to this grief with the greatest violence; so that at last, from my tears and sobbing, i came to such a point that i could scarcely swallow any longer; eating and drinking became painful to me; and my chest, which was so nearly concerned, seemed to suffer. the vexation i had constantly felt since the discovery made me banish every weakness. it seemed to me something frightful that i had sacrificed sleep, repose, and health for the sake of a girl who was pleased to consider me a babe, and to imagine herself, with respect to me, something very much like a nurse. these depressing reflections, as i was soon convinced, were only to be banished by activity; but of what was i to take hold? i had, indeed, much to make up for in many things, and to prepare myself, in more than one sense, for the university, which i was now to attend; but i relished and accomplished nothing. much appeared to me familiar and trivial: for grounding myself, in several respects, i found neither strength within nor opportunity without; and i therefore suffered myself to be moved by the taste of my good room-neighbor, to a study which was altogether new and strange to me, and which for a long time offered me a wide field of information and thought. for my friend began to make me acquainted with the secrets of philosophy. he had studied in jena, under daries, and, possessing a well-regulated mind, had acutely seized the relations of that doctrine, which he now sought to impart to me. but, unfortunately, these things would not hang together in such a fashion in my brain. i put questions, which he promised to answer afterwards: i made demands, which he promised to satisfy in future. but our most important difference was this: that i maintained a separate philosophy was not necessary, as the whole of it was already contained in religion and poetry. this he would by no means allow, but rather tried to prove to me that these must first be founded on philosophy; which i stubbornly denied, and, at every step in the progress of our discussions, found arguments for my opinion. for as in poetry a certain faith in the impossible, and as in religion a like faith in the inscrutable, must have a place, the philosophers appeared to me to be in a very false position who would demonstrate and explain both of them from their own field of vision. besides, it was very quickly proved, from the history of philosophy, that one always sought a ground different from that of the other, and that the sceptic, in the end, pronounced every thing groundless and useless. however, this very history of philosophy, which my friend was compelled to go over with me, because i could learn nothing from dogmatical discourse, amused me very much, but only on this account, that one doctrine or opinion seemed to me as good as another, so far, at least, as i was capable of penetrating into it. with the most ancient men and schools i was best pleased, because poetry, religion, and philosophy were completely combined into one; and i only maintained that first opinion of mine with the more animation, when the book of job and the song and proverbs of solomon, as well as the lays of orpheus and hesiod, seemed to bear valid witness in its favor. my friend had taken the smaller work of brucker as the foundation of his discourse; and, the farther we went on, the less i could make of it. i could not clearly see what the first greek philosophers would have. socrates i esteemed as an excellent, wise man, who in his life and death might well be compared with christ. his disciples, on the other hand, seemed to me to bear a strong resemblance to the apostles, who disagreed immediately after their master's death, when each manifestly recognized only a limited view as the right one. neither the keenness of aristotle nor the fulness of plato produced the least fruit in me. for the stoics, on the contrary, i had already conceived some affection, and even procured epictetus, whom i studied with much interest. my friend unwillingly let me have my way in this one-sidedness, from which he could not draw me; for, in spite of his varied studies, he did not know how to bring the leading question into a narrow compass. he need only have said to me that in life action is every thing, and that joy and sorrow come of themselves. however, youth should be allowed its own course: it does not stick to false maxims very long; life soon tears or charms it away again. the season had become fine: we often went together into the open air, and visited the places of amusement which surrounded the city in great numbers. but it was precisely here that matters went worse with me; for i still saw the ghosts of the cousins everywhere, and feared, now here, now there, to see one of them step forward. even the most indifferent glances of men annoyed me. i had lost that unconscious happiness of wandering about unknown and unblamed, and of thinking of no observer, even in the greatest crowds. now hypochondriacal fancies began to torment me, as if i attracted the attention of the people, as if their eyes were turned on my demeanor, to fix it on their memories, to scan and to find fault. i therefore drew my friend into the woods; and, while i shunned the monotonous firs, i sought those fine leafy groves, which do not indeed spread far in the district, but are yet of sufficient compass for a poor wounded heart to hide itself. in the remotest depth of the forest i sought out a solemn spot, where the oldest oaks and beeches formed a large, noble, shaded space. the ground was somewhat sloping, and made the worth of the old trunks only the more perceptible. round this open circle closed the densest thickets, from which the mossy rocks mightily and venerably peered forth, and made a rapid fall for a copious brook. scarcely had i dragged hither my friend, who would rather have been in the open country by the stream, among men, when he playfully assured me that i showed myself a true german. he related to me circumstantially, out of tacitus, how our ancestors found pleasure in the feelings which nature so provides for us, in such solitudes, with her inartificial architecture. he had not been long discoursing of this, when i exclaimed, "oh! why did not this precious spot lie in a deeper wilderness! why may we not train a hedge around it, to hallow and separate from the world both it and ourselves! surely there is no more beautiful adoration of the deity than that which needs no image, but which springs up in our bosom merely from the intercourse with nature!" what i then felt is still present to my mind: what i said i know not how to recall. thus much, however, is certain, that the undetermined, widely expanding feelings of youth and of uncultivated nations are alone adapted to the sublime, which, if it is to be excited in us through external objects, formless, or moulded into incomprehensible forms, must surround us with a greatness to which we are not equal. all men, more or less, have such a disposition, and seek to satisfy this noble want in various ways. but as the sublime is easily produced by twilight and night, when objects are blended, it is, on the other hand, scared away by the day, which separates and sunders every thing; and so must it also be destroyed by every increase of cultivation, if it be not fortunate enough to take refuge with the beautiful, and unite itself closely with it, whereby both become equally undying and indestructible. the brief moments of such enjoyments were still more shortened by my meditative friend: but, when i turned back into the world, it was altogether in vain that i sought, among the bright and barren objects around, again to arouse such feelings within me; nay, i could scarcely retain even the remembrance of them. my heart, however, was too far spoiled to be able to compose itself: it had loved, and the object was snatched away from it; it had lived, and life to it was embittered. a friend who makes it too perceptible that he designs to improve you, excites no feeling of comfort; while a woman who is forming you, while she seems to spoil you, is adored as a heavenly, joy-bringing being. but that form in which the idea of beauty manifested itself to me had vanished into distance; it often visited me under the shade of my oak- trees, but i could not hold it fast: and i felt a powerful impulse to seek something similar in the distance. i had imperceptibly accustomed, nay, compelled, my friend and overseer to leave me alone; for, even in my sacred grove, those undefined, gigantic feelings were not sufficient for me. the eye was, above all others, the organ by which i seized the world. i had, from childhood, lived among painters, and had accustomed myself to look at objects, as they did, with reference to art. now i was left to myself and to solitude, this gift, half natural, half acquired, made its appearance. wherever i looked, i saw a picture; and whatever struck me, whatever gave me delight, i wished to fix, and began, in the most awkward manner, to draw after nature. to this end i lacked nothing less than every thing; yet, though without any technical means, i obstinately persisted in trying to imitate the most magnificent things that offered themselves to my sight. thus, to be sure, i acquired the faculty of paying a great attention to objects; but i only seized them as a whole, so far as they produced an effect: and, little as nature had meant me for a descriptive poet, just as little would she grant me the capacity of a draughtsman for details. this, however, being the only way left me of uttering my thoughts, i stuck to it with so much stubbornness, nay, even with melancholy, that i always continued my labors the more zealously the less i saw they produced. but i will not deny that there was a certain mixture of roguery; for i had remarked, that if i chose for an irksome study a half-shaded old trunk, to the hugely curved roots of which clung well-lit fern, combined with twinkling maiden-hair, my friend, who knew from experience that i should not be disengaged in less than an hour, commonly resolved to seek, with his books, some other pleasant little spot. now nothing disturbed me in prosecuting my taste, which was so much the more active, as my paper was endeared to me by the circumstance that i had accustomed myself to see in it, not so much what stood upon it, as what i had been thinking of at any time and hour when i drew. thus plants and flowers of the commonest kind may form a charming diary for us, because nothing that calls back the remembrance of a happy moment can be insignificant; and even now it would be hard for me to destroy as worthless many things of the kind that have remained to me from different epochs, because they transport me immediately to those times which i like to remember, although not without melancholy. but, if such drawings may have had any thing of interest in themselves, they were indebted for this advantage to the sympathy and attention of my father. he, informed by my overseer that i had become gradually reconciled to my condition, and, in particular, had applied myself passionately to drawing from nature, was very well satisfied,--partly because he himself set a high value on drawing and painting, partly because gossip seekatz had once said to him, that it was a pity i was not destined for a painter. but here again the peculiarities of father and son came into conflict: for it was almost impossible for me to make use of a good, white, perfectly clean sheet of paper; gray old leaves, even if scribbled over on one side already, charmed me most, just as if my awkwardness had feared the touchstone of a white ground. nor were any of my drawings quite finished; and how should i have executed a whole, which indeed i saw with my eyes, but did not comprehend, and how an individual object, which i had neither skill nor patience to follow out? my father's mode of training me in this respect was really to be admired. he kindly asked for my attempts, and drew lines round every imperfect sketch. he wished, by this means, to compel me to completeness and fulness of detail. the irregular leaves he cut straight, and thus made the beginning of a collection, in which he wished, at some future time, to rejoice at the progress of his son. it was, therefore, by no means disagreeable to him when my wild, restless disposition sent me roving about the country: he rather seemed pleased when i brought back a parcel of drawings on which he could exercise his patience, and in some measure strengthen his hopes. they no longer said that i might relapse into my former attachments and connections: they left me by degrees perfect liberty. by accidental inducements and in accidental society i undertook many journeys to the mountain-range, which, from my childhood, had stood so distant and solemn before me. thus we visited homburg, kroneburg, ascended the feldberg, from which the prospect invited us still farther and farther into the distance. königstein, too, was not left unvisited; wiesbaden, schwalbach, with its environs, occupied us many days; we reached the rhine, which, from the heights, we had seen winding along far off. mentz astonished us, but could not chain a youthful mind which was running into the open country; we were delighted with the situation of biberich; and, contented and happy, we resumed our journey home. this whole tour, from which my father had promised himself many a drawing, might have been almost without fruit; for what taste, what talent, what experience, does it not require to seize an extensive landscape as a picture! i was again imperceptibly drawn into a narrow compass, from which i derived some profit; for i met no ruined castle, no piece of wall which pointed to antiquity, that i did not think an object worthy of my pencil, and imitate as well as i could. even the stone of drusus, on the ramparts of mentz, i copied at some risk, and with inconveniences which every one must experience who wishes to carry home with him some pictorial reminiscences of his travels. unfortunately i had again brought with me nothing but the most miserable common paper, and had clumsily crowded several objects into one sheet. but my paternal teacher was not perplexed at this: he cut the sheets apart; had the parts which belonged to each other put together by the bookbinder; surrounded the single leaves with lines; and thus actually compelled me to draw the outline of different mountains up to the margin, and to fill up the foreground with some weeds and stones. if his faithful endeavors could not increase my talent, nevertheless this mark of his love of order had upon me a secret influence, which afterwards manifested itself vigorously in more ways than one. from such rambling excursions, undertaken partly for pleasure, partly for art, and which could be performed in a short time, and often repeated, i was again drawn home, and that by a magnet which always acted upon me strongly: this was my sister. she, only a year younger than i, had lived the whole conscious period of my life with me, and was thus bound to me by the closest ties. to these natural causes was added a forcible motive, which proceeded from our domestic position: a father certainly affectionate and well-meaning, but grave, who, because he cherished within a very tender heart, externally, with incredible consistency, maintained a brazen sternness, that he might attain the end of giving his children the best education, and of building up, regulating, and preserving his well-founded house; a mother, on the other hand, as yet almost a child, who first grew up to consciousness with and in her two eldest children; these three, as they looked at the world with healthy eyes, capable of life, and desiring present enjoyment. this contradiction floating in the family increased with years. my father followed out his views unshaken and uninterrupted: the mother and children could not give up their feelings, their claims, their wishes. under these circumstances it was natural that brother and sister should attach themselves close to each other, and adhere to their mother, that they might singly snatch the pleasures forbidden as a whole. but since the hours of solitude and toil were very long compared with the moments of recreation and enjoyment, especially for my sister, who could never leave the house for so long a time as i could, the necessity she felt for entertaining herself with me was still sharpened by the sense of longing with which she accompanied me to a distance. and as, in our first years, playing and learning, growth and education, had been quite common to both of us, so that we might well have been taken for twins, so did this community, this confidence, remain during the development of our physical and moral powers. that interest of youth; that amazement at the awakening of sensual impulses which clothe themselves in mental forms; of mental necessities which clothe themselves in sensual images; all the reflections upon these, which obscure rather than enlighten us, as the fog covers over and does not illumine the vale from which it is about to rise; the many errors and aberrations springing therefrom,--all these the brother and sister shared and endured hand in hand, and were the less enlightened as to their strange condition, as the nearer they wished to approach each other, to clear up their minds, the more forcibly did the sacred awe of their close relationship keep them apart reluctantly do i mention, in a general way, what i undertook to set forth years ago, without being able to accomplish it. as i lost this beloved, incomprehensible being but too soon, i felt inducement enough to make her worth present to me: and thus arose in me the conception of a poetic whole, in which it might be possible to exhibit her individuality; but for this no other form could be devised than that of the richardsonian novels. only by the minutest detail, by endless particularities which bear vividly all the character of the whole, and, as they spring up from a wonderful depth, give some feeling of that depth,--only in such a manner would it have been in some degree possible to give a representation of this remarkable personality; for the spring can be apprehended only while it is flowing. but from this beautiful and pious design, as from so many others, the tumult of the world drew me away; and nothing now remains for me but to call up for a moment that blessed spirit, as if by the aid of a magic mirror. she was tall, well and delicately formed, and had something naturally dignified in her demeanor, which melted away into a pleasing mildness. the lineaments of her face, neither striking nor beautiful, indicated a character which was not nor ever could be in union with itself. her eyes were not the finest i have ever seen, but the deepest, behind which you expected the most; and when they expressed any affection, any love, their brilliancy was unequalled. and yet, properly speaking, this expression was not tender, like that which comes from the heart, and at the same time carries with it something of longing and desire: this expression came from the soul; it was full and rich; it seemed as if it would only give, without needing to receive. but what in a manner quite peculiar disfigured her face, so that she would often appear positively ugly, was the fashion of those times, which not only bared the forehead, but, either accidentally or on purpose, did every thing apparently or really to enlarge it. now, as she had the most feminine, most perfect arched forehead, and, moreover, a pair of strong black eyebrows, and prominent eyes, these circumstances occasioned a contrast, which, if it did not repel every stranger at the first glance, at least did not attract him. she early felt it; and this feeling became constantly the more painful to her, the farther she advanced into the years when both sexes find an innocent pleasure in being mutually agreeable. to nobody can his own form be repugnant; the ugliest, as well as the most beautiful, has a right to enjoy his own presence: and as favor beautifies, and every one regards himself in the looking-glass with favor, it may be asserted that every one must see himself with complacency, even if he would struggle against the feeling. yet my sister had such a decided foundation of good sense, that she could not possibly be blind and silly in this respect; on the contrary, she perhaps knew more clearly than she ought, that she stood far behind her female playfellows in external beauty, without feeling consoled by the fact that she infinitely surpassed them in internal advantages. if a woman can find compensation for the want of beauty, she richly found it in the unbounded confidence, the regard and love, which all her female friends bore to her; whether they were older or younger, all cherished the same sentiments. a very pleasant society had collected around her: young men were not wanting who knew how to insinuate themselves; nearly every girl found an admirer; she alone had remained without a partner. while, indeed, her exterior was in some measure repulsive, the mind that gleamed through it was also more repelling than attractive; for the presence of any excellence throws others back upon themselves. she felt this sensibly: she did not conceal it from me, and her love was directed to me with so much the greater force. the case was singular enough. as confidants to whom one reveals a love-affair actually by genuine sympathy become lovers also, nay, grow into rivals, and at last, perchance, transfer the passion to themselves; so it was with us two: for, when my connection with gretchen was torn asunder, my sister consoled me the more earnestly, because she secretly felt the satisfaction of having gotten rid of a rival; and i, too, could not but feel a quiet, half-mischievous pleasure, when she did me the justice to assure me that i was the only one who truly loved, understood, and esteemed her. if now, from time to time, my grief for the loss of gretchen revived, and i suddenly began to weep, to lament, and to act in a disorderly manner, my despair for my lost one awakened in her likewise a similar despairing impatience as to the never-possessings, the failures, and miscarriages of such youthful attachments, that we both thought ourselves infinitely unhappy, and the more so, as, in this singular case, the confidants could not change themselves into lovers. fortunately, however, the capricious god of love, who needlessly does so much mischief, here for once interfered beneficially, to extricate us out of all perplexity. i had much intercourse with a young englishman who was educated in pfeil's boarding-school. he could give a good account of his own language: i practised it with him, and thus learned much concerning his country and people. he went in and out of our house long enough without my remarking in him a liking for my sister; yet he may have been nourishing it in secret, even to passion, for at last it declared itself unexpectedly and at once. she knew him, she esteemed him, and he deserved it. she had often made the third at our english conversations: we had both tried to catch from his mouth the irregularities of the english pronunciation, and thereby accustomed ourselves, not only to the peculiarities of its accent and sound, but even to what was most peculiar in the personal qualities of our teacher; so that at last it sounded strangely enough when we all seemed to speak as if out of one mouth. the pains he took to learn as much german from us in the like manner were to no purpose; and i think i have remarked that even this little love-affair was also, both orally and in writing, carried on in the english language. both the young persons were very well suited to each other: he was tall and well built, as she was, only still more slender; his face, small and compact, might really have been pretty, had it not been too much disfigured by the small-pox; his manner was calm, precise,--one might often have called it dry and cold; but his heart was full of kindness and love, his soul full of generosity, and his attachments as lasting as they were decided and controlled. now, this serious pair, who had but lately formed an attachment, were quite peculiarly distinguished among the others, who, being already better acquainted with each other, of more frivolous character, and careless as to the future, roved about with levity in these connections, which commonly pass away as the mere fruitless prelude to subsequent and more serious ties, and very seldom produce a lasting effect upon life. the fine weather and the beautiful country did not remain unenjoyed by so lively a company: water-excursions were frequently arranged, because these are the most sociable of all parties of pleasure. yet, whether we were going by water or by land, the individual attracting powers immediately showed themselves; each couple kept together: and for some men who were not engaged, of whom i was one, there remained either no conversation with the ladies at all, or only such as no one would have chosen for a day of pleasure. a friend who found himself in this situation, and who might have been in want of a partner chiefly for this reason, that, with, the best humor, he lacked tenderness, and, with much intelligence, that delicate attention, without which connections of this kind are not to be thought of,--this man, after often humorously and wittily lamenting his condition, promised at the next meeting to make a proposal which would benefit himself and the whole company. nor did he fail to perform his promise; for when, after a brilliant trip by water, and a very pleasant walk, reclining on the grass between shady knolls, or sitting on mossy rocks and roots of trees, we had cheerfully and happily consumed a rural meal, and our friend saw us all cheerful and in good spirits, he, with a waggish dignity, commanded us to sit close round him in a semicircle, before which he stepped, and began to make an emphatic peroration as follows:-- "most worthy friends of both sexes, paired and unpaired!"--it was already evident from this address, how necessary it was that a preacher of repentance should arise, and sharpen the conscience of the company. "one part of my noble friends is paired, and they may find themselves quite happy; another unpaired, and these find themselves in the highest degree miserable, as i can assure you from my own experience: and although the loving couples are here in the majority, yet i would have them consider whether it is not a social duty to take thought for the whole. why do we wish to assemble in such numbers, except to take a mutual interest in each other? and how can that be done when so many little secessions are to be seen in our circle? far be it from me to insinuate any thing against such sweet connections, or even to wish to disturb them; but 'there is a time for all things,'--an excellent great saying, of which, indeed, nobody thinks when his own amusement is sufficiently provided for." he then went on with constantly increasing liveliness and gayety to compare the social virtues with the tender sentiments. "the latter," said he, "can never fail us; we always carry them about with us, and every one becomes a master in them without practice: but we must go in quest of the former, we must take some trouble about them; and, though we progress in them as much as we will, we have never done learning them." now he went into particulars. many felt hit off, and they could not help casting glances at each other: yet our friend had this privilege, that nothing he did was taken ill; and so he could proceed without interruption. "it is not enough to discover deficiencies: indeed, it is unjust to do so, if at the same time one cannot contrive to give the means for bettering the state of affairs. i will not, therefore, my friends, something like a preacher in passion week, exhort you in general terms to repentance and amendment: i rather wish all amiable couples the longest and most enduring happiness; and, to contribute to it myself in the surest manner, i propose to sever and abolish these most charming little segregations during our social hours. i have," he continued, "already provided for the execution of my project, if it should meet your approbation. here is a bag in which are the names of the gentlemen: now draw, my fair ones, and be pleased to favor as your servant, for a week, him whom fate shall send you. this is binding only within our circle; as soon as that is broken up, these connections are also abolished, and the heart may decide who shall attend you home." a great part of the company had been delighted with this address, and the manner in which he delivered it, and seemed to approve of the notion; yet some couples looked at each other as if they thought that it would not answer their purpose: he therefore cried with humorous vehemence,-- "truly! it surprises me that some one does not spring up, and, though others hesitate, extol my plan, explain its advantages, and spare me the pain of being my own encomiast. i am the oldest among you: may god forgive me for that! already have i a bald pate, which is owing to my great meditation."-- here he took off his hat-- "but i should expose it to view with joy and honor if my lucubrations, which dry up my skin, and rob me of my finest adornment, could only be in some measure beneficial to myself and others. we are young, my friends,--that is good; we shall grow older,--that is bad; we take little offence at each other,--that is right, and in accordance with the season. but soon, my friends, the days will come when we shall have much to be displeased at in ourselves; then, let every one see that he makes all right with himself; but, at the same time, others will take things ill of us, and on what account we shall not understand; for this we must prepare ourselves; this shall now be done." he had delivered the whole speech, but especially the last part, with the tone and gesture of a capuchin; for, as he was a catholic, he might have had abundant opportunity to study the oratory of these fathers. he now appeared out of breath, wiped his youthful, bald head, which really gave him the look of a priest, and by these drolleries put the light- hearted company in such good humor that every one was eager to hear him longer. but, instead of proceeding, he drew open the bag, and turned to the nearest lady. "now for a trial of it!" exclaimed he: "the work will do credit to the master. if in a week's time we do not like it, we will give it up, and stick to the old plan." half willingly, half on compulsion, the ladies drew their tickets; and it was easy to see that various passions were in play during this little affair. fortunately it happened that the merry-minded were separated, while the more serious remained together, and so, too, my sister kept her englishman; which, on both sides, they took very kindly of the god of love and luck. the new chance-couples were immediately united by the /antistes/, their healths were drank, and to all the more joy was wished, as its duration was to be but short. this was certainly the merriest moment that our company had enjoyed for a long time. the young men to whose share no lady had fallen, held, for this week, the office of providing for the mind, the soul, and the body, as our orator expressed himself, but especially, he hinted, for the soul, since both the others already knew how to help themselves. these masters of ceremonies, who wished at once to do themselves credit, brought into play some very pretty new games, prepared at some distance a supper, which we had not reckoned on, and illuminated the yacht on our return at night, although there was no necessity for it in the bright moonlight; but they excused themselves by saying that it was quite conformable to the new social regulation to outshine the tender glances of the heavenly moon by earthly candles. the moment we touched the shore, our solon cried, "/ite, missa est!/" each one now handed out of the vessel the lady who had fallen to him by lot, and then surrendered her to her proper partner, on receiving his own in exchange. at our next meeting this weekly regulation was established for the summer, and the lots were drawn once more. there was no question but that this pleasantry gave a new and unexpected turn to the company; and every one was stimulated to display whatever of wit and grace was in him, and to pay court to his temporary fair one in the most obliging manner, since he might depend on having a sufficient store of complaisance for one week at least. we had scarcely settled down, when, instead of thanking our orator, we reproached him for having kept to himself the best part of his speech,-- the conclusion. he thereupon protested that the best part of a speech was persuasion, and that he who did not aim at persuasion should make no speech; for, as to conviction, that was a ticklish business. as, however, they gave him no peace, he began a capuchinade on the spot, more comical than ever, perhaps, for the very reason that he took it into his head to speak on the most serious subjects. for with texts out of the bible, which had nothing to do with the business; with similes which did not fit; with allusions which illustrated nothing,--he carried out the proposition, that whosoever does not know how to conceal his passions, inclinations, wishes, purposes, and plans, will come to no good in the world, but will be disturbed and made a butt in every end and corner; and that especially if one would be happy in love, one must take pains to keep it a most profound secret. this thought ran through the whole, without, properly speaking, a single word of it being said. if you would form a conception of this singular man, let it be considered, that, being born with a good foundation, he had cultivated his talents, and especially his acuteness, in jesuit schools, and had amassed an extensive knowledge of the world and of men, but only on the bad side. he was some two and twenty years old, and would gladly have made me a proselyte to his contempt for mankind; but this would not take with me, as i always had a great desire to be good myself, and to find good in others. meanwhile, i was by him made attentive to many things. to complete the /dramatis personae/ of every merry company, an actor is necessary who feels pleasure when the others, to enliven many an indifferent moment, point the arrows of their wit at him. if he is not merely a stuffed saracen, like those on whom the knights used to practise their lances in mock battles, but understands himself how to skirmish, to rally, and to challenge, how to wound lightly, and recover himself again, and, while he seems to expose himself, to give others a thrust home, nothing more agreeable can be found. such a man we possessed in our friend horn, whose name, to begin with, gave occasion for all sorts of jokes, and who, on account of his small figure, was called nothing but hörnchen (little horn). he was, in fact, the smallest in the company, of a stout but pleasing form; a pug-nose, a mouth somewhat pouting, little sparkling eyes, made up a swarthy countenance which always seemed to invite laughter. his little compact skull was thickly covered with curly black hair: his beard was prematurely blue; and he would have liked to let it grow, that, as a comic mask, he might always keep the company laughing. for the rest, he was neat and nimble, but insisted that he had bandy legs, which everybody granted, since he was bent on having it so, but about which many a joke arose; for, since he was in request as a very good dancer, he reckoned it among the peculiarities of the fair sex, that they always liked to see bandy legs on the floor. his cheerfulness was indestructible, and his presence at every meeting indispensable. we two kept more together because he was to follow me to the university; and he well deserves that i should mention him with all honor, as he adhered to me for many years with infinite love, faithfulness, and patience. by my ease in rhyming, and in winning from common objects a poetical side, he had allowed himself to be seduced into similar labors. our little social excursions, parties of pleasure, and the contingencies that occurred in them, we decked out poetically; and thus, by the description of an event, a new event always arose. but as such social jests commonly degenerate into personal ridicule, and my friend horn, with his burlesque representations, did not always keep within proper bounds, many a misunderstanding arose, which, however, could soon be softened down and effaced. thus, also, he tried his skill in a species of poetry which was then very much the order of the day,--the comic heroical poem. pope's "rape of the lock" had called forth many imitations: zachariä cultivated this branch of poetry on german soil; and it pleased every one, because the ordinary subject of it was some awkward fellow, of whom the genii made game, while they favored the better one. although it is no wonder, yet it excites wonderment, when contemplating a literature, especially the german, one observes how a whole nation cannot get free from a subject which has been once given, and happily treated in a certain form, but will have it repeated in every manner, until, at last, the original itself is covered up, and stifled by the heaps of imitations. the heroic poem of my friend was a voucher for this remark. at a great sledging-party, an awkward man has assigned to him a lady who does not like him: comically enough, there befalls him, one after another, every accident that can happen on such an occasion, until at last, as he is entreating for the sledge-driver's right (a kiss), he falls from the back-seat; for just then, as was natural, the fates tripped him up. the fair one seizes the reins, and drives home alone, where a favored friend receives her, and triumphs over his presumptuous rival. as to the rest, it was very prettily contrived that the four different kinds of spirits should worry him in turn, till at the end the gnomes hoist him completely out of the saddle. the poem, written in alexandrines, and founded on a true story, highly delighted our little public; and we were convinced that it could well be compared with the "walpurgisnight" of löwen, or the "renommist" of zachariä. [footnote: this word, which signifies something like our "bully," is specially used to designate a fighting student.--trans.] while, now, our social pleasures required but an evening, and the preparations for them only a few hours, i had enough time to read, and, as i thought, to study. to please my father, i diligently repeated the smaller work of hopp, and could stand an examination in it forwards and backwards, by which means i made myself complete master of the chief contents of the institutes. but a restless eagerness for knowledge urged me farther: i lighted upon the history of ancient literature, and from that fell into an encyclopaedism, in which i hastily read gessner's "isagoge" and morhov's "polyhistor," and thus gained a general notion of how many strange things might have happened in learning and life. by this persevering and rapid industry, continued day and night, i became more confused than instructed; but i lost myself in a still greater labyrinth when i found bayle in my father's library, and plunged deeply into this work. but a leading conviction, which was continually revived within me, was that of the importance of the ancient tongues; since from amidst this literary hurly-burly, thus much continually forced itself upon me, that in them were preserved all the models of oratory, and at the same time every thing else of worth that the world has ever possessed. hebrew, together with biblical studies, had retired into the background, and greek likewise, since my acquaintance with it did not extend beyond the new testament. i therefore the more zealously kept to latin, the masterpieces in which lie nearer to us, and which, besides its splendid original productions, offers us the other wealth of all ages in translations, and the works of the greatest scholars. i consequently read much in this language, with great ease, and was bold enough to believe i understood the authors, because i missed nothing of the literal sense. indeed, i was very indignant when i heard that grotius had insolently declared, "he did not read terence as boys do." happy narrow-mindedness of youth!--nay, of men in general, that they can, at every moment of their existence, fancy themselves finished, and inquire after neither the true nor the false, after neither the high nor the deep, but merely after that which is suited to them. i had thus learned latin, like german, french, and english, merely by practice, without rules, and without comprehension. whoever knows the then condition of scholastic instruction will not think it strange that i skipped grammar as well as rhetoric; all seemed to me to come together naturally: i retained the words, their forms and inflexions, in my ear and mind, and used the language with ease in writing and in chattering. michaelmas, the time fixed for my going to the university, was approaching; and my mind was excited quite as much about my life as about my learning. i grew more and more clearly conscious of an aversion to my native city. by gretchen's removal, the heart had been broken out of the boyish and youthful plant: it needed time to bud forth again from its sides, and surmount the first injury by a new growth. my ramblings through the streets had ceased: i now, like others, only went such ways as were necessary. i never went again into gretchen's quarter of the city, not even into its vicinity: and as my old walls and towers became gradually disagreeable to me, so also was i displeased at the constitution of the city; all that hitherto seemed so worthy of honor now appeared to me in distorted shapes. as grandson of the /schultheiss/ i had not remained unacquainted with the secret defects of such a republic; the less so, as children feel quite a peculiar surprise, and are excited to busy researches, as soon as something which they have hitherto implicitly revered becomes in any degree suspicious to them. the fruitless indignation of upright men, in opposition to those who are to be gained and even bribed by factions, had become but too plain to me: i hated every injustice beyond measure, for children are all moral rigorists. my father, who was concerned in the affairs of the city only as a private citizen, expressed himself with very lively indignation about much that had failed. and did i not see him, after so many studies, endeavors, pains, travels, and so much varied cultivation, between his four walls, leading a solitary life, such as i could never desire for myself? all this put together lay as a horrible load on my mind, from which i could only free myself by trying to contrive a plan of life altogether different from that which had been marked out for me. in thought i threw aside my legal studies, and devoted myself solely to the languages, to antiquities, to history, and to all that flows from them. indeed, at all times, the poetic imitation of what i had perceived in myself, in others, and in nature, afforded me the greatest pleasure. i did it with ever-increasing facility, because it came by instinct, and no criticism had led me astray; and, if i did not feel full confidence in my productions, i could certainly regard them as defective, but not such as to be utterly rejected. although here and there they were censured, i still retained my silent conviction that i could not but gradually improve, and that some time i might be honorably named along with hagedorn, gellert, and other such men. but such a distinction alone seemed to me too empty and inadequate; i wished to devote myself professionally and with zeal to those aforesaid fundamental studies, and, whilst i meant to advance more rapidly in my own works by a more thorough insight into antiquity, to qualify myself for a university professorship, which seemed to me the most desirable thing for a young man who strove for culture, and intended to contribute to that of others. with these intentions i always had my eye upon göttingen. my whole confidence rested upon men like heyne, michaelis, and so many others: my most ardent wish was to sit at their feet, and attend to their instructions. but my father remained inflexible. howsoever some family friends, who were of my opinion, tried to influence him, he persisted that i must go to leipzig. i was now resolved, contrary to his views and wishes, to choose a line of studies and of life for myself, by way of self-defense. the obstinacy of my father, who, without knowing it, opposed himself to my plans, strengthened me in my impiety; so that i made no scruple to listen to him by the hour, while he described and repeated to me the course of study and of life which i should pursue at the universities and in the world. all hopes of göttingen being cut off, i now turned my eyes towards leipzig. there ernesti appeared to me as a brilliant light: morus, too, already awakened much confidence. i planned for myself in secret an opposition-course, or rather i built a castle in the air, on a tolerably solid foundation; and it seemed to me quite romantically honorable to mark out my own path of life, which appeared the less visionary, as griesbach had already made great progress in a similar way, and was commended for it by every one. the secret joy of a prisoner, when he has unbound the fetters, and rapidly filed through the bars of his jail- window, cannot be greater than was mine as i saw day after day disappear, and october draw nigh. the inclement season and the bad roads, of which everybody had something to tell, did not frighten me. the thought of making good my footing in a strange place, and in winter, did not make me sad; suffice it to say, that i only saw my present situation was gloomy, and represented to myself the other unknown world as light and cheerful. thus i formed my dreams, to which i gave myself up exclusively, and promised myself nothing but happiness and content in the distance. closely as i kept these projects a secret from every one else, i could not hide them from my sister, who, after being very much alarmed about them at first, was finally consoled when i promised to send after her, so that she could enjoy with me the brilliant station i was to obtain, and share my comfort with me. michaelmas, so longingly expected, came at last, when i set out with delight, in company with the bookseller fleischer and his wife (whose maiden name was triller, and who was going to visit her father in wittemberg); and i left behind me the worthy city in which i had been born and bred, with indifference, as if i wished never to set foot in it again. thus, at certain epochs, children part from parents, servants from masters, /protégés/ from their patrons; and, whether it succeed or not, such an attempt to stand on one's own feet, to make one's self independent, to live for one's self, is always in accordance with the will of nature. we had driven out through the allerheiligen (/all saints/) gate, and had soon left hanau behind us, after which we reached scenes which aroused my attention by their novelty, if, at this season of the year, they offered little that was pleasing. a continual rain had completely spoiled the roads, which, generally speaking, were not then in such good order as we find them now; and our journey was thus neither pleasant nor happy. yet i was indebted to this damp weather for the sight of a natural phenomenon which must be exceedingly rare, for i have seen nothing like it since, nor have i heard of its having been observed by others. it was this; namely, we were driving at night up a rising ground between hanau and gelhausen, and, although it was dark, we preferred walking to exposing ourselves to the danger and difficulty of that part of the road. all at once, in a ravine on the right-hand side of the way, i saw a sort of amphitheatre, wonderfully illuminated. in a funnel- shaped space there were innumerable little lights gleaming, ranged step- fashion over one another; and they shone so brilliantly that the eye was dazzled. but what still more confused the sight was, that they did not keep still, but jumped about here and there, as well downwards from above as /vice versa/, and in every direction. the greater part of them, however, remained stationary, and beamed on. it was only with the greatest reluctance that i suffered myself to be called away from this spectacle, which i could have wished to examine more closely. the postilion, when questioned, said that he knew nothing about such a phenomenon, but that there was in the neighborhood an old stone-quarry, the excavation of which was filled with water. now, whether this was a pandemonium of will-o'-the-wisps, or a company of luminous creatures, i will not decide. the roads through thuringia were yet worse; and unfortunately, at night- fall, our coach stuck fast in the vicinity of auerstädt. we were far removed from all mankind, and did every thing possible to work ourselves out. i failed not to exert myself zealously, and might thereby have overstrained the ligaments of my chest; for soon afterwards i felt a pain, which went off and returned, and did not leave me entirely until after many years. yet on that same night, as if it had been destined for alternate good and bad luck, i was forced, after an unexpectedly fortunate incident, to experience a teasing vexation. we met, in auerstädt, a genteel married couple, who had also just arrived, having been delayed by a similar accident; a pleasing, dignified man, in his best years, with a very handsome wife. they politely persuaded us to sup in their company, and i felt very happy when the excellent lady addressed a friendly word to me. but when i was sent out to hasten the soup which had been ordered, not having been accustomed to the loss of rest and the fatigues of travelling, such an unconquerable drowsiness overtook me, that actually i fell asleep while walking, returned into the room with my hat on my head, and, without remarking that the others were saying grace, placed myself with quiet unconsciousness behind the chair, and never dreamed that by my conduct i had come to disturb their devotions in a very droll way. madame fleischer, who lacked neither spirit nor wit nor tongue, entreated the strangers, before they had seated themselves, not to be surprised at any thing they might see here; for that their young fellow- traveller had in his nature much of the peculiarity of the quakers, who believe that they cannot honor god and the king better than with covered heads. the handsome lady, who could not restrain her laughter, looked prettier than ever in consequence; and i would have given every thing in the world not to have been the cause of a merriment which was so highly becoming to her countenance. i had, however, scarcely laid aside my hat, when these persons, in accordance with their polished manners, immediately dropped the joke, and, with the best wine from their bottle- case, completely extinguished sleep, chagrin, and the memory of all past troubles. i arrived in leipzig just at the time of the fair, from which i derived particular pleasure; for here i saw before me the continuation of a state of things belonging to my native city, familiar wares and traders,--only in other places, and in a different order. i rambled about the market and the booths with much interest; but my attention was particularly attracted by the inhabitants of the eastern countries in their strange dresses, the poles and russians, and, above all, the greeks, for the sake of whose handsome forms and dignified costume i often went to the spot. but this animating bustle was soon over; and now the city itself appeared before me, with its handsome, high, and uniform houses. it made a very good impression upon me; and it cannot be denied, that in general, but especially in the silent moments of sundays and holidays, it has something imposing; and when in the moonlight the streets were half in shadow, half-illuminated, they often invited me to nocturnal promenades. [illustration: woman with birds.] in the mean time, as compared with that to which i had hitherto been accustomed, this new state of affairs was by no means satisfactory. leipzig calls up before the spectator no antique time: it is a new, recently elapsed epoch, testifying commercial activity, comfort and wealth, which announces itself to us in these monuments. yet quite to my taste were the houses, which to me seemed immense, and which, fronting two streets, and embracing a citizen-world within their large court- yards, built round with lofty walls, are like large castles, nay, even half-cities. in one of these strange places i quartered myself; namely, in the bombshell tavern (/feuerkugel/), between the old and the new newmarket (/neumarkt/). a couple of pleasant rooms looking out upon a court-yard, which, on account of the thoroughfare, was not without animation, were occupied by the bookseller fleischer during the fair, and by me taken for the rest of the time at a moderate price. as a fellow-lodger i found a theological student, who was deeply learned in his professional studies, a sound thinker, but poor, and suffering much from his eyes, which caused him great anxiety for the future. he had brought this affliction upon himself by his inordinate reading till the latest dusk of the evening, and even by moonlight, to save a little oil. our old hostess showed herself benevolent to him, always friendly to me, and careful for us both. i now hastened with my letters of introduction to hofrath böhme, who, once a pupil of maskow, and now his successor, was professor of history and public law. a little, thick-set, lively man received me kindly enough, and introduced me to his wife. both of them, as well as the other persons whom i waited on, gave me the pleasantest hopes as to my future residence; but at first i let no one know of the design i entertained, although i could scarcely wait for the favorable moment when i should declare myself free from jurisprudence, and devoted to the study of the classics. i cautiously waited till the fleischers had returned, that my purpose might not be too prematurely betrayed to my family. but i then went, without delay, to hofrath böhme, to whom, before all, i thought i must confide the matter, and with much self- importance and boldness of speech disclosed my views to him. however, i found by no means a good reception of my proposition. as professor of history and public law, he had a declared hatred for every thing that savored of the /belles-lettres/. unfortunately he did not stand on the best footing with those who cultivated them; and gellert in particular, in whom i had, awkwardly enough, expressed much confidence, he could not even endure. to send a faithful student to those men, therefore, while he deprived himself of one, and especially under such circumstances, seemed to him altogether out of the question. he therefore gave me a severe lecture on the spot, in which he protested that he could not permit such a step without the permission of my parents, even if he approved of it himself, which was not the case in this instance. he then passionately inveighed against philology and the study of languages, but still more against poetical exercises, which i had indeed allowed to peep out in the background. he finally concluded, that, if i wished to enter more closely into the study of the ancients, it could be done much better by the way of jurisprudence. he brought to my recollection many elegant jurists, such as eberhard, otto, and heineccius, promised me mountains of gold from roman antiquities and the history of law, and showed me, clear as the sun, that i should here be taking no roundabout way, even if afterwards, on more mature deliberation, and with the consent of my parents, i should determine to follow out my own plan. he begged me, in a friendly manner, to think the matter over once more, and to open my mind to him soon; as it would be necessary to come to a determination at once, on account of the impending commencement of the lectures. it was, however, very polite of him not to press me on the spot. his arguments, and the weight with which he advanced them, had already convinced my pliant youth; and i now first saw the difficulties and doubtfulness of a matter which i had privately pictured to myself as so feasible. frau hofrath böhme invited me shortly afterwards. i found her alone. she was no longer young, and had very delicate health; was gentle and tender to an infinite degree; and formed a decided contrast to her husband, whose good nature was even blustering. she spoke of the conversation her husband had lately had with me, and once more placed the subject before me, in all its bearings, in so cordial a manner, so affectionately and sensibly, that i could not help yielding: the few reservations on which i insisted were also agreed upon by the other side. thereupon her husband regulated my hours; for i was to hear lectures on philosophy, the history of law, the institutes, and some other matters. i was content with this; but i carried my point so as to attend gellert's history of literature (with stockhausen for a text-book), and his "practicum" besides. the reverence and love with which gellert was regarded by all young people was extraordinary. i had already called on him, and had been kindly received by him. not of tall stature; elegant without being lean; soft and rather pensive eyes; a very fine forehead; a nose aquiline, but not too much so; a delicate mouth; a face of an agreeable oval,--all made his presence pleasing and desirable. it cost some trouble to reach him. his two /famuli/ appeared like priests who guard a sanctuary, the access to which is not permitted to everybody, nor at every time: and such a precaution was very necessary; for he would have sacrificed his whole time, had he been willing to receive and satisfy all those who wished to become intimate with him. at first i attended my lectures assiduously and faithfully, but the philosophy would not enlighten me at all. in the logic it seemed strange to me that i had so to tear asunder, isolate, and, as it were, destroy, those operations of the mind which i had performed with the greatest ease from my youth upwards, and this in order to see into the right use of them. of the thing itself, of the world, and of god, i thought i knew about as much as the professor himself; and, in more places than one, the affair seemed to me to come into a tremendous strait. yet all went on in tolerable order till towards shrovetide, when, in the neighborhood of professor winkler's house on the thomas place, the most delicious fritters came hot out of the pan just at the hour of lecture: and these delayed us so long, that our note-books became disordered; and the conclusion of them, towards spring, melted away, together with the snow, and was lost. the law-lectures very soon fared not any better, for i already knew just as much as the professor thought good to communicate to us. my stubborn industry in writing down the lectures at first, was paralyzed by degrees; for i found it excessively tedious to pen down once more that which, partly by question, partly by answer, i had repeated with my father often enough to retain it forever in my memory. the harm which is done when young people at school are advanced too far in many things was afterwards manifested still more when time and attention were diverted from exercises in the languages, and a foundation in what are, properly speaking, preparatory studies, in order to be applied to what are called "realities," which dissipate more than they cultivate, if they are not methodically and thoroughly taught. i here mention, by the way, another evil by which students are much embarrassed. professors, as well as other men in office, cannot all be of the same age: but when the younger ones teach, in fact, only that they may learn, and moreover, if they have talent, anticipate their age, they acquire their own cultivation altogether at the cost of their hearers; since these are not instructed in what they really need, but in that which the professor finds it necessary to elaborate for himself. among the oldest professors, on the contrary, many are for a long time stationary: they deliver on the whole only fixed views, and, in the details, much that time has already condemned as useless and false. between the two arises a sad conflict, in which young minds are dragged hither and thither, and which can scarcely be set right by the middle- aged professors, who, though possessed of sufficient learning and culture, always feel within themselves an active desire for knowledge and reflection. now, as in this way i learned to know much more than i could digest, whereby a constantly increasing uncomfortableness was forced upon me; so also from life i experienced many disagreeable trifles,--as, indeed, one must always pay one's footing when one changes one's place and comes into a new position. the first thing the ladies blamed me for was my dress, for i had come from home to the university rather oddly equipped. my father, who detested nothing so much as when something happened in vain, when any one did not know how to make use of his time, or found no opportunity for turning it to account, carried his economy of time and abilities so far, that nothing gave him greater pleasure than to kill two birds with one stone. [footnote: literally, "to strike two flies with one flapper."--trans.] he had, therefore, never engaged a servant who could not be useful to the house in something else. now, as he had always written every thing with his own hand, and had, latterly, the convenience of dictating to the young inmate of the house, he found it most advantageous to have tailors for his domestics, who were obliged to make good use of their time, as they not only had to make their own liveries, but the clothes for my father and the children, besides doing all the mending. my father himself took pains to have the best materials and the best kind of cloth, by getting fine wares of the foreign merchants at the fair, and laying them up in store. i still remember well that he always visited the herr von löwenicht, of aix-la-chapelle, and from my earliest youth made me acquainted with these and other eminent merchants. care was also taken for the fitness of the stuff: and there was a plentiful stock of different kinds of cloth, serge, and götting stuff, besides the requisite lining; so that, as far as the materials were concerned, we might well venture to be seen. but the form spoiled almost every thing. for, if one of our home-tailors was any thing of a clever hand at sewing and making up a coat which had been cut out for him in masterly fashion, he was now obliged also to cut out the dress for himself, which did not always succeed to perfection. in addition to this, my father kept whatever belonged to his clothing in very good and neat order, and preserved more than used it for many years. thus he had a predilection for certain old cuts and trimmings, by which our dress sometimes acquired a strange appearance. in this same way had the wardrobe which i took with me to the university been furnished: it was very complete and handsome, and there was even a laced suit amongst the rest. already accustomed to this kind of attire, i thought myself sufficiently well dressed; but it was not long before my female friends, first by gentle raillery, then by sensible remonstrances, convinced me that i looked as if i had dropped down out of another world. much as i felt vexed at this, i did not see at first how i was to mend matters. but when herr von masuren, the favorite poetical country squire, once entered the theatre in a similar costume, and was heartily laughed at, more by reason of his external than his internal absurdity, i took courage, and ventured at once to exchange my whole wardrobe for a new-fashioned one, suited to the place, by which, however, it shrunk considerably. when this trial was surmounted, a new one was to come up, which proved to be far more unpleasant, because it concerned a matter which one does not so easily put off and exchange. i had been born and bred in the upper-german dialect; and although my father always labored to preserve a certain purity of language, and, from our youth upwards, had made us children attentive to what may be really called the defects of that idiom, and so prepared us for a better manner of speaking, i retained nevertheless many deeper-seated peculiarities, which, because they pleased me by their /naïvete/, i was fond of making conspicuous, and thus every time i used them incurred a severe reproof from my new fellow-townsmen. the upper-german, and perhaps chiefly he who lives by the rhine and main (for great rivers, like the seacoast, always have something animating about them), expresses himself much in similes and allusions, and makes use of proverbial sayings with a native common-sense aptness. in both cases he is often blunt: but, when one sees the drift of the expression, it is always appropriate; only something, to be sure, may often slip in, which proves offensive to a more delicate ear. every province loves its own dialect; for it is, properly speaking, the element in which the soul draws its breath. but every one knows with what obstinacy the misnian dialect has contrived to domineer over the rest, and even, for a long time, to exclude them. we have suffered for many years under this pedantic tyranny, and only by reiterated struggles have all the provinces again established themselves in their ancient rights. what a lively young man had to endure from this continual tutoring, may be easily inferred by any one who reflects that modes of thought, imagination, feeling, native character, must be sacrificed with the pronunciation which one at last consents to alter. and this intolerable demand was made by men and women of education, whose convictions i could not adopt, whose injustice i thought i felt, though i was unable to make it plain to myself. allusions to the pithy biblical texts were to be forbidden me, as well as the use of the honest-hearted expressions from the chronicles. i had to forget that i had read the "kaiser von geisersberg," and eschew the use of proverbs, which nevertheless, instead of much fiddle-faddle, just hit the nail upon the head,--all this, which i had appropriated to myself with youthful ardor, i was now to do without: i felt paralyzed to the core, and scarcely knew any more how i had to express myself on the commonest things. i was, moreover, told that one should speak as one writes, and write as one speaks; while to me, speaking and writing seemed once for all two different things, each of which might well maintain its own rights. and even in the misnian dialect had i to hear many things which would have made no great figure on paper. every one who perceives in this the influence which men and women of education, the learned, and other persons who take pleasure in refined society, so decidedly exercise over a young student, would be immediately convinced that we were in leipzig, even if it had not been mentioned. each one of the german universities has a particular character; for, as no universal cultivation can pervade our fatherland, every place adheres to its own fashion, and carries out, even to the last, its own characteristic peculiarities: exactly the same thing holds good of the universities. in jena and halle roughness had been carried to the highest pitch: bodily strength, skill in fighting, the wildest self-help, was there the order of the day; and such a state of affairs can only be maintained and propagated by the most universal riot. the relations of the students to the inhabitants of those cities, various as they might be, nevertheless agreed in this, that the wild stranger had no regard for the citizen, and looked upon himself as a peculiar being, privileged to all sorts of freedom and insolence. in leipzig, on the contrary, a student could scarcely be any thing else than polite, as soon as he wished to stand on any footing at all with the rich, well- bred, and punctilious inhabitants. all politeness, indeed, when it does not present itself as the flowering of a great and comprehensive mode of life, must appear restrained, stationary, and, from some points of view, perhaps, absurd; and so those wild huntsmen from the saale [footnote: the river on which halle is built.--trans.] thought they had a great superiority over the tame shepherds on the pleisse. [footnote: the river near leipzig.--trans.] zachariä's "renommist" will always be a valuable document, from which the manner of life and thought at that time rises visibly forth; as in general his poems must be welcome to every one who wishes to form for himself a conception of the then prevailing state of social life and manners, which was indeed feeble, but amiable on account of its innocence and child-like simplicity. all manners which result from the given relations of a common existence are indestructible; and, in my time, many things still reminded us of zachariä's epic poem. only one of our fellow-academicians thought himself rich and independent enough to snap his fingers at public opinion. he drank acquaintance with all the hackney-coachmen, whom he allowed to sit inside the coach as if they were gentlemen, while he drove them on the box; thought it a great joke to upset them now and then, and contrived to satisfy them for their smashed vehicles as well as for their occasional bruises; but otherwise he did no harm to any one, seeming only to make a mock of the public /en masse/. once, on a most beautiful promenade-day, he and a comrade of his seized upon the donkeys of the miller in st. thomas's square: well-dressed, and in their shoes and stockings, they rode around the city with the greatest solemnity, stared at by all the promenaders, with whom the glacis was swarming. when some sensible persons remonstrated with him on the subject, he assured them, quite unembarrassed, that he only wanted to see how the lord christ might have looked in a like case. yet he found no imitators and few companions. for the student of any wealth and standing had every reason to show himself attentive to the mercantile class, and to be the more solicitous about the proper external forms, as the colony [footnote: leipzig was so called, because a large and influential portion of its citizens were sprung from a colony of huguenots, who settled there after the revocation of the edict of nantes.--/american note/.] exhibited a model of french manners. the professors, opulent both from their private property and from their liberal salaries, were not dependent upon their scholars; and many subjects of the state, educated at the government schools or other gymnasia, and hoping for preferment, did not venture to throw off the traditional customs. the neighborhood of dresden, the attention thence paid to us, and the true piety of the superintendent of the course of study, could not be without a moral, nay, a religious, influence. at first this kind of life was not repugnant to me: my letters of introduction had given me the /entrée/ into good families, whose circle of relatives also received me well. but as i was soon forced to feel that the company had much to find fault with in me, and that, after dressing myself in their fashion, i must now talk according to their tongue also; and as, moreover, i could plainly see that i was, on the other hand, but little benefited by the instruction and mental improvement i had promised myself from my academical residence,--i began to be lazy, and to neglect the social duties of visiting, and other attentions; and indeed i should have sooner withdrawn from all such connections, had not fear and esteem attached me firmly to hofrath böhme, and confidence and affection to his wife. the husband, unfortunately, had not the happy gift of dealing with young people, of winning their confidence, and of guiding them, for the moment, as occasion might require. when i visited him i never got any good by it: his wife, on the contrary, showed a genuine interest in me. her ill health kept her constantly at home. she often invited me to spend the evening with her, and knew how to direct and improve me in many little external particulars: for my manners were good, indeed; but i was not yet master of what is properly termed /étiquette/. only one friend spent the evenings with her; but she was much more dictatorial and pedantic, for which reason she displeased me excessively: and, out of spite to her, i often resumed those unmannerly habits from which the other had already weaned me. nevertheless she always had patience enough with me, taught me piquet, ombre, and similar games, the knowledge and practice of which is held indispensable in society. but it was in the matter of taste that madame böhme had the greatest influence upon me,--in a negative way truly, yet one in which she agreed perfectly with the critics. the gottsched waters [footnote: that is to say, the influence of gottsched on german literature, of which more is said in the next book.--trans.] had inundated the german world with a true deluge, which threatened to rise up, even over the highest mountains. it takes a long time for such a flood to subside again, for the mire to dry away; and as in any epoch there are numberless aping poets, so the imitation of the flat and watery produced a chaos, of which now scarcely a notion remains. to find out that trash was trash was hence the greatest sport, yea, the triumph, of the critics of those days. whoever had only a little common sense, was superficially acquainted with the ancients, and was somewhat more familiar with the moderns, thought himself provided with a standard scale which he could everywhere apply. madame böhme was an educated woman, who opposed the trivial, weak, and commonplace: she was, besides, the wife of a man who lived on bad terms with poetry in general, and would not even allow that of which she perhaps might have somewhat approved. she listened, indeed, for some time with patience, when i ventured to recite to her the verse or prose of famous poets who already stood in good repute,--for then, as always, i knew by heart every thing that chanced in any degree to please me; but her complaisance was not of long duration. the first whom she outrageously abused were the poets of the weisse school, who were just then often quoted with great applause, and had delighted me very particularly. if i looked more closely into the matter, i could not say she was wrong. i had sometimes even ventured to recite to her, though anonymously, some of my own poems; but these fared no better than the rest of the set. and thus, in a short time, the beautiful variegated meadows at the foot of the german parnassus, where i was fond of luxuriating, were mercilessly mowed down; and i was even compelled to toss about the drying hay myself, and to ridicule that as lifeless which, a short time before, had given me such lively joy. without knowing it, professor morus came to strengthen her instructions. he was an uncommonly gentle and friendly man, with whom i became acquainted at the table of hofrath ludwig, and who received me very pleasantly when i begged the privilege of visiting him. now, while making inquiries of him concerning antiquity, i did not conceal from him what delighted me among the moderns; when he spoke about such things with more calmness, but, what was still worse, with more profundity than madame böhme; and he thus opened my eyes, at first to my greatest chagrin, but afterwards to my surprise, and at last to my edification. besides this, there came the jeremiads, with which gellert, in his course, was wont to warn us against poetry. he wished only for prose essays, and always criticised these first. verses he treated as a sorry addition: and, what was the worst of all, even my prose found little favor in his eyes; for, after my old fashion, i used always to lay, as the foundation, a little romance, which i loved to work out in the epistolary form. the subjects were impassioned, the style went beyond ordinary prose, and the contents probably did not display any very deep knowledge of mankind in the author; and so i stood in very little favor with our professor, although he carefully looked over my labors as well as those of the others, corrected them with red ink, and here and there added a moral remark. many leaves of this kind, which i kept for a long time with satisfaction, have unfortunately, in the course of years, at last disappeared from among my papers. if elderly persons wish to play the pedagogue properly, they should neither prohibit nor render disagreeable to a young man any thing which gives him pleasure, of whatever kind it may be, unless, at the same time, they have something else to put in its place, or can contrive a substitute. everybody protested against my tastes and inclinations; and, on the other hand, what they commended to me lay either so far from me that i could not perceive its excellencies, or stood so near me that i thought it not a whit better than what they inveighed against. i thus became thoroughly perplexed on the subject, and promised myself the best results from a lecture of ernesti's on "cicero de oratore." i learned something, indeed, from this lecture, but was not enlightened on the subject which particularly concerned me. what i demanded was a standard of opinion, and thought i perceived that nobody possessed it; for no one agreed with another, even when they brought forward examples: and where were we to get a settled judgment, when they managed to reckon up against a man like wieland so many faults in his amiable writings, which so completely captivated us younger folks? amid this manifold distraction, this dismemberment of my existence and my studies, it happened that i took my dinners at hofrath ludwig's. he was a medical man, a botanist; and his company, with the exception of morus, consisted of physicians just commencing or near the completion of their studies. now, during these hours, i heard no other conversation than about medicine or natural history, and my imagination was drawn over into quite a new field. i heard the names of haller, linnaeus, buffon, mentioned with great respect; and, even if disputes often arose about mistakes into which it was said they had fallen, all agreed in the end to honor the acknowledged abundance of their merits. the subjects were entertaining and important, and enchained my attention. by degrees i became familiar with many names and a copious terminology, which i grasped more willingly as i was afraid to write down a rhyme, however spontaneously it presented itself, or to read a poem, for i was fearful that it might please me at the time, and that perhaps immediately afterwards, like so much else, i should be forced to pronounce it bad. this uncertainty of taste and judgment disquieted me more and more every day, so that at last i fell into despair. i had brought with me those of my youthful labors which i thought the best, partly because i hoped to get some credit by them, partly that i might be able to test my progress with greater certainty; but i found myself in the miserable situation in which one is placed when a complete change of mind is required,--a renunciation of all that one has hitherto loved and found good. however, after some time and many struggles, i conceived so great a contempt for my labors, begun and ended, that one day i burnt up poetry and prose, plans, sketches, and projects, all together on the kitchen hearth, and threw our good old landlady into no small fright and anxiety by the smoke which filled the whole house. seventh book. about the condition of german literature of those times so much has been written, and so exhaustively, that every one who takes any interest in it can be completely informed; in regard to it critics agree now pretty well; and what at present i intend to say piecemeal and disconnectedly concerning it, relates not so much to the way in which it was constituted in itself, as to its relation to me. i will therefore first speak of those things by which the public is particularly excited; of those two hereditary foes of all comfortable life, and of all cheerful, self-sufficient, living poetry,--i mean, satire and criticism. in quiet times every one wants to live after his own fashion: the citizen will carry on his trade or his business, and enjoy the fruits of it afterwards; thus will the author, too, willingly compose something, publish his labors, and, since he thinks he has done something good and useful, hope for praise, if not reward. in this tranquillity the citizen is disturbed by the satirist, the author by the critic; and peaceful society is thus put into a disagreeable agitation. the literary epoch in which i was born was developed out of the preceding one by opposition. germany, so long inundated by foreigners, interpenetrated by other nations, directed to foreign languages in learned and diplomatic transactions, could not possibly cultivate her own. together with so many new ideas, innumerable foreign words were obtruded necessarily and unnecessarily upon her; and, even for objects already known, people were induced to make use of foreign expressions and turns of speech. the german, having run wild for nearly two hundred years in an unhappy tumultuary state, went to school with the french to learn manners, and with the romans in order to express his thoughts with propriety. but this was to be done in the mother-tongue, when the literal application of those idioms, and their half-germanization, made both the social and business style ridiculous. besides this, they adopted without moderation the similes of the southern languages, and employed them most extravagantly. in the same way they transferred the stately deportment of the prince-like citizens of rome to the learned german small-town officers, and were at home nowhere, least of all with themselves. but as in this epoch works of genius had already appeared, the german sense of freedom and joy also began to stir itself. this, accompanied by a genuine earnestness, insisted that men should write purely and naturally, without the intermixture of foreign words, and as common intelligible sense dictated. by these praiseworthy endeavors, however, the doors and gates were thrown open to an extended national insipidity, nay,--the dike was dug through by which the great deluge was shortly to rush in. meanwhile, a stiff pedantry long stood its ground in all the four faculties, until at last, much later, it fled for refuge from one of them to another. men of parts, children of nature looking freely about them, had therefore two objects on which they could exercise themselves, against which they could labor, and, as the matter was of no great importance, give a vent to their petulance: these were,--a language disfigured by foreign words, forms, and turns of speech on the one hand, and the worthlessness of such writings as had been careful to keep themselves free from those faults on the other; though it occurred to nobody, that, while they were battling against one evil, the other was called on for assistance. liskow, a daring young man, first ventured to attack by name a shallow, silly writer, whose awkward demeanor soon gave him an opportunity to proceed still more severely. he then went farther, and constantly aimed his scorn at particular persons and objects, whom he despised and sought to render despicable,--nay, even persecuted them with passionate hatred. but his career was short; for he soon died, and was gradually forgotten as a restless, irregular youth. the talent and character shown in what he did, although he had accomplished little, may have seemed valuable to his countrymen; for the germans have always shown a peculiar pious kindliness to talents of good promise, when prematurely cut off. suffice it to say, that liskow was very soon praised and recommended to us as an excellent satirist, who could have attained a rank even above the universally beloved rabener. here, indeed, we saw ourselves no better off than before; for we could discover nothing in his writings, except that he had found the silly, silly, which seemed to us quite a matter of course. rabener, well educated, grown up under good scholastic instruction, of a cheerful, and by no means passionate or malicious, disposition, took up general satire. his censure of the so-called vices and follies springs from the clear views of a quiet common sense, and from a fixed moral conception of what the world ought to be. his denunciation of faults and failings is harmless and cheerful; and, in order to excuse even the slight boldness of his writings, it is supposed that the improving of fools by ridicule is no fruitless undertaking. rabener's personal character will not easily appear again. as an able, punctual man of business, he does his duty, and thus gains the good opinion of his fellow-townsmen and the confidence of his superiors; along with which, he gives himself up to the enjoyment of a pleasant contempt for all that immediately surrounds him. pedantic /literati/, vain youngsters, every sort of narrowness and conceit, he banters rather than satirizes; and even his banter expresses no contempt. just in the same way does he jest about his own condition, his misfortune, his life, and his death. there is little of the aesthetic in the manner in which this writer treats his subjects. in external forms he is indeed varied enough, but throughout he makes too much use of direct irony; namely, in praising the blameworthy and blaming the praiseworthy, whereas this figure of speech should be used but extremely seldom; for, in the long run, it becomes annoying to clear-sighted men, perplexes the weak, while indeed it pleases the great middle class, who, without any special expense of mind, can fancy themselves more knowing than others. but whatever he brings before us, and however he does it, alike bears witness to his rectitude, cheerfulness, and equanimity; so that we always feel prepossessed in his favor. the unbounded applause of his own times was a consequence of such moral excellencies. that people looked for originals to his general descriptions and found them, was natural; that individuals complained of him, followed from the above; his lengthy apologies that his satire is not personal, prove the spite it provoked. some of his letters crown him at once as a man and an author. the confidential epistle in which he describes the siege of dresden, and how he loses his house, his effects, his writings, and his wigs, without having his equanimity in the least shaken or his cheerfulness clouded, is highly valuable; although his contemporaries and fellow-citizens could not forgive him his happy turn of mind. the letter where he speaks of the decay of his strength and of his approaching death is in the highest degree worthy of respect; and rabener deserves to be honored as a saint by all cheerful, intelligent men, who cheerfully resign themselves to earthly events. i tear myself away from him reluctantly, yet i would make this remark: his satire refers throughout to the middle class; he lets us see here and there that he is also well acquainted with the higher ranks, but does not hold it advisable to come in contact with them. it may be said, that he has had no successor, that no one has been found who could consider himself equal or even similar to him. now for criticism! and first of all for the theoretic attempts. it is not going too far when we say that the ideal had, at that time, escaped out of the world into religion; it scarcely even made its appearance in moral philosophy; of a highest principle of art no one had a notion. they put gottsched's "critical art of poetry" into our hands; it was useful and instructive enough, for it gave us a historical information of all the kinds of poetry, as well as of rhythm and its different movements: the poetic genius was presupposed! but, besides that, the poet was to have acquirements and even learning: he should possess taste, and every thing else of that kind. they directed us at last to horace's "art of poetry:" we gazed at single golden maxims of this invaluable work, but did not know in the least what to do with it as a whole, or how we should use it. the swiss stepped forth as gottsched's antagonists: they must take it into their heads to do something different, to accomplish something better; accordingly we heard that they were, in fact, superior. breitinger's "critical art of poetry" was taken in hand. here we reached a wider field, but, properly speaking, only a greater labyrinth, which was so much the more tiresome, as an able man, in whom we had confidence, was driving us about in it. let a brief review justify these words. for poetry in itself they had been able to find no fundamental axiom: it was too spiritual and too volatile. painting, an art which one could hold fast with one's eyes, and follow step by step with the external senses, seemed more favorable for such an end: the english and french had already theorized about plastic art; and, by a comparison drawn from this, it was thought that poetry might be grounded. the former presented images to the eye, the latter to the imagination: poetical images, therefore, were the first thing which was taken into consideration. people began with comparisons, descriptions followed, and only that was expressed which had always been apparent to the external senses. images, then! but where should these images be got except from nature? the painter professedly imitated nature: why not the poet also? but nature, as she lies before us, cannot be imitated: she contains so much that is insignificant and worthless, that one must make a selection; but what determines the choice? one must select that which is important: but what is important? to answer this question, the swiss may have taken a long time to consider; for they came to a notion, which is indeed singular, but clever, and even comical, inasmuch as they say, the new is always the most important: and after they have considered this for a while, they discover that the marvellous is always newer than every thing else. they had now pretty well collected their poetical requisitions; but they had still to consider that the marvellous might also be empty, and without relation to man. but this relation, demanded as necessary, must be a moral one, from which the improvement of mankind should manifestly follow; and thus a poem had reached its utmost aim when, with every thing else accomplished, it was useful besides. they now wished to test the different kinds of poetry according to all these requisites: those which imitated nature, besides being marvellous, and at the same time of a moral aim and use, were to rank as the first and highest. and, after much deliberation, this great pre-eminence was at last ascribed, with the highest degree of conviction, to aesop's fables! strange as such a deduction may now appear, it had the most decided influence on the best minds. that gellert and subsequently lichtwer devoted themselves to this department, that even lessing attempted to labor in it, that so many others turned their talents towards it, speaks for the confidence which this species of poetry had gained. theory and practice always act upon each other: one can see from their works what is the men's opinion, and, from their opinions, predict what they will do. yet we must not dismiss our swiss theory without doing it justice. bodmer, with all the pains he took, remained theoretically and practically a child all his life. breitinger was an able, learned, sagacious man, whom, when he looked rightly about him, the essentials of a poem did not all escape,--nay, it can be shown that he may have dimly felt the deficiencies of his system. remarkable, for instance, is his query, "whether a certain descriptive poem by könig, on the 'review-camp of augustus the second,' is properly a poem?" and the answer to it displays good sense. but it may serve for his complete justification that he, starting from a false point, on a circle almost run out already, still struck upon the main principle, and at the end of his book finds himself compelled to recommend as additions, so to speak, the representation of manners, character, passions,--in short, the whole inner man; to which, indeed, poetry pre-eminently belongs. it may well be imagined into what perplexity young minds felt themselves thrown by such dislocated maxims, half-understood laws, and shivered-up dogmas. we adhere to examples, and there, too, were no better off; foreigners as well as the ancients stood too far from us; and from the best native poets always peeped out a decided individuality, to the good points of which we could not lay claim, and into the faults of which we could not but be afraid of falling. for him who felt any thing productive in himself it was a desperate condition. when one considers closely what was wanting in the german poetry, it was a material, and that, too, a national one: there was never a lack of talent. here we make mention only of günther, who may be called a poet in the full sense of the word. a decided talent, endowed with sensuousness, imagination, memory, the gifts of conception and representation, productive in the highest degree, ready at rhythm, ingenious, witty, and of varied information besides,--he possessed, in short, all the requisites for creating, by means of poetry, a second life within life, even within common real life. we admire the great facility with which, in his occasional poems, he elevates all circumstances by the feelings, and embellishes them with suitable sentiments, images, and historical and fabulous traditions. their roughness and wildness belong to his time, his mode of life, and especially to his character, or, if one would have it so, his want of fixed character. he did not know how to curb himself; and so his life, like his poetry, melted away from him. by his vacillating conduct, günther had trifled away the good fortune of being appointed at the court of augustus the second, where, in addition to every other species of ostentation, they were also looking about for a court-poet, who could give elevation and grace to their festivities, and immortalize a transitory pomp. von könig was more mannerly and more fortunate: he filled this post with dignity and applause. in all sovereign states the material for poetry comes downwards from above; and "the review-camp at mühlberg" ("das lustlager bei mühlberg") was, perhaps, the first worthy object, provincial, if not national, which presented itself to a poet. two kings saluting one another in the presence of a great host, their whole courts and military state around them, well-appointed troops, a mock-fight, /fêtes/ of all kinds,-- this is business enough for the outward sense, and overflowing material for delineating and descriptive poetry. this subject had, indeed, the internal defect, that it was only pomp and show, from which no real action could result. none except the very first distinguished themselves; and, even if they had done so, the poet could not render any one conspicuous lest he should offend the others. he had to consult the "court and state calendar;" and the delineation of the persons therefore went off pretty dryly,--nay, even his contemporaries very strongly reproached him with having described the horses better than the men. but should not this redound to his credit, that he showed his art just where an object for it presented itself? the main difficulty, too, seems soon to have manifested itself to him,--since the poem never advanced beyond the first canto. amidst such studies and reflections, an unexpected event surprised me, and frustrated my laudable design of becoming acquainted with our new literature from the beginning. my countryman, john george schlosser, after spending his academical years with industry and exertion, had repaired to frankfort-on-the-main, in the customary profession of an advocate; but his mind, aspiring and seeking after the universal, could not reconcile itself to this situation for many reasons. he accepted, without hesitation, an office as private secretary to the duke ludwig of wurtemberg, who resided in treptow; for the prince was named among those great men who, in a noble and independent manner, purposed to enlighten themselves, their families, and the world, and to unite for higher aims. it was this prince ludwig who, to ask advice about the education of his children, had written to rousseau, whose well-known answer began with the suspicious-looking phrase, "/si j'avais le malheur d'être né prince/." not only in the affairs of the prince, but also in the education of his children, schlosser was now willingly to assist in word and deed, if not to superintend them. this noble young man, who harbored the best intentions and strove to attain a perfect purity of morals, would have easily kept men from him by a certain dry austerity, if his fine and rare literary cultivation, his knowledge of languages, and his facility at expressing himself by writing, both in verse and prose, had not attracted every one, and made living with him more agreeable. it had been announced to me that he would pass through leipzig, and i expected him with longing. he came and put up at a little inn or wine-house that stood in the /brühl/ (marsh), and the host of which was named schönkopf. this man had a frankfort woman for his wife; and although he entertained few persons during the rest of the year, and could lodge no guests in his little house, yet at fair-time he was visited by many frankforters, who used to eat, and, in case of need, even take quarters, there also. thither i hastened to find schlosser, when he had sent to inform me of his arrival. i scarcely remembered having seen him before, and found a young, well-formed man, with a round, compressed face, without the features losing their sharpness on that account. the form of his rounded forehead, between black eyebrows and locks, indicated earnestness, sternness, and perhaps obstinacy. he was, in a certain measure, the opposite of myself; and this very thing doubtless laid the foundation of our lasting friendship. i had the greatest respect for his talents, the more so as i very well saw, that, in the certainty with which he acted and produced, he was completely my superior. the respect and the confidence which i showed him confirmed his affection, and increased the indulgence he was compelled to have for my lively, impetuous, and ever-excitable disposition, in such contrast with his own. he studied the english writers diligently: pope, if not his model, was his aim; and, in opposition to that author's "essay on man," he had written a poem in like form and measure, which was to give the christian religion the triumph over the deism of the other work. from the great store of papers which he carried with him, he showed me poetical and prose compositions in all languages, which, as they challenged me to imitation, once more gave me infinite disquietude. yet i contrived to get over it immediately by activity. i wrote german, french, english, and italian poems, addressed to him, the subject-matter of which i took from our conversations, which were always important and instructive. schlosser did not wish to leave leipzig without having seen face to face the men who had a name. i willingly took him to those i knew: with those whom i had not yet visited, i in this way became honorably acquainted; since he was received with distinction as a well-informed man of education, of already established character, and well knew how to pay for the outlay of conversation. i cannot pass over our visit we paid to gottsched, as it exemplifies the character and manners of that man. he lived very respectably in the first story of the golden bear, where the elder breitkopf, on account of the great advantage which gottsched's writings, translations, and other aids had brought to the trade, had promised him a lodging for life. we were announced. the servant led us into a large chamber, saying his master would come immediately. now, whether we misunderstood a gesture which he made, i cannot say: it is enough, we thought he directed us into an adjoining room. we entered, to witness a singular scene: for, on the instant, gottsched, that tall, broad, gigantic man, came in at the opposite door in a morning-gown of green damask lined with red taffeta; but his monstrous head was bald and uncovered. this, however, was to be immediately provided for: the servant rushed in at a side-door with a great full-bottomed wig in his hand (the curls came down to the elbows), and handed the head-ornament to his master with gestures of terror. gottsched, without manifesting the least vexation, raised the wig from the servant's arm with his left hand, and, while he very dexterously swung it up on his head, gave the poor fellow such a box on the ear with his right paw, that the latter, as often happens in a comedy, went spinning out at the door; whereupon the respectable old grandfather invited us quite gravely to be seated, and kept up a pretty long discourse with good grace. as long as schlosser remained in leipzig, i dined daily with him, and became acquainted with a very pleasant set of boarders. some livonians, and the son of hermann (chief court-preacher in dresden), afterwards burgomaster in leipzig, and their tutor, hofrath pfeil, author of the "count von p.," a continuation of gellert's "swedish countess;" zachariä, a brother of the poet; and krebel, editor of geographical and genealogical manuals,--all these were polite, cheerful, and friendly men. zachariä was the most quiet; pfeil, an elegant man, who had something almost diplomatic about him, yet without affectation, and with great good humor; krebel, a genuine falstaff, tall, corpulent, fair, with prominent, merry eyes, as bright as the sky, always happy and in good spirits. these persons all treated me in the most handsome manner, partly on schlosser's account--partly, too, on account of my own frank good humor and obliging disposition; and it needed no great persuasion to make me partake of their table in future. in fact, i remained with them after schlosser's departure, deserted ludwig's table, and found myself so much the better off in this society, which was limited to a certain number, as i was very well pleased with the daughter of the family, a very neat, pretty girl, and had opportunities to exchange friendly glances with her,--a comfort which i had neither sought nor found by accident since the mischance with gretchen. i spent the dinner- hours with my friends cheerfully and profitably. krebel, indeed, loved me, and continued to tease me and stimulate me in moderation: pfeil, on the contrary, showed his earnest affection for me by trying to guide and settle my judgment upon many points. during this intercourse, i perceived through conversation, through examples, and through my own reflections, that the first step in delivering ourselves from the wishy-washy, long-winded, empty epoch, could be taken only by definiteness, precision, and brevity. in the style which had hitherto prevailed, one could not distinguish the commonplace from what was better; since all were brought down to a level with each other. authors had already tried to escape from this wide- spread disease, with more or less success. haller and ramler were inclined to compression by nature: lessing and wieland were led to it by reflection. the former became by degrees quite epigrammatical in his poems, terse in "minna," laconic in "emilia galotti,"--it was not till afterwards that he returned to that serene /naiveté/ which becomes him so well in "nathan." "wieland, who had been occasionally prolix in "agathon," "don sylvio," and the "comic tales," becomes condensed and precise to a wonderful degree, as well as exceedingly graceful in "musarion" and "idris." klopstock, in the first cantos of "the messiah," is not without diffuseness: in his "odes" and other minor poems he appears compressed, as also in his tragedies. by his emulation of the ancients, especially tacitus, he sees himself constantly forced into narrower limits, by which he at last becomes obscure and unpalatable. gerstenberg, a fine but eccentric talent, also distinguishes himself: his merit is appreciated, but on the whole he gives little pleasure. gleim, diffuse and easy by nature, is scarcely once concise in his war- songs. ramler is properly more a critic than a poet. he begins to collect what the germans have accomplished in lyric poetry. he now finds, that scarcely one poem fully satisfies him: he must leave out, arrange, and alter, that the things may have some shape or other. by this means he makes himself almost as many enemies as there are poets and amateurs; since every one, properly speaking, recognizes himself only in his defects: and the public interests itself sooner for a faulty individuality than for that which is produced or amended according to a universal law of taste. rhythm lay yet in the cradle, and no one knew of a method to shorten its childhood. poetical prose came into the ascendant. gessner and klopstock excited many imitators: others, again, still demanded an intelligible metre, and translated this prose into rhythm. but even these gave nobody satisfaction, for they were obliged to omit and add; and the prose original always passed for the better of the two. but the more, with all this, conciseness is aimed at, the more does a judgment become possible; since that which is important, being more closely compressed, allows a certain comparison at last. it happened, also, at the same time, that many kinds of truly poetical forms arose; for, as they tried to represent only what was necessary in the objects they wished to imitate, they were forced to do justice to every one of these: and in this manner, though no one did it consciously, the modes of representation multiplied themselves, among which, indeed, were some which were really caricatures, while many an attempt proved unsuccessful. without question, wieland possessed the finest natural gifts of all. he had early cultivated himself thoroughly in those ideal regions where youth so readily lingers; but when, by what is called experience, by the events of the world, and women, these were rendered distasteful to him, he threw himself on the side of the actual, and pleased himself and others with the contest of the two worlds, where, in light skirmishing between jest and earnest, his talent displayed itself most beautifully. how many of his brilliant productions fall into the time of my academic years! "musarion" had the most effect upon me; and i can yet remember the place and the very spot where i got sight of the first proof-sheet, which oeser gave me. here it was that i believed i saw antiquity again living and fresh. every thing that is plastic in wieland's genius here showed itself in its highest perfection; and when that phanias-timon, condemned to an unhappy insipidity, finally reconciles himself to his mistress and to the world, one can well, with him, live through the misanthropical epoch. for the rest, we readily conceded to these works a cheerful aversion from those exalted sentiments, which, by reason of their easy misapplication to life, are often open to the suspicion of dreaminess. we pardoned the author for prosecuting with ridicule what we held as true and reverend, the more readily as he thereby gave us to understand that it caused him continual trouble. how miserably criticism then received such labors may be seen from the first volumes of "the universal german library." of "the comic tales" there is honorable mention, but there is no trace of any insight into the character of the kind of poetry. the reviewer, like every one at that time, had formed his taste by examples. he never takes it into consideration, that, in a judgment of such parodistical works, one must first of all have before one's eyes the original noble, beautiful object, in order to see whether the parodist has really gotten from it a weak and comical side, whether he has borrowed any thing from it, or, under the appearance of such an imitation, has perhaps given us an excellent invention of his own. of all this there is not a notion, but the poems are praised and blamed by passages. the reviewer, as he himself confesses, has marked so much that pleased him, that he cannot quote it all in print. when they even meet the highly meritorious translation of shakespeare with the exclamation, "by rights, a man like shakespeare should not have been translated at all!" it will be understood, without further remark, how infinitely "the universal german library" was behind-hand in matters of taste, and that young people, animated by true feeling, had to look about them for other guiding stars. the material which, in this manner, more or less determined the form, the germans sought everywhere. they had handled few national subjects, or none at all. schlegel's "hermann" only showed the way. the idyllic tendency extended itself without end. the want of distinctive character with gessner, with all his great gracefulness and child-like heartiness, made every one think that he could do something of the same kind. just in the same manner, out of the more generally human, some snatch those poems which should have portrayed a foreign nationality, as, for instance, the jewish pastoral poems, those on the patriarchs altogether, and whatever else related to the old testament. bodmer's "noachide" was a perfect symbol of the watery deluge that swelled high around the german parnassus, and which abated but slowly. the leading-strings of anacreon likewise allowed innumerable mediocre geniuses to reel about at large. the precision of horace compelled the germans, though but slowly, to conform to him. comic heroic poems, mostly after the model of pope's "rape of the lock," did not serve to bring in a better time. i must here mention a delusion, which operated as seriously as it must be ridiculous when one examines it more closely. the germans had now sufficient historical knowledge of all the kinds of poetry in which the different nations had distinguished themselves. this pigeon-hole work, which, properly speaking, totally destroys the inner conception of poetry, had been already pretty completely hammered together by gottsched in his "critical art of poetry;" and it had been shown at the same time that german poets, too, had already known how to fill up all the rubrics with excellent works. and thus it ever went on. each year the collection was more considerable, but every year one work pushed another out of the place in which it had hitherto shone. we now possessed, if not homers, yet virgils and miltons; if not a pindar, yet a horace; of theocrituses there was no lack: and thus they weighed themselves by comparisons from without; whilst the mass of poetical works always increased, so that at last there could be a comparison from within. now though matters of taste stood on a very uncertain footing, there could be no dispute but that, within the protestant part of germany and of switzerland, what is generally called common sense began to stir briskly at that epoch. the scholastic philosophy--which always has the merit of propounding according to received axioms, in a favorite order, and under fixed rubrics, every thing about which man can at all inquire- -had, by the frequent darkness and apparent uselessness of its subject- matter, by its unseasonable application of a method in itself respectable, and by its too great extension over so many subjects, made itself foreign to the mass, unpalatable, and at last superfluous. many a one became convinced that nature had endowed him with as great a portion of good and straightforward sense as, perchance, he required to form such a clear notion of objects that he could manage them and turn them to his own profit, and that of others, without laboriously troubling himself about the most universal problems, and inquiring how the most remote things which do not particularly affect us may hang together. men made the trial, opened their eyes, looked straight before them, observant, industrious, active, and believed, that, when one judges and acts correctly in one's own circle, one may well presume to speak of other things also, which lie at a greater distance. in accordance with such a notion, every one was now entitled, not only to philosophize, but also by degrees to consider himself a philosopher. philosophy, therefore, was more or less sound, and practised common sense, which ventured to enter upon the universal, and to decide upon inner and outer experiences. a clear-sighted acuteness and an especial moderation, while the middle path and fairness to all opinions was held to be right, procured respect and confidence for writings and oral statements of the sort; and thus at last philosophers were found in all the faculties,--nay, in all classes and trades. in this way the theologians could not help inclining to what is called natural religion; and, when the discussion was how far the light of nature may suffice to advance us in the knowledge of god and the improving and ennobling of ourselves, they commonly ventured to decide in its favor without much scruple. according to the same principle of moderation, they then granted equal rights to all positive religions, by which they all became alike indifferent and uncertain. for the rest, they let every thing stand; and since the bible is so full of matter, that, more than any other book, it offers material for reflection and opportunity for meditation on human affairs, it could still, as before, be always laid as the foundation of all sermons and other religious treatises. but over this work, as well as over the whole body of profane writers, was impending a singular fate, which, in the lapse of time, was not to be averted. hitherto it had been received as a matter of implicit faith, that this book of books was composed in one spirit; that it was even inspired, and, as it were, dictated by the divine spirit. yet for a long time already the discrepancies of the different parts of it had been now cavilled at, now apologized for, by believers and unbelievers. english, french, and germans had attacked the bible with more or less violence, acuteness, audacity, and wantonness; and just as often had it been taken under the protection of earnest, sound-thinking men of each nation. as for myself, i loved and valued it; for almost to it alone did i owe my moral culture: and the events, the doctrines, the symbols, the similes, had all impressed themselves deeply upon me, and had influenced me in one way or another. these unjust, scoffing, and perverting attacks, therefore, disgusted me; but people had already gone so far as very willingly to admit, partly as a main ground for the defense of many passages, that god had accommodated himself to the modes of thought and power of comprehension in men; that even those moved by the spirit had not on that account been able to renounce their character, their individuality, and that amos, a cow-herd, did not use the language of isaiah, who is said to have been a prince. out of such views and convictions, especially with a constantly increasing knowledge of languages, was very naturally developed that kind of study by which it was attempted to examine more accurately the oriental localities, nationalities, natural products, and phenomena, and in this manner to make present to one's self that ancient time. michaelis employed the whole strength of his talents and his knowledge on this side. descriptions of travels became a powerful help in explaining the holy scriptures; and later travellers, furnished with numerous questions, were made, by the answers to them, to bear witness for the prophets and apostles. but whilst they were on all sides busied to bring the holy scriptures to a natural intuition, and to render peculiar modes of thought and representation in them more universally comprehensible, that by this historico-critical aspect many an objection might be removed, many offensive things effaced, and many a shallow scoffing be made ineffective, there appeared in some men just the opposite disposition, since these chose the darkest, most mysterious, writings as the subject of their meditations, and wished, if not to elucidate them, yet to confirm them through internal evidence, by means of conjectures, calculations, and other ingenious and strange combinations, and, so far as they contained prophecies, to prove them by the results, and thus to justify a faith in what was next to be expected. the venerable bengel had procured a decided reception for his labors on the revelation of st. john, from the fact that he was known as an intelligent, upright, god-fearing, blameless man. deep minds are compelled to live in the past as well as in the future. the ordinary movements of the world can be of no importance to them, if they do not, in the course of ages up to the present, revere prophecies which have been revealed, and in the immediate, as well as in the most remote futurity, predictions still veiled. hence arises a connection that is wanting in history, which seems to give us only an accidental wavering backwards and forwards in a necessarily limited circle. doctor crusius was one of those whom the prophetic part of scripture suited more than any other, since it brings into action the two most opposite qualities of human nature, the affections, and the acuteness of the intellect. many young men had devoted themselves to this doctrine, and already formed a respectable body, which attracted the more attention, as ernesti with his friends threatened, not to illuminate, but completely to disperse, the obscurity in which these delighted. hence arose controversies, hatred, persecution, and much that was unpleasant. i attached myself to the lucid party, and sought to appropriate to myself their principles and advantages; although i ventured to forebode, that by this extremely praiseworthy, intelligent method of interpretation, the poetic contents of the writings must at last be lost along with the prophetical. but those who devoted themselves to german literature and the /belles- lettres/ were more nearly concerned with the efforts of such men, who, as jerusalem, zollikofer, and spalding, tried, by means of a good and pure style in their sermons and treatises, to gain, even among persons of a certain degree of sense and taste, applause and attachment for religion, and for the moral philosophy which is so closely related to it. a pleasing manner of writing began to be necessary everywhere; and since such a manner must, above all, be comprehensible, so did writers arise, on many sides, who undertook to write about their studies and their professions clearly, perspicuously, and impressively, and as well for the adepts as for the multitude. after the example of tissot, a foreigner, the physicians also now began to labor zealously for the general cultivation. haller, unzer, zimmerman, had a very great influence; and whatever may be said against them in detail, especially the last, they produced a very great effect in their time. and mention should be made of this in history, but particularly in biography; for a man remains of consequence, not so far as he leaves something behind him, but so far as he acts and enjoys, and rouses others to action and enjoyment. the jurists, accustomed from their youth upward to an abstruse style, which, in all legal papers, from the petty court of the immediate knight up to the imperial diet at ratisbon, was still maintained in all its quaintness, could not easily elevate themselves to a certain freedom, the less so as the subjects of which they had to treat were most intimately connected with the external form, and consequently also with the style. but the younger von moser had already shown himself an independent and original writer; and putter, by the clearness of his delivery, had also brought clearness into his subject, and the style in which he was to treat it. all that proceeded from his school was distinguished by this. and even the philosophers, in order to be popular, now found themselves compelled to write clearly and intelligibly. mendelssohn and garve appeared, and excited universal interest and admiration. with the cultivation of the german language and style in every department, the capacity for forming a judgment also increased, and we admire the reviews then published of works upon religious and moral, as well as medical, subjects; while, on the contrary, we remark that the judgments of poems, and of whatever else may relate to the /belles- lettres/, will be found, if not pitiful, at least very feeble. this holds good of the "literary epistles" ("literaturbriefen"), and of "the universal german library," as well as of "the library of the belles- lettres," notable instances of which could easily be produced. no matter in how motley a manner all this might be confused, still, for every one who contemplated producing any thing from himself,--who would not merely take the words and phrases out of the mouths of his predecessors,--there was nothing further left but, early and late, to look about him for some subject-matter which he might determine to use. here, too, we were much led astray. people were constantly repeating a saying of kleist, which we had to hear often enough. he had sportively, ingeniously, and truly replied to those who took him to task on account of his frequent, lonely walks, "that he was not idle at such times,--he was going to the image-hunt." this simile was very suitable for a nobleman and soldier, who by it placed himself in contrast with the men of his rank, who did not neglect going out, with their guns on their shoulders, hare-hunting and partridge-shooting, as often as an opportunity presented itself. hence we find in kleist's poems many such individual images, happily seized, although not always happily elaborated, which, in a kindly manner, remind us of nature. but now they also recommended us, quite seriously, to go out on the image-hunt, which did not at last leave us wholly without fruit; although apel's garden, the kitchen-gardens, the rosenthal, golis, raschwitz, and konnewitz, would be the oddest ground to beat up poetical game in. and yet i was often induced by that motive to contrive that my walk should be solitary; and because many objects neither beautiful nor sublime met the eye of the beholder, and, in the truly splendid rosenthal, the gnats, in the best season of the year, allowed no tender thoughts to arise, so did i, by unwearied, persevering endeavor, become extremely attentive to the small life of nature (i would use this word after the analogy of "still life"); and, since the pretty events which one perceives within this circle represent but little in themselves, so i accustomed myself to see in them a significance, which inclined now towards the symbolical, now towards the allegorical, side, accordingly as intuition, feeling, or reflection had the preponderance. i will relate one incident in place of many. i was, after the fashion of humanity, in love with my name, and, as young, uneducated people commonly do, wrote it down everywhere. once i had carved it very handsomely and accurately on the smooth bark of a linden-tree of moderate age. the following autumn, when my affection for annette was in its fullest bloom, i took the trouble to cut hers above it. towards the end of the winter, in the mean time, like a capricious lover, i had wantonly sought many opportunities to tease her and cause her vexation: in the spring i chanced to visit the spot; and the sap, which was rising strongly in the trees, had welled out through the incisions which formed her name, and which were not yet crusted over, and moistened with innocent vegetable tears the already hardened traces of my own. thus to see her here weeping over me,--me, who had so often called up her tears by my ill conduct, filled me with confusion. at the remembrance of my injustice and of her love, even the tears came into my eyes; i hastened to implore pardon of her, doubly and trebly: and i turned this incident into an idyl, [footnote: die laune des verliebten, translated as the lover's caprice, see p. .] which i never could read to myself without affection, or to others without emotion. while i now, like a shepherd on the pleisse, was absorbed childishly enough in such tender subjects, and always chose only such as i could easily recall into my bosom, provision from a greater and more important side had long been made for german poets. the first true and really vital material of the higher order came into german poetry through frederick the great and the deeds of the seven years' war. all national poetry must be shallow or become shallow which does not rest on that which is most universally human,--upon the events of nations and their shepherds, when both stand for one man. kings are to be represented in war and danger, where, by that very means, they appear as the first, because they determine and share the fate of the very least, and thus become much more interesting than the gods themselves, who, when they have once determined the fates, withdraw from all participation in them. in this view of the subject, every nation, if it would be worth any thing at all, must possess an epopee, to which the precise form of the epic poem is not necessary. the war-songs started by gleim maintain so high a rank among german poems, because they arose with and in the achievements which are their subject; and because, moreover, their felicitous form, just as if a fellow-combatant had produced them in the loftiest moments, makes us feel the most complete effectiveness. ramler sings the deeds of his king in a different and most noble manner. all his poems are full of matter, and occupy us with great, heart- elevating objects, and thus already maintain an indestructible value. for the internal matter of the subject treated is the beginning and end of art. it will not, indeed, be denied that genius, that thoroughly cultivated artistical talent, can make every thing out of every thing by its method of treatment, and can subdue the most refractory material. but, when closely examined, the result is rather a trick of art than a work of art, which should rest upon a worthy object, that the treatment of it, by skill, pains, and industry, may present to us the dignity of the subject-matter only the more happily and splendidly. the prussians, and with them protestant germany, acquired thus for their literature a treasure which the opposite party lacked, and the want of which they have been able to supply by no subsequent endeavors. upon the great idea which the prussian writers might well entertain of their king, they first established themselves, and the more zealously as he, in whose name they did it all, wished once for all to know nothing about them. already before this, through the french colony, afterwards through the king's predilection for the literature of that nation and for their financial institutions, had a mass of french civilization come into prussia, which was highly advantageous to the germans, since by it they were challenged to contradiction and resistance; thus the very aversion of frederick from german was a fortunate thing for the formation of its literary character. they did every thing to attract the king's attention, not indeed to be honored, but only noticed, by him; yet they did it in german fashion, from an internal conviction; they did what they held to be right, and desired and wished that the king should recognize and prize this german uprightness. that did not and could not happen; for how can it be required of a king, who wishes to live and enjoy himself intellectually, that he shall lose his years in order to see what he thinks barbarous developed and rendered palatable too late? in matters of trade and manufacture, he might indeed force upon himself, but especially upon his people, very moderate substitutes instead of excellent foreign wares; but here every thing comes to perfection more rapidly, and it needs not a man's life-time to bring such things to maturity. but i must here, first of all, make honorable mention of one work, the most genuine production of the seven years' war, and of perfect north- german nationality: it is the first theatrical production caught from the important events of life, one of specific, temporary value, and one which therefore produced an incalculable effect,--"minna von barnhelm." lessing, who, in opposition to klopstock and gleim, was fond of casting off his personal dignity, because he was confident that he could at any moment grasp and take it up again, delighted in a dissipated life in taverns and the world, as he always needed a strong counterpoise to his powerfully laboring interior; and for this reason, also, he had joined the suite of gen. tauentzien. one easily discovers how the above- mentioned piece was generated betwixt war and peace, hatred and affection. it was this production which happily opened the view into a higher, more significant, world, from the literary and citizen world in which poetic art had hitherto moved. the intense hatred in which the prussians and saxons stood towards each other during this war could not be removed by its termination. the saxon now first felt, with true bitterness, the wounds which the upstart prussian had inflicted upon him. political peace could not immediately re-establish a peace between their dispositions. but this was to be brought about symbolically by the above-mentioned drama. the grace and amiability of the saxon ladies conquer the worth, the dignity, and the stubbornness of the prussians; and, in the principal as well as in the subordinate characters, a happy union of bizarre and contradictory elements is artistically represented. if i have put my reader in some perplexity by these cursory and desultory remarks on german literature, i have succeeded in giving them a conception of that chaotic condition in which my poor brain found itself, when, in the conflict of two epochs so important for the literary fatherland, so much that was new crowded in upon me before i could come to terms with the old, so much that was old yet made me feel its right over me, when i believed i had already cause to venture on renouncing it altogether. i will at present try to impart, as well as possible, the way i entered on to extricate myself from this difficulty, if only step by step. the period of prolixity into which my youth had fallen, i had labored through with genuine industry, in company with so many worthy men. the numerous quarto volumes of manuscript which i left behind with my father might serve for sufficient witnesses of this; and what a mass of essays, rough draughts, and half-executed designs, had, more from despondency than conviction, gone up in smoke! now, through conversation, through instruction in general, through so many conflicting opinions, but especially through my fellow-boarder hofrath pfeil, i learned to value more and more the importance of the subject-matter and the conciseness of the treatment; without, however, being able to make it clear to myself where the former was to be sought, or how the latter was to be attained. for, what with the great narrowness of my situation; what with the indifference of my companions, the reserve of the professors, the exclusiveness of the educated inhabitants; and what with the perfect insignificance of the natural objects,--i was compelled to seek for every thing within myself. whenever i desired a true basis in feeling or reflection for my poems, i was forced to grasp into my own bosom; whenever i required for my poetic representation an immediate intuition of an object or an event, i could not step outside the circle which was fitted to teach me, and inspire me with an interest. in this view i wrote at first certain little poems, in the form of songs or in a freer measure: they are founded on reflection, treat of the past, and for the most part take an epigrammatic turn. and thus began that tendency from which i could not deviate my whole life through; namely, the tendency to turn into an image, into a poem, every thing that delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied me, and to come to some certain understanding with myself upon it, that i might both rectify my conceptions of external things, and set my mind at rest about them. the faculty of doing this was necessary to no one more than to me, for my natural disposition whirled me constantly from one extreme to the other. all, therefore, that has been confessed by me, consists of fragments of a great confession; and this little book is an attempt which i have ventured on to render it complete. my early affection for gretchen i had now transferred to one annette (/aennchen/), of whom i can say nothing more than that she was young, handsome, sprightly, loving, and so agreeable that she well deserved to be set up for a time in the shrine of the heart as a little saint, that she might receive all that reverence which it often causes more pleasure to bestow than to receive. i saw her daily without hinderance; she helped to prepare the meals i enjoyed; she brought, in the evening at least, the wine i drank; and indeed our select club of noon-day boarders was a warranty that the little house, which was visited by few guests except during the fair, well merited its good reputation. opportunity and inclination were found for various kinds of amusement. but, as she neither could nor dared go much out of the house, the pastime was somewhat limited. we sang the songs of zachariä; played the "duke michael" of krüger, in which a knotted handkerchief had to take the place of the nightingale; and so, for a while, it went on quite tolerably. but since such connections, the more innocent they are, afford the less variety in the long run, i was seized with that wicked distemper which seduces us to derive amusement from the torment of a beloved one, and to domineer over a girl's devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice. my ill humor at the failure of my poetical attempts, at the apparent impossibility of coming to a clear understanding about them, and at every thing else that might pinch me here and there, i thought i might vent on her, because she truly loved me with all her heart, and did whatever she could to please me. by unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy, i destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself and her. she endured it for a time with incredible patience, which i was cruel enough to try to the uttermost. but, to my shame and despair, i was at last forced to remark that her heart was alienated from me, and that i might now have good ground for the madness in which i had indulged without necessity and without cause. there were also terrible scenes between us, in which i gained nothing; and i then first felt that i had truly loved her, and could not bear to lose her. my passion grew, and assumed all the forms of which it is capable under such circumstances; nay, at last i even took up the /rôle/ which the girl had hitherto played. i sought every thing possible in order to be agreeable to her, even to procure her pleasure by means of others; for i could not renounce the hope of winning her again. but it was too late! i had lost her really; and the frenzy with which i revenged my fault upon myself, by assaulting in various frantic ways my physical nature, in order to inflict some hurt on my moral nature, contributed very much to the bodily maladies under which i lost some of the best years of my life: indeed, i should perchance have been completely ruined by this loss, had not my poetic talent here shown itself particularly helpful with its healing power. already, at many intervals before, i had clearly enough perceived my ill conduct. i really pitied the poor child, when i saw her so thoroughly wounded by me, without necessity. i pictured to myself so often and so circumstantially her condition and my own, and, as a contrast, the contented state of another couple in our company, that at last i could not forbear treating this situation dramatically, as a painful and instructive penance. hence arose the oldest of my extant dramatic labors, the little piece entitled, "die laune des verliebten" ("the lover's caprice"), in the simple nature of which one may at the same time perceive the impetus of a boiling passion. but, before this, a deep, significant, impulsive world had already interested me. through my adventure with gretchen and its consequences, i had early looked into the strange labyrinths by which civil society is undermined. religion, morals, law, rank, connections, custom, all rule only the surface of city existence. the streets, bordered by splendid houses, are kept neat; and every one behaves himself there properly enough: but, indoors, it often seems only so much the more disordered; and a smooth exterior, like a thin coat of mortar, plasters over many a rotten wall that tumbles together overnight, and produces an effect the more frightful, as it comes into the midst of a condition of repose. a great many families, far and near, i had seen already, either overwhelmed in ruin or kept miserably hanging on the brink of it, by means of bankruptcies, divorces, seduced daughters, murders, house- robberies, poisonings; and, young as i was, i had often, in such cases, lent a hand for help and preservation. for as my frankness awakened confidence; as my secrecy was proved; as my activity feared no sacrifice, and loved best to exert itself in the most dangerous affairs,--i had often enough found opportunity to mediate, to hush up, to divert the lightning-flash, with every other assistance of the kind; in the course of which, as well in my own person as through others, i could not fail to come to the knowledge of many afflicting and humiliating facts. to relieve myself i designed several plays, and wrote the arguments [footnote: "/exposition/," in a dramatic sense, properly means a statement of the events which take place before the action of the play commences.--trans.] of most of them. but since the intrigues were always obliged to be painful, and almost all these pieces threatened a tragical conclusion, i let them drop one after another. "die mitschuldigen" ("the accomplices") is the only one that was finished, the cheerful and burlesque tone of which upon the gloomy family-ground appears as if accompanied by something causing anxiety; so that, on the whole, it is painful in representation, although it pleases in detached passages. the illegal deeds, harshly expressed, wound the aesthetic and moral feeling, and the piece could therefore find no favor on the german stage; although the imitations of it, which steered clear of those rocks, were received with applause. both the above-mentioned pieces were, however, written from a more elevated point of view, without my having been aware of it. they direct us to a considerate forbearance in casting moral imputations, and in somewhat harsh and coarse touches sportively express that most christian maxim, /let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone/. through this earnestness, which cast a gloom over my first pieces, i committed the mistake of neglecting very favorable materials which lay quite decidedly in my natural disposition. in the midst of these serious, and, for a young man, fearful, experiences, was developed in me a reckless humor, which feels itself superior to the moment, and not only fears no danger, but rather wantonly courts it. the reason of this lay in the exuberance of spirits in which the vigorous time of life so much delights, and which, if it manifests itself in a frolicsome way, causes much pleasure, both at the moment and in remembrance. these things are so usual, that, in the vocabulary of our young university friends, they are called /suites/; and, on account of the close similarity of signification, to say "play /suites/," means just the same as to "play pranks." [footnote: the real meaning of the passage is, that the idiom "possen reissen" is used also with the university word "suite," so that one can say "suiten reissen."--trans.] such humorous acts of daring, brought on the theatre with wit and sense, are of the greatest effect. they are distinguished from intrigue, inasmuch as they are momentary, and that their aim, whenever they are to have one, must not be remote. beaumarchais has seized their full value, and the effects of his "figaro" spring pre-eminently from this. whereas such good-humored roguish and half-knavish pranks are practised with personal risk for noble ends, the situations which arise from them are aesthetically and morally considered of the greatest value for the theatre; as, for instance, the opera of "the water-carrier" treats perhaps the happiest subject which we have ever yet seen upon the stage. to enliven the extreme tedium of daily life, i played off numberless tricks of the sort, partly without any aim at all, partly in the service of my friends, whom i liked to please. for myself, i could not say that i had once acted in this designedly, nor did i ever happen to consider a feat of the kind as a subject for art. had i, however, seized upon and elaborated such materials, which were so close at hand, my earliest labors would have been more cheerful and available. some incidents of this kind occur indeed later, but isolated and without design. for since the heart always lies nearer to us than the head, and gives us trouble, whereas the latter knows how to set matters to rights, the affairs of the heart had always appeared to me as the most important. i was never weary of reflecting upon the transient nature of attachments, the mutability of human character, moral sensuality, and all the heights and depths, the combination of which in our nature may be considered as the riddle of human life. here, too, i sought to get rid of that which troubled me, in a song, an epigram, in some kind of rhyme; which, since they referred to the most private feelings and the most peculiar circumstances, could scarcely interest any one but myself. in the mean time, my external position had very much changed after the lapse of a short time. madame böhme, after a long and melancholy illness, had at last died: she had latterly ceased to admit me to her presence. her husband could not be very much satisfied with me: i seemed to him not sufficiently industrious, and too frivolous. he especially took it very ill of me, when it was told him, that at the lectures on german public law, instead of taking proper notes, i had been drawing on the margin of my note-book the personages presented to our notice in them, such as the president of the chamber, the moderators and assessors, in strange wigs; and by this drollery had disturbed my attentive neighbors and set them laughing. after the loss of his wife he lived still more retired than before, and at last i shunned him in order to avoid his reproaches. but it was peculiarly unfortunate that gellert would not use the power which he might have exercised over us. indeed, he had not time to play the father-confessor, and to inquire after the character and faults of everybody: he therefore took the matter very much in the lump, and thought to curb us by means of the church forms. for this reason he commonly, when he admitted us to his presence, used to lower his little head, and, in his weeping, winning voice, to ask us whether we went regularly to church, who was our confessor, and whether we took the holy communion? if we came off badly at this examination, we were dismissed with lamentations: we were more vexed than edified, yet could not help loving the man heartily. on this occasion i cannot forbear recalling somewhat of my earlier youth, in order to make it obvious that the great affairs of the ecclesiastical religion must be carried on with order and coherence, if they are to prove as fruitful as is expected. the protestant service has too little fulness and consistency to be able to hold the congregation together; hence it easily happens that members secede from it, and either form little congregations of their own, or, without ecclesiastical connection, quietly carry on their citizen-life side by side. thus for a considerable time complaints were made that church- goers were diminishing from year to year, and, just in the same ratio, the persons who partook of the lord's supper. with respect to both, but especially the latter, the cause lies close at hand; but who dares to speak it out? we will make the attempt. in moral and religious, as well as in physical and civil, matters, man does not like to do any thing on the spur of the moment; he needs a sequence from which results habit; what he is to love and to perform, he cannot represent to himself as single or isolated; and, if he is to repeat any thing willingly, it must not have become strange to him. if the protestant worship lacks fulness in general, so let it be investigated in detail, and it will be found that the protestant has too few sacraments,--nay, indeed, he has only one in which he is himself an actor,--the lord's supper; for baptism he sees only when it is performed on others, and is not greatly edified by it. the sacraments are the highest part of religion, the symbols to our senses of an extraordinary divine favor and grace. in the lord's supper earthly lips are to receive a divine being embodied, and partake of a heavenly under the form of an earthly nourishment. this import is the same in all kinds of christian churches: whether the sacrament is taken with more or less submission to the mystery, with more or less accommodation as to that which is intelligible, it always remains a great, holy thing, which in reality takes the place of the possible or the impossible, the place of that which man can neither attain nor do without. but such a sacrament should not stand alone: no christian can partake of it with the true joy for which it is given, if the symbolical or sacramental sense is not fostered within him. he must be accustomed to regard the inner religion of the heart and that of the external church as perfectly one, as the great universal sacrament, which again divides itself into so many others, and communicates to these parts its holiness, indestructibleness, and eternity. here a youthful pair join hands, not for a passing salutation or for the dance: the priest pronounces his blessing upon them, and the bond is indissoluble. it is not long before this wedded pair bring a likeness to the threshold of the altar: it is purified with holy water, and so incorporated into the church, that it cannot forfeit this benefit but through the most monstrous apostasy. the child in the course of life goes on progressing in earthly things of his own accord, in heavenly things he must be instructed. does it prove on examination that this has been fully done, he is now received into the bosom of the church as an actual citizen, as a true and voluntary professor, not without outward tokens of the weightiness of this act. now, only, he is decidedly a christian, now for the first time he knows his advantages and also his duties. but, in the mean time, a great deal that is strange has happened to him as a man: through instruction and affliction he has come to know how critical appears the state of his inner self, and there will constantly be a question of doctrines and of transgressions; but punishment shall no longer take place. for here, in the infinite confusion in which he must entangle himself, amid the conflict of natural and religious claims, an admirable expedient is given him, in confiding his deeds and misdeeds, his infirmities and doubts, to a worthy man, appointed expressly for that purpose, who knows how to calm, to warn, to strengthen him, to chasten him likewise by symbolical punishments, and at last, by a complete washing away of his guilt, to render him happy, and to give him back, pure and cleansed, the tablet of his manhood. thus prepared, and purely set at rest by several sacramental acts, which on closer examination branch forth again into minuter sacramental traits, he kneels down to receive the host; and, that the mystery of this high act may be still enhanced, he sees the chalice only in the distance: it is no common eating and drinking that satisfies, it is a heavenly feast, which makes him thirst after heavenly drink. yet let not the youth believe that this is all he has to do; let not even the man believe it. in earthly relations we are at last accustomed to depend on ourselves; and, even there, knowledge, understanding, and character will not always suffice: in heavenly things, on the contrary, we have never finished learning. the higher feeling within us, which often finds itself not even truly at home, is, besides, oppressed by so much from without, that our own power hardly administers all that is necessary for counsel, consolation, and help. but, to this end, that remedy is instituted for our whole life; and an intelligent, pious man is continually waiting to show the right way to the wanderers, and to relieve the distressed. and what has been so well tried through the whole life, is now to show forth all its healing power with tenfold activity at the gate of death. according to a trustful custom, inculcated from youth upwards, the dying man receives with fervor those symbolical, significant assurances; and there, where every earthly warranty fails, he is assured, by a heavenly one, of a blessed existence for all eternity. he feels perfectly convinced that neither a hostile element nor a malignant spirit can hinder him from clothing himself with a glorified body, so that, in immediate relation with the godhead, he may partake of the boundless happiness which flows forth from him. then, in conclusion, that the whole may be made holy, the feet also are anointed and blessed. they are to feel, even in the event of possible recovery, a repugnance to touching this earthly, hard, impenetrable soil. a wonderful elasticity is to be imparted to them, by which they spurn from under them the clod of earth which hitherto attracted them. and so, through a brilliant cycle of equally holy acts, the beauty of which we have only briefly hinted at, the cradle and the grave, however far asunder they may chance to be, are joined in one continuous circle. but all these spiritual wonders spring not, like other fruits, from the natural soil, where they can neither be sown nor planted nor cherished. we must supplicate for them from another region,--a thing which cannot be done by all persons nor at all times. here we meet the highest of these symbols, derived from pious tradition. we are told that one man may be more favored, blessed, and sanctified from above than another. but, that this may not appear as a natural gift, this great boon, bound up with a heavy duty, must be communicated to others by one authorized person to another; and the greatest good that a man can attain, without his having to obtain it by his own wrestling or grasping, must be preserved and perpetuated on earth by spiritual inheritance. in the very ordination of the priest is comprehended all that is necessary for the effectual solemnizing of those holy acts by which the multitude receive grace, without any other activity being needful on their part than that of faith and implicit confidence. and thus the priest joins the line of his predecessors and successors, in the circle of those anointed with him, representing the highest source of blessings, so much the more gloriously, as it is not he, the priest, whom we reverence, but his office: it is not his nod to which we bow the knee, but the blessing which he imparts, and which seems the more holy, and to come the more immediately from heaven, because the earthly instrument cannot at all weaken or invalidate it by its own sinful, nay, wicked, nature. how is this truly spiritual connection shattered to pieces in protestantism, by part of the above-mentioned symbols being declared apocryphal, and only a few canonical!--and how, by their indifference to one of these, will they prepare us for the high dignity of the others? in my time i had been confided to the religious instruction of a good old infirm clergyman, who had been confessor of the family for many years. the "catechism," a "paraphrase" of it, and the "scheme of salvation," i had at my finger's ends: i lacked not one of the strongly proving biblical texts, but from all this i reaped no fruit; for, as they assured me that the honest old man arranged his chief examimation according to an old set form, i lost all pleasure and inclination for the business, spent the last week in all sorts of diversions, laid in my hat the loose leaves borrowed from an older friend, who had gotten them from the clergyman, and unfeelingly and senselessly read aloud all that i should have known how to utter with feeling and conviction. but i found my good intention and my aspirations in this important matter still more paralyzed by a dry, spiritless routine, when i was now to approach the confessional. i was indeed conscious of having many failings, but no great faults; and that very consciousness diminished them, since it directed me to the moral strength which lay within me, and which, with resolution and perseverance, was at last to become master over the old adam. we were taught that we were much better than the catholics for the very reason, that we were not obliged to confess any thing in particular in the confessional,--nay, that this would not be at all proper, even if we wished to do it. i did not like this at all; for i had the strangest religious doubts, which i would readily have had cleared up on such an occasion. now, as this was not to be done, i composed a confession for myself, which, while it well expressed my state of mind, was to confess to an intelligent man, in general terms, that which i was forbidden to tell him in detail. but when i entered the old choir of the barefoot friars, when i approached the strange latticed closets in which the reverend gentlemen used to be found for that purpose, when the sexton opened the door for me, when i now saw myself shut up in the narrow place face to face with my spiritual grandsire, and he bade me welcome with his weak, nasal voice, all the light of my mind and heart was extinguished at once, the well- conned confession-speech would not cross my lips: in my embarrassment i opened the book i had in my hand, and read from it the first short form i saw, which was so general, that anybody might have spoken it with quite a safe conscience. i received absolution, and withdrew neither warm nor cold; went the next day with my parents to the table of the lord, and, for a few days, behaved myself as was becoming after so holy an act. in the sequel, however, there came over me that evil, which, from the fact of our religion being complicated by various dogmas, and founded on texts of scripture which admit of several interpretations, attacks scrupulous men in such a manner, that it brings on a hypochondriacal condition, and raises this to its highest point, to fixed ideas. i have known several men, who, though their manner of thinking and living was perfectly rational, could not free themselves from thinking about the sin against the holy ghost, and from the fear that they had committed it. a similar trouble threatened me on the subject of the communion; for the text, that one who unworthily partakes of the sacrament /eateth and drinketh damnation to himself/, had, very early, already made a monstrous impression upon me. every fearful thing that i had read in the histories of the middle ages, of the judgments of god, of those most strange ordeals, by red-hot iron, flaming fire, swelling water, and even what the bible tells us of the draught which agrees well with the innocent, but puffs up and bursts the guilty,--all this pictured itself to my imagination, and formed itself into the most frightful combinations; since false vows, hypocrisy, perjury, blasphemy, all seemed to weigh down the unworthy person at this most holy act, which was so much the more horrible, as no one could dare to pronounce himself worthy: and the forgiveness of sins, by which every thing was to be at last; done away, was found limited by so many conditions, that one could not with certainty dare appropriate it to one's self. this gloomy scruple troubled me to such a degree, and the expedient which they would represent to me as sufficient seemed so bald and feeble, that it gave the bugbear only a more fearful aspect; and, as soon as i had reached leipzig, i tried to free myself altogether from my connection with the church. how oppressive, then, must have been to me the exhortations of gellert, whom, considering the generally laconic style with which he was obliged to repel our obtrusiveness, i was unwilling to trouble with such singular questions, and the less so as in my more cheerful hours i was myself ashamed of them, and at last left completely behind me this strange anguish of conscience, together with church and altar. gellert, in accordance with his pious feelings, had composed for himself a course of ethics, which from time to time he publicly read, and thus in an honorable manner acquitted himself of his duty to the public. gellert's writings had already, for a long time, been the foundation of german moral culture, and every one anxiously wished to see that work printed; but, as this was not to be done till after the good man's death, people thought themselves very fortunate to hear him deliver it himself in his lifetime. the philosophical auditorium [footnote: the lecture-room. the word is also used in university language to denote a professor's audience.] was at such times crowded: and the beautiful soul, the pure will, and the interest of the noble man in our welfare, his exhortations, warnings, and entreaties, uttered in a somewhat hollow and sorrowful tone, made indeed an impression for the moment; but this did not last long, the less so as there were many scoffers, who contrived to make us suspicious of this tender, and, as they thought, enervating, manner. i remember a frenchman travelling through the town, who asked what were the maxims and opinions of the man who attracted such an immense concourse. "when we had given him the necessary information, he shook his head, and said, smiling, "/laissez le faire, il nous forme des dupes./" and thus also did good society, which cannot easily endure any thing worthy near it, know how to spoil, on occasion, the moral influence which gellert might have had upon us. now it was taken ill of him that he instructed the danes of distinction and wealth, who were particularly recommended to him, better than the other students, and had a marked solicitude for them; now he was charged with selfishness and nepotism for causing a /table d'hôte/ to be established for these young men at his brother's house. this brother, a tall, good-looking, blunt, unceremonious, and somewhat coarse, man, had, it was said, been a fencing-master; and, notwithstanding the too great lenity of his brother, the noble boarders were often treated harshly and roughly: hence the people thought they must again take the part of these young folks, and pulled about the good reputation of the excellent gellert to such a degree, that, in order not to be mistaken about him, we became indifferent towards him, and visited him no more; yet we always saluted him in our best manner when he came riding along on his tame gray horse. this horse the elector had sent him, to oblige him to take an exercise so necessary for his health,--a distinction for which he was not easily to be forgiven. and thus, by degrees, the epoch approached when all authority was to vanish from before me, and i was to become suspicious--nay, to despair, even--of the greatest and best individuals whom i had known or imagined. frederick the second still stood at the head of all the distinguished men of the century in my thoughts; and it must therefore have appeared very surprising to me, that i could praise him as little before the inhabitants of leipzig as formerly in my grandfather's house. they had felt the hand of war heavily, it is true; and therefore they were not to blame for not thinking the best of him who had begun and continued it. they, therefore, were willing to let him pass as a distinguished, but by no means as a great, man. "there was no art," they said, "in performing something with great means; and, if one spares neither lands nor money nor blood, one may well accomplish one's purpose at last. frederick had shown himself great in none of his plans, and in nothing that he had, properly speaking, undertaken. so long as it depended on himself, he had only gone on making blunders, and what was extraordinary in him had only come to light when he was compelled to make these blunders good again. it was purely from this that he had obtained his great reputation; since every man wishes for himself that same talent of making good, in a clever way, the blunders which he frequently commits. if one goes through the seven years' war, step by step, it will be found that the king quite uselessly sacrificed his fine army, and that it was his own fault that this ruinous feud had been protracted to so great a length. a truly great man and general would have got the better of his enemies much sooner." in support of these opinions they could cite infinite details, which i did not know how to deny; and i felt the unbounded reverence which i had devoted to this remarkable prince, from my youth upwards, gradually cooling away. as the inhabitants of leipzig had now destroyed for me the pleasant feeling of revering a great man; so did a new friend, whom i gained at the time, very much diminish the respect which i entertained for my present fellow-citizens. this friend was one of the strangest fellows in the world. he was named behrisch, and was tutor to the young count lindenau. even his exterior was singular enough. lean and well-built, far advanced in the thirties, a very large nose, and altogether marked features: he wore from morning till night a scratch which might well have been called a peruke, but dressed himself very neatly, and never went out but with his sword by his side, and his hat under his arm. he was one of those men who have quite a peculiar gift of killing time, or, rather, who know how to make something out of nothing, in order to pass time away. every thing he did had to be done with slowness, and with a certain deportment which might have been called affected if behrisch had not even by nature had something affected in his manner. he resembled an old frenchman, and also spoke and wrote french very well and easily. his greatest delight was to busy himself seriously about drolleries, and to follow up without end any silly notion. thus he was constantly dressed in gray; and as the different parts of his attire were of different material, and also of different shades, he could reflect for whole days as to how he should procure one gray more for his body, and was happy when he had succeeded in this, and could put to shame us who had doubted it, or had pronounced it impossible. he then gave us long, severe lectures about our lack of inventive power, and our want of faith in his talents. for the rest, he had studied well, was particularly versed in the modern languages and their literature, and wrote an excellent hand. he was very well disposed towards me; and i, having been always accustomed and inclined to the society of older persons, soon attached myself to him. my intercourse served him, too, for a special amusement; since he took pleasure in taming my restlessness and impatience, with which, on the other hand, i gave him enough to do. in the art of poetry he had what is called taste,--a certain general opinion about the good and bad, the mediocre and tolerable: but his judgment was rather censorious; and he destroyed even the little faith in contemporary writers which i cherished within me, by unfeeling remarks, which he knew how to advance with wit and humor, about the writings and poems of this man and that. he received my productions with indulgence, and let me have my own way, but only on the condition that i should have nothing printed. he promised me, on the other hand, that he himself would copy those pieces which he thought good, and would present me with them in a handsome volume. this undertaking now afforded an opportunity for the greatest possible waste of time. for before he could find the right paper, before he could make up his mind as to the size, before he had settled the breadth of the margin and the form of handwriting, before the crow- quills were provided and cut into pens, and indian ink was rubbed, whole weeks passed, without the least bit having been done. with just as much ado he always set about his writing, and really, by degrees, put together a most charming manuscript. the title of the poems was in german text; the verses themselves in a perpendicular saxon hand; and at the end of every poem was an analogous vignette, which he had either selected somewhere or other, or had invented himself, and in which he contrived to imitate very neatly the hatching of the wood-cuts and tail- pieces which are used for such purposes. to show me these things as he went on, to celebrate beforehand in a comico-pathetical manner my good fortune in seeing myself immortalized in such exquisite handwriting, and that in a style which no printing-press could attain, gave another occasion for passing the most agreeable hours. in the mean time, his intercourse was always secretly instructive, by reason of his liberal acquirements, and, as he knew how to subdue my restless, impetuous disposition, was also quite wholesome for me in a moral sense. he had, too, quite a peculiar abhorrence of roughness; and his jests were always quaint without ever falling into the coarse or the trivial. he indulged himself in a distorted aversion from his countrymen, and described with ludicrous touches even what they were able to undertake. he was particularly inexhaustible in a comical representation of individual persons, as he found something to find fault with in the exterior of every one. thus, when we lay together at the window, he could occupy himself for hours criticising the passers-by, and, when he had censured them long enough, in showing exactly and circumstantially how they ought to have dressed themselves, ought to have walked, and ought to have behaved, to look like orderly people. such attempts, for the most part, ended in something improper and absurd; so that we did not so much laugh at how the man looked, but at how, perchance, he might have looked had he been mad enough to caricature himself. in all such matters. behrisch went quite unmercifully to work, without being in the slightest degree malicious. on the other hand, we knew how to tease him, on our side, by assuring him, that, to judge from his exterior, he must be taken, if not for a french dancing-master, at least for the academical teacher of the language. this reproval was usually the signal for dissertations an hour long, in which he used to set forth the difference, wide as the heavens, which there was between him and an old frenchman. at the same time he commonly imputed to us all sorts of awkward attempts, that we might possibly have made for the alteration and modification of his wardrobe. my poetical compositions, which i only carried on the more zealously as the transcript went on becoming more beautiful and more careful, now inclined altogether to the natural and the true: and if the subjects could not always be important, i nevertheless always endeavored to express them clearly and pointedly, the more so as my friend often gave me to understand what a great thing it was to write down a verse on dutch paper, with the crow-quill and indian ink; what time, talent, and exertion it required, which ought not to be squandered on any thing empty and superfluous. he would, at the same time, open a finished parcel, and circumstantially to explain what ought not to stand in this or that place, or congratulate us that it actually did not stand there. he then spoke with great contempt of the art of printing, mimicked the compositor, ridiculed his gestures and his hurried picking out of letters here and there, and derived from this manoeuvre all the calamities of literature. on the other hand, he extolled the grace and noble posture of a writer, and immediately sat down himself to exhibit it to us; while he rated us at the same time for not demeaning ourselves at the writing-table precisely after his example and model. he now reverted to the contrast with the compositor, turned a begun letter upside down, and showed how unseemly it would be to write any thing from the bottom to the top, or from the right to the left, with other things of like kind with which whole volumes might have been filled. with such harmless fooleries we squandered our precious time; while it could have occurred to none of us, that any thing would chance to proceed out of our circle which would awaken a general sensation and bring us into not the best repute. gellert may have taken little pleasure in his "practicum;" and if, perhaps, he took pleasure in giving some directions as to prose and poetical style, he did it most privately only to a few, among whom we could not number ourselves. professor clodius thought to fill the gap which thus arose in the public instruction. he had gained some renown in literature, criticism, and poetry, and, as a young, lively, obliging man, found many friends, both in the university and in the city. gellert himself referred us to the lectures now commenced by him; and, as far as the principal matter was concerned, we remarked little difference. he, too, only criticised details, corrected likewise with red ink; and one found one's self in company with mere blunders, without a prospect as to where the right was to be sought. i had brought to him some of my little labors, which he did not treat harshly. but just at this time they wrote to me from home, that i must without fail furnish a poem for my uncle's wedding. i felt far removed from that light and frivolous period in which a similar thing would have given me pleasure; and, since i could get nothing out of the actual circumstance itself, i determined to trick out my work in the best manner with extraneous ornament. i therefore convened all olympus to consult about the marriage of a frankfort lawyer, and seriously enough, to be sure, as well became the festival of such an honorable man. venus and themis had quarrelled for his sake; but a roguish prank, which amor played the latter, gained the suit for the former: and the gods decided in favor of the marriage. my work by no means displeased me. i received from home a handsome letter in its praise, took the trouble to have another fair copy, and hoped to extort some applause from my professor also. but here i had missed my aim. he took the matter severely; and as he did not notice the tone of parody, which nevertheless lay in the notion, he declared the great expenditure of divine means for such an insignificant human end in the highest degree reprehensible; inveighed against the use and abuse of such mythological figures, as a false habit originating in pedantic times; found the expression now too high, now too low; and, in divers particulars, had indeed not spared the red ink, though he asserted that he had yet done too little. such pieces were read out and criticised anonymously, it is true; but we used to watch each other, and it remained no secret that this unfortunate assembly of the gods was my work: yet since his critique, when i took his point of view, seemed to be perfectly just, and those divinities more nearly inspected were in fact only hollow shadow-forms, i cursed all olympus, flung the whole mythic pantheon away; and from that time amor and luna have been the only divinities which at all appear in my little poems. among the persons whom behrisch had chosen as the butts of his wit, clodius stood just at the head; nor was it hard to find a comical side in him. being of small stature, rather stout and thick-set, he was violent in his motions, somewhat impetuous in his utterances, and restless in his demeanor. in all this he differed from his fellow- citizens, who, nevertheless, willingly put up with him on account of his good qualities, and the fine promise which he gave. he was usually commissioned with the poems which had become necessary on festive occasions. in the so-called "ode," he followed the manner employed by ramler, whom, however, it alone suited. but clodius, as an imitator, had especially marked the foreign words by means of which the poems of ramler come forth with a majestic pomp, which, because it is conformable to the greatness of his subject and the rest of his poetic treatment, produces a very good effect on the ear, feelings, and imagination. in clodius, on the contrary, these expressions had a heterogeneous air; since his poetry was in other respects not calculated to elevate the mind in any manner. now, we had often been obliged to see such poems printed and highly lauded in our presence; and we found it highly offensive, that he who had sequestered the heathen gods from us, now wished to hammer together another ladder to parnassus out of greek and roman word-rungs. these oft-recurring expressions stamped themselves firmly on our memory; and in a merry hour, when we were eating some most excellent cakes in the kitchen-gardens (/kohlgärten/), it all at once struck me to put together these words of might and power, in a poem on the cake-baker hendel. no sooner thought than done! and let it stand here too, as it was written on the wall of the house with a lead-pencil. "o hendel, dessen ruhm vom /süd/ zum /norden/ reicht, vernimm den /päan/ der zu deinen ohren steigt. du bäckst was /gallien/ und /britten/ emsig suchen, mit /schöpfrischen genie, originelle/ kuchen. des kaffee's /ocean/, der sich vor dir ergiesst, ist süssev als der saft der vom /hymettus/ fliesst. dein haus ein /monument/, wie wir den künsten lohnen umhangen mit /trophän/, erzählt den /nationen/: auch ohne /diadem/ fand hendel hier sein glück und raubte dem /cothurn/ gar manch achtgroschenstück. glänzt deine /urn/ dereinst in majestäts'chen /pompe/, dann weint der /patriot/ an deinem /katacombe/. doch leb! dein /torus/ sey von edler brut ein /nest/, steh' hoch wie der /olymp/, wie der /parnassus/ fest! kein /phalanx/ griechenland mit römischen /ballisten/ vermög /germanien/ und hendel zu verwüsten. dein /wohl/ is unser /stolz/, dein /leiden/, unser /schmerz/, /und/ hendel's /tempel ist der musensöhne herz/." [footnote: the humor of the above consists, not in the thoughts, but in the particular words employed. these have no remarkable effect in english, as to us the words of latin origin are often as familiar as those which have teutonic roots; and these form the chief peculiarity of the style. we have therefore given the poem in the original language, with the peculiar words (as indicated by goethe) in italics, and subjoin a literal translation. it will be observed that we have said that the peculiarity consists /chiefly/, not /solely/, in the use of the foreign words; for there are two or three instances of unquestionably german words, which are italicized on account of their high-sounding pomp. "o hendel, whose fame extends from /south/ to /north/, hear the /paean/i> which ascends to thine ears! thou bakest that which /gauls/ and /britons/ industriously seek, (thou bakest) with /creative genius original/ cakes. the /ocean/ of coffee which pours itself out before thee is sweeter than the juice which flows from /hymettus/. thy house, a /monument/, how we reward the arts, hung round with /trophies/, tells the nations: 'even without a /diadem/, hendel formed his fortune here, and robbed the /cothurnus/ of many an eight-groschen-piece.' when thy /urn/ shines hereafter in majestic /pomp/, then will the /patriot/ weep at thy /catacomb/. but live! let /thy/ bed (/torus/) be the /nest/ of a noble brood, stand high as /olympus/, and firm as /parnassus/. may no /phalanx/ of greece with roman /ballistoe/ be able to destroy /germania/ and hendel. thy /weal/ is our /pride/, thy /woe/ our /pain/, and hendel's /temple/ is the /heart/ of the /sons of the muses/."-trans.] this poem had its place for a long time among many others which disfigured the walls of that room, without being noticed; and we, who had sufficiently amused ourselves with it, forgot it altogether amongst other things. a long time afterwards, clodius came out with his "medon," whose wisdom, magnanimity, and virtue we found infinitely ridiculous, much as the first representation of the piece was applauded. that evening, when we met together in the wine-house, i made a prologue in doggerel verse, in which harlequin steps out with two great sacks, places them on each side of the /proscenium/, and, after various preliminary jokes, tells the spectators in confidence, that in the two sacks moral aesthetic dust is to be found, which the actors will very frequently throw into their eyes. one, to wit, was filled with good deeds, that cost nothing; and the other with splendidly expressed opinions, that had no meaning behind them. he reluctantly withdrew, and sometimes came back, earnestly exhorted the spectators to attend to his warning and shut their eyes, reminded them that he had always been their friend, and meant well with them, with many more things of the kind. this prologue was acted in the room, on the spot, by friend horn: but the jest remained quite among ourselves, not even a copy had been taken; and the paper was soon lost. however, horn, who had performed the harlequin very prettily, took it into his head to enlarge my poem to hendel by several verses, and then to make it refer to "medon." he read it to us; but we could not take any pleasure in it, for we did not find the additions even ingenious: while the first poem, being written for quite a different purpose, seemed to us disfigured. our friend, displeased with our indifference, or rather censure, may have shown it to others, who found it new and amusing. copies were now made of it, to which the reputation of clodius's "medon" gave at once a rapid publicity. universal disapproval was the consequence, and the originators (it was soon found out that the poem had proceeded from our clique) were severely censured; for nothing of the sort had been seen since cronegk's and rost's attacks upon gottsched. we had besides already secluded ourselves, and now found ourselves quite in the case of the owl with respect to the other birds. in dresden, too, they did not like the affair; and it had for us serious, if not unpleasant, consequences. for some time, already, count lindenau had not been quite satisfied with his son's tutor. for although the young man was by no means neglected, and behrisch kept himself either in the chamber of the young count, or at least close to it, when the instructors gave their daily lessons, regularly frequented the lectures with him, never went out in the daytime without him, and accompanied him in all his walks, yet the rest of us were always to be found in apel's house, and joined them whenever they went on a pleasure ramble: this already excited some attention. behrisch, too, accustomed himself to our society, and at last, towards nine o'clock in the evenings, generally transferred his pupil into the hands of the /valet de chambre/, and went in quest of us to the wine-house, whither, however, he never used to come but in shoes and stockings, with his sword by his side, and commonly his hat under his arm. the jokes and fooleries, which he generally started, went on /ad infinitum/. thus, for instance, one of our friends had a habit of going away precisely at ten, because he had a connection with a pretty girl, with whom he could converse only at that hour. we did not like to lose him; and one evening, when we sat very happily together, behrisch secretly determined that he would not let him off this time. at the stroke of ten, the other arose and took leave. behrisch called after him, and begged him to wait a moment, as he was just going with him. he now began, in the most amusing manner, first to look after his sword, which stood just before his eyes, and in buckling it on behaved awkwardly, so that he could never accomplish it. he did this, too, so naturally, that no one took offence at it. but when, to vary the theme, he at last went farther, so that the sword came now on the right side, now between his legs, an universal laughter arose, in which the man in a hurry, who was like-wise a merry fellow, chimed in, and let behrisch have his own way till the happy hour was past, when, for the first time, there followed general pleasure and agreeable conversation till deep into the night. unfortunately behrisch, and we through him, had a certain other propensity for some girls who were better than their reputation,--by which our own reputation could not be improved. we had often been seen in their garden; and we directed our walks thither, even when the young count was with us. all this may have been treasured up, and at last communicated to his father: enough, he sought, in a gentlemanly manner, to get rid of the tutor, to whom the event proved fortunate. his good exterior, his knowledge and talents, his integrity, which no one could call in question, had won him the affection and esteem of distinguished persons, on whose recommendation he was appointed tutor to the hereditary prince of dessau, and at the court of a prince, excellent in every respect, found a solid happiness. the loss of a friend like behrisch was of the greatest consequence to me. he had spoiled while he cultivated me; and his presence was necessary, if the pains he had thought good to spend upon me were in any degree to bring forth fruit for society. he knew how to engage me in all kinds of pretty and agreeable things, in whatever was just appropriate, and to bring out my social talents. but as i had gained no self- dependence in such things, so when i was alone again i immediately relapsed into my confused and crabbed disposition, which always increased, the more discontented i was with those about me, since i fancied that they were not contented with me. with the most arbitrary caprice, i took offence at what i might have considered an advantage; thus alienated many with whom i had hitherto been on a tolerable footing; and on account of the many disagreeable consequences which i had drawn on myself and others, whether by doing or leaving undone, by doing too much or too little, was obliged to hear the remark from my well-wishers, that i lacked experience. the same thing was told me by every person of sound sense who saw my productions, especially when these referred to the external world. i observed this as well as i could, but found in it little that was edifying, and was still forced to add enough of my own to make it only tolerable. i had often pressed my friend behrisch, too, that he would make plain to me what was meant by experience? but, because he was full of nonsense, he put me off with fair words from one day to another, and at last, after great preparations, disclosed to me, that true experience was properly when one experiences how an experienced man must experience in experiencing his experience. now, when we scolded him outrageously, and called him to account for this, he assured us that a great mystery lay hidden behind these words, which we could not comprehend until we had experienced ...and so on without end,--for it cost him nothing to talk on in that way by the quarter of an hour,--since the experience would always become more experienced and at last come to true experience. when we were about to despair at such fooleries, he protested that he had learned this way of making himself intelligible and impressive from the latest and greatest authors, who had made us observe how one can rest a restful rest, and how silence, in being silent, can constantly become more silent. by chance an officer, who came among us on furlough, was praised in good company as a remarkable, sound-minded, and experienced man, who had fought through the seven years' war, and had gained universal confidence. it was not difficult for me to approach him, and we often went walking with each other. the idea of experience had almost become fixed in my brain, and the craving to make it clear to me passionate. being of a frank disposition, i disclosed to him the uneasiness in which i found myself. he smiled, and was kind enough to tell me, as an answer to my question, something of his own life, and generally of the world immediately about us; from which, indeed, little better was to be gathered than that experience convinces us that our best thoughts, wishes, and designs are unattainable, and that he who fosters such vagaries, and advances them with eagerness, is especially held to be an inexperienced man. yet, as he was a gallant, good fellow, he assured me that he had himself not quite given up these vagaries, and felt himself tolerably well off with the little faith, love, and hope which remained. he then felt obliged to tell me a great deal about war, about the sort of life in the field, about skirmishes and battles, especially so far as he had taken part in them; when these vast events, by being considered in relation to a single individual, gained a very marvellous aspect. i then led him on to an open narration of the late situation of the court, which seemed to me quite like a tale. i heard of the bodily strength of augustus the second, of his many children and his vast expenses, then of his successor's love of art and of making collections; of count brühl and his boundless love of magnificence, which in detail appeared almost absurd, of his numerous banquets and gorgeous amusements, which were all cut off by frederick's invasion of saxony. the royal castles now lay in ruins, brühl's splendors were annihilated, and, of the whole, a glorious land, much injured, alone remained. when he saw me astonished at that mad enjoyment of fortune, and then grieved by the calamity that followed, and informed me that one expects from an experienced man exactly this, that he shall be astonished at neither the one nor the other, nor take too lively an interest in them, i felt a great desire still to remain a while in the same inexperience as hitherto; in which desire he strengthened me, and very urgently entreated me, for the present at least, always to cling to agreeable experiences, and to try to avoid those that were disagreeable as much as possible, if they should intrude themselves upon me. but once, when the discussion was again about experience in general, and i related to him those ludicrous phrases of my friend behrisch, he shook his head, smiling, and said, "there, one sees how it is with words which are only once uttered! these sound so comical, nay, so silly, that it would seem almost impossible to put a rational meaning into them; and yet, perhaps, the attempt might be made." and, when i pressed him, he replied in his intelligent, cheerful manner, "if you will allow me, while commenting on and completing your friend's observations, to go on after his fashion, i think he meant to say, that experience is nothing else than that one experiences what one does not wish to experience; which is what it amounts to for the most part, at least in this world." eighth book. another man, although infinitely different from behrisch in every respect, might yet be compared with him in a certain sense: i mean oeser, who was also one of those men who dream away their lives in a comfortable state of being busy. his friends themselves secretly acknowledged, that, with very fine natural powers, he had not spent his younger years in sufficient activity; for which reason he never went so far as to practise his art with perfect technicality. yet a certain diligence appeared to be reserved for his old age; and, during the many years which i knew him, he never lacked invention or laboriousness. from the very first moment he had attracted me very much: even his residence, strange and portentous, was highly charming to me. in the old castle pleissenburg, at the right-hand corner, one ascended a repaired, cheerful, winding staircase. the saloons of the academy of design, of which he was director, were found to the left, and were light and roomy; but he himself could only be reached through a narrow, dark passage, at the end of which one first sought the entrance into his apartments, having just passed between the whole suite of them and an extensive granary. the first apartment was adorned with pictures from the later italian school, by masters whose grace he used highly to commend. as i, with some noblemen, had taken private lessons of him, we were permitted to draw here; and we often penetrated into his adjoining private cabinet, which contained at the same time his few books, collections of art and natural curiosities, and whatever else might have most interested him. every thing was arranged with taste, simply, and in such a manner that the little space held a great deal. the furniture, presses, and portfolios were elegant, without affection or superfluity. thus also the first thing which he recommended to us, and to which he always recurred, was simplicity in every thing that art and manual labor united are called upon to produce. being a sworn foe to the scroll-and- shell style, and of the whole taste for quaintness, he showed us in copper-plates and drawings old patterns of the sort contrasted with better decorations and simpler forms of furniture, as well as with other appurtenances of a room; and, because every thing about him corresponded with these maxims, his words and instructions made a good and lasting impression on us. besides this, he had an opportunity to let us see his opinions in practice; since he stood in good consideration, both with private and with official persons, and was asked for advice when there were new buildings and alterations. he seemed in general to be more fond of preparing things on occasion, for a certain end and use, than of undertaking and completing such as exist for themselves and require a greater perfection; he was therefore always ready and at hand when the publishers needed larger and smaller copper-plates for any work: thus the vignettes to winckelmann's first writings were etched by him. but he often made only very sketchy drawings, to which geyser knew very well how to adapt himself. his figures had throughout something general, not to say ideal. his women were pleasing and agreeable, his children /naive/ enough; only he could not succeed with the men, who, in his spirited but always cloudy, and at the same time foreshortening, manner, had for the most part the look of lazzaroni. since he designed his composition less with regard to form than to light, shade, and masses, the general effect was good; as indeed all that he did and produced was attended by a peculiar grace. as he at the same time neither could nor would control a deep-rooted propensity to the significant and the allegorical--to that which excites a secondary thought, so his works always furnished something to reflect upon, and were complete through a conception, even where they could not be so from art and execution. this bias, which is always dangerous, frequently led him to the very bounds of good taste, if not beyond them. he often sought to attain his views by the oddest notions and by whimsical jests; nay, his best works always have a touch of humor. if the public were not always satisfied with such things, he revenged himself by a new and even stranger drollery. thus he afterwards exhibited, in the ante-room of the great concert-hall, an ideal female figure, in his own style, who was raising a pair of snuffers to a taper; and he was extraordinarily delighted when he was able to cause a dispute on the question, whether this singular muse meant to snuff the light or to extinguish it? when he roguishly allowed all sorts of bantering by-thoughts to peep forth. but the building of the new theatre, in my time, made the greatest noise; in which his curtain, when it was still quite new, had certainly an uncommonly charming effect. oeser had taken the muses out of the clouds, upon which they usually hover on such occasions, and set them upon the earth. the statues of sophocles and aristophanes, around whom all the modern dramatic writers were assembled, adorned a vestibule to the temple of fame. here, too, the goddesses of the arts were likewise present; and all was dignified and beautiful. but now comes the oddity! through the open centre was seen the portal of the distant temple: and a man in a light jerkin was passing between the two above-mentioned groups, and, without troubling himself about them, directly up to the temple; he was seen from behind, and was not particularly distinguished. now, this man was to represent shakespeare, who without predecessors or followers, without concerning himself about models, went to meet immortality in his own way. this work was executed on the great floor over the new theatre. "we often assembled round him there, and in that place i read aloud to him the proof-sheets of "musarion." as to myself, i by no means advanced in the practice of the art. his instructions worked upon our mind and our taste; but his own drawing was too undefined to guide me, who had only glimmered along by the objects of art and of nature, to a severe and decided practice. of the faces and bodies he gave us rather the aspect than the forms, rather the postures than the proportions. he gave us the conceptions of the figures, and desired that we should impress them vividly upon our minds. that might have been beautifully and properly done, if he had not had mere beginners before him. if, on this account, a pre-eminent talent for instruction may be well denied him, it must, on the other hand, be acknowledged that he was very discreet and politic, and that a happy adroitness of mind qualified him very peculiarly for a teacher in a higher sense. the deficiencies under which each one labored he clearly saw; but he disdained to reprove them directly, and rather hinted his praise and censure indirectly and very laconically. one was now compelled to think over the matter, and soon came to a far deeper insight. tims, for instance, i had very carefully executed, after a pattern, a nosegay on blue paper, with white and black crayon, and partly with the stump, partly by hatching it up, had tried to give effect to the little picture. after i had been long laboring in this way, he once came behind me, and said, "more paper!" upon which he immediately withdrew. my neighbor and i puzzled our heads as to what this could mean; for my bouquet, on a large half-sheet, had plenty of space around it. after we had reflected a long while, we thought, at last, that we had hit his meaning, when we remarked, that, by working together the black and the white, i had quite covered up the blue ground, had destroyed the middle tint, and, in fact, with great industry, had produced a disagreeable drawing. as to the rest, he did not fail to instruct us in perspective, and in light and shade, sufficiently indeed, but always so that we had to exert and torment ourselves to find the application of the principles communicated. probably his view with regard to us who did not intend to become artists, was only to form the judgment and taste, and to make us acquainted with the requisites of a work of art, without precisely requiring that we should produce one. since, moreover, patient industry was not my talent, for nothing gave me pleasure except what came to me at once, so by degrees i became discouraged, if not lazy; and, as knowledge is more comfortable than doing, i was quite content to follow wherever he chose, after his own fashion, to lead us. at this time the "lives of the painters," by d'argenville, was translated into german: i obtained it quite fresh, and studied it assiduously enough. this seemed to please oeser; and he procured us an opportunity of seeing many a portfolio out of the great leipzig collections, and thus introduced us to the history of the art. but even these exercises produced in me an effect different from that which he probably had in mind. the manifold subjects which i saw treated by artists awakened the poetic talent in me: and, as one easily makes an engraving for a poem; so did i now make poems to the engravings and drawings, by contriving to present to myself the personages introduced in them, in their previous and subsequent condition, and sometimes to compose a little song which might have suited them; and thus accustomed myself to consider the arts in connection with each other. even the mistakes which i made, so that my poems were often descriptive, were useful to me in the sequel, when i came to more reflection, by making me attentive to the differences between the arts. of such little things many were in the collection which behrisch had arranged, but there is nothing left of them now. the atmosphere of art and taste in which oeser lived, and into which one was drawn, provided one visited him frequently, was the more and more worthy and delightful, because he was fond of remembering departed or absent persons, with whom he had been, or still continued to be, on good terms; for, if he had once given any one his esteem, he remained unalterable in his conduct towards him, and always showed himself equally friendly. after we had heard caylus pre-eminently extolled among the french, he made us also acquainted with germans of activity in this department. thus we learned that professor christ, as an amateur, a collector, a connoisseur, a fellow-laborer, had done good service for art, and had applied his learning to its true improvement. heinecken, on the contrary, could not be honorably mentioned, partly because he devoted himself too assiduously to the ever-childish beginnings of german art; which oeser little valued, partly because he had once treated winckelmann shabbily, which could never be forgiven him. our attention, however, was strongly drawn to the labors of lippert, since our instructor knew how to set forth his merits sufficiently. "for," he said, "although single statues and larger groups of sculpture remain the foundation and the summit of all knowledge of art, yet, either as originals or as casts, they are seldom to be seen; on the contrary, by lippert, a little world of gems is made known, in which the more comprehensible merit of the ancients, their happy invention, judicious composition, tasteful treatment, are made more striking and intelligible, while, from the great number of them, comparison is much more possible." while now we were busying ourselves with these as much as was allowed, winckelmann's lofty life of art in italy was pointed out, and we took his first writings in hand with devotion; for oeser had a passionate reverence for him, which he was able easily to instil into us. the problematical part of those little treatises, which are, besides, confused even from their irony, and from their referring to opinions and events altogether peculiar, we were, indeed, unable to decipher; but as oeser had great influence over us, and incessantly gave them out to us as the gospel of the beautiful, and still more of the tasteful and the pleasing, we found out the general sense, and fancied, that, with such interpretations, we should go on the more securely, as we regarded it no small happiness to draw from the same fountain from which winckelmann had allayed his earliest thirst. no greater good fortune can befall a city, than when several educated men, like-minded in what is good and right, live together in it. leipzig had this advantage, and enjoyed it the more peacefully, as so many differences of judgment had not yet manifested themselves. huber, a print collector and well-experienced connoisseur, had furthermore the gratefully acknowledged merit of having determined to make the worth of german literature known to the french; kreuchauf, an amateur with a practised eye, who, as the friend of the whole society of art, might regard all collections as his own; winkler, who much loved to share with others the intelligent delight he cherished for his treasures; many more who were added to the list,--all lived and labored with one feeling; and, often as i was permitted to be present when they examined works of art, i do not remember that a dispute ever arose. the school from which the artist had proceeded, the time in which he lived, the peculiar talent which nature had bestowed on him, and the degree of excellence to which he had brought it in his performances, were always fairly considered. there was no predilection for spiritual or temporal subjects, for landscape or for city views, for animate or inanimate: the question was always about the accordance with art. now, although from their situation, mode of thought, abilities, and opportunities, these amateurs and collectors inclined more to the dutch school, yet, while the eye was practised on the endless merits of the north-western artist, a look of reverential longing was always turned towards the south-east. and so the university, where i neglected the ends of both my family and myself, was to ground me in that in which i afterwards found the greatest satisfaction of my life: the impression of those localities, too, in which i received such important incitements, has always remained to me most dear and precious. the old pleissenburg; the rooms of the academy; but, above all, the abode of oeser; and no less the collections of winkler and richter,--i have always vividly present before me. but a young man, who, while older persons are conversing with each other on subjects already familiar to them, is instructed only incidentally, and for whom the most difficult part of the business--that of rightly arranging all--yet remains, must find himself in a very painful situation. i therefore, as well as others, looked about with longing for some new light, which was indeed to come to us from a man to whom we owed so much already. the mind can be highly delighted in two ways,--by perception and conception. but the former demands a worthy object, which is not always at hand, and a proportionate culture, which one does not immediately attain. conception, on the other hand, requires only susceptibility: it brings its subject-matter with it, and is itself the instrument of culture. hence that beam of light was most welcome to us which that most excellent thinker brought down to us through dark clouds. one must be a young man to render present to one's self the effect which lessing's "laocoön" produced upon us, by transporting us out of the region of scanty perceptions into the open fields of thought. the /ut pictura poesis/, so long misunderstood, was at once laid aside: the difference between plastic and speaking art [footnote: bildende und redende kunst." the expression "speaking art" is used to produce a corresponding antithesis, though "/belles-lettres/ would be the ordinary rendering.--trans.] was made clear; the summits of the two now appeared sundered, however near their bases might border on each other. the plastic artist was to keep himself within the bounds of the beautiful, if the artist of language, who cannot dispense with the significant in any kind, is permitted to ramble abroad beyond them. the former labors for the outer sense, which is satisfied only by the beautiful; the latter for the imagination, which may even reconcile itself to the ugly. all the consequences of this splendid thought were illumined to us as by a lightning-flash: all the criticism which had hitherto guided and judged was thrown away like a worn-out coat. we considered ourselves freed from all evil, and fancied we might venture to look down with some compassion upon the otherwise so splendid sixteenth century, when, in german sculptures and poems, they knew how to represent life only under the form of a fool hung with bells, death under the misformed shape of a rattling skeleton, and the necessary and accidental evils of the world under the image of the caricatured devil. what enchanted us most was the beauty of that thought, that the ancients had recognized death as the brother of sleep, and had represented them similar, even to confusion, as becomes menaechmi. here we could first do high honor to the triumph of the beautiful, and banish the ugly of every kind into the low sphere of the ridiculous within the realm of art, since it could not be utterly driven out of the world. the splendor of such leading and fundamental conceptions appears only to the mind upon which they exercise their infinite activity,--appears only to the age in which, after being longed for, they come forth at the right moment. then do those at whose disposal such nourishment is placed fondly occupy whole periods of their lives with it, and rejoice in a superabundant growth; while men are not wanting, meanwhile, who resist such an effect on the spot, nor others who afterwards haggle and cavil at its high meaning. but, as conception and perception mutually require each other, i could not long work up these new thoughts without an infinite desire arising within me to see important works of art, once and away, in great number. i therefore determined to visit dresden without delay. i was not in want of the necessary cash: but there were other difficulties to overcome, which i needlessly increased still further, through my whimsical disposition; for i kept my purpose a secret from every one, because i wished to contemplate the treasures of art there quite after my own way, and, as i thought, to allow no one to perplex me. besides this, so simple a matter became more complicated by still another eccentricity. we have weaknesses, both by birth and by education; and it may be questioned which of the two gives us the most trouble. willingly as i made myself familiar with all sorts of conditions, and many as had been my inducements to do so, an excessive aversion from all inns had nevertheless been instilled into me by my father. this feeling had taken firm root in him on his travels through italy, france, and germany. although he seldom spoke in images, and only called them to his aid when he was very cheerful, yet he used often to repeat that he always fancied he saw a great cobweb spun across the gate of an inn, so ingeniously that the insects could indeed fly in, but that even the privileged wasps could not fly out again unplucked. it seemed to him something horrible that one should be obliged to pay immoderately for renouncing one's habits and all that was dear to one in life, and living after the manner of publicans and waiters. he praised the hospitality of the olden time; and, reluctantly as he otherwise endured even any thing unusual in the house, he yet practised hospitality, especially towards artists and virtuosi. thus gossip seekatz always had his quarters with us; and abel, the last musician who handled the /viol di gamba/ with success and applause, was well received and entertained. with such youthful impressions, which nothing had as yet rubbed off, how could i have resolved to set foot in an inn in a strange city? nothing would have been easier than to find quarters with good friends. hofrath krebel, assessor hermann, and others, had often spoken to me about it already; but even to these my trip was to remain a secret, and i hit upon a most singular notion. my next-room neighbor, the industrious theologian, whose eyes unfortunately constantly grew weaker and weaker, had a relation in dresden, a shoemaker, with whom from time to time he corresponded. for a long while already this man had been highly remarkable to me on account of his expressions, and the arrival of one of his letters was always celebrated by us as a holiday. the mode in which he replied to the complaints of his cousin, who feared blindness, was quite peculiar: for he did not trouble himself about grounds of consolation, which are always hard to find; but the cheerful way in which he looked upon his own narrow, poor, toilsome life, the merriment which he drew, even from evils and inconveniences, the indestructible conviction that life is in itself and on its own account a blessing, communicated itself to him who read the letter, and, for the moment at least, transposed him into a like mood. enthusiastic as i was, i had often sent my compliments to this man, extolled his happy natural gift, and expressed the wish to become acquainted with him. all this being premised, nothing seemed to me more natural than to seek him out, to converse with him,--nay, to lodge with him, and to learn to know him intimately. my good candidate, after some opposition, gave me a letter, written with difficulty, to carry with me; and, full of longing, i went to dresden in the yellow coach, with my matriculation in my pocket. i went in search of my shoemaker, and soon found him in the suburb (/vorstadt/). he received me in a friendly manner, sitting upon his stool, and said, smiling, after he had read the letter, "i see from this, young sir, that you are a whimsical christian."--"how so, master?" i replied. "no offence meant by '/whimsical/,'" he continued: "one calls every one so who is not consistent with himself; and i call you a whimsical christian because you acknowledge yourself a follower of our lord in one thing, but not in another." on my requesting him to enlighten me, he said further, "it seems that your view is, to announce glad tidings to the poor and lowly; that is good, and this imitation of the lord is praiseworthy: but you should reflect, besides, that he rather sat down to table with prosperous rich folks, where there was good fare, and that he himself did not despise the sweet scent of the ointment, of which you will find the opposite in my house." this pleasant beginning put me at once in good humor, and we rallied each other for some time. his wife stood doubting how she should board and lodge such a guest. on this point, too, he had notions which referred, not only to the bible, but also to "gottfried's chronicle;" and when we were agreed that i was to stay, i gave my purse, such as it was, into the charge of my hostess, and requested her to furnish herself from it, if any thing should be necessary. when he would have declined it, and somewhat waggishly gave me to understand that he was not so burned out as he might appear, i disarmed him by saying, "even if it were only to change water into wine, such a well-tried domestic resource would not be out of place, since there are no more miracles nowadays." the hostess seemed to find my conduct less and less strange: we had soon accommodated ourselves to each other, and spent a very merry evening. he remained always the same, because all flowed from one source. his peculiarity was an apt common sense, which rested upon a cheerful disposition, and took delight in uniform habitual activity. that he should labor incessantly was his first and most necessary care; that he regarded every thing else as secondary,--this kept up his comfortable state of mind; and i must reckon him before many others in the class of those who are called practical unconscious philosophers. [footnote: "pratische philosophen, bewusstlose weltweisen." it is impossible to give two substantives, as in the original, since this is effected by using first the word of greek, then the word of german origin, whereas we have but one.--trans.] the hour when the gallery was to be opened appeared, after having been expected with impatience. i entered into this sanctuary, and my astonishment surpassed every conception which i had formed. this room, returning into itself, in which splendor and neatness reigned together with the deepest stillness; the dazzling frames, all nearer to the time in which they had been gilded; the floor polished with bees'-wax; the spaces more trodden by spectators than used by copyists,--imparted a feeling of solemnity, unique of its kind, which so much the more resembled the sensation with which one treads a church, as the adornments of so many a temple, the objects of so much adoration, seemed here again set up only for the sacred purposes of art. i readily put up with the cursory description of my guide, only i requested that i might be allowed to remain in the outer gallery. here, to my comfort, i felt really at home. i had already seen the works of several artists, others i knew from engravings, others by name. i did not conceal this, and i thus inspired my conductor with some confidence: nay, the rapture which i expressed at pieces where the pencil had gained the victory over nature delighted him; for such were the things which principally attracted me, where the comparison with known nature must necessarily enhance the value of art. when i again entered my shoemaker's house for dinner, i scarcely believed my eyes; for i fancied i saw before me a picture by ostade, so perfect that all it needed was to be hung up in the gallery. the position of the objects, the light, the shadow, the brownish tint of the whole, the magical harmony,--every thing that one admires in those pictures, i here saw in reality. it was the first time that i perceived, in so high a degree, the faculty which i afterwards exercised with more consciousness; namely, that of seeing nature with the eyes of this or that artist, to whose works i had devoted a particular attention. this faculty has afforded me much enjoyment, but has also increased the desire zealously to abandon myself, from time to time, to the exercise of a talent which nature seemed to have denied me. i visited the gallery at all permitted hours, and continued to express too loudly the ecstasy with which i beheld many precious works. i thus frustrated my laudable purpose of remaining unknown and unnoticed; and whereas only one of the unclerkeepers had hitherto had intercourse with me, the gallery-inspector, counsellor riedel, now also took notice of me, and called my attention to many things which seemed chiefly to lie within my sphere. i found this excellent man just as active and obliging then, as when i afterwards saw him during many years, and as he shows himself to this day. his image has, for me, interwoven itself so closely with those treasures of art, that i can never regard the two apart: the remembrance of him has even accompanied me to italy, where, in many large and rich collections, his presence would have been very desirable. since, even with strangers and unknown persons, one cannot gaze on such works silently and without mutual sympathy,--nay, since the first sight of them is rather adapted, in the highest degree, to open hearts towards each other, i there got into conversation with a young man who seemed to be residing at dresden, and to belong to some embassy. he invited me to come in the evening to an inn where a lively company met, and where, by each one's paying a moderate reckoning, one could pass some very pleasant hours. i repaired thither, but did not find the company; and the waiter somewhat surprised me when he delivered the compliments of the gentleman who made the appointment with me, by which the latter sent an excuse for coming somewhat later, with the addition that i must not take offence at any thing that might occur; also, that i should have nothing to pay beyond my own score. i knew not what to make of these words: my father's cobwebs came into my head, and i composed myself to await whatever might befall. the company assembled; my acquaintance introduced me; and i could not be attentive long, without discovering that they were aiming at the mystification of a young man, who showed himself a novice by an obstreperous, assuming deportment: i therefore kept very much on my guard, so that they might not find delight in selecting me as his fellow. at table this intention became more apparent to everybody, except to himself. they drank more and more deeply: and, when a vivat in honor of sweethearts was started, every one solemnly swore that there should never be another out of those glasses; they flung them behind them, and this was the signal for far greater follies. at last i withdrew very quietly; and the waiter, while demanding quite a moderate amount, requested me to come again, as they did not go on so wildly every evening. i was far from my lodgings, and it was near midnight when i reached them. i found the doors unlocked; everybody was in bed; and one lamp illuminated the narrow domestic household, where my eye, more and more practised, immediately perceived the finest picture by schalken, from which i could not tear myself away, so that it banished from me all sleep. the few days of my residence in dresden were solely devoted to the picture-gallery. the antiquities still stood in the pavilion of the great garden; but i declined seeing them, as well as all the other precious things which dresden contained, being but too full of the conviction, that, even in and about the collection of paintings, much must yet remain hidden from me. thus i took the excellence of the italian masters more on trust and in faith, than by pretending to any insight into them. what i could not look upon as nature, put in the place of nature, and compare with a known object, was without effect upon me. it is the material impression which makes the beginning even to every more elevated taste. with my shoemaker i lived on very good terms. he was witty and varied enough, and we often outvied each other in merry conceits: nevertheless, a man who thinks himself happy, and desires others to do the same, makes us discontented; indeed, the repetition of such sentiments produces weariness. i found myself well occupied, entertained, excited, but by no means happy; and the shoes from his last would not fit me. we parted, however, as the best friends; and even my hostess, on my departure, was not dissatisfied with me. shortly before my departure, something else very pleasant was to happen. by the mediation of that young man, who wished to somewhat regain his credit with me, i was introduced to the director von hagedorn, who, with great kindness, showed me his collection, and was highly delighted with the enthusiasm of the young lover of art. he himself, as becomes a connoisseur, was quite peculiarly in love with the pictures which he possessed, and therefore seldom found in others an interest such as he wished. it gave him particular satisfaction that i was so excessively pleased with a picture by schwanefeld, and that i was not tired of praising and extolling it in every single part; for landscapes, which again reminded me of the beautiful clear sky under which i had grown up, of the vegetable luxuriance of those spots, and of whatever other favors a warmer climate offers to man, were just the things that most affected me in the imitation, while they awakened in me a longing remembrance. these delightful experiences, preparing both mind and sense for true art, were nevertheless interrupted and damped by one of the most melancholy sights,--by the destroyed and desolate condition of so many of the streets of dresden through which i took my way. the mohrenstrasse in ruins, and the church (/kreuzkirche/) of the cross, with its shattered tower, impressed themselves deeply upon me, and still stand like a gloomy spot in my imagination. from the cupola of the lady church (/frauenkirche/) i saw these pitiable ruins scattered about amid the beautiful order of the city. here the clerk commended to me the art of the architect, who had already fitted up church and cupola for so undesirable an event, and had built them bomb-proof. the good sacristan then pointed out to me the ruins on all sides, and said doubtfully and laconically, "/the enemy hath done this/!" at last, though very loath, i returned to leipzig, and found my friends, who were not used to such digressions in me, in great astonishment, busied with all sorts of conjectures as to what might be the import of my mysterious journey. when, upon this, i told them my story quite in order, they declared it was only a made-up tale, and sagaciously tried to get at the bottom of the riddle which i had been waggish enough to conceal under my shoemaker-lodgings. but, could they have looked into my heart, they would have discovered no waggery there; for the truth of that old proverb, "he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow," had struck me with all its force: and the more i struggled to arrange and appropriate to myself what i had seen, the less i succeeded. i had at last to content myself with a silent after-operation. ordinary life carried me away again; and i at last felt myself quite comfortable when a friendly intercourse, improvement in branches of knowledge which were suitable for me, and a certain practice of the hand, engaged me in a manner less important, but more in accordance with my strength. very pleasant and wholesome for me was the connection i formed with the breitkopf family. bernhard christoph breitkopf, the proper founder of the family, who had come to leipzig as a poor journeyman printer, was yet living, and occupied the golden bear, a respectable house in the new newmarket, with gottsched as an inmate. the son, johann gottlob immanuel, had already been long married, and was the father of many children. they thought they could not spend a part of their considerable wealth better than in putting up, opposite the first house, a large new one, the silver bear, which they built higher and more extensive than the original house itself. just at the time of the building i became acquainted with the family. the eldest son, who might have been some years older than i, was a well-formed young man, devoted to music, and practised to play skilfully on both the piano and the violin. the second, a true, good soul, likewise musical, enlivened the concerts which were often got up, no less than his elder brother. they were both kindly disposed towards me, as well as their parents and sisters. i lent them a helping hand during the building up and the finishing, the furnishing and the moving in, and thus formed a conception of much that belongs to such an affair: i also had an opportunity of seeing oeser's instructions put in practice. in the new house, which i had thus seen erected, i was often a visitor. we had many pursuits in common; and the eldest son set some of my songs to music, which, when printed, bore his name, but not mine, and have been little known. i have selected the best, and inserted them among my other little poems. the father had invented or perfected musical type. he granted me the use of a fine library, which related principally to the origin and progress of printing; and thus i gained some knowledge in that department. i found there, moreover, good copper-plates, which exhibited antiquity, and advanced on this side also my studies, which were still further promoted by the circumstance that a considerable collection of casts had fallen into disorder in moving. i set them right again as well as i could, and in doing so was compelled to search lippert and other authorities. a physician, doctor reichel, likewise an inmate of the house, i consulted from time to time when i felt, if not sick, yet unwell; and thus we led together a quiet, pleasant life. i was now to enter into another sort of connection in this house; for the copper-plate engraver, stock, had moved into the attic. he was a native of nuremberg, a very industrious man, and, in his labors, precise and methodical. he also, like geyser, engraved, after oeser's designs, larger and smaller plates, which came more and more into vogue for novels and poems. he etched very neatly, so that his work came out of the aquafortis almost finished; and but little touching-up remained to be done with the graver, which he handled very well. he made an exact calculation how long a plate would occupy him, and nothing could call him off from his work if he had not completed the daily task he had set himself. thus he sat working by a broad table, by the great gable- window, in a very neat and orderly chamber, where his wife and two daughters afforded him a domestic society. of these last, one is happily married, and the other is an excellent artist: they have continued my friends all my life long. i now divided my time between the upper and lower stories, and attached myself much to the man, who, together with his persevering industry, possessed an excellent humor, and was good nature itself. the technical neatness of this branch of art charmed me, and i associated myself with him to execute something of the kind. my predilection was again directed towards landscape, which, while it amused me in my solitary walks, seemed in itself more attainable and more comprehensible for works of art than the human figure, which discouraged me. under his directions, therefore, i etched, after thiele and others, various landscapes, which, although executed by an unpractised hand, produced some effect, and were well received. the grounding (varnishing) of the plates, the putting in the high lights, the etching, and at last the biting with aquafortis, gave me variety of occupation; and i soon got so far that i could assist my master in many things. i did not lack the attention necessary for the biting, and i seldom failed in any thing; but i had not care enough in guarding against the deleterious vapors which are generated on such occasions, and these may have contributed to the maladies which afterwards troubled me for a long time. amidst such labors, lest any thing should be left untried, i often made wood-cuts also. i prepared various little printing-blocks after french patterns, and many of them were found fit for use. let me here make mention of some other men who resided in leipzig, or tarried there for a short time. weisse, the custom-house collector of the district, in his best years, cheerful, friendly, and obliging, was loved and esteemed by us. we would not, indeed, allow his theatrical pieces to be models throughout, but we suffered ourselves to be carried away by them; and his operas, set to music by hiller in an easy style, gave us much pleasure. schiebler, of hamburgh, pursued the same track; and his "lisuard and dariolette" was likewise favored by us. eschenburg, a handsome young man, but little older than we were, distinguished himself advantageously among the students. zachariä was pleased to spend some weeks with us, and, being introduced by his brother, dined every day with us at the same table. we rightly deemed it an honor to gratify our guest in return, by a, few extra dishes, a richer dessert, and choicer wine; for, as a tall, well-formed, comfortable man, he did not conceal his love of good eating. lessing came at a time when we had i know not what in our heads: it was our good pleasure to go nowhere on his account,--nay, even to avoid the places to which he came, probably because we thought ourselves too good to stand at a distance, and could make no pretension to obtain a closer intimacy with him. this momentary absurdity, which, however, is nothing rare in presuming and freakish youth, proved, indeed, its own punishment in the sequel; for i have never set eyes on that eminent man, who was most highly esteemed by me. notwithstanding all our efforts relative to art and antiquity, we each of us always had winckelmann before our eyes, whose ability was acknowledged in his country with enthusiasm. we read his writings diligently, and tried to make ourselves acquainted with the circumstances under which he had written the first of them. we found in them many views which seemed to have originated with oeser, even jests and whims after his fashion: and we did not rest until we had formed some general conception of the occasion on which these remarkable and sometimes so enigmatical writings had arisen, though we were not very accurate; for youth likes better to be excited than instructed, and it was not the last time that i was to be indebted to sibylline leaves for an important step in cultivation. it was then a fine period in literature, when eminent men were yet treated with respect; although the disputes of klotz and lessing's controversies already indicated that this epoch would soon close. winckelmann enjoyed an universal, unassailed reverence; and it is known how sensitive he was with regard to any thing public which did not seem commensurate with his deeply felt dignity. all the periodical publications joined in his praise, the better class of tourists came back from him instructed and enraptured, and the new views which he gave extended themselves over science and life. the prince of dessau had raised himself up to a similar degree of respect. young, well and nobly minded, he had on his travels and at other times shown himself truly desirable. winckelmann was in the highest degree delighted with him, and, whenever he mentioned him, loaded him with the handsomest epithets. the laying out of a park, then unique, the taste for architecture, which von erdmannsdorf supported by his activity, every thing spoke in favor of a prince, who, while he was a shining example for the rest, gave promise of a golden age for his servants and subjects. we young people now learned with rejoicings that winckelmann would return back from italy, visit his princely friend, call on oeser by the way, and so come within our sphere of vision. we made no pretensions to speaking with him, but we hoped to see him; and, as at that time of life one willingly changes every occasion into a party of pleasure, we had already agreed upon a journey to dessau, where in a beautiful spot, made glorious by art, in a land well governed and at the same time externally adorned, we thought to lie in wait, now here, now there, in order to see with our own eyes these men so highly exalted above us walking about. oeser himself was quite elated if he only thought of it, and the news of winckelmann's death fell down into the midst of us like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. i still remember the place where i first heard it: it was in the court of the pleissenburg, not far from the little gate through which one used to go up to oeser's residence. one of my fellow- pupils met me, and told me that oeser was not to be seen, with the reason why. this monstrous event [footnote: winckelmann was assassinated.--trans.] produced a monstrous effect: there was an universal mourning and lamentation, and winckelmann's untimely death sharpened the attention paid to the value of his life. perhaps, indeed, the effect of his activity, if he had /continued/ it to a more advanced age, would probably not have been so great as it now necessarily became, when, like many other extraordinary men, he was distinguished by fate through a strange and calamitous end. now, while i was infinitely lamenting the death of winckelmann, i did not think that i should soon find myself in the case of being apprehensive about my own life; since, during all these events, my bodily condition had not taken the most favorable turn. i had already brought with me from home a certain touch of hypochondria, which, in this new sedentary and lounging life, was rather increased than diminished. the pain in my chest, which i had felt from time to time ever since the accident at auerstädt, and which after a fall from horseback had perceptibly increased, made me dejected. by an unfortunate diet i destroyed my powers of digestion; the heavy merseburg beer clouded my brain; coffee, which gave me a peculiarly melancholy tone, especially when taken with milk after dinner, paralyzed my bowels, and seemed completely to suspend their functions, so that i experienced great uneasiness on this account, yet without being able to embrace a resolution for a more rational mode of life. my natural disposition, supported by the sufficient strength of youth, fluctuated between the extremes of unrestrained gayety and melancholy discomfort. moreover, the epoch of cold-water bathing, which was unconditionally recommended, had then begun. one was to sleep on a hard bed, only slightly covered, by which all the usual perspiration was suppressed. these and other follies, in consequence of some misunderstood suggestions of rousseau, would, it was promised, bring us nearer to nature, and deliver us from the corruption of morals. now, all the above, without discrimination, applied with injudicious alternation, were felt by many most injuriously; and i irritated my happy organization to such a degree, that the particular systems contained within it necessarily broke out at last into a conspiracy and revolution, in order to save the whole. one night i awoke with a violent hemorrhage, and had just strength and presence of mind enough to waken my next-room neighbor. dr. reichel was called in, who assisted me in the most friendly manner; and thus for many days i wavered betwixt life and death: and even the joy of a subsequent improvement was embittered by the circumstance that, during that eruption, a tumor had formed on the left side of the neck, which, after the danger was past, they now first found time to notice. recovery is, however, always pleasing and delightful, even though it takes place slowly and painfully: and, since nature had helped herself with me, i appeared now to have become another man; for i had gained a greater cheerfulness of mind than i had known for a long time, and i was rejoiced to feel my inner self at liberty, although externally a wearisome affliction threatened me. but what particularly set me up at this time was, to see how many eminent men had, undeservedly, given me their affection. undeservedly, i say; for there was not one among them to whom i had not been troublesome through contradictory humors, not one whom i had not more than once wounded by morbid absurdity,--nay, whom i had not stubbornly avoided for a long time, from a feeling of my own injustice. all this was forgotten: they treated me in the most affectionate manner, and sought, partly in my chamber, partly as soon as i could leave it, to amuse and divert me. they drove out with me, entertained me at their country houses, and i seemed soon to recover. among these friends i name first of all docter hermann, then senator, afterwards burgomaster at leipzig. he was among those boarders with whom i had become acquainted through schlosser, the one with whom an always equable and enduring connection was maintained. one might well reckon him the most industrious of his academical fellow-citizens. he attended his lectures with the greatest regularity, and his private industry remained always the same. step by step, without the slightest deviation, i saw him attain his doctor's degree, and then raise himself to the assessorship, without any thing of all this appearing arduous to him, or his having in the least hurried or been too late with any thing. the gentleness of his character attracted me, his instructive conversation held me fast; indeed, i really believe that i took delight in his methodical industry especially for this reason, because i thought, by acknowledgments and high esteem, to appropriate to myself at least a part of a merit of which i could by no means boast. he was just as regular in the exercise of his talents and the enjoyment of his pleasures as in his business. he played the harpsichord with great skill, drew from nature with feeling, and stimulated me to do the same; when, in his manner, on gray paper and with black and white chalk, i used to copy many a willow-plot on the pleisse, and many a lovely nook of those still waters, and at the same time longingly to indulge in my fancies. he knew how to meet my sometimes comical disposition with merry jests; and i remember many pleasant hours which we spent together when he invited me, with mock solemnity, to a /tete-a-tete/ supper, where, with some dignity, by the light of waxen candles, we ate what they call a council-hare, which had run into his kitchen as a perquisite of his place, and, with many jokes in the manner of behrisch, were pleased to season the meat and heighten the spirit of the wine. that this excellent man, who is still constantly laboring in his respectable office, rendered me the most faithful assistance during a disease, of which there was indeed a foreboding, but which had not been foreseen in its full extent; that he bestowed every leisure hour upon me, and, by remembrances of former happy times, contrived to brighten the gloomy moment,---i still acknowledge with the sincerest thanks, and rejoice that after so long a time i can give them publicly. besides this worthy friend, groening of bremen particularly interested himself in me. i had made his acquaintance only a short time before, and first discovered his good feeling towards me during my misfortune: i felt the value of this favor the more warmly, as no one is apt to seek a closer connection with invalids. he spared nothing to give me pleasure, to draw me away from musing on my situation, to hold up to my view and promise me recovery and a wholesome activity in the nearest future. how often have i been delighted, in the progress of life, to hear how this excellent man has in the weightiest affairs shown himself useful, and indeed a blessing to his native city. here, too, it was that friend horn uninterruptedly brought into action his love and attention. the whole breitkopf household, the stock family, and many others, treated me like a near relative; and thus, through the good will of so many friendly persons, the feeling of my situation was soothed in the tenderest manner. i must here, however, make particular mention of a man with whom i first became acquainted at this time, and whose instructive conversation so far blinded me to the miserable state in which i was, that i actually forgot it. this was langer, afterwards librarian at wolfenbüttel. eminently learned and instructed, he was delighted at my voracious hunger after knowledge, which, with the irritability of sickness, now broke out into a perfect fever. he tried to calm me by perspicuous summaries; and i have been very much indebted to his acquaintance, short as it was, since he understood how to guide me in various ways, and made me attentive whither i had to direct myself at the present moment. i felt all the more obliged to this important man, as my intercourse exposed him to some danger; for when, after behrisch, he got the situation of tutor to the young count lindenau, the father made it an express condition with the new mentor that he should have no intercourse with me. curious to become acquainted with such a dangerous subject, he frequently found means of meeting me indirectly. i soon gained his affection; and he, more prudent than behrisch, called for me by night: we went walking together, conversed on interesting things, and at last i accompanied him to the very door of his mistress; for even this externally severe, earnest, scientific man had not kept free from the toils of a very amiable lady. german literature, and with it my own poetical undertakings, had already for some time become strange to me; and, as is usually the result in such an auto-didactic circular course, i turned back towards the beloved ancients who still constantly, like distant blue mountains, distinct in their outlines and masses, but indiscernible in their parts and internal relations, bounded the horizon of my intellectual wishes. i made an exchange with langer, in which i at last played the part of glaucus and diomedes: i gave up to him whole baskets of german poets and critics, and received in return a number of greek authors, the reading of whom was to give me recreation, even during the most tedious convalescence. the confidence which new friends repose in each other usually develops itself by degrees. common occupation and tastes are the first things in which a mutual harmony shows itself; then the mutual communication generally extends over past and present passions, especially over love- affairs: but it is a lower depth which opens itself, if the connection is to be perfected; the religious sentiments, the affairs of the heart which relate to the imperishable, are the things which both establish the foundation and adorn the summit of a friendship. the christian religion was fluctuating between its own historically positive base and a pure deism, which, grounded on morality, was in its turn to lay the foundation of ethics. the diversity of characters and modes of thought here showed itself in infinite gradations, especially when a leading difference was brought into play by the question arising as to how great a share reason, and how great a share the feelings, could and should have in such convictions. the most lively and ingenious men showed themselves, in this instance, like butterflies, who, quite regardless of their caterpillar state, throw away the chrysalis veil in which they have grown up to their organic perfection. others, more honestly and modestly minded, might be compared to the flowers, which, although they unfold themselves to the most beautiful bloom, yet do not tear themselves from the root, from the mother stalk, nay,--rather through this family connection first bring the desired fruit to maturity. of this latter class was langer; for although a learned man, and eminently versed in books, he would yet give the bible a peculiar pre-eminence over the other writings which have come down to us, and regard it as a document from which alone we could prove our moral and spiritual pedigree. he belonged to those who cannot conceive an immediate connection with the great god of the universe: a mediation, therefore, was necessary for him, an analogy to which he thought he could find everywhere in earthly and heavenly things. his discourse, which was pleasing and consistent, easily found a hearing with a young man, who, separated from worldly things by an annoying illness, found it highly desirable to turn the activity of his mind towards the heavenly. grounded as i was in the bible, all that was wanted was merely the faith to explain as divine that which i had hitherto esteemed in human fashion,---a belief the easier for me, since i had made my first acquaintance with that book as a divine one. to a sufferer, to one who felt himself delicate, nay, weak, the gospel was therefore welcome; and even though langer, with all his faith, was at the same time a very sensible man, and firmly maintained that one should not let the feelings prevail, should not let one's self be led astray into mysticism, i could not have managed to occupy myself with the new testament without feeling and enthusiasm. in such conversations we spent much time; and he grew so fond of me as an honest and well-prepared proselyte, that he did not scruple to sacrifice to me many of the hours destined for his fair one, and even to run the risk of being betrayed and looked upon unfavorably by his patron, like behrisch. i returned his affection in the most grateful manner; and, if what he did for me would have been of value at any time, i could not but regard it, in my present condition, as worthy of the highest honor. but as when the concert of our souls is most spiritually attuned, the rude, shrieking tones of the world usually break in most violently and boisterously, and the contrast which has gone on exercising a secret control affects us so much the more sensibly when it comes forward all at once: thus was i not to be dismissed from the peripatetic school of my langer without having first witnessed an event, strange at least for leipzig; namely, a tumult which the students excited, and that on the following pretence. some young people had quarrelled with the city soldiers, and the affair had not gone off without violence. many of the students combined to revenge the injuries inflicted. the soldiers resisted stubbornly, and the advantage was not on the side of the very discontented academical citizens. it was now said that respectable persons had commended and rewarded the conquerors for their valiant resistance; and, by this, the youthful feeling of honor and revenge was mightily excited. it was publicly said, that, on the next evening, windows would be broken in: and some friends who brought me word that this was actually taking place, were obliged to carry me there; for youth and the multitude are always attracted by danger and tumult. there really began a strange spectacle. the otherwise open street was lined on one side with men who, quite quiet, without noise or movement, were waiting to see what would happen. about a dozen young fellows were walking singly up and down the empty sidewalk, with the greatest apparent composure; but, as soon as they came opposite the marked house, they threw stones at the windows as they passed by, and this repeatedly as they returned backwards and forwards, as long as the panes would rattle. just as quietly as this was done, all at last dispersed; and the affair had no further consequences. with such a ringing echo of university exploits, i left leipzig in the september of , in a comfortable hired coach, and in the company of some respectable persons of my acquaintance. in the neighborhood of auerstädt i thought of that previous accident; but i could not forebode that which many years afterwards would threaten me from thence with still greater danger, just as little as in gotha, where we had the castle shown to us, i could think in the great hall adorned with stucco figures, that so much favor and affection would befall me on that very spot. the nearer i approached my native city, the more i recalled to myself doubtingly the circumstances, prospects, and hopes with which i had left home; and it was with a very disheartening feeling that i now returned, as it were, like one shipwrecked. yet, since i had not very much with which to reproach myself, i contrived to compose myself tolerably well: however, the welcome was not without emotion. the great vivacity of my nature, excited and heightened by sickness, caused an impassioned scene. i might have looked worse than i myself knew, since for a long time i had not consulted a looking-glass; and who does not become used to himself? suffice it to say, they silently resolved to communicate many things to me only by degrees, and before all things to let me have some repose, both bodily and mental. my sister immediately associated herself with me, and as previously, from her letters, so i could now more in detail and accurately understand the circumstances and situation of the family. my father had, after my departure, applied all his didactic taste to my sister; and in a house completely shut up, rendered secure by peace, and even cleared of lodgers, he had cut off from her almost every means of looking about and finding some recreation abroad. she had by turns to pursue and work at french, italian, and english; besides which he compelled her to practise a great part of the day on the harpsichord. nor was her writing to be neglected; and i had already remarked that he had directed her correspondence with me, and had let his doctrines come to me through her pen. my sister was and still continued to be an undefinable being, the most singular mixture of strength and weakness, of stubbornness and pliability, which qualities operated now united, now isolated by will and inclination. thus she had, in a manner which seemed to me fearful, turned the hardness of her character against her father, whom she did not forgive for having, in these three years, hindered, or embittered to her, so many innocent joys; and of his good and excellent qualities she would not acknowledge even one. she did all he commanded and arranged, but in the most unamiable manner in the world. she did it in the established routine, but nothing more and nothing less. not from love or a desire to please did she accommodate herself to any thing, so that this was one of the first things about which my mother complained to me in private. but, since love was as essential to my sister as to any human being, she turned her affection wholly on me. her care in nursing and entertaining me absorbed all her time: her female companions, who were swayed by her without her intending it, had likewise to contrive all sorts of things to be pleasing and consolatory to me. she was inventive in cheering me up, and even developed some germs of comical humor which i had never known in her, and which became her very well. there soon arose between us a coterie-language, by which we could converse before all people without their understanding us; and she often used this gibberish with great pertness in the presence of our parents. my father was personally tolerably comfortable. he was in good health, spent a great part of the day in the instruction of my sister, went on with the description of his travels, and was longer in tuning his lute than in playing on it. he concealed at the same time, as well as he could, his vexation at finding, instead of a vigorous, active son, who ought now to take his degree and run through the prescribed course of life, an invalid who seemed to suffer still more in soul than in body. he did not conceal his wish that they would be expeditious with my cure; but one was forced to be specially on one's guard in his presence against hypochondriacal expressions, because he could then become passionate and bitter. my mother, by nature very lively and cheerful, spent under these circumstances very tedious days. her little housekeeping was soon provided for. the good woman's mind, inwardly never unoccupied, wished to find an interest in something; and that which was nearest at hand was religion, which she embraced the more fondly as her most eminent female friends were cultivated and hearty worshippers of god. at the head of these stood fräulein von klettenberg. she is the same person from whose conversations and letters arose the "confessions of a beautiful soul," which are found inserted in "wilhelm meister." she was slenderly formed, of the middle size: a hearty natural demeanor had been made still more pleasing by the manners of the world and the court. her very neat attire reminded of the dress of the hernhutt women. her serenity and peace of mind never left her; she looked upon her sickness as a necessary element of her transient earthly existence; she suffered with the greatest patience, and, in painless intervals, was lively and talkative. her favorite, nay, indeed, perhaps her only, conversation, was on the moral experiences which a man who observes himself can form in himself; to which was added the religious views which, in a very graceful manner, nay, with genius, came under her consideration as natural and supernatural. it scarcely needs more to recall back to the friends of such representations, that complete delineation composed from the very depths of her soul. owing to the very peculiar course she had taken from her youth upwards, the distinguished rank in which she had been born and educated, and the liveliness and originality of her mind, she did not agree very well with the other ladies who had set out on the same road to salvation. frau griesbach, the chief of them, seemed too severe, too dry, too learned: she knew, thought, comprehended, more than the others, who contented themselves with the development of their feelings; and she was therefore burdensome to them, because every one neither could nor would carry with her so great an apparatus on the road to bliss. but for this reason most of them were indeed somewhat monotonous, since they confined themselves to a certain terminology which might well have been compared to that of the later sentimentalists. fräulein von klettenberg guided her way between both extremes, and seemed, with some self- complacency, to see her own reflections in the image of count zindendorf, whose opinions and actions bore witness to a higher birth and more distinguished rank. now she found in me what she needed, a lively young creature, striving after an unknown happiness, who, although he could not think himself an extraordinary sinner, yet found himself in no comfortable condition, and was perfectly healthy neither in body nor soul. she was delighted with what nature had given me, as well as with much which i had gained for myself. and, if she conceded to me many advantages, this was by no means humiliating to her: for, in the first place, she never thought of emulating one of the male sex; and, secondly, she believed, that, in regard to religious culture, she was very much in advance of me. my disquiet, my impatience, my striving, my seeking, investigating, musing, and wavering, she interpreted in her own way, and did not conceal from me her conviction, but assured me in plain terms that all this proceeded from my having no reconciled god. now, i had believed from my youth upwards that i stood on very good terms with my god,--nay, i even fancied to myself, according to various experiences, that he might even be in arrears to me; and i was daring enough to think that i had something to forgive him. this presumption was grounded on my infinite good will, to which, as it seemed to me, he should have given better assistance. it may be imagined how often i got into disputes on this subject with my friend, which, however, always terminated in the friendliest way, and often, like my conversations with the old rector, with the remark, "that i was a foolish fellow, for whom many allowances must be made." i was much troubled with the tumor in my neck, as the physician and surgeon wished first to disperse this excrescence, afterwards, as they said, to draw it to a head, and at last thought it best to open it; so for a long time i had to suffer more from inconvenience than pain, although towards the end of the cure the continual touching with lunar caustic and other corrosive substances could not but give me very disagreeable prospects for every fresh day. the physician and surgeon both belonged to the pious separatists, although both were of highly different natural characters. the surgeon, a slender, well-built man, of easy and skilful hand, was unfortunately somewhat hectic, but endured his condition with truly christian patience, and did not suffer his disease to perplex him in his profession. the physician was an inexplicable, sly-looking, fair-spoken, and, besides, an abstruse, man, who had quite won the confidence of the pious circle. being active and attentive, he was consoling to the sick; but, more than by all this, he extended his practice by the gift of showing in the background some mysterious medicines prepared by himself, of which no one could speak, since with us the physicians were strictly prohibited from making up their own prescriptions. with certain powders, which may have been some kind of digestive, he was not so reserved, but that powerful salt, which could only be applied in the greatest danger, was only mentioned among believers; although no one had yet seen it or traced its effects. to excite and strengthen our faith in the possibility of such an universal remedy, the physician, wherever he found any susceptibility, had recommended certain chemico-alchemical books to his patients, and given them to understand, that, by one's own study of them, one could well attain this treasure for one's self, which was the more necessary, as the mode of its preparation, both for physical, and especially for moral, reasons, could not be well communicated; nay, that in order to comprehend, produce, and use this great work, one must know the secrets of nature in connection, since it was not a particular, but an universal remedy, and could indeed be produced under different forms and shapes. my friend had listened to these enticing words. the health of the body was too nearly allied to the health of the soul; and could a greater benefit, a greater mercy, be shown towards others than by appropriating to one's self a remedy by which so many sufferings could be assuaged, so many a danger averted? she had already secretly studied welling's "opus mago-cabalisticum," for which, however, as the author himself immediately darkens and removes the light he imparts, she was looking about for a friend, who, in this alternation of glare and gloom, might bear her company. it needed small incitement to inoculate me also with this disease. i procured the work, which, like all writings of this kind, could trace its pedigree in a direct line up to the neo-platonic school. my chief labor in this book was most accurately to notice the obscure hints by which the author refers from one passage to another, and thus promises to reveal what he conceals, and to mark down on the terminology which might well have been compared to that of the later sentimentalists. fräulein von klettenberg guided her way between both extremes, and seemed, with some self-complacency, to see her own reflections in the image of count zindendorf, whose opinions and actions bore witness to a higher birth and more distinguished rank. now she found in me what she needed, a lively young creature, striving after an unknown happiness, who, although he could not think himself an extraordinary sinner, yet found himself in no comfortable condition, and was perfectly healthy neither in body nor soul. she was delighted with what nature had given me, as well as with much which i had gained for myself. and, if she conceded to me many advantages, this was by no means humiliating to her: for, in the first place, she never thought of emulating one of the male sex; and, secondly, she believed, that, in regard to religious culture, she was very much in advance of me. my disquiet, my impatience, my striving, my seeking, investigating, musing, and wavering, she interpreted in her own way, and did not conceal from me her conviction, but assured me in plain terms that all this proceeded from my having no reconciled god. now, i had believed from my youth upwards that i stood on very good terms with my god,--nay, i even fancied to myself, according to various experiences, that he might even be in arrears to me; and i was daring enough to think that i had something to forgive him. this presumption was grounded on my infinite good will, to which, as it seemed to me, he should have given better assistance. it may be imagined how often i got into disputes on this subject with my friend, which, however, always terminated in the friendliest way, and often, like my conversations with the old rector, with the remark, "that i was a foolish fellow, for whom many allowances must be made." i was much troubled with the tumor in my neck, as the physician and surgeon wished first to disperse this excrescence, afterwards, as they said, to draw it to a head, and at last thought it best to open it; so for a long time i had to suffer more from inconvenience than pain, although towards the end of the cure the continual touching with lunar caustic and other corrosive substances could not but give me very disagreeable prospects for every fresh day. the physician and surgeon both belonged to the pious separatists, although both were of highly different natural characters. the surgeon, a slender, well-built man, of easy and skilful hand, was unfortunately somewhat hectic, but endured his condition with truly christian patience, and did not suffer his disease to perplex him in his profession. the physician was an inexplicable, sly-looking, fair-spoken, and, besides, an abstruse, man, who had quite won the confidence of the pious circle. being active and attentive, he was consoling to the sick; but, more than by all this, he extended his practice by the gift of showing in the background some mysterious medicines prepared by himself, of which no one could speak, since with us the physicians were strictly prohibited from making up their own prescriptions. with certain powders, which may have been some kind of digestive, he was not so reserved, but that powerful salt, which could only be applied in the greatest danger, was only mentioned among believers; although no one had yet seen it or traced its effects. to excite and strengthen our faith in the possibility of such an universal remedy, the physician, wherever he found any susceptibility, had recommended certain chemico-alchemical books to his patients, and given them to understand, that, by one's own study of them, one could well attain this treasure for one's self, which was the more necessary, as the mode of its preparation, both for physical, and especially for moral, reasons, could not be well communicated; nay, that in order to comprehend, produce, and use this great work, one must know the secrets of nature in connection, since it was not a particular, but an universal remedy, and could indeed be produced under different forms and shapes. my friend had listened to these enticing words. the health of the body was too nearly allied to the health of the soul; and could a greater benefit, a greater mercy, be shown towards others than by appropriating to one's self a remedy by which so many sufferings could be assuaged, so many a danger averted? she had already secretly studied welling's "opus mago-cabalisticum," for which, however, as the author himself immediately darkens and removes the light he imparts, she was looking about for a friend, who, in this alternation of glare and gloom, might bear her company. it needed small incitement to inoculate me also with this disease. i procured the work, which, like all writings of this kind, could trace its pedigree in a direct line up to the neo-platonic school. my chief labor in this book was most accurately to notice the obscure hints by which the author refers from one passage to another, and thus promises to reveal what he conceals, and to mark down on the margin the number of the page where such passages as should explain each other were to be found. but even thus the book still remained dark and unintelligible enough, except that one at last studied one's self into a certain terminology, and, by using it according to one's own fancy, believed that one was, at any rate, saying, if not understanding, something. the work mentioned before makes very honorable mention of its predecessors, and we were incited to investigate those original sources themselves. we turned to the works of theophrastus, paracelsus, and basilius valentinus, as well as to those of helmont, starkey, and others, whose doctrines and directions, resting more or less on nature and imagination, we endeavored to see into and follow out. i was particularly pleased with the "aurea catena homeri," in which nature, though perhaps in fantastical fashion, is represented in a beautiful combination; and thus sometimes by ourselves, sometimes together, we employed much time on these singularities, and spent the evenings of a long winter--during which i was compelled to keep my chamber--very agreeably, since we three (my mother being included) were more delighted with these secrets than we could have been at their elucidation. in the mean time, a very severe trial was preparing for me: for a disturbed, and, one might even say, for certain moments, destroyed digestion, excited such symptoms, that, in great tribulation, i thought i should lose my life; and none of the remedies applied would produce any further effect. in this last extremity my distressed mother constrained the embarrassed physician with the greatest vehemence to come out with his universal medicine. after a long refusal, he hastened home at the dead of night, and returned with a little glass of crystallized dry salt, which was dissolved in water, and swallowed by the patient. it had a decidedly alkaline taste. the salt was scarcely taken than my situation appeared relieved; and from that moment the disease took a turn which, by degrees, led to my recovery. i need not say how much this strengthened and heightened our faith in our physician, and our industry to share in such a treasure. my friend, who, without parents or brothers and sisters, lived in a large, well-situated house, had already before this begun to purchase herself a little air-furnace, alembics, and retorts of moderate size, and, in accordance with the hints of welling, and the significant signs of our physician and master, operated principally on iron, in which the most healing powers were said to be concealed, if one only knew how to open it. and as the volatile salt which must be produced made a great figure in all the writings with which we were acquainted; so, for these operations, alkalies also were required, which, while they flowed away into the air, were to unite with these superterrestrial things, and at last produce, /per se/, a mysterious and excellent neutral salt. no sooner was i in some measure restored, and, favored by the change in the season, once more able to occupy my old gable-chamber, than i also began to provide myself with a little apparatus. a small air-furnace with a sand-bath was prepared; and i very soon learned to change the glass alembics, with a piece of burning match-cord, into vessels in which the different mixtures were to be evaporated. now were the strange ingredients of the macrocosm and microcosm handled in an odd, mysterious manner; and, before all, i attempted to produce neutral salts in an unheard-of way. but what, for a long time, kept me busy most, was the so-called /liquor silicum/ (flint-juice), which is made by melting down pure quartz-flint with a proper proportion of alkali, whence results a transparent glass, which melts away on exposure to the air, and exhibits a beautiful clear fluidity. whoever has once prepared this himself, and seen it with his own eyes, will not blame those who believe in a maiden earth, and in the possibility of producing further effects upon it by means of it. i had become quite skilful in preparing this /liquor silicum/; the fine white flints which are found in the main furnished a perfect material for it: and i was not wanting in the other requisites, nor in diligence. but i wearied at last, because i could not but remark that the flinty substance was by no means so closely combined with the salt as i had philosophically imagined, for it very easily separated itself again; and this most beautiful mineral fluidity, which, to my greatest astonishment, had sometimes appeared in the form of an animal jelly, always deposited a powder, which i was forced to pronounce the finest flint dust, but which gave not the least sign of any thing productive in its nature from which one could have hoped to see this maiden earth pass into the maternal state. strange and unconnected as these operations were, i yet learned many things from them. i paid strict attention to all the crystallizations that might occur, and became acquainted with the external forms of many natural things: and, inasmuch as i well knew that in modern times chemical subjects were treated more methodically, i wished to get a general conception of them; although, as a half-adept, i had very little respect for the apothecaries and all those who operated with common fire. however, the chemical "compendium" of boerhaave attracted me powerfully, and led me on to read several of his writings, in which (since, moreover, my tedious illness had inclined me towards medical subjects) i found an inducement to study also the "aphorisms" of this excellent man, which i was glad to stamp upon my mind and in my memory. another employment, somewhat more human, and by far more useful for my cultivation at the moment, was reading through the letters which i had written home from leipzig. nothing reveals more with respect to ourselves, than when we again see before us that which has proceeded from us years before, so that we can now consider ourselves as an object of contemplation. but, of course, i was as yet too young, and the epoch which was represented by those papers was still too near. as in our younger years we do not in general easily cast off a certain self- complacent conceit, this especially shows itself in despising what we have been but a little time before; for while, indeed, we perceive, as we advance from step to step, that those things which we regard as good and excellent in ourselves and others do not stand their ground, we think we can best extricate ourselves from this dilemma by ourselves throwing away what we cannot preserve. so it was with me also. for as in leipzig i had gradually learned to set little value on my childish labors, so now my academical course seemed to me likewise of small account; and i did not understand, that, for this very reason, it must be of great value to me, as it elevated me to a higher degree of observation and insight. my father had carefully collected and sewed together the letters i had written to him, as well as those to my sister; nay, he had even corrected them with attention, and improved the mistakes, both in writing and in grammar. what first struck me in these letters was their exterior: i was shocked at an incredible carelessness in the handwriting, which extended from october, , to the middle of the following january. but, in the middle of march, there appeared all at once a quite compressed, orderly hand, such as i used formerly to employ in writing for a prize. my astonishment resolved itself into gratitude towards good gellert, who, as i now well remembered, whenever we handed in our essays to him, represented to us, in his hearty tone of voice, that it was our sacred duty to practise our hand as much, nay, more, than our style. he repeated this as often as he caught sight of any scrawled, careless writing, on which occasion he often said that he would much like to make a good hand of his pupils the principal end in his instructions; the more so as he had often remarked that a good hand led the way to a good style. i could further notice that the french and english passages in my letters, although not free from blunders, were nevertheless written with facility and freedom. these languages i had likewise continued to practise in my correspondence with george schlosser, who was still at treptow; and i had remained in constant communication with him, by which i was instructed in many secular affairs (for things did not always turn out with him quite as he had hoped), and acquired an ever increasing confidence in his earnest, noble way of thinking. another consideration which could not escape me in going over these letters, was that my good father, with the best intentions, had done me a special mischief, and had led me into that odd way of life into which i had fallen at last. he had repeatedly warned me against card-playing; but frau hofrath böhme, as long as she lived, contrived to persuade me, after her own fashion, by declaring that my father's warnings were only against the abuse. now, as i likewise saw the advantages of it in society, i readily submitted to being led by her. i had indeed the sense of play, but not the spirit of play: i learned all games easily and rapidly, but i could never keep up the proper attention for a whole evening. therefore, however good a beginning i would make, i invariably failed at the end, and made myself and others lose; through which i went off, always out of humor, either to the supper-table or out of the company. scarcely had madame böhme died, who, moreover, had no longer kept me in practice during her tedious illness, when my father's doctrine gained force: i at first begged to be excused from joining the card-tables; and, as they now did not know what else to do with me, i became even more of a burden to myself than to others, and declined the invitations, which then became more rare, and at last ceased altogether. play, which is much to be recommended to young people, especially to those who incline to be practical, and wish to look about in the world for themselves, could never, indeed, become a passion with me; for i never got any farther, no matter how long i might have been playing. had any one given me a general view of the subject, and made me observe how here certain signs and more or less of chance form a kind of material, at which judgment and activity can exercise themselves; had any one made me see several games at once,--i might sooner have become reconciled. with all this, at the time of which i am now speaking, i had, from the above considerations, come to the conviction, that one should not avoid social games, but should rather strive after a certain skill in them. time is infinitely long; and each day is a vessel into which a great deal may be poured, if one would actually fill it up. thus variously was i occupied in my solitude; the more so, as the departed spirits of the different tastes to which i had from time to time devoted myself had an opportunity to re-appear. i then again took up drawing: and as i always wished to labor directly from nature, or rather from reality, i made a picture of my chamber, with its furniture, and the persons who were in it; and, when this no more amused me, i represented all sorts of town-tales, which were told at the time, and in which interest was taken. all this was not without character and a certain taste; but unfortunately the figures lacked proportion and the proper vigor, besides which the execution was extremely misty. my father, who continued to take pleasure in these things, wished to have them more distinct, wanting every thing to be finished and properly completed. he therefore had them mounted and surrounded with ruled lines; nay, the painter morgenstern, his domestic artist,--the same who afterwards made himself known, and indeed famous, by his church-views,-- had to insert the perspective lines of the rooms and chambers, which then, indeed, stood in pretty harsh contrast with those cloudy looking figures. in this manner he thought he would make me gain greater accuracy; and, to please him, i drew various objects of still life, in which, since the originals stood as patterns before me, i could work with more distinctness and precision. at last i took it into my head to etch once more. i had composed a tolerably interesting landscape, and felt myself very happy when i could look out for the old receipts given me by stock, and could, at my work, call to mind those pleasant times. i soon bit the plate and had a proof taken. unluckily the composition was without light and shade, and i now tormented myself to bring in both; but, as it was not quite clear to me what was really the essential point, i could not finish. up to this time i had been quite well, after my own fashion; but now a disease attacked me which had never troubled me before. my throat, namely, had become completely sore, and particularly what is called the "uvula" very much inflamed: i could only swallow with great pain, and the physicians did not know what to make of it. they tormented me with gargles and hair-pencils, but could not free me from my misery. at last it struck me that i had not been careful enough in the biting of my plates, and that, by often and passionately repeating it, i had contracted this disease, and always revived and increased it. to the physicians this cause was plausible, and very soon certain on my leaving my etching and biting, and that so much the more readily as the attempt had by no means turned out well, and i had more reason to conceal than to exhibit my labors; for which i consoled myself the more easily, as i very soon saw myself free from the troublesome disease. upon this i could not refrain from the reflection, that my similar occupations at leipzig might have greatly contributed to those diseases from which i had suffered so much. it is, indeed, a tedious, and withal a melancholy, business to take too much care of ourselves, and of what injures and benefits us; but there is no question but that, with the wonderful idiosyncrasy of human nature on the one side, and the infinite variety in the mode of life and pleasure on the other, it is a wonder that the human race has not worn itself out long ago. human nature appears to possess a peculiar kind of toughness and many- sidedness, since it subdues every thing which approaches it, or which it takes into itself, and, if it cannot assimilate, at least makes it indifferent. in case of any great excess, indeed, it must yield to the elements in spite of all resistance, as the many endemic diseases and the effects of brandy convince us. could we, without being morbidly anxious, keep watch over ourselves as to what operates favorably or unfavorably upon us in our complicated civil and social life, and would we leave off what is actually pleasant to us as an enjoyment, for the sake of the evil consequences, we should thus know how to remove with ease many an inconvenience which, with a constitution otherwise sound, often troubles us more than even a disease. unfortunately, it is in dietetics as in morals,--we cannot see into a fault till we have got rid of it; by which nothing is gained, for the next fault is not like the preceding one, and therefore cannot be recognized under the same form. while i was reading over the letters which had been written to my sister from leipzig, this remark, among others, could not escape me,--that, from the very beginning of my academical course, i had esteemed myself very clever and wise, since, as soon as i had learned any thing, i put myself in the place of the professor, and so became didactic on the spot. i was amused to see how i had immediately applied to my sister whatever gellert had imparted or advised in his lectures, without seeing, that, both in life and in books, a thing may be proper for a young man without being suitable for a young lady; and we both together made merry over these mimicries. the poems also which i had composed in leipzig were already too poor for me; and they seemed to me cold, dry, and, in respect of all that was meant to express the state of the human heart or mind, too superficial. this induced me, now that i was to leave my father's house once more, and go to a second university, again to decree a great high /auto-da-fé/ against my labors. several commenced plays, some of which had reached the third or the fourth act, while others had only the plot fully made out, together with many other poems, letters, and papers, were given over to the fire: and scarcely any thing was spared except the manuscript by behrisch, "die laune des verliebten" and "die mitschuldigen," which latter play i constantly went on improving with peculiar affection; and, as the piece was already complete, i again worked over the plot, to make it more bustling and intelligible. lessing, in the first two acts of his "minna," had set up an unattainable model of the way in which a drama should be developed; and nothing was to me of greater importance than to thoroughly enter into his meaning and views. the recital of whatever moved, excited, and occupied me at this time, is already circumstantial enough; but i must nevertheless recur to that interest with which supersensuous things had inspired me, of which i, once for all, so far as might be possible, undertook to form some notion. i experienced a great influence from an important work that fell into my hands: it was arnold's "history of the church and of heretics." this man is not merely a reflective historian, but at the same time pious and feeling. his sentiments chimed in very well with mine; and what particularly delighted me in his work was, that i received a more favorable notion of many heretics, who had been hitherto represented to me as mad or impious. the spirit of contradiction and the love of paradoxes are inherent in us all. i diligently studied the different opinions: and as i had often enough heard it said that every man has his own religion at last, so nothing seemed more natural to me than that i should form mine too; and this i did with much satisfaction. the neo- platonism lay at the foundation; the hermetical, the mystical, the cabalistic, also contributed their share; and thus i built for myself a world that looked strange enough. i could well represent to myself a godhead which has gone on producing itself from all eternity; but, as production cannot be conceived without multiplicity, so it must of necessity have immediately appeared to itself as a second, which we recognize under the name of the son: now, these two must continue the act of producing, and again appear to themselves in a third, which was just as substantial, living, and eternal as the whole. with these, however, the circle of the godhead was complete; and it would not have been possible for them to produce another perfectly equal to them. but, since the work of production always proceeded, they created a fourth, which already fostered in himself a contradiction, inasmuch as it was, like them, unlimited, and yet at the same time was to be contained in them and bounded by them. now, this was lucifer, to whom the whole power of creation was committed from this time, and from whom all other beings were to proceed. he immediately displayed his infinite activity by creating the whole body of angels,--all, again, after his own likeness, unlimited, but contained in him and bounded by him. surrounded by such a glory, he forgot his higher origin, and believed that he could find himself in himself; and from this first ingratitude sprang all that does not seem to us in accordance with the will and purposes of the godhead. now, the more he concentrated himself within himself, the more painful must it have become to him, as well as to all the spirits whose sweet uprising to their origin he had embittered. and so that happened which is intimated to us under the form of the fall of the angels. one part of them concentrated itself with lucifer, the other turned itself again to its origin. from this concentration of the whole creation--for it had proceeded out of lucifer, and was forced to follow him--sprang all that we perceive under the form of matter, which we figure to ourselves as heavy, solid, and dark, but which, since it is descended, if not even immediately, yet by filiation, from the divine being, is just as unlimited, powerful, and eternal as its sire and grandsire. now, the whole mischief, if we may call it so, having arisen merely through the one-sided direction of lucifer, the better half was indeed wanting to this creation; for it possessed all that is gained by concentration, while it lacked all that can be effected by expansion alone: and so the entire creation might have been destroyed by everlasting concentration, become annihilated with its father lucifer, and have lost all its claims to an equal eternity with the godhead. this condition the elohim contemplated for a time: and they had their choice, to wait for those eons, in which the field would again have become clear, and space would be left them for a new creation; or, if they would, to seize upon that which existed already, and supply the want, according to their own eternity. now, they chose the latter, and by their mere will supplied in an instant the whole want which the consequence of lucifer's undertaking drew after it. they gave to the eternal being the faculty of expansion, of moving towards them: the peculiar pulse of life was again restored, and lucifer himself could not avoid its effects. this is the epoch when that appeared which we know as light, and when that began which we are accustomed to designate by the word creation. however much this multiplied itself by progressive degrees, through the continually working vital power of the elohim, still a being was wanting who might be able to restore the original connection with the godhead: and thus man was produced, who in all things was to be similar, yea, equal to the godhead, but thereby, in effect, found himself once more in the situation of lucifer, that of being at once unlimited and limited; and since this contradiction was to manifest itself in him through all the categories of existence, and a perfect consciousness, as well as a decided will, was to accompany his various conditions, it was to be foreseen that he must be at the same time the most perfect and the most imperfect, the most happy and the most unhappy, creature. it was not long before he, too, completely acted the part of lucifer. true ingratitude is the separation from the benefactor; and thus that fall was manifest for the second time, although the whole creation is nothing and was nothing but a falling from and returning to the original. one easily sees how the redemption is not only decreed from eternity, but is considered as eternally necessary,--nay, that it must ever renew itself through the whole time of generation [footnote: "das werden," the state of becoming, as distinguished from that of being. the word, which is most useful to the germans, can never be rendered properly in english.--trans.] and existence. in this view of the subject, nothing is more natural than for the divinity himself to take the form of man, which had already prepared itself as a veil, and to share his fate for a short time, in order, by this assimilation, to enhance his joys and alleviate his sorrows. the history of all religions and philosophies teaches us, that this great truth, indispensable to man, has been handed down by different nations, in different times, in various ways, and even in strange fables and images, in accordance with their limited knowledge: enough, if it only be acknowledged that we find ourselves in a condition which, even if it seems to drag us down and oppress us, yet gives us opportunity, nay, even makes it our duty, to raise ourselves up, and to fulfil the purposes of the godhead in this manner, that, while we are compelled on the one hand to concentrate ourselves (/uns zu verselbsten/), we, on the other hand, do not omit to expand ourselves (/uns zu entselbstigen/) in regular pulsation. [footnote: if we could make use of some such verbs as "inself" and "unself," we should more accurately render this passage.--trans.] ninth book. "the heart is often affected, moreover, to the advantage of different, but especially of social and refined, virtues; and the more tender sentiments are excited and unfolded in it. many touches, in particular, will impress themselves, which give the young reader an insight into the more hidden corner of the human heart and its passions,--a knowledge which is more worth than all latin and greek, and of which ovid was a very excellent master. but yet it is not on this account that the classic poets, and therefore ovid, are placed in the hands of youth. we have received from a kind creator a variety of mental powers, to which we must not neglect giving their proper culture in our earliest years, and which cannot be cultivated, either by logic or metaphysics, latin or greek. we have an imagination, before which, since it should not seize upon the very first conceptions that chance to present themselves, we ought to place the fittest and most beautiful images, and thus accustom and practise the mind to recognize and love the beautiful everywhere, and in nature itself, under its determined, true, and also in its finer, features. a multitude of conceptions and general knowledge is necessary to us, as well for the sciences as for daily life, which can be learned out of no compendium. our feelings, affections, and passions should be advantageously developed and purified." this significant passage, which is found in "the universal german library," was not the only one of its kind. similar principles and similar views manifested themselves in many directions. they made upon us lively youths a very great impression, which had the more decided effect, as it was strengthened besides by wieland's example; for the works of his second brilliant period clearly showed that he had formed himself according to such maxims. and what more could we desire? philosophy, with its abstruse questions, was set aside; the classic languages, the acquisition of which is accompanied by so much drudgery, one saw thrust into the background; the compendiums, about the sufficiency of which hamlet had already whispered a word of caution into our ears, came more and more into suspicion. we were directed to the contemplation of an active life, which we were so fond of leading; and to the knowledge of the passions, which we partly felt, partly anticipated, in our own bosoms, and which, if though they had been rebuked formerly, now appeared to us as something important and dignified, because they were to be the chief object of our studies; and the knowledge of them was extolled as the most excellent means of cultivating our mental powers. besides, such a mode of thought was quite in accordance with my own conviction,--nay, with my poetical mode of treatment. i therefore, without opposition, after i had thwarted so many good designs, and seen so many fair hopes vanish, reconciled myself to my father's intention of sending me to strasburg, where i was promised a cheerful, gay life, while i should prosecute my studies, and at last take my degree. in spring i felt my health, but still more my youthful spirits, restored, and once more longed to be out of my father's house, though with reasons far different from those on the first time. the pretty chambers and spots where i had suffered so much had become disagreeable to me, and with my father himself there could be no pleasant relation. i could not quite pardon him for having manifested more impatience than was reasonable at the relapse of my disease, and at my tedious recovery; nay, for having, instead of comforting me by forbearance, frequently expressed himself in a cruel manner, about that which lay in no man's hand, as if it depended only on the will. and he, too, was in various ways hurt and offended by me. for young people bring back from the university general ideas, which, indeed, is quite right and good; but, because they fancy themselves very wise in this, they apply them as a standard to the objects that occur, which must then, for the most part, lose by the comparison. thus i had gained a general notion of architecture, and of the arrangement and decoration of houses, and imprudently, in conversation, had applied this to our own house. my father had designed the whole arrangement of it, and carried out its construction with great perseverance; and, considering that it was to be exclusively a residence for himself and his family, nothing could be objected to it: in this taste, also, very many of the houses in frankfort were built. an open staircase ran up through the house, and touched upon large ante-rooms, which might very well have been chambers themselves, as, indeed, we always passed the fine season in them. but this pleasant, cheerful existence for a single family--this communication from above to below--became the greatest inconvenience as soon as several parties occupied the house, as we had but too well experienced on the occasion of the french quartering. for that painful scene with the king's lieutenant would not have happened, nay, my father would even have felt all those disagreeable matters less, if, after the leipzig fashion, our staircase had run close along the side of the house, and a separate door had been given to each story. this style of building i once praised highly for its advantages, and showed my father the possibility of altering his staircase also; whereat he got into an incredible passion, which was the more violent as, a short time before, i had found fault with some scrolled looking-glass frames, and rejected certain chinese hangings. a scene ensued, which, indeed, was again hushed up and smothered; but it hastened my journey to the beautiful alsace, which i accomplished in a newly contrived comfortable diligence, without delay, and in a short time. i had alighted at the ghost (/geist/) tavern, and hastened at once to satisfy my most earnest desire and to approach the minster, which had long since been pointed out to me by fellow-travellers, and had been before my eyes for a great distance. when i first perceived this colossus through the narrow lanes, and then stood too near before it, in the truly confined little square, it made upon me an impression quite of its own kind, which i, being unable to analyze on the spot, carried with me only indistinctly for this time, as i hastily ascended the building, so as not to neglect the beautiful moment of a high and cheerful sun, which was to disclose to me at once the broad, rich land. and now, from the platform, i saw before me the beautiful country in which i should for a long time live and reside: the handsome city; the wide-spreading meadows around it, thickly set and interwoven with magnificent trees; that striking richness of vegetation which follows in the windings of the rhine, marks its banks, islands, and aits. nor is the level ground, stretching down from the south, and watered by the iller, less adorned with varied green. even westward, towards the mountains, there are many low grounds, which afford quite as charming a view of wood and meadow-growth, just as the northern and more hilly part is intersected by innumerable little brooks, which promote a rapid vegetation everywhere. if one imagines, between these luxuriantly outstretched meads, between these joyously scattered groves, all land adapted for tillage, excellently prepared, verdant, and ripening, and the best and richest spots marked by hamlets and farmhouses, and this great and immeasurable plain, prepared for man, like a new paradise, bounded far and near by mountains partly cultivated, partly overgrown with woods, he will then conceive the rapture with which i blessed my fate, that it had destined me, for some time, so beautiful a dwelling- place. such a fresh glance into a new land in which we are to abide for a time, has still the peculiarity, both pleasant and foreboding, that the whole lies before us like an unwritten tablet. as yet no sorrows and joys which relate to ourselves are recorded upon it; this cheerful, varied, animated plain is still mute for us; the eye is only fixed on the objects so far as they are intrinsically important, and neither affection nor passion has especially to render prominent this or that spot. but a presentiment of the future already disquiets the young heart; and an unsatisfied craving secretly demands that which is to come and may come, and which at all events, whether for good or ill, will imperceptibly assume the character of the spot in which we find ourselves. having descended the height, i still tarried a while before the face of the venerable pile; but what i could not quite clearly make out, either the first or the following time, was, that i regarded this miracle as a monster, which must have terrified me, if it had not, at the same time, appeared to me comprehensible by its regularity, and even pleasing in its finish. yet i by no means busied myself with meditating on this contradiction, but suffered a monument so astonishing quietly to work upon me by its presence. i took small, but well-situated and pleasant, lodgings, on the north side of the fish-market, a fine, long street, where the everlasting motion came to the assistance of every unoccupied moment. i then delivered my letters of introduction, and found among my patrons a merchant, who, with his family, was devoted to those pious opinions sufficiently known to me, although, as far as regarded external worship, he had not separated from the church. he was a man of intelligence withal, and by no means hypocritical in his conduct. the company of boarders which was recommended to me, and, indeed, i to it, was very agreeable and entertaining. a couple of old maids had long kept up this boarding-house with regularity and good success: there might have been about ten persons, older and younger. of these latter, one named meyer, a native of lindau, is most vividly present to my mind. from his form and face he might have been considered one of the handsomest of men, if, at the same time, he had not had something of the sloven in his whole appearance. in like manner his splendid natural talents were marred by an incredible levity, and his excellent temper by an unbounded dissoluteness. he had an open, jovial face, rather more round than oval: the organs of the senses, the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears, could be called rich; they showed a decided fulness, without being too large. his mouth was particularly charming, owing to his curling lips; and his whole physiognomy had the peculiar expression of a rake, from the circumstance that his eyebrows met across his nose, which, in a handsome face, always produces a pleasant expression of sensuality. by his jovialness, sincerity, and good nature, he made himself beloved by all. his memory was incredible; attention at the lectures was no effort for him; he retained all he heard, and was intellectual enough to take an interest in every thing, and this the more easily, as he was studying medicine. all his impressions remained vivid; and his waggery in repeating the lectures and mimicking the professors often went so far, that, when he had heard three different lectures in one morning, he would, at the dinner-table, interchange the professors with each other, paragraphwise, and often even more abruptly, which motley lecture frequently entertained us, but often, too, became troublesome. the rest were more or less polite, steady, serious people. a pensioned knight of the order of st. louis was one of these: but the majority were students, all really good and well-disposed; only they were not allowed to go beyond their usual allowance of wine. that this should not be easily done was the care of our president, one doctor salzmann. already in the sixties and unmarried, he had attended this dinner-table for many years, and maintained its good order and respectability. he possessed a handsome property, kept himself close and neat in his exterior, even belonging to those who always go in shoes and stockings, and with their hat under their arm. to put on the hat was with him an extraordinary action. he commonly carried an umbrella, wisely reflecting that the finest summer-days often bring thunder-storms and passing showers over the country. with this man i talked over my design of continuing to study jurisprudence at strasburg, so as to be able to take my degree as soon as possible. since he was exactly informed of every thing, i asked him about the lectures i should have to hear, and what he generally thought of the matter. to this he replied, that it was not in strasburg as in the german universities, where they try to educate jurists in the large and learned sense of the term. here, in conformity with the relation towards france, all was really directed to the practical, and managed in accordance with the opinions of the french, who readily stop at what is given. they tried to impart to every one certain general principles and preliminary knowledge, they compressed as much as possible, and communicated only what was most necessary. hereupon he made me acquainted with a man, in whom, as a /repetent/, [footnote: a repetent is one of a class of persons to be found in the german universities, and who assist students in their studies. they are somewhat analogous to the english tutors, but not precisely: for the latter render their aid /before/ the recitation; while the repetent /repeats/ with the student, in private, the lectures he has previously heard from the professor. hence his name, which might be rendered /repeater/, had we any corresponding class of men in england or america, which would justify an english word.--/american note/.] great confidence was entertained; which he very soon managed to gain from me also. by way of introduction, i began to speak with him on subjects of jurisprudence; and he wondered not a little at my swaggering: for, during my residence at leipzig, i had gained more of an insight into the requisites for the law than i have hitherto taken occasion to state in my narrative, though all i had acquired could only be reckoned as a general encyclopedical survey, and not as proper definite knowledge. university life, even if in the course of it we may not exactly have to boast of industry, nevertheless affords endless advantages in every kind of cultivation, because we are always surrounded by men who either possess or are seeking science, so that, even if unconsciously, we are constantly drawing some nourishment from such an atmosphere. my repetent, after he had had patience with my rambling discourse for some time, gave me at last to understand that i must first of all keep my immediate object in view, which was, to be examined, to take my degree, and then, perchance, to commence practice. "regarding the former," said he, "the subject is by no means investigated at large. it is inquired how and when a law arose, and what gave the internal or external occasion for it: there is no inquiry as to how it has been altered by time and custom, or how far it has perhaps been perverted by false interpretation or the perverted usage of the courts. it is in such investigations that learned men quite peculiarly spend their lives, whereas we inquire into that which exists at present: this we stamp firmly on our memory, that it may always be ready when we wish to employ it for the use and defence of our clients. thus we qualify our young people for their future life, and the rest follows in proportion to their talents and activity." hereupon he handed me his pamphlets, which were written in question and answer, and in which i could have stood a pretty good examination at once; for hopp's smaller law-catechism was yet perfectly in my memory: the rest i supplied with some diligence, and, against my will, qualified myself in the easiest manner as a candidate. but since in this way all my own activity in the study was cut off,--for i had no sense for any thing positive, but wished to have every thing explained historically, if not intelligibly,--i found for my powers a wider field, which i employed in the most singular manner by devoting myself to a matter of interest which was accidentally presented to me from without. most of my fellow-boarders were medical students. these, as is well known, are the only students who zealously converse about their science and profession, even out of the hours of study. this lies in the nature of the case. the objects of their endeavors are those most obvious to the senses, and at the same time the highest, the most simple, and the most complicated. medicine employs the whole man, for it occupies itself with man as a whole. all that the young man learns refers directly to an important, dangerous indeed, but yet in many respects lucrative, practice. he therefore devotes himself passionately to whatever is to be known and to be done, partly because it is interesting in itself, partly because it opens to him the joyous prospect of independence and wealth. at table, then, i heard nothing but medical conversations, just as formerly in the boarding-house of hofrath ludwig. in our walks and in our pleasure-parties likewise not much else was talked about: for my fellow-boarders, like good fellows, had also become my companions at other times; and they were always joined on all sides by persons of like minds and like studies. the medical faculty in general shone above the others, with respect both to the celebrity of the professors and the number of the students; and i was the more easily borne along by the stream, as i had just so much knowledge of all these things that my desire for science could soon be increased and inflamed. at the commencement of the second half-year, therefore, i attended spielmann's course on chemistry, another on anatomy by lobstein, and proposed to be right industrious, because, by my singular preliminary or rather extra knowledge, i had already gained some respect and confidence in our society. yet this trifling and piecemeal way of study was even to be once more seriously disturbed; for a remarkable political event set every thing in motion, and procured us a tolerable succession of holidays. marie antoinette, archduchess of austria and queen of france, was to pass through strasburg on her road to paris. the solemnities by which the people are made to take notice that there is greatness in the world were busily and abundantly prepared; and especially remarkable to me was the building which stood on an island in the rhine between the two bridges, erected for her reception and for surrendering her into the hands of her husband's ambassadors. it was but slightly raised above the ground; had in the centre a grand saloon, on each side smaller ones; then followed other chambers, which extended somewhat backward. in short, had it been more durably built, it might have answered very well as a pleasure-house for persons of rank. but that which particularly interested me, and for which i did not grudge many a /büsel/ (a little silver coin then current) in order to procure a repeated entrance from the porter, was the embroidered tapestry with which they had lined the whole interior. here, for the first time, i saw a specimen of those tapestries worked after raffaelle's cartoons; and this sight was for me of very decided influence, as i became acquainted with the true and the perfect on a large scale, though only in copies. i went and came, and came and went, and could not satiate myself with looking; nay, a vain endeavor troubled me, because i would willingly have comprehended what interested me in so extraordinary a manner. i found these side-chambers highly delightful and refreshing, but the chief saloon so much the more shocking. this had been hung with many larger, more brilliant and richer, hangings, which were surrounded with crowded ornaments, worked after pictures by the modern french. now, i might perhaps have become reconciled to this style also, as my feelings, like my judgment, did not readily reject any thing entirely; but the subject was excessively revolting to me. these pictures contained the history of jason, medea, and creusa, and therefore an example of the most unhappy marriage. to the left of the throne was seen the bride struggling with the most horrible death, surrounded by persons full of sympathizing woe; to the right was the father, horrified at the murdered babes before his feet; whilst the fury, in her dragon-car, drove along into the air. and, that the horrible and atrocious should not lack something absurd, the white tail of that magic bull flourished out on the right hand from behind the red velvet of the gold-embroidered back of the throne; while the fire-spitting beast himself, and the jason who was fighting with him, were completely covered by the sumptuous drapery. here all the maxims which i had made my own in oeser's school were stirring within my bosom. it was without proper selection and judgment, to begin with, that christ and the apostles were brought into the side- halls of a nuptial building; and doubtless the size of the chambers had guided the royal tapestry-keeper. this, however, i willingly forgave, because it had turned out so much to my advantage; but a blunder like that in the grand saloon put me altogether out of my self-possession, and with animation and vehemence i called on my comrades to witness such a crime against taste and feeling. "what!" cried i, without regarding the by-standers, "is it permitted so thoughtlessly to place before the eyes of a young queen, at her first setting foot in her dominions, the representation of the most horrible marriage that perhaps ever was consummated? is there among the french architects, decorators, upholsterers, not a single man who understands that pictures represent something, that pictures work upon the mind and feelings, that they make impressions, that they excite forebodings? it is just the same as if they had sent the most ghastly spectre to meet this beauteous and pleasure-loving lady at the very frontiers!" i know not what i said besides: enough, my comrades tried to quiet me and to remove me out of the house, that there might be no offence. they then assured me that it was not everybody's concern to look for significance in pictures; that to themselves, at least, nothing of the sort would have occurred; while the whole population of strasburg and the vicinity, which was to throng thither, would no more take such crotchets into their heads than the queen herself and her court. i yet remember well the beauteous and lofty mien, as cheerful as it was imposing, of this youthful lady. perfectly visible to us all in her glass carriage, she seemed to be jesting with her female attendants, in familiar conversation, about the throng that poured forth to meet her train. in the evening we roamed through the streets to look at the various illuminated buildings, but especially the glowing spire of the minster, with which, both near and in the distance, we could not sufficiently feast our eyes. the queen pursued her way: the country people dispersed, and the city was soon quiet as ever. before the queen's arrival, the very reasonable regulation had been made, that no deformed persons, no cripples nor disgusting invalids, should show themselves on her route. people joked about this; and i made a little french poem in which i compared the advent of christ, who seemed to wander upon earth particularly on account of the sick and the lame, with the arrival of the queen, who scared these unfortunates away. my friends let it pass: a frenchman, on the contrary, who lived with us, criticised the language and metre very unmercifully, although, as it seemed, with too much foundation; and i do not remember that i ever made a french poem afterwards. no sooner had the news of the queen's happy arrival rung from the capital, than it was followed by the horrible intelligence, that, owing to an oversight of the police during the festal fireworks, an infinite number of persons, with horses and carriages, had been destroyed in a street obstructed by building materials, and that the city, in the midst of the nuptial solemnities, had been plunged into mourning and sorrow. they attempted to conceal the extent of the misfortune, both from the young royal pair and from the world, by burying the dead in secret; so that many families were convinced only by the ceaseless absence of their members that they, too, had been swept off by this awful event. that, on this occasion, those ghastly figures in the grand saloon again came vividly before my mind, i need scarcely mention; for every one knows how powerful certain moral impressions are when they embody themselves, as it were, in those of the senses. this occurrence was, however, destined moreover to place my friends in anxiety and trouble by means of a prank in which i indulged. among us young people who had been at leipzig, there had been maintained ever afterwards a certain itch for imposing on and in some way mystifying one another. with this wanton love of mischief i wrote to a friend in frankfort (he was the one who had amplified my poem on the cake-baker hendel, applied it to /medon/, and caused its general circulation) a letter dated from versailles, in which i informed him of my happy arrival there, my participation in the solemnities, and other things of the kind, but at the same time enjoined the strictest secrecy. i must here remark, that, from the time of that trick which had caused us so much annoyance, our little leipzig society had accustomed itself to persecute him from time to time with mystifications, and this especially as he was the drollest man in the world, and was never more amiable than when he was discovering the cheat into which he had deliberately been led. shortly after i had written this letter, i went on a little journey, and remained absent about a fortnight. meanwhile the news of that disaster had reached frankfort: my friend believed me in paris, and his affection led him to apprehend that i might have been involved in the calamity. he inquired of any parents and other persons to whom i was accustomed to write, whether any letters had arrived; and, as it was just at the time when my journey kept me from sending any, they were altogether wanting. he went about in the greatest uneasiness, and at last told the matter in confidence to our nearest friends, who were now in equal anxiety. fortunately this conjecture did not reach my parents until a letter had arrived announcing my return to strasburg. my young friends were satisfied to learn that i was alive, but remained firmly convinced that i had been at paris in the interim. the affectionate intelligence of the solicitude they had felt on my account affected me so much that i vowed to leave off such tricks forever; but, unfortunately, i have often since allowed myself to be guilty of something similar. real life frequently loses its brilliancy to such a degree, that one is many a time forced to polish it up again with the varnish of fiction. this mighty stream of courtly magnificence had now flowed by, and had left in me no other longing than after those tapestries of raffaelle, which i would willingly have gazed at, revered, nay, adored, every day and every hour. fortunately, my passionate endeavors succeeded in interesting several persons of consequence in them, so that they were taken down and packed up as late as possible. we now gave ourselves up again to our quiet, easy routine of the university and society; and in the latter the actuary salzmann, president of our table, continued to be the general pedagogue. his intelligence, complaisance, and dignity, which he always contrived to maintain amid all the jests, and often even in the little extravagances, which he allowed us, made him beloved and respected by the whole company; and i could mention but few instances where he showed his serious displeasure, or interposed with authority in little quarrels and disputes. yet among them all i was the one who most attached myself to him; and he was not less inclined to converse with me, as he found me more variously accomplished than the others, and not so one-sided in judgment. i also followed his directions in external matters; so that he could, without hesitation, publicly acknowledge me as his companion and comrade: for, although he only filled an office which seems to be of little influence, he administered it in a manner which redounded to his highest honor. he was actuary to the court of wards (/pupillen-collegium/); and there, indeed, like the perpetual secretary of a university, he had, properly speaking, the management of affairs in his own hands. now, as he had performed the duties of this office with the greatest exactness for many years, there was no family, from the first to the last, which did not owe him its gratitude; as indeed scarcely any one in the whole administration of government can earn more blessings or more curses than one who takes charge of the orphans, or, on the contrary, squanders or suffers to be squandered their property and goods. the strasburgers are passionate walkers, and they have a good right to be so. let one turn his steps as he will, he will find pleasure-grounds, partly natural, partly adorned by art in ancient and modern times, all of them visited and enjoyed by a cheerful, merry little people. but what made the sight of a great number of pedestrians still more agreeable here than in other places, was the various costume of the fair sex. the middle class of city girls yet retained the hair twisted up and secured by a large pin, as well as a certain close style of dress, in which any thing like a train would have been unbecoming: and the pleasant part of it was, that this costume did not differ violently according to the rank of the wearer; for there were still some families of opulence and distinction who would not permit their daughters to deviate from this costume. the rest followed the french fashion, and this party made some proselytes every year. salzmann had many acquaintances and an entrance everywhere: a very pleasant circumstance for his companion, especially in summer, for good company and refreshment were found in all the public gardens far and near, and more than one invitation for this or that pleasant day was received. on one such occasion i found an opportunity to recommend myself very rapidly to a family which i was visiting for only the second time. we were invited, and arrived at the appointed hour. the company was not large: some played and some walked as usual. afterwards, when they were to go to supper, i saw our hostess and her sister speaking to each other with animation, and as if in a peculiar embarrassment. i accosted them, and said, "i have indeed no right, ladies, to force myself into your secrets; but perhaps i may be able to give you good counsel, or even to serve you." upon this they disclosed to me their painful dilemma; namely, that they had invited twelve persons to table, and that just at that moment a relation had returned from a journey, who now, as the thirteenth, would be a fatal /memento mori/, if not for himself, yet certainly for some of the guests. "the case is very easily mended," replied i: "permit me to take my leave, and stipulate for indemnification." as they were persons of consequence and good breeding, they would by no means allow this, but sent about in the neighborhood to find a fourteenth. i suffered them to do so; yet when i saw the servant coming in at the garden-gate without having effected his errand, i stole away and spent my evening pleasantly under the old linden-trees of the wanzenau. that this self-denial was richly repaid me was a very natural consequence. a certain kind of general society is not to be thought of without card- playing. salzmann renewed the good instructions of madame böhme; and i was the more docile as i had really seen, that by this little sacrifice, if it be one, one may procure one's self much pleasure, and even a greater freedom in society than one would otherwise enjoy. the old piquet, which had gone to sleep, was again looked out; i learned whist; i made myself, according to the directions of my mentor, a card-purse, which was to remain untouched under all circumstances; and i now found opportunity to spend most of my evenings with my friend in the best circles, where, for the most part, they wished me well, and pardoned many a little irregularity, to which, nevertheless, my friend, though kindly enough, used to call my attention. but that i might experience symbolically how much one, even in externals, has to adapt one's self to society, and direct one's self according to it, i was compelled to something which seemed to me the most disagreeable thing in the world. i had really very fine hair; but my strasburg hair-dresser at once assured me that it was cut much too short behind, and that it would be impossible to make a /frizure/ of it in which i could show myself, since nothing but a few short curls in front were decreed lawful; and all the rest, from the crown, must be tied up in a cue or a hair-bag. nothing was left but to put up with false hair till the natural growth was again restored according to the demands of the time. he promised me that nobody should ever remark this innocent deception (against which i objected at first very earnestly), if i could resolve upon it immediately. he kept his word, and i was always looked upon as the young man who had the best and the best- dressed head of hair. but as i was obliged to remain thus propped up and powdered from early morning, and at the same time to take care not to betray my false ornament by heating myself or by violent motions, this restraint in fact contributed much to my behaving for a time more quietly and politely, and accustomed me to going with my hat under my arm, and consequently in shoes and stockings also; however i did not venture to neglect wearing understockings of fine leather, as a defence against the rhine gnats, which, on the fine summer evenings, generally spread themselves over the meadows and gardens. under these circumstances, violent bodily motion being denied me, our social conversations grew more and more animated and impassioned; indeed, they were the most interesting in which i had hitherto ever borne part. with my way of feeling and thinking, it cost me nothing to let every one pass for what he was,--nay, for that which he wished to pass for; and thus the frankness of a fresh, youthful heart, which manifested itself almost for the first time in its full bloom, made me many friends and adherents. our company of boarders increased to about twenty persons; and, as salzmann kept up his accustomed order, every thing continued in its old routine,--nay, the conversation was almost more decorous, as every one had to be on his guard before several. among the new-comers was a man who particularly interested me: his name was jung, the same who afterwards became known under the name of stilling. in spite of an antiquated dress, his form had something delicate about it, with a certain sturdiness. a bag-wig did not disfigure his significant and pleasing countenance. his voice was mild, without being soft and weak: it became even melodious and powerful as soon as his ardor was roused, which was very easily done. on becoming better acquainted with him, one found in him a sound common sense, which rested on feeling, and therefore took its tone from the affections and passions; and from this very feeling sprang an enthusiasm for the good, the true, and the just, in the greatest possible purity. for the course of this man's life had been very simple, and yet crowded with events and with manifold activity. the element of his energy was indestructible faith in god, and in an assistance flowing immediately from him, which evidently manifested itself in an uninterrupted providence, and in an unfailing deliverance out of all troubles and from every evil. jung had made many such experiences in his life, and they had often been repeated of late in strasburg: so that, with the greatest cheerfulness, he led a life frugal indeed, but free from care, and devoted himself most earnestly to his studies; although he could not reckon upon any certain subsistence from one quarter to another. in his youth, when on a fair way to become a charcoal-burner, he took up the trade of a tailor; and after he had instructed himself, at the same time, in higher matters, his knowledge- loving mind drove him to the occupation of schoolmaster. this attempt failed; and he returned to his trade, from which, however, since every one felt for him confidence and affection, he was repeatedly called away, again to take a place as private tutor. but for his most internal and peculiar training he had to thank that wide-spread class of men who sought out their salvation on their own responsibility, and who, while they strove to edify themselves by reading the scriptures and good books, and by mutual exhortation and confession, thereby attained a degree of cultivation which must excite surprise. for while the interest which always accompanied them and which maintained them in fellowship rested on the simplest foundation of morality, well-wishing and well- doing, the deviations which could take place with men of such limited circumstances were of little importance; and hence their consciences, for the most part, remained clear, and their minds commonly cheerful: so there arose no artificial, but a truly natural, culture, which yet had this advantage over others, that it was suitable to all ages and ranks, and was generally social by its nature. for this reason, too, these persons were, in their own circle, truly eloquent, and capable of expressing themselves appropriately and pleasingly on all the tenderest and best concerns of the heart. now, good jung was in this very case. among a few persons, who, if not exactly like-minded with himself, did not declare themselves averse from his mode of thought, he was found, not only talkative but eloquent: in particular, he related the history of his life in the most delightful manner, and knew how to make all the circumstances plainly and vividly present to his listeners. i persuaded him to write them down, and he promised to do so. but because, in his way of expressing himself, he was like a somnambulist, who must not be called by name lest he should fall from his elevation, or like a gentle stream, to which one dare oppose nothing lest it should foam, he was often constrained to feel uncomfortable in a more numerous company. his faith tolerated no doubt, and his conviction no jest. "while in friendly communication he was inexhaustible, every thing came to a standstill with him when he met with contradiction. i usually helped him through on such occasions, for which he repaid me with honest affection. since his mode of thought was nothing strange to me, but on the contrary i had already become accurately acquainted with it in my very best friends of both sexes; and since, moreover, it generally interested me with its naturalness and /naïveté/,--he found himself on the very best terms with me. the bent of his intellect was pleasing to me; nor did i meddle with his faith in miracles, which was so useful to him. salzmann likewise behaved towards him with forbearance,--i say with forbearance, for salzmann, in conformity with his character, his natural disposition, his age arid circumstances, could not but stand and continue on the side of the rational, or rather the common-sense, christians, whose religion properly rested on the rectitude of their characters, and a manly independence, and who therefore did not like to meddle or have any thing to do with feelings which might easily have led them into gloom, or with mysticism, which might easily have led them into the dark. this class, too, was respectable and numerous: all men of honor and capacity understood each other, and were of the like persuasion, as well as of the same mode of life. lerse, likewise our fellow-boarder, also belonged to this number: a perfectly upright young man, and, with limited gifts of fortune, frugal and exact. his manner of life and housekeeping was the closest i ever knew among students. he was, of us all, the most neatly dressed, and yet always appeared in the same clothes; but he managed his wardrobe with the greatest care, kept every thing about him clean, and required all things in ordinary life to go according to his example. he never happened to lean anywhere, or to prop his elbow on the table; he never forgot to mark his table-napkin; and the maid always had a bad time of it when the chairs were not found perfectly clean. with all this, he had nothing stiff in his exterior. he spoke cordially, with precise and dry liveliness, in which a light ironical joke was very becoming. in figure he was well built, slender, and of fair height: his face was pock-pitted and homely, his little blue eyes cheerful and penetrating. as he had cause to tutor us in so many respects, we let him be our fencing-master besides, for he drew a very fine rapier; and it seemed to give him sport to play off upon us, on this occasion, all the pedantry of this profession. moreover, we really profited by him, and had to thank him for many sociable hours, which he induced us to spend in good exercise and practice. by all these peculiarities, lerse completely qualified himself for the office of arbitrator and umpire in all the small and great quarrels which happened, though but rarely, in our circle, and which salzmann could not hush up in his fatherly way. without the external forms, which do so much mischief in universities, we represented a society bound together by circumstances and good feeling, which others might occasionally touch, but into which they could not intrude. now, in his judgment of internal piques, lerse always showed the greatest impartiality; and, when the affair could no longer be settled by words and explanations, he knew how to conduct the desired satisfaction, in an honorable way, to a harmless issue. in this no man was more clever than he: indeed, he often used to say, that since heaven had destined him for a hero neither in war nor in love, he would be content, both in romances and fighting, with the part of second. since he remained the same throughout, and might be regarded as a true model of a good and steady disposition, the conception of him stamped itself as deeply as amiably upon me; and, when i wrote "götz von berlichingen," i felt myself induced to set up a memorial of our friendship, and to give the gallant fellow, who knew how to subordinate himself in so dignified a manner, the name of franz lerse. while, by his constant humorous dryness, he continued ever to remind us of what one owed to one's self and to others, and how one ought to behave in order to live at peace with men as long as possible, and thus gain a certain position towards them, i had to fight, both inwardly and outwardly, with quite different circumstances and adversaries, being at strife with myself, with the objects around me, and even with the elements. i was then in a state of health which furthered me sufficiently in all that i would and should undertake; only there was a certain irritability left behind, which did not always let me be in equilibrium. a loud sound was disagreeable to me, diseased objects awakened in me loathing and horror. but i was especially troubled with a giddiness which came over me every time i looked down from a height. all these infirmities i tried to remedy, and, indeed, as i wished to lose no time, in a somewhat violent way. in the evening, when they beat the tattoo, i went near the multitude of drums, the powerful rolling and beating of which might have made one's heart burst in one's bosom. all alone i ascended the highest pinnacle of the minster spire, and sat in what is called the neck, under the nob or crown, for a quarter of an hour, before i would venture to step out again into the open air, where, standing upon a platform scarce an ell square, without any particular holding, one sees the boundless prospect before; while the nearest objects and ornaments conceal the church, and every thing upon and above which one stands. it is exactly as if one saw one's self carried up into the air in a balloon. such troublesome and painful sensations i repeated until the impression became quite indifferent to me; and i have since then derived great advantage from this training, in mountain travels and geological studies, and on great buildings, where i have vied with the carpenters in running over the bare beams and the cornices of the edifice, and even in rome, where one must run similar risks to obtain a nearer view of important works of art. anatomy, also, was of double value to me, as it taught me to endure the most repulsive sights, while i satisfied my thirst for knowledge. and thus i also attended the clinical course of the elder dr. ehrmann, as well as the lectures of his son on obstetrics, with the double view of becoming acquainted with all conditions, and of freeing myself from all apprehension as to repulsive things. and i have actually succeeded so far, that nothing of this kind could ever put me out of my self-possession. but i endeavored to harden myself, not only against these impressions on the senses, but also against the infections of the imagination. the awful and shuddering impressions of the darkness in churchyards, solitary places, churches, and chapels by night, and whatever may be connected with them, i contrived to render likewise indifferent; and in this, also, i went so far that day and night, and every locality, were quite the same to me: so that even when, in later times, a desire came over me once more to feel in such scenes the pleasing shudder of youth, i could hardly compel this, in any degree, by calling up the strangest and most fearful images. in my efforts to free myself from the pressure of the too gloomy and powerful, which continued to rule within me, and seemed to me sometimes as strength, sometimes as weakness, i was thoroughly assisted by that open, social, stirring manner of life, which attracted me more and more, to which i accustomed myself, and which i at last learned to enjoy with perfect freedom. it is not difficult to remark in the world, that man feels himself most freely and most perfectly rid of his own feelings when he represents to himself the faults of others, and expatiates upon them with complacent censoriousness. it is a tolerably pleasant sensation even to set ourselves above our equals by disapprobation and misrepresentation; for which reason good society, whether it consists of few or many, is most delighted with it. but nothing equals the comfortable self-complacency, when we erect ourselves into judges of our superiors, and of those who are set over us,--of princes and statesmen, --when we find public institutions unfit and injudicious, only consider the possible and actual obstacles, and recognize neither the greatness of the invention, nor the co-operation which is to be expected from time and circumstances in every undertaking. whoever remembers the condition of the french kingdom, and is accurately and circumstantially acquainted with it from later writings, will easily figure to himself how, at that time, in the alsatian semi-france, people used to talk about the king and his ministers, about the court and court-favorites. these were new subjects for my love of instructing myself, and very welcome ones to my pertness and youthful conceit. i observed every thing accurately, noted it down industriously; and i now see, from the little that is left, that such accounts, although only put together on the moment, out of fables and uncertain general rumors, always have a certain value in after-times, because they serve to confront and compare the secret made known at last with what was then already discovered and public, and the judgments of contemporaries, true or false, with the convictions of posterity. striking, and daily before the eyes of us street-loungers, was the project for beautifying the city; the execution of which according to draughts and plans, began in the strangest fashion to pass from sketches and plans into reality. intendant gayot had undertaken to new-model the angular and uneven lanes of strasburg, and to lay the foundations of a respectable, handsome city, regulated by line and level. upon this, blondel, a parisian architect, drew a plan, by which an hundred and forty householders gained in room, eighty lost, and the rest remained in their former condition. this plan accepted, but not to be put into execution at once, now, should in course of time have been approaching completion; and, meanwhile, the city oddly enough wavered between form and formlessness. if, for instance, a crooked side of a street was to be straightened, the first man who felt disposed to build moved forward to the appointed line, perhaps, too, his next neighbor, but perhaps, also, the third or fourth resident from him; by which projections the most awkward recesses were left, like front court-yards, before the houses in the background. they would not use force, yet without compulsion they would never have got on: on which account no man, when his house was once condemned, ventured to improve or replace any thing that related to the street. all these strange accidental inconveniences gave to us rambling idlers the most welcome opportunity of practising our ridicule; of making proposals, in the manner of behrisch, for accelerating the completion, and of constantly doubting the possibility of it, although many a newly erected handsome building should have brought us to other thoughts. how far that project was advanced by the length of time, i cannot say. another subject on which the protestant strasburgers liked to converse was the expulsion of the jesuits. these fathers, as soon as the city had fallen to the share of the french, had made their appearance and sought a /domicilium/. but they soon extended themselves and built a magnificent college, which bordered so closely on the minster that the back of the church covered a third part of its front. it was to be a complete quadrangle, and have a garden in the middle: three sides of it were finished. it is of stone, and solid, like all the buildings of these fathers. that the protestants were pushed hard, if not oppressed by them, lay in the plan of the society which made it a duty to restore the old religion in its whole compass. their fall, therefore, awakened the greatest satisfaction in the opposite party; and people saw, not without pleasure, how they sold their wines, carried away their books: and the building was assigned to another, perhaps less active, order. how glad are men when they get rid of an opponent, or only of a guardian! and the herd does not reflect, that, where there is no dog, it is exposed to wolves. now, since every city must have its tragedy, at which children and children's children shudder; so in strasburg frequent mention was made of the unfortunate praetor klingling, who, after he had mounted the highest step of earthly felicity, ruled city and country with almost absolute power, and enjoyed all that wealth, rank, and influence could afford, had at last lost the favor of the court, and was dragged up to answer for all in which he had been indulged hitherto,--nay, was even thrown into prison, where, more than seventy years old, he died an ambiguous death. this and other tales, that knight of st. louis, our fellow-boarder, knew how to tell with passion and animation; for which reason i was fond of accompanying him in his walks, unlike the others, who avoided such invitations, and left me alone with him. as with new acquaintances i generally took my ease for a long time without thinking much about them or the effect which they were exercising upon me, so i only remarked gradually that his stories and opinions rather unsettled and confused than instructed and enlightened me. i never knew what to make of him, although the riddle might easily have been solved. he belonged to the many to whom life offers no results, and who, therefore, from first to last, exert themselves on individual objects. unfortunately he had with this a decided desire, nay, even passion, for meditating, without having any capacity for thinking; and in such men a particular notion easily fixes itself fast, which may be regarded as a mental disease. to such a fixed view he always came back again, and was thus in the long run excessively tiresome. he would bitterly complain of the decline of his memory, especially with regard to the latest events, and maintained, by a logic of his own, that all virtue springs from a good memory, and all vice, on the contrary, from forgetfulness. this doctrine he contrived to carry out with much acuteness; as, indeed, any thing may be maintained when one has no compunction to use words altogether vaguely, and to employ and apply them in a sense now wider, now narrower, now closer, now more remote. at first it was amusing to hear him; nay, his persuasiveness even astonished us. we fancied we were standing before a rhetorical sophist, who for jest and practice knew how to give a fair appearance to the strangest things. unfortunately this first impression became blunted but too soon; for at the end of every discourse, manage the thing as i would, the man came back again to the same theme. he was not to be held fast to older events, although they interested him,--although he had them present to his mind with their minutest circumstances. indeed, he was often, by a small circumstance, snatched out of the middle of a wild historical narrative, and thrust into his detestable favorite thought. one of our afternoon walks was particularly unfortunate in this respect: the account of it may stand here instead of similar cases, which might weary if not vex the reader. on the way through the city we were met by an old female mendicant, who, by her beggings and importunities, disturbed him in his story. "pack yourself off, old witch!" said he, and walked by. she shouted after him the well-known retort,--only somewhat changed, since she saw well that the unfriendly man was old himself,--"if you did not wish to be old, you should have had yourself hanged in your youth!" he turned round violently, and i feared a scene. "hanged cried he, "have myself hanged! no: that could not have been,--i was too honest a fellow for that; but hang myself--hang up my own self--that is true--that i should have done: i should have turned a charge of powder against myself, that i might not live to see that i am not even worth that any more." the woman stood as if petrified; but he continued, "you have said a great truth, witch- mother; and, as they have neither drowned nor burned you yet, you shall be paid for your proverb." he handed her a /büsel/, a coin not usually given to a beggar. we had crossed over the first rhine-bridge, and were going to the inn where we meant to stop; and i was trying to lead him back to our previous conversation, when, unexpectedly, a very pretty girl met us on the pleasant foot-path, remained standing before us, bowed prettily, and cried, "eh, eh, captain, where are you going?" and, whatever else is usually said on such an occasion. "mademoiselle," replied he, somewhat embarrassed, "i know not"--"how?" said she, with graceful astonishment, "do you forget your friends so soon?" the word "forget" fretted him: he shook his head and replied, peevishly enough, "truly, mademoiselle, i did not know!"--she now retorted with some humor, yet very temperately, "take care, captain: i may mistake you another time!" and so she hurried past, taking huge strides, without looking round. at once my fellow- traveller struck his forehead with both his fists: "oh, what an ass i am!" exclaimed he, "what an old ass i am! now, you see whether i am right or not." and then, in a very violent manner, he went on with his usual sayings and opinions, in which this case still more confirmed him. i can not and would not repeat what a philippic discourse he held against himself. at last he turned to me, and said, "i call you to witness! you remember that small-ware woman at the corner, who is neither young nor pretty? i salute her every time we pass, and often exchange a couple of friendly words with her; and yet it is thirty years ago since she was gracious to me. but now i swear it is not four weeks since this young lady showed herself more complaisant to me than was reasonable; and yet i will not recognize her, but insult her in return for her favors! do i not always say, that ingratitude is the greatest of vices, and no man would be ungrateful if he were not forgetful?" we went into the inn; and nothing but the tippling, swarming crowd in the ante-rooms stopped the invectives which he rattled off against himself and his contemporaries. he was silent, and i hoped pacified, when we stepped into an upper chamber, where we found a young man pacing up and down alone, whom the captain saluted by name. i was pleased to become acquainted with him; for the old fellow had said much good of him to me, and had told me that this young man, being employed in the war- bureau, had often disinterestedly done him very good service when the pensions were stopped. i was glad that the conversation took a general turn; and, while we were carrying it on, we drank a bottle of wine. but here, unluckily, another infirmity which my knight had in common with obstinate men developed itself. for as, on the whole, he could not get rid of that fixed notion; so did he stick fast to a disagreeable impression of the moment, and suffer his feelings to run on without moderation. his last vexation about himself had not yet died away; and now was added something new, although of quite a different kind. he had not long cast his eyes here and there before he noticed on the table a double portion of coffee, and two cups, and might besides, being a man of gallantry, have traced some other indication that the young man had not been so solitary all the time. and scarcely had the conjecture arisen in his mind, and ripened into a probability, that the pretty girl had been paying a visit here, than the most outrageous jealousy added itself to that first vexation, so as completely to perplex him. now, before i could suspect any thing,--for i had hitherto been conversing quite harmlessly with the young man,--the captain, in an unpleasant tone, which i well knew, began to be satirical about the pair of cups, and about this and that. the young man, surprised, tried to turn it off pleasantly and sensibly, as is the custom among men of good breeding: but the old fellow continued to be unmercifully rude; so that there was nothing left for the other to do but to seize his hat and cane, and at his departure to leave behind him a pretty unequivocal challenge. the fury of the captain now burst out the more vehemently, as he had in the interim drunk another bottle of wine almost by himself. he struck the table with his fist, and cried more than once, "i will strike him dead!" it was not, however, meant quite so badly as it sounded; for he often used this phrase when any one opposed or otherwise displeased him. just as unexpectedly the business grew worse on our return; for i had the want of foresight to represent to him his ingratitude towards the young man, and to remind him how strongly he had praised to me the ready obligingness of this official person. no! such rage of a man against himself i never saw again: it was the most passionate conclusion to that beginning to which the pretty girl had given occasion. here i saw sorrow and repentance carried into caricature, and, as all passion supplies the place of genius, to a point really genius-like. he then went over all the incidents of our afternoon ramble again, employed them rhetorically for his own self-reproach, brought up the old witch at last before him once more, and perplexed himself to such a degree, that i could not help fearing he would throw himself into the rhine. could i have been sure of fishing him out again quickly, like mentor his telemachus, he might have made the leap; and i should have brought him home cooled down for this occasion. i immediately confided the affair to lerse; and we went the next morning to the young man, whom my friend in his dry way set laughing. we agreed to bring about an accidental meeting, where a reconciliation should take place of itself. the drollest thing about it was, that this time the captain, too, had slept off his rudeness, and found himself ready to apologize to the young man, to whom petty quarrels were of some consequence. all was arranged in one morning; and, as the affair had not been kept quite secret, i did not escape the jokes of my friends, who might have foretold me, from their own experience, how troublesome the friendship of the captain could become upon occasion. but now, while i am thinking what should be imparted next, there comes again into my thoughts, by a strange play of memory, that reverend minster-building, to which in those days i devoted particular attention, and which, in general, constantly presents itself to the eye, both in the city and in the country. the more i considered the /façade/, the more was that first impression strengthened and developed, that here the sublime has entered into alliance with the pleasing. if the vast, when it appears as a mass before us, is not to terrify; if it is not to confuse, when we seek to investigate its details,--it must enter into an unnatural, apparently impossible, connection, it must associate to itself the pleasing. but now, since it will be impossible for us to speak of the impression of the minster except by considering both these incompatible qualities as united, so do we already see, from this, in what high value we must hold this ancient monument; and we begin in earnest to describe how such contradictory elements could peaceably interpenetrate and unite themselves. first of all, without thinking of the towers, we devote out considerations to the /façade/ alone, which powerfully strikes the eye as an upright, oblong parallelogram. if we approach it at twilight, in the moonshine, on a starlight night, when the parts appear more or less indistinct and at last disappear, we see only a colossal wall, the height of which bears an advantageous proportion to the breadth. if we view it by day, and by the power of the mind abstract from the details, we recognize the front of a building which not only encloses the space within, but also covers much in its vicinity. the openings of this monstrous surface point to internal necessities, and according to these we can at once divide it into nine compartments. the great middle door, which opens into the nave of the church, first meets the eye. on both sides of it lie two smaller ones, belonging to the cross-ways. over the chief door our glance falls upon the wheel-shaped window, which is to spread an awe-inspiring light within the church and its vaulted arches. at its sides appear two large, perpendicular, oblong openings, which form a striking contrast with the middle one, and indicate that they belong to the base of the rising towers. in the third story are three openings in a row, which are designed for belfries and other church necessities. above them one sees the whole horizontally closed by the balustrade of the gallery, instead of a cornice. these nine spaces described are supported, enclosed, and separated into three great perpendicular divisions by four pillars rising up from the ground. now, as it cannot be denied that there is in the whole mass a fine proportion of height to breadth, so also in the details it maintains a somewhat uniform lightness by means of these pillars and the narrow compartments between them. but if we adhere to our abstraction, and imagine to ourselves this immense wall without ornaments, with firm buttresses, with the necessary openings in it, but only so far as necessity requires them, we even then must allow that these chief divisions are in good proportion: thus the whole will appear solemn and noble indeed, but always heavily unpleasant, and, being without ornament, unartistical. for a work of art, the whole of which is conceived in great, simple, harmonious parts, makes indeed a noble and dignified impression; but the peculiar enjoyment which the pleasing produces can only find place in the consonance of all developed details. and it is precisely here that the building we are examining satisfies us in the highest degree, for we see all the ornaments fully suited to every part which they adorn: they are subordinate to it, they seem to have grown out of it. such a manifoldness always gives great pleasure, since it flows of its own accord from the suitable, and therefore at the same time awakens the feeling of unity. it is only in such cases that the execution is prized as the summit of art. by such means, now, was a solid piece of masonry, an impenetrable wall, which had moreover to announce itself as the base of two heaven-high towers, made to appear to the eye as if resting on itself, consisting in itself, but at the same time light and adorned, and, though pierced through in a thousand places, to give the idea of indestructible firmness. this riddle is solved in the happiest manner. the openings in the wall, its solid parts, the pillars, every thing has its peculiar character, which proceeds from its particular destination: this communicates itself by degrees to the subdivisions; hence every thing is adorned in proportionate taste, the great as well as the small is in the right place, and can be easily comprehended, and thus the pleasing presents itself in the vast. i would refer only to the doors sinking in perspective into the thickness of the wall, and adorned without end in their columns and pointed arches; to the window with its rose springing out of the round form; to the outline of its framework, as well as to the slender reed-like pillars of the perpendicular compartments. let one represent to himself the pillars retreating step by step, accompanied by little, slender, light-pillared, pointed structures, likewise striving upwards, and furnished with canopies to shelter the images of the saints, and how at last every rib, every boss, seems like a flower-head and row of leaves, or some other natural object transformed into stone. one may compare, if not the building itself, yet representations of the whole and of its parts, for the purpose of reviewing and giving life to what i have said. it may seem exaggerated to many; for i myself, though transported into love for this work at first sight, required a long time to make myself intimately acquainted with its value. having grown up among those who found fault with gothic architecture, i cherished my aversion from the abundantly overloaded, complicated ornaments which, by their capriciousness, made a religious, gloomy character highly adverse. i strengthened myself in this repugnance, since i had only met with spiritless works of this kind, in which one could perceive neither good proportions nor a pure consistency. but here i thought i saw a new revelation of it, since what was objectionable by no means appeared, but the contrary opinion rather forced itself upon my mind. but the longer i looked and considered, i all the while thought i discovered yet greater merits beyond that which i have already mentioned. the right proportion of the larger divisions, the ornamental, as judicious as rich, even to the minutest, were found out; but now i recognized the connection of these manifold ornaments amongst each other, the transition from one leading part to another, the enclosing of details, homogeneous indeed, but yet greatly varying in form, from the saint to the monster, from the leaf to the dental. the more i investigated, the more i was astonished; the more i amused and wearied myself with measuring and drawing, so much the more did my attachment increase, so that i spent much time, partly in studying what actually existed, partly in restoring, in my mind and on paper, what was wanting and unfinished, especially in the towers. finding that this building had been based on old german ground, and grown thus far in genuine german times, and that the name of the master, on his modest gravestone, was likewise of native sound and origin, i ventured, being incited by the worth of this work of art, to change the hitherto decried appellation of "gothic architecture," and to claim it for our nation as "german architecture;" nor did i fail to bring my patriotic views to light, first orally, and afterwards in a little treatise dedicated to the memory of ervinus a steinbach. if my biographical narrative should come down to the epoch when the said sheet appeared in print, which herder afterwards inserted in his pamphlet, "von deutscher art und kunst" ("of german manner and art"), much more will be said on this weighty subject. but, before i turn from it this time, i will take the opportunity to vindicate the motto prefixed to the present volume with those who may have entertained some doubt about it. i know indeed very well, that in opposition to this honest, hopeful old german saying, "of whatever one wishes in youth, he has abundance in old age," many would quote contrary experience, and many trifling comments might be made; but much, also, is to be said in its favor: and i will explain how i understand it. our wishes are presentiments of the capabilities which lie within us, and harbingers of that which we shall be in a condition to perform. whatever we are able and would like to do, presents itself to our imagination, as without us and in the future. we feel a longing after that which we already possess in secret. thus a passionate anticipating grasp changes the truly possible into a dreamed reality. now, if such a bias lies decidedly in our nature, then, with every step of our development will a part of the first wish be fulfilled,--under favorable circumstances in the direct way, under unfavorable in the circuitous way, from which we always come back again to the other. thus we see men by perseverance attain to earthly wealth. they surround themselves with riches, splendor, and external honor. others strive yet more certainly after intellectual advantages, acquire for themselves a clear survey of things, a peacefulness of mind, and a certainty for the present and the future. but now there is a third direction, which is compounded of both, and the issue of which must be the most surely successful. when a man's youth falls into a pregnant time; when production overweighs destruction, and a presentiment is early awakened within him as to what such an epoch demands and promises,--he will then, being forced by outward inducements into an active interest, take hold now here, now there, and the wish to be active on many sides will be lively within him. but so many accidental hinderances are associated with human limitation, that here a thing, once begun, remains unfinished: there that which is already grasped falls out of the hand, and one wish after another is dissipated. but had these wishes sprung out of a pure heart, and in conformity with the necessities of the times, one might composedly let them lie and fall right and left, and be assured that these must not only be found out and picked up again, but that also many kindred things, which one has never touched and never even thought of, will come to light. if, now, during our own lifetime, we see that performed by others, for which we ourselves felt an earlier call, but had been obliged to give it up, with much besides, then the beautiful feeling enters the mind that only mankind combined is the true man, and that the individual can only be joyous and happy when he has the courage to feel himself in the whole. this contemplation is here in the right place; for when i reflect on the affection which drew me to these antique edifices, when i reckon up the time which i devoted to the strasburg minster alone, the attention with which i afterwards examined: the cathedral at cologne, and that at freyburg, and more and more felt the value of these buildings, i could even blame myself for having afterwards lost sight of them altogether,-- nay, for having left them completely in the background, being attracted by a more developed art. but when now, in the latest times, i see attention again turned to those objects; when i see affection, and even passion, for them appearing and flourishing; when i see able young persons seized with this passion, recklessly devoting powers, time, care, and property to these memorials of a past world,--then am i reminded with pleasure that what i formerly would and wished had a value. with satisfaction i see that they not only know how to prize what was done by our fore-fathers, but that, from existing unfinished beginnings, they try to represent, in pictures at least, the original design, so as thus to make us acquainted with the thought, which is ever the beginning and end of all undertakings; and that they strive with considerate zeal to clear up and vivify what seems to be a confused past. here i especially applaud the brave sulpiz boisserée, who is indefatigably employed in a magnificent series of copper-plates to exhibit the cathedral of cologne as the model of those vast conceptions, the spirit of which, like that of babel, strove up to heaven, and which were so out of proportion to earthly means that they were necessarily stopped fast in their execution. if we have been hitherto astonished that such buildings proceeded only so far, we shall learn with the greatest admiration what was really designed to be done. would that literary-artistical undertakings of this kind were duly patronized by all who have power, wealth, and influence; that the great and gigantic views of our fore-fathers may be presented to our contemplation; and that we may be able to form a conception of what they dared to desire. the insight resulting from this will not remain fruitless; and the judgment will, for once at least, be in a condition to exercise itself on these works with justice. nay, this will be done most thoroughly if our active young friend, besides the monograph devoted to the cathedral of cologne, follows out in detail the history of our mediaeval architecture. when whatever is to be known about the practical exercise of this art is further brought to light, when the art is represented in all its fundamental features by a comparison with the graeco-roman and the oriental egyptian, little can remain to be done in this department. and i, when the results of such patriotic labors lie before the world, as they are now known in friendly private communications, shall be able, with true content, to repeat that motto in its best sense, "of whatever one wishes in youth, he will have enough in old age." but if, in operations like these, which belong to centuries, one can trust one's self to time, and wait for opportunity, there are, on the contrary, other things which in youth must be enjoyed at once, fresh, like ripe fruits. let me be permitted, with this sudden turn, to mention dancing, of which the ear is reminded, as the eye is of the minster, every day and every hour in strasburg and all alsace. from early youth my father himself had given my sister and me instruction in dancing, a task which must have comported strangely enough with so stern a man. but he did not suffer his composure to be put out by it: he drilled us in the positions and steps in a manner the most precise; and, when he had brought us far enough to dance a minuet, he played for us something easily intelligible in three-four time, on a /flute-douce/, and we moved to it as well as we could. on the french theatre, likewise, i had seen from my youth upwards, if not ballets, yet /pas seuls/ and /pas de deux/, and had noticed in them various strange motions of the feet, and all sorts of springs. when we had had enough of the minuet, i requested my father to play some other dance-music, of which our music-books, in their jigs and murkies, [footnote: a "murki" is defined as an old species of short composition for the harpsichord, with a lively murmuring accompaniment in the bass.--trans.] offered us a rich supply; and i immediately found out, of myself, the steps and other motions for them, the time being quite suitable to my limbs, and, as it were, born with them. this pleased my father to a certain degree; indeed, he often, by way of joke for himself and us, let the "monkies" dance in this way. after my misfortune with gretchen, and during the whole of my residence in leipzig, i did not make my appearance again on the floor: on the contrary, i still remember, that when, at a ball, they forced me into a minuet, both measure and motion seemed to have abandoned my limbs, and i could no longer remember either the steps or the figures; so that i should have been put to disgrace and shame if the greater part of the spectators had not maintained that my awkward behavior was pure obstinacy, assumed with the view of depriving the ladies of all desire to invite me and draw me into their circle against my will. during my residence in frankfort i was quite cut off from such pleasures; but in strasburg, with other enjoyments of life, there soon arose in my limbs the faculty of keeping time. on sundays and week-days one sauntered by no pleasure-ground without finding there a joyous crowd assembled for the dance, and for the most part revolving in the circle. moreover, there were private balls in the country houses; and people were already talking of the brilliant masquerades of the coming winter. here, indeed, i should have been out of my place, and useless to the company, when a friend, who waltzed very well, advised me to practise myself first in parties of a lower rank, so that afterwards i might be worth something in the highest. he took me to a dancing-master, who was well known for his skill. this man promised me, that, when i had in some degree repeated the first elements and made myself master of them, he would then lead me farther. he was one of your dry, ready french characters, and received me in a friendly manner. i paid him a month in advance, and received twelve tickets, for which he agreed to give me certain hours' instruction. the man was strict and precise, but not pedantic; and, as i already had some previous practice, i soon gave him satisfaction, and received his commendation. one circumstance, however, greatly facilitated the instruction of this teacher: he had two daughters, both pretty, and both not yet twenty. having been instructed in this art from their youth upwards, they showed themselves very skilful, and might have been able, as partners, soon to help even the most clumsy scholars into some cultivation. they were both very polite, spoke nothing but french; and i, on my part, did my best, that i might not appear awkward or ridiculous before them. i had the good fortune that they likewise praised me, and were always willing to dance a minuet to their father's little violin, and, what indeed was more difficult for them, to initiate me by degrees into waltzing and whirling. their father did not seem to have many customers, and they led a lonely life. for this reason they often asked me to remain with them after my hour, and to chat away the time a little, which i the more willingly did, as the younger one pleased me well; and generally they both altogether behaved very becomingly. i often read aloud something from a novel, and they did the same. the elder, who was as handsome as, perhaps even handsomer than, the second, but who did not correspond with my taste so well as the latter, always conducted herself towards me more obligingly, and more kindly in every respect. she was always at hand during the lesson, and often protracted it: hence i sometimes thought myself bound to offer back a couple of tickets to her father, which, however, he did not accept. the younger, on the contrary, although never showing me any ill will, was more reserved, and waited till she was called by her father before she relieved the elder. the cause of this became manifest to me one evening; for when, after the dance was done, i was about to go into the sitting-room with the elder, she held me back, and said, "let us remain here a little longer; for i will confess to you that my sister has with her a woman who tells fortunes from cards, and who is to reveal to her how matters stand with an absent lover, on whom her whole heart hangs, and upon whom she has placed all her hope. mine is free," she continued, "and i must accustom myself to see it despised." i thereupon said sundry pretty things to her, replying that she could at once convince herself on that point by consulting the wise woman likewise; that i would do so myself, for i had long wished to learn something of the kind, but lacked faith. she blamed me for this, and assured me that nothing in the world was surer than the responses of this oracle; only it must be consulted, not out of sport and mischief, but solely in real affairs. however, i at last compelled her to go with me into that room, as soon as she had ascertained that the consultation was over. we found her sister in a very cheerful humor: and even towards me she was kinder than usual, sportive, and almost witty; for, since she seemed to be secure of an absent friend, she may have thought it no treachery to be a little gracious with a present friend of her sister's, which she thought me to be. the old woman was now flattered, and good payment was promised her if she would tell the truth to the elder sister and to me. with the usual preparations and ceremonies she began her business, in order to tell the fair one's fortune first. she carefully considered the situation of the cards, but seemed to hesitate, and would not speak out what she had to say. "i see now," said the younger, who was already better acquainted with the interpretation of such a magic tablet, "you hesitate, and do not wish to disclose any thing disagreeable to my sister; but that is a cursed card!" the elder one turned pale, but composed herself, and said, "only speak out: it will not cost one's head!" the old woman, after a deep sigh, showed her that she was in love; that she was not beloved; that another person stood in the way; and other things of like import. we saw the good girl's embarrassment. the old woman thought somewhat to improve the affair by giving hopes of letters and money. "letters," said the lovely child, "i do not expect; and money i do not desire. if it is true, as you say, that i love, i deserve a heart that loves me in return."--"let us see if it will not be better," replied the old woman, as she shuffled the cards and laid them out a second time; but before the eyes of all of us it had only become still worse. the fair one stood, not only more lonely, but surrounded with many sorrows. her lover had moved somewhat farther, and the intervening figures nearer. the old woman wished to try it a third time, in hopes of a better prospect; but the beautiful girl could restrain herself no longer,--she broke out into uncontrollable weeping, her lovely bosom heaved violently, she turned round, and rushed out of the room. i knew not what to do. inclination kept me with the one present: compassion drove me to the other. my situation was painful enough. "comfort lucinda," said the younger: "go after her." i hesitated. how could i comfort her without at least assuring her of some sort of affection? and could i do that at such a moment in a cool, moderate manner? "let us go together," said i to emilia. "i know not whether my presence will do her good," replied she. yet we went, but found the door bolted. lucinda made no answer, we might knock, shout, entreat, as we would. "we must let her have her own way," said emilia: "she will not have it otherwise now." and, indeed, when i called to my mind her manner from our very first acquaintance, she always had something violent and unequal about her, and chiefly showed her affection for me by not behaving to me with rudeness. what was i to do? i paid the old woman richly for the mischief she had caused, and was about to go, when emilia said, "i stipulate that the cards shall now be cut for you too." the old woman was ready. "do not let me be present," cried i, and hastened down stairs. the next day i had not courage to go there. the third day, early in the morning, emilia sent me word by a boy,--who had already brought me many a message from the sisters, and had carried back flowers and fruits to them in return,--that i should not fail that day. i came at the usual hour, and found the father alone, who, in many respects, improved my paces and steps, my goings and comings, my bearing and behavior, and, moreover, seemed to be satisfied with me. the younger daughter came in towards the end of the hour, and danced with me a very graceful minuet, in which her movements were extraordinarily pleasing, and her father declared that he had rarely seen a prettier and more nimble pair upon his floor. after the lesson, i went as usual into the sitting-room; the father left us alone; i missed lucinda. "she is in bed," said emilia, "and i am glad of it: do not be concerned about it. her mental illness is first alleviated when she fancies herself bodily sick: she does not like to die, and therefore she then does what we wish. we have certain family medicines which she takes, and reposes; and thus, by degrees, the swelling waves subside. she is indeed too good and amiable in such an imaginary sickness; and as she is in reality very well, and is only attacked by passion, she imagines various kinds of romantic deaths, with which she frightens herself in a pleasant manner, like children when we tell them ghost-stories. thus, only last night, she announced to me with great vehemence, that this time she should certainly die; and that only when she was really near death, they should bring again before her the ungrateful, false friend, who had at first acted so handsomely to her, and now treated her so ill; she would reproach him bitterly, and then give up the ghost."--"i know not that i am guilty," exclaimed i, "of having expressed any sort of affection for her. i know somebody who can best bear me witness in this respect." emilia smiled, and rejoined, "i understand you; and, if we are not discreet and determined, we shall all find ourselves in a bad plight together. what will you say if i entreat you not to continue your lessons? you have, i believe, four tickets yet of the last month: and my father has already declared that he finds it inexcusable to take your money any longer, unless you wish to devote yourself to the art of dancing in a more serious manner; what is required by a young man of the world you possess already."--"and do you, emilia, give me this advice, to avoid your house?" replied i. "yes, i do," said she, "but not of myself. only listen! when you hastened away, the day before yesterday, i had the cards cut for you; and the same response was repeated thrice, and each time more emphatically. you were surrounded by every thing good and pleasing, by friends and great lords; and there was no lack of money. the ladies kept themselves at some distance. my poor sister in particular stood always the farthest off: one other advanced constantly nearer to you, but never came up to your side; for a third person, of the male sex, always came between. i will confess to you that i thought that i myself was meant by the second lady, and after this confession you will best comprehend my well-meant counsel. to an absent friend i have promised my heart and my hand; and, until now, i loved him above all: yet it might be possible for your presence to become more important to me than hitherto; and what kind of a situation would you have between two sisters, one of whom you had made unhappy by your affection, and the other by your coldness, and all this ado about nothing and only for a short time? for, if we had not known already who you are and what are your expectations, the cards would have placed it before my eyes in the clearest manner. fare you well!" said she, and gave me her hand. i hesitated. "now," said she, leading me towards the door, "that it may really be the last time that we shall speak to each other, take what i would otherwise have denied you." she fell upon my neck, and kissed me most tenderly. i embraced her, and pressed her to my bosom. at this moment the side-door flew open; and her sister, in a light but becoming night-dress, rushed out and cried, "you shall not be the only one to take leave of him!" emilia let me go; and lucinda seized me, clung close to my heart, pressed her black locks upon my cheeks, and remained in this position for some time. and thus i found myself between the two sisters, in the dilemma emilia had prophesied to me a moment before. lucinda let me loose, and looked earnestly into my face. i was about to grasp her hand and say something friendly to her; but she turned herself away, walked with violent steps up and down the room for some time, and then threw herself into a corner of the sofa. emilia went to her, but was immediately repulsed; and here began a scene which is yet painful to me in the recollection, and which, although really it had nothing theatrical about it, but was quite suitable to a lively young frenchwoman, could only be properly repeated in the theatre by a good and feeling actress. lucinda overwhelmed her sister with a thousand reproaches. "this is not the first heart," she cried, "that was inclining itself to me, and that you have turned away. was it not just so with him who is absent, and who at last betrothed himself to you under my very eyes? i was compelled to look on; i endured it; but i know how many thousand tears it has cost me. this one, too, you have now taken away from me, without letting the other go; and how many do you not manage to keep at once? i am frank and good natured; and every one thinks he knows me soon, and may neglect me. you are secret and quiet, and people think wonders of what may be concealed behind you. yet there is nothing behind but a cold, selfish heart that can sacrifice every thing to itself; this nobody learns so easily, because it lies deeply hidden in your breast: and just as little do they know of my warm, true heart, which i carry about with me as open as my face." emilia was silent, and had sat down by her sister, who became constantly more and more excited in her discourse, and let certain private matters slip out, which it was not exactly proper for me to know. emilia, on the other hand, who was trying to pacify her sister, made me a sign from behind that i should withdraw; but, as jealousy and suspicion see with a thousand eyes, lucinda seemed to have noticed this also. she sprang up and advanced to me, but not with vehemence. she stood before me, and seemed to be thinking of something. then she said, "i know that i have lost you: i make no further pretensions to you. but neither shall you have him, sister!" so saying, she took a thorough hold of my head, thrusting both her hands into my locks and pressing my face to hers, and kissed me repeatedly on the mouth. "now," cried she, "fear my curse! woe upon woe, for ever and ever, to her who kisses these lips for the first time after me! dare to have any thing more to do with him! i know heaven hears me this time. and you, sir, hasten now, hasten away as fast as you can!" i flew down the stairs, with the firm determination never again to enter the house. de quincey's writings. the "confessions of an english opium eater," and "suspiria de profundis," form the first volume of this series of mr. de quincey's writings. a third volume will shortly be issued, containing some of his most interesting papers contributed to the english magazines. biographical essays. by thomas de quincey, author of "confessions of an english opium-eater," etc. etc. shakspeare. [endnote: ] william shakspeare, the protagonist on the great arena of modern poetry, and the glory of the human intellect, was born at stratford-upon-avon, in the county of warwick, in the year , and upon some day, not precisely ascertained, in the month of april. it is certain that he was baptized on the th; and from that fact, combined with some shadow of a tradition, malone has inferred that he was born on the d. there is doubtless, on the one hand, no absolute necessity deducible from law or custom, as either operated in those times, which obliges us to adopt such a conclusion; for children might be baptized, and were baptized, at various distances from their birth: yet, on the other hand, the d is as likely to have been the day as any other; and more likely than any earlier day, upon two arguments. first, because there was probably a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, that shakspeare died upon his birthday: now it is beyond a doubt that he died upon the d of april. secondly, because it is a reasonable presumption, that no parents, living in a simple community, tenderly alive to the pieties of household duty, and in an age still clinging reverentially to the ceremonial ordinances of religion, would much delay the adoption of their child into the great family of christ. considering the extreme frailty of an infant's life during its two earliest years, to delay would often be to disinherit the child of its christian privileges; privileges not the less eloquent to the feelings from being profoundly mysterious, and, in the english church, forced not only upon the attention, but even upon the eye of the most thoughtless. according to the discipline of the english church, the unbaptized are buried with "maimed rites," shorn of their obsequies, and sternly denied that "sweet and solemn farewell," by which otherwise the church expresses her final charity with all men; and not only so, but they are even _locally_ separated and sequestrated. ground the most hallowed, and populous with christian burials of households, "that died in peace with one another. father, sister, son, and brother," opens to receive the vilest malefactor; by which the church symbolically expresses her maternal willingness to gather back into her fold those even of her flock who have strayed from her by the most memorable aberrations; and yet, with all this indulgence, she banishes to unhallowed ground the innocent bodies of the unbaptized. to them and to suicides she turns a face of wrath. with this gloomy fact offered to the very external senses, it is difficult to suppose that any parents would risk their own reproaches, by putting the fulfilment of so grave a duty on the hazard of a convulsion fit. the case of royal children is different; their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeks but the household chaplains of the palace were always at hand, night and day, to baptize them in the very agonies of death. [endnote: ] we must presume, therefore, that william shakspeare was born on some day very little anterior to that of his baptism; and the more so because the season of the year was lovely and genial, the d of april in , corresponding in fact with what we now call the d of may, so that, whether the child was to be carried abroad, or the clergyman to be summoned, no hindrance would arise from the weather. one only argument has sometimes struck us for supposing that the d might be the day, and not the d; which is, that shakspeare's sole granddaughter, lady barnard, was married on the d of april, , ten years exactly from the poet's death; and the reason for choosing this day _might_ have had a reference to her illustrious grandfather's birthday, which, there is good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a festival in the family for generations. still this choice _may_ have been an accident, or governed merely by reason of convenience. and, on the whole, it is as well perhaps to acquiesce in the old belief, that shakspeare was born and died on the d of april. we cannot do wrong if we drink to his memory on both d and d. on a first review of the circumstances, we have reason to feel no little perplexity in finding the materials for a life of this transcendent writer so meagre and so few; and amongst them the larger part of doubtful authority. all the energy of curiosity directed upon this subject, through a period of one hundred and fifty years, (for so long it is since betterton the actor began to make researches,) has availed us little or nothing. neither the local traditions of his provincial birthplace, though sharing with london through half a century the honor of his familiar presence, nor the recollections of that brilliant literary circle with whom he lived in the metropolis, have yielded much more than such an outline of his history, as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious records of a grave-stone. that he lived, and that he died, and that he was "a little lower than the angels;"--these make up pretty nearly the amount of our undisputed report. it may be doubted, indeed, whether at this day we arc as accurately acquainted with the life of shakspeare as with that of chaucer, though divided from each other by an interval of two centuries, and (what should have been more effectual towards oblivion) by the wars of the two roses. and yet the traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan region, such as warwickshire at that time was, is usually exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect to shakspeare in particular, we may presume it to have been full and circumstantial through the generation succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which would pursue the motions of one living so large a part of his life at a distance from his wife, but also from the final reverence and honor which would settle upon the memory of a poet so predominently successful; of one who, in a space of five and twenty years, after running a bright career in the capital city of his native land, and challenging notice from the throne, had retired with an ample fortune, created by his personal efforts, and by labors purely intellectual. how are we to account, then, for that deluge, as if from lethe, which has swept away so entirely the traditional memorials of one so illustrious? such is the fatality of error which overclouds every question connected with shakspeare, that two of his principal critics, steevens and malone, have endeavored to solve the difficulty by cutting it with a falsehood. they deny in effect that he _was_ illustrious in the century succeeding to his own, however much he has since become so. we shall first produce their statements in their own words, and we shall then briefly review them. steevens delivers _his_ opinion in the following terms: "how little shakspeare was once read, may be understood from tate, who, in his dedication to the altered play of king lear, speaks of the original as an obscure piece, recommended to his notice by a friend; and the author of the tatler, having occasion to quote a few lines out of macbeth, was content to receive them from davenant's alteration of that celebrated drama, in which almost every original beauty is either awkwardly disguised or arbitrarily omitted." another critic, who cites this passage from steevens, pursues the hypothesis as follows: "in fifty years after his death, dryden mentions that he was then become _a little obsolete_. in the beginning of the last century, lord shaftesbury complains of his _rude unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and wit_. it is certain that, for nearly a hundred years after his death, partly owing to the immediate revolution and rebellion, and partly to the licentious taste encouraged in charles ii's time, and perhaps partly to the incorrect state of his works, he was almost entirely neglected." this critic then goes on to quote with approbation the opinion of malone,--"that if he had been read, admired, studied, and imitated, in the same degree as he is now, the enthusiasm of some one or other of his admirers in the last age would have induced him to make some inquiries concerning the history of his theatrical career, and the anecdotes of his private life." after which this enlightened writer re-affirms and clenches the judgment he has quoted, by saying,--"his admirers, however, _if he had admirers in that age_, possessed no portion of such enthusiasm." it may, perhaps, be an instructive lesson to young readers, if we now show them, by a short sifting of these confident dogmatists, how easy it is for a careless or a half-read man to circulate the most absolute falsehoods under the semblance of truth; falsehoods which impose upon himself as much as they do upon others. we believe that not one word or illustration is uttered in the sentences cited from these three critics, which is not _virtually_ in the very teeth of the truth. to begin with mr. nahum tate. this poor grub of literature, if he did really speak of lear as "an _obscure_ piece, recommended to his notice by a friend," of which we must be allowed to doubt, was then uttering a conscious falsehood. it happens that lear was one of the few shakspearian dramas which had kept the stage unaltered. but it is easy to see a mercenary motive in such an artifice as this. mr. nahum tate is not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they are "well known:" they and their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest of travesties, mr. nahum's lear, would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. for himself, he belonged to the age of dryden rather than of pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the era of the revolution; and his lear, we believe, was arranged in the year . but the family to which he belongs is abundantly recorded in the dunciad, and his own name will be found amongst its catalogues of heroes. with respect to _the author of the tatler_, a very different explanation is requisite. steevens means the reader to understand addison; but it does not follow that the particular paper in question was from his pen. nothing, however, could be more natural than to quote from the common form of the play as then in possession of the stage. it was _there_, beyond a doubt, that a fine gentleman living upon town, and not professing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature, (a light in which we are always to regard the writers of the spectator, guardian, &c.,) would be likely to have learned anything he quoted from macbeth. this we say generally of the writers in those periodical papers; but, with reference to addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer lines of distinction. it is already pretty well known, that addison had no very intimate acquaintance with the literature of his own country. it is known, also, that he did not think such an acquaintance any ways essential to the character of an elegant scholar and _litterateur_. quite enough he found it, and more than enough for the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable familiarity with the foremost latin poets, and a very slender one indeed with the grecian. _how_ slender, we can see in his "travels." of modern authors, none as yet had been published with notes, commentaries, or critical collations of the text; and, accordingly, addison looked upon all of them, except those few who professed themselves followers in the retinue and equipage of the ancients, as creatures of a lower race. boileau, as a mere imitator and propagator of horace, he read, and probably little else amongst the french classics. hence it arose that he took upon himself to speak sneeringly of tasso. to this, which was a bold act for his timid mind, he was emboldened by the countenance of boileau. of the elder italian authors, such as ariosto, and, _a fortiori_, dante, be knew absolutely nothing. passing to our own literature, it is certain that addison was profoundly ignorant of chaucer and of spenser. milton only,--and why? simply because he was a brilliant scholar, and stands like a bridge between the christian literature and the pagan,--addison had read and esteemed. there was also in the very constitution of milton's mind, in the majestic regularity and planetary solemnity of its _epic_ movements, something which he could understand and appreciate. as to the meteoric and incalculable eccentricities of the _dramatic_ mind, as it displayed itself in the heroic age of our drama, amongst the titans of - , they confounded and overwhelmed him. in particular, with regard to shakspeare, we shall now proclaim a discovery which we made some twenty years ago. we, like others, from seeing frequent references to shakspeare in the spectator, had acquiesced in the common belief, that although addison was no doubt profoundly unlearned in shakspeare's language, and thoroughly unable to do him justice, (and this we might well assume, since his great rival pope, who had expressly studied shakspeare, was, after all, so memorably deficient in the appropriate knowledge,)--yet, that of course he had a vague popular knowledge of the mighty poet's cardinal dramas. accident only led us into a discovery of our mistake. twice or thrice we had observed, that if shakspeare were quoted, that paper turned out not to be addison's; and at length, by express examination, we ascertained the curious fact, that addison has never in one instance quoted or made any reference to shakspeare. but was this, as steevens most disingenuously pretends, to be taken as an exponent of the public feeling towards shakspeare? was addison's neglect representative of a general neglect? if so, whence came rowe's edition, pope's, theobald's, sir thomas hanmer's, bishop warburton's, all upon the heels of one another? with such facts staring him in the face, how shameless must be that critic who could, in support of such a thesis, refer to " _the author of the tatler_" contemporary with all these editors. the truth is, addison was well aware of shakspeare's hold on the popular mind; too well aware of it. the feeble constitution of the poetic faculty, as existing in himself, forbade his sympathizing with shakspeare; the proportions were too colossal for his delicate vision; and yet, as one who sought popularity himself, he durst not shock what perhaps he viewed as a national prejudice. those who have happened, like ourselves, to see the effect of passionate music and "deep-inwoven harmonics" upon the feeling of an idiot, we may conceive what we mean. such music does not utterly revolt the idiot; on the contrary, it has a strange but a horrid fascination for him; it alarms, irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly unhappy; and chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses of thoughts and slumbering instincts, which it is for his peace to have entirely obscured, because for him they can be revealed only partially, and with the sad effect of throwing a baleful gleam upon his blighted condition. do we mean, then, to compare addison with an idiot? not generally, by any means. nobody can more sincerely admire him where he was a man of real genius, viz., in his delineations of character and manners, or in the exquisite delicacies of his humor. but assuredly addison, as a poet, was amongst the sons of the feeble; and between the authors of cato and of king lear there was a gulf never to be bridged over. [endnote: ] but dryden, we are told, pronounced shakspeare already in his day _"a little obsolete."_ here now we have wilful, deliberate falsehood. _obsolete_, in dryden's meaning, does not imply that he was so with regard to his popularity, (the question then at issue,) but with regard to his diction and choice of words. to cite dryden as a witness for any purpose against shakspeare,--dryden, who of all men had the most ransacked wit and exhausted language in celebrating the supremacy of shakspeare's genius, does indeed require as much shamelessness in feeling as mendacity in principle. but then lord shaftesbury, who may be taken as half way between dryden and pope, (dryden died in , pope was then twelve years old, and lord s. wrote chiefly, we believe, between and ,) "complains," it seems, "of his rude unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and wit." what if he does? let the whole truth be told, and then we shall see how much stress is to be laid upon such a judgment. the second lord shaftesbury, the author of the characteristics, was the grandson of that famous political agitator, the chancellor shaftesbury, who passed his whole life in storms of his own creation. the second lord shaftesbury was a man of crazy constitution, querulous from ill health, and had received an eccentric education from his eccentric grandfather. he was practised daily in _talking_ latin, to which afterwards he added a competent study of the greek; and finally he became unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute and undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has to show. he sneers continually at the regular built academic pedant; but he himself, though no academic, was essentially the very impersonation of pedantry. no thought however beautiful, no image however magnificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was clothed in english; but present him with the most trivial common-places in greek, and he unaffectedly fancied them divine; mistaking the pleasurable sense of his own power in a difficult and rare accomplishment for some peculiar force or beauty in the passage. such was the outline of his literary taste. and was it upon shakspeare only, or upon him chiefly, that he lavished his pedantry? far from it. he attacked milton with no less fervor; he attacked dryden with a thousand times more. jeremy taylor he quoted only to ridicule; and even locke, the confidential friend of his grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. as to shakspeare, so far from lord shaftesbury's censures arguing his deficient reputation, the very fact of his noticing him at all proves his enormous popularity; for upon system he noticed those only who ruled the public taste. the insipidity of his objections to shakspeare may be judged from this, that he comments in a spirit of absolute puerility upon the name _desdemona_, as though intentionally formed from the greek word for _superstition_. in fact, he had evidently read little beyond the list of names in shakspeare; yet there is proof enough that the irresistible beauty of what little he _had_ read was too much for all his pedantry, and startled him exceedingly; for ever afterwards he speaks of shakspeare as one who, with a little aid from grecian sources, really had something great and promising about him. as to modern authors, neither this lord shaftesbury nor addison read any thing for the latter years of their lives but bayle's dictionary. and most of the little scintillations of erudition, which may be found in the notes to the characteristics, and in the essays of addison, are derived, almost without exception, and uniformly without acknowledgment, from bayle. [endnote: ] finally, with regard to the sweeping assertion, that "for nearly a hundred years after his death shakspeare was almost entirely neglected," we shall meet this scandalous falsehood, by a rapid view of his fortunes during the century in question. the tradition has always been, that shakspeare was honored by the especial notice of queen elizabeth, as well as by that of james i. at one time we were disposed to question the truth of this tradition; but that was for want of having read attentively the lines of ben jonson to the memory of shakspeare, those generous lines which have so absurdly been taxed with faint praise. jonson could make no mistake on this point; he, as one of shakspeare's familiar companions, must have witnessed at the very time, and accompanied with friendly sympathy, every motion of royal favor towards shakspeare. now he, in words which leave no room for doubt, exclaims, "sweet swan of avon, what a sight it were to see thee in our waters yet appear; and make those flights upon the banks of thames, _that so did take eliza and our james."_ these princes, then, _were_ taken, were fascinated, with some of shakspeare's dramas. in elizabeth the approbation would probably be sincere. in james we can readily suppose it to have been assumed; for he was a pedant in a different sense from lord shaftesbury; not from undervaluing modern poetry, but from caring little or nothing for any poetry, although he wrote about its mechanic rules. still the royal _imprimatur_ would be influential and serviceable no less when offered hypocritically than in full sincerity. next let us consider, at the very moment of shakspeare's death, who were the leaders of the british youth, the _principes juventutis_, in the two fields, equally important to a great poet's fame, of rank and of genius. the prince of wales and john milton; the first being then about sixteen years old, the other about eight. now these two great powers, as we may call them, these presiding stars over all that was english in thought and action, were both impassioned admirers of shakspeare. each of them counts for many thousands. the prince of wales [endnote: ] had learned to appreciate shakspeare, not originally from reading him, but from witnessing the court representations of his plays at whitehall. afterwards we know that he made shakspeare his closet companion, for he was reproached with doing so by milton. and we know also, from the just criticism pronounced upon the character and diction of caliban by one of charles's confidential counsellors, lord falkland, that the king's admiration of shakspeare had impressed a determination upon the court reading. as to milton, by double prejudices, puritanical and classical, his mind had been preoccupied against the full impressions of shakspeare. and we know that there is such a thing as keeping the sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, or state of abeyance; an effort of self-conquest realized in more cases than one by the ancient fathers, both greek and latin, with regard to the profane classics. intellectually they admired, and would not belie their admiration; but they did not give their hearts cordially, they did not abandon themselves to their natural impulses. they averted their eyes and weaned their attention from the dazzling object. such, probably, was milton's state of feeling towards shakspeare after , when the theatres were suppressed, and the fanatical fervor in its noontide heat. yet even then he did not belie his reverence intellectually for shakspeare; and in his younger days we know that he had spoken more enthusiastically of shakspeare, than he ever did again of any uninspired author. not only did he address a sonnet to his memory, in which he declares that kings would wish to die, if by dying they could obtain such a monument in the hearts of men; but he also speaks of him in his _il penseroso_, as the tutelary genius of the english stage. in this transmission of the torch (greek: lampadophoria) dryden succeeds to milton; he was born nearly thirty years later; about thirty years they were contemporaries; and by thirty years, or nearly, dryden survived his great leader. dryden, in fact, lived out the seventeenth century. and we have now arrived within nine years of the era, when the critical editions started in hot succession to one another. the names we have mentioned were the great influential names of the century. but of inferior homage there was no end. how came betterton the actor, how came davenant, how came rowe, or pope, by their intense (if not always sound) admiration for shakspeare, unless they had found it fuming upwards like incense to the pagan deities in ancient times, from altars erected at every turning upon all the paths of men? but it is objected that inferior dramatists were sometimes preferred to shakspeare; and again, that vile travesties of shakspeare were preferred to the authentic dramas. as to the first argument, let it be remembered, that if the saints of the chapel are always in the same honor, because _there_ men are simply discharging a duty, which once due will be due for ever; the saints of the theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the local genius, and to the very reasons for having a theatre at all. men go thither for amusement. this is the paramount purpose, and even acknowledged merit or absolute superiority must give way to it. does a man at paris expect to see moliere reproduced in proportion to his admitted precedency in the french drama? on the contrary, that very precedency argues such a familiarization with his works, that those who are in quest of relaxation will reasonably prefer any recent drama to that which, having lost all its novelty, has lost much of its excitement. we speak of ordinary minds; but in cases of _public_ entertainments, deriving part of their power from scenery and stage pomp, novelty is for all minds an essential condition of attraction. moreover, in some departments of the comic, beaumont and fletcher, when writing in combination, really had a freedom and breadth of manner which excels the comedy of shakspeare. as to the altered shakspeare as taking precedency of the genuine shakspeare, no argument can be so frivolous. the public were never allowed a choice; the great majority of an audience even now cannot be expected to carry the real shakspeare in their mind, so as to pursue a comparison between that and the alteration. their comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they have opportunities of seeing; that is, between the various pieces presented to them by the managers of theatres. further than this, it is impossible for them to extend their office of judging and collating; and the degenerate taste which substituted the caprices of davenant, the rants of dryden, or the filth of tate, for the jewellery of shakspeare, cannot with any justice be charged upon the public, not one in a thousand of whom was furnished with any means of comparing, but exclusively upon those (viz., theatrical managers,) who had the very amplest. yet even in excuse for _them_ much may be said. the very length of some plays compelled them to make alterations. the best of shakspeare's dramas, king lear, is the least fitted for representation; and, even for the vilest alteration, it ought in candor to be considered that possession is nine points of the law. he who would not have introduced, was often obliged to retain. finally, it is urged, that the small number of editions through which shakspeare passed in the seventeenth century, furnishes a separate argument, and a conclusive one against his popularity. we answer, that, considering the bulk of his plays collectively, the editions were _not_ few. compared with any known case, the copies sold of shakspeare were quite as many as could be expected under the circumstances. ten or fifteen times as much consideration went to the purchase of one great folio like shakspeare, as would attend the purchase of a little volume like waller or donne. without reviews, or newspapers, or advertisements, to diffuse the knowledge of books, the progress of literature was necessarily slow, and its expansion narrow. but this is a topic which has always been treated unfairly, not with regard to shakspeare only, but to milton, as well as many others. the truth is, we have not facts enough to guide us; for the number of editions often tells nothing accurately as to the number of copies. with respect to shakspeare it is certain, that, had his masterpieces been gathered into small volumes, shakspeare would have had a most extensive sale. as it was, there can be no doubt, that from his own generation, throughout the seventeenth century, and until the eighteenth began to accommodate, not any greater popularity in _him_, but a greater taste for reading in the public, his fame never ceased to be viewed as a national trophy of honor; and the most illustrious men of the seventeenth century were no whit less fervent in their admiration than those of the eighteenth and the nineteenth, either as respected its strength and sincerity, or as respected its open profession. [endnote: ] it is therefore a false notion, that the general sympathy with the merits of shakspeare ever beat with a languid or intermitting pulse. undoubtedly, in times when the functions of critical journals and of newspapers were not at hand to diffuse or to strengthen the impressions which emanated from the capital, all opinions must have travelled slowly into the provinces. but even then, whilst the perfect organs of communication were wanting, indirect substitutes were supplied by the necessities of the times, or by the instincts of political zeal. two channels especially lay open between the great central organ of the national mind, and the remotest provinces. parliaments were occasionally summoned, (for the judges' circuits were too brief to produce much effect,) and during their longest suspensions, the nobility, with large retinues, continually resorted to the court. but an intercourse more constant and more comprehensive was maintained through the agency of the two universities. already, in the time of james i., the growing importance of the gentry, and the consequent birth of a new interest in political questions, had begun to express itself at oxford, and still more so at cambridge. academic persons stationed themselves as sentinels at london, for the purpose of watching the court and the course of public affairs. these persons wrote letters, like those of the celebrated joseph mede, which we find in ellis's historical collections, reporting to their fellow-collegians all the novelties of public life as they arose, or personally carried down such reports, and thus conducted the general feelings at the centre into lesser centres, from which again they were diffused into the ten thousand parishes of england; for, (with a very few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, welch or cumbrian,) every parish priest must unavoidably have spent his three years at one or other of the english universities. and by this mode of diffusion it is, that we can explain the strength with which shakspeare's thoughts and diction impressed themselves from a very early period upon the national literature, and even more generally upon the national thinking and conversation.[endnote: ] the question, therefore, revolves upon us in threefold difficulty--how, having stepped thus prematurely into this inheritance of fame, leaping, as it were, thus abruptly into the favor alike of princes and the enemies of princes, had it become possible that in his native place, (honored still more in the final testimonies of his preference when founding a family mansion,) such a man's history, and the personal recollections which cling so affectionately to the great intellectual potentates who have recommended themselves by gracious manners, could so soon and so utterly have been obliterated? malone, with childish irreflection, ascribes the loss of such memorials to the want of enthusiasm in his admirers. local researches into private history had not then commenced. such a taste, often petty enough in its management, was the growth of after ages. else how came spenser's life and fortunes to be so utterly overwhelmed in oblivion? no poet of a high order could be more popular. the answer we believe to be this: twenty-six years after shakspeare's death commenced the great parliamentary war. this it was, and the local feuds arising to divide family from family, brother from brother, upon which we must charge the extinction of traditions and memorials, doubtless abundant up to that era. the parliamentary contest, it will be said, did not last above three years; the king's standard having been first raised at nottingham in august, , and the battle of naseby (which terminated the open warfare) having been fought in june, . or even if we extend its duration to the surrender of the last garrison, that war terminated in the spring of . and the brief explosions of insurrection or of scottish invasion, which occurred on subsequent occasions, were all locally confined, and none came near to warwickshire, except the battle of worcester, more than five years after. this is true; but a short war will do much to efface recent and merely personal memorials. and the following circumstances of the war were even more important than the general fact. first of all, the very mansion founded by shakspeare became the military headquarters for the queen in , when marching from the eastern coast of england to join the king in oxford; and one such special visitation would be likely to do more serious mischief in the way of extinction, than many years of general warfare. secondly, as a fact, perhaps, equally important, birmingham, the chief town of warwickshire, and the adjacent district, the seat of our hardware manufactures, was the very focus of disaffection towards the royal cause. not only, therefore, would this whole region suffer more from internal and spontaneous agitation, but it would be the more frequently traversed vindictively from without, and harassed by flying parties from oxford, or others of the king's garrisons. thirdly, even apart from the political aspects of warwickshire, this county happens to be the central one of england, as regards the roads between the north and south; and birmingham has long been the great central axis, [endnote: ] in which all the radii from the four angles of england proper meet and intersect. mere accident, therefore, of local position, much more when united with that avowed inveteracy of malignant feeling, which was bitter enough to rouse a re-action of bitterness in the mind of lord clarendon, would go far to account for the wreck of many memorials relating to shakspeare, as well as for the subversion of that quiet and security for humble life, in which the traditional memory finds its best _nidus_. thus we obtain one solution, and perhaps the main one, of the otherwise mysterious oblivion which had swept away all traces of the mighty poet, by the time when those quiet days revolved upon england, in which again the solitary agent of learned research might roam in security from house to house, gleaning those personal remembrances which, even in the fury of civil strife, might long have lingered by the chimney corner. but the fierce furnace of war had probably, by its _local_ ravages, scorched this field of natural tradition, and thinned the gleaner's inheritance by three parts out of four. this, we repeat, may be one part of the solution to this difficult problem. and if another is still demanded, possibly it may be found in the fact, hostile to the perfect consecration of shakspeare's memory, that after all he was a player. many a coarse-minded country gentleman, or village pastor, who would have held his town glorified by the distinction of having sent forth a great judge or an eminent bishop, might disdain to cherish the personal recollections which surrounded one whom custom regarded as little above a mountebank, and the illiberal law as a vagabond. the same degrading appreciation attached both to the actor in plays and to their author. the contemptuous appellation of "play-book," served as readily to degrade the mighty volume which contained lear and hamlet, as that of "play-actor," or "player-man," has always served with the illiberal or the fanatical to dishonor the persons of roscius or of garrick, of talma or of siddons. nobody, indeed, was better aware of this than the noble-minded shakspeare; and feelingly he has breathed forth in his sonnets this conscious oppression under which he lay of public opinion, unfavorable by a double title to his own pretensions; for, being both dramatic author and dramatic performer, he found himself heir to a twofold opprobrium, and at an era of english society when the weight of that opprobrium was heaviest. in reality, there was at this period a collision of forces acting in opposite directions upon the estimation of the stage and scenical art, and therefore of all the ministers in its equipage. puritanism frowned upon these pursuits, as ruinous to public morals; on the other hand, loyalty could not but tolerate what was patronized by the sovereign; and it happened that elizabeth, james, and charles i., were _all_ alike lovers and promoters of theatrical amusements, which were indeed more indispensable to the relief of court ceremony, and the monotony of aulic pomp, than in any other region of life. this royal support, and the consciousness that any brilliant success in these arts implied an unusual share of natural endowments, did something in mitigation of a scorn which must else have been intolerable to all generous natures. but whatever prejudice might thus operate against the perfect sanctity of shakspeare's posthumous reputation, it is certain that the splendor of his worldly success must have done much to obliterate that effect; his admirable colloquial talents a good deal, and his gracious affability still more. the wonder, therefore, will still remain, that betterton, in less than a century from his death, should have been able to glean so little. and for the solution of this wonder, we must throw ourselves chiefly upon the explanations we have made as to the parliamentary war, and the local ravages of its progress in the very district, of the very town, and the very house. if further arguments are still wanted to explain this mysterious abolition, we may refer the reader to the following succession of disastrous events, by which it should seem that a perfect malice of misfortune pursued the vestiges of the mighty poet's steps. in , the globe theatre, with which he had been so long connected, was burned to the ground. soon afterwards a great fire occurred in stratford; and next, (without counting upon the fire of london, just fifty years after his death, which, however, would consume many an important record from periods far more remote,) the house of ben jonson, in which probably, as mr. campbell suggests, might be parts of his correspondence, was also burned. finally, there was an old tradition that lady barnard, the sole grand-daughter of shakspeare, had carried off many of his papers from stratford, and these papers have never since been traced. in many of the elder lives it has been asserted, that john shakspeare, the father of the poet, was a butcher, and in others that he was a woolstapler. it is now settled beyond dispute that he was a glover. this was his professed occupation in stratford, though it is certain that, with this leading trade, from which he took his denomination, he combined some collateral pursuits; and it is possible enough that, as openings offered, he may have meddled with many. in that age, and in a provincial town, nothing like the exquisite subdivision of labor was attempted which we now see realized in the great cities of christendom. and one trade is often found to play into another with so much reciprocal advantage, that even in our own days we do not much wonder at an enterprising man, in country places, who combines several in his own person. accordingly, john shakspeare is known to have united with his town calling the rural and miscellaneous occupations of a farmer. meantime his avowed business stood upon a very different footing from the same trade as it is exercised in modern times. gloves were in that age an article of dress more costly by much, and more elaborately decorated, than in our own. they were a customary present from some cities to the judges of assize, and to other official persons; a custom of ancient standing, and in some places, we believe, still subsisting; and in such cases it is reasonable to suppose, that the gloves must originally have been more valuable than the trivial modern article of the same name. so also, perhaps, in their origin, of the gloves given at funerals. in reality, whenever the simplicity of an age makes it difficult to renew the parts of a wardrobe, except in capital towns of difficult access, prudence suggests that such wares should be manufactured of more durable materials; and, being so, they become obviously susceptible of more lavish ornament. but it will not follow, from this essential difference in the gloves of shakspeare's age, that the glover's occupation was more lucrative. doubtless he sold more costly gloves, and upon each pair had a larger profit, but for that very reason he sold fewer. two or three gentlemen "of worship" in the neighborhood might occasionally require a pair of gloves, but it is very doubtful whether any inhabitant of stratford would ever call for so mere a luxury. the practical result, at all events, of john shakspeare's various pursuits, does not appear permanently to have met the demands of his establishment, and in his maturer years there are indications still surviving that he was under a cloud of embarrassment. he certainly lost at one time his social position in the town of stratford; but there is a strong presumption, in _our_ construction of the case, that he finally retrieved it; and for this retrieval of a station, which he had forfeited by personal misfortunes or neglect, he was altogether indebted to the filial piety of his immortal son. meantime the earlier years of the elder shakspeare wore the aspect of rising prosperity, however unsound might be the basis on which it rested. there can be little doubt that william shakspeare, from his birth up to his tenth or perhaps his eleventh year, lived in careless plenty, and saw nothing in his father's house but that style of liberal house-keeping, which has ever distinguished the upper yeomanry and the rural gentry of england. probable enough it is, that the resources for meeting this liberality were not strictly commensurate with the family income, but were sometimes allowed to entrench, by means of loans or mortgages, upon capital funds. the stress upon the family finances was perhaps at times severe; and that it was borne at all, must be imputed to the large and even splendid portion which john shakspeare received with his wife. this lady, for such she really was in an eminent sense, by birth as well as by connections, bore the beautiful name of mary arden, a name derived from the ancient forest district [endnote: ] of the country; and doubtless she merits a more elaborate notice than our slender materials will furnish. to have been _the mother of shakspeare, _--how august a title to the reverence of infinite generations, and of centuries beyond the vision of prophecy. a plausible hypothesis has been started in modern times, that the facial structure, and that the intellectual conformation, may be deduced more frequently from the corresponding characteristics in the mother than in the father. it is certain that no very great man has ever existed, but that his greatness has been rehearsed and predicted in one or other of his parents. and it cannot be denied, that in the most eminent men, where we have had the means of pursuing the investigation, the mother has more frequently been repeated and reproduced than the father. we have known cases where the mother has furnished all the intellect, and the father all the moral sensibility; upon which assumption, the wonder ceases that _cicero,_ lord chesterfield, and other brilliant men, who took the utmost pains with their sons, should have failed so conspicuously; for possibly the mothers had been women of excessive and even exemplary stupidity. in the case of shakspeare, each parent, if we had any means of recovering their characteristics, could not fail to furnish a study of the most profound interest; and with regard to his mother in particular, if the modern hypothesis be true, and if we are indeed to deduce from her the stupendous intellect of her son, in that case she must have been a benefactress to her husband's family, beyond the promises of fairy land or the dreams of romance; for it is certain that to her chiefly this family was also indebted for their worldly comfort. mary arden was the youngest daughter and the heiress of robert arden, of wilmecote, esq., in the county of warwick. the family of arden was even then of great antiquity. about one century and a quarter before the birth of william shakspeare, a person bearing the same name as his maternal grandfather had been returned by the commissioners in their list of the warwickshire gentry; he was there styled robert arden, esq., of bromich. this was in , or the th year of henry vi. in henry vii.'s reign, the ardens received a grant of lands from the crown; and in , four years after the birth of william shakspeare, edward arden, of the same family, was sheriff of the county. mary arden was, therefore, a young lady of excellent descent and connections, and an heiress of considerable wealth. she brought to her husband, as her marriage portion, the landed estate of asbies, which, upon any just valuation, must be considered as a handsome dowry for a woman of her station. as this point has been contested, and as it goes a great way towards determining the exact social position of the poet's parents, let us be excused for sifting it a little more narrowly than might else seem warranted by the proportions of our present life. every question which it can be reasonable to raise at all, it must be reasonable to treat with at least so much of minute research, as may justify the conclusions which it is made to support. the estate of asbies contained fifty acres of arable land, six of meadow, and a right of commonage. what may we assume to have been the value of its fee-simple? malone, who allows the total fortune of mary arden to have been l s d., is sure that the value of asbies could not have been more than one hundred pounds. but why? because, says he, the "average" rent of land at that time was no more than three shillings per acre. this we deny; but upon that assumption, the total yearly rent of fifty-six acres would be exactly eight guineas. [endnote: ] and therefore, in assigning the value of asbies at one hundred pounds, it appears that malone must have estimated the land at no more than twelve years' purchase, which would carry the value to l. s. "even at this estimate," as the latest annotator [endnote: ] on this subject _justly_ observes, "mary arden's portion was a larger one than was usually given to a landed gentleman's daughter." but this writer objects to malone's principle of valuation. "we find," says he, "that john shakspeare also farmed the meadow of tugton, containing sixteen acres, at the rate of eleven shillings per acre. now what proof has mr. malone adduced, that the acres of asbies were not as valuable as those of tugton? and if they were so, the former estate must have been worth between three and four hundred pounds." in the main drift of his objections we concur with mr. campbell. but as they are liable to some criticism, let us clear the ground of all plausible cavils, and then see what will be the result. malone, had he been alive, would probably have answered, that tugton was a farm specially privileged by nature; and that if any man contended for so unusual a rent as eleven shillings an acre for land not known to him, the _onus probandi_ would lie upon _him_. be it so; eleven shillings is certainly above the ordinary level of rent, but three shillings is below it. we contend, that for tolerably good land, situated advantageously, that is, with a ready access to good markets and good fairs, such as those of coventry, birmingham, gloucester, worcester, shrewsbury,. &c., one noble might be assumed as the annual rent; and that in such situations twenty years' purchase was not a valuation, even in elizabeth's reign, very unusual. let us, however, assume the rent at only five shillings, and land at sixteen years' purchase. upon this basis, the rent would be l, and the value of the fee simple l. now, if it were required to equate that sum with its present value, a very operose [endnote: ] calculation might be requisite. but contenting ourselves with the gross method of making such equations between and the current century, that is, multiplying by five, we shall find the capital value of the estate to be eleven hundred and twenty pounds, whilst the annual rent would be exactly seventy. but if the estate had been sold, and the purchase-money lent upon mortgage, (the only safe mode of investing money at that time,) the annual interest would have reached l, equal to l of modern money; for mortgages in elizabeth's age readily produced ten per cent. a woman who should bring at this day an annual income of l to a provincial tradesman, living in a sort of _rus in urbe_, according to the simple fashions of rustic life, would assuredly be considered as an excellent match. and there can be little doubt that mary arden's dowry it was which, for some ten or a dozen years succeeding to his marriage, raised her husband to so much social consideration in stratford. in john shakspeare is supposed to have first settled in stratford, having migrated from some other part of warwickshire. in he married mary arden; in , the year subsequent to the birth of his son william, his third child, he was elected one of the aldermen; and in the year he became first magistrate of the town, by the title of high bailiff. this year we may assume to have been that in which the prosperity of this family reached its zenith; for in this year it was, over and above the presumptions furnished by his civic honors, that he obtained a grant of arms from clarencieux of the heralds' college. on this occasion he declared himself worth five hundred pounds derived from his ancestors. and we really cannot understand the right by which critics, living nearly three centuries from his time, undertake to know his affairs better than himself, and to tax him with either inaccuracy or falsehood. no man would be at leisure to court heraldic honors, when he knew himself to be embarrassed, or apprehended that he soon might be so. a man whose anxieties had been fixed at all upon his daily livelihood would, by this chase after the armorial honors of heraldry, have made himself a butt for ridicule, such as no fortitude could enable him to sustain. in , therefore, when his son william would be moving through his fifth year, john shakspeare, (now honored by the designation of _master_,) would be found at times in the society of the neighboring gentry. ten years in advance of this period he was already in difficulties. but there is no proof that these difficulties had then reached a point of degradation, or of memorable distress. the sole positive indications of his decaying condition are, that in he received an exemption from the small weekly assessment levied upon the aldermen of stratford for the relief of the poor; and that in the following year, , he is found enrolled amongst the defaulters in the payment of taxes. the latter fact undoubtedly goes to prove that, like every man who is falling back in the world, he was occasionally in arrears. paying taxes is not like the honors awarded or the processions regulated by clarencieux; no man is ambitious of precedency there; and if a laggard pace in that duty is to be received as evidence of pauperism, nine tenths of the english people might occasionally be classed as paupers. with respect to his liberation from the weekly assessment, that may bear a construction different from the one which it has received. this payment, which could never have been regarded as a burthen, not amounting to five pounds annually of our present money, may have been held up as an exponent of wealth and consideration; and john shakspeare may have been required to resign it as an honorable distinction, not suitable to the circumstances of an embarrassed man. finally, the fact of his being indebted to robert sadler, a baker, in the sum of five pounds, and his being under the necessity of bringing a friend as security for the payment, proves nothing at all. there is not a town in europe, in which opulent men cannot be found that are backward in the payment of their debts. and the probability is, that master sadler acted like most people who, when they suppose a man to be going down in the world, feel their respect for him sensibly decaying, and think it wise to trample him under foot, provided only in that act of trampling they can squeeze out of him their own individual debt. like that terrific chorus in spohr's oratorio of st. paul, _" stone him to death "_ is the cry of the selfish and the illiberal amongst creditors, alike towards the just and the unjust amongst debtors. it was the wise and beautiful prayer of agar, "give me neither poverty nor riches;" and, doubtless, for quiet, for peace, and the _latentis semita vita_, that is the happiest dispensation. but, perhaps, with a view to a school of discipline and of moral fortitude, it might be a more salutary prayer, "give me riches _and_ poverty, and afterwards neither." for the transitional state between riches and poverty will teach a lesson both as to the baseness and the goodness of human nature, and will impress that lesson with a searching force, such as no borrowed experience ever can approach. most probable it is that shakspeare drew some of his powerful scenes in the timon of athens, those which exhibit the vileness of ingratitude and the impassioned frenzy of misanthropy, from his personal recollections connected with the case of his own father. possibly, though a cloud of two hundred and seventy years now veils it, this very master sadler, who was so urgent for his five pounds, and who so little apprehended that he should be called over the coals for it in the encyclopaedia britannica, may have compensate for the portrait of that lucullus who says of timon: "alas, good lord! a noble gentleman 'tis, if he would not keep so good a house. many a time and often i have dined with him, and told him on't; and come again to supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less; and yet he would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. every man has his fault, and honesty is his; i have told him on't, but i could never get him from it." for certain years, perhaps, john shakspeare moved on in darkness and sorrow: "his familiars from his buried fortunes slunk all away; left their false vows with him, like empty purses pick'd; and his poor self, a dedicated beggar to the air, with his disease of all-shunn'd poverty, walk'd, like contempt, alone." we, however, at this day, are chiefly interested in the case as it bears upon the education and youthful happiness of the poet. now if we suppose that from , the high noon of the family prosperity, to , the first year of their mature embarrassments, one half the interval was passed in stationary sunshine, and the latter half in the gradual twilight of declension, it will follow that the young william had completed his tenth year before he heard the first signals of distress; and for so long a period his education would probably be conducted on as liberal a scale as the resources of stratford would allow. through this earliest section of his life he would undoubtedly rank as a gentleman's son, possibly as the leader of his class, in stratford. but what rank he held through the next ten years, or, more generally, what was the standing in society of shakspeare until he had created a new station for himself by his own exertions in the metropolis, is a question yet unsettled, but which has been debated as keenly as if it had some great dependencies. upon this we shall observe, that could we by possibility be called to settle beforehand what rank were best for favoring the development of intellectual powers, the question might wear a face of deep practical importance; but when the question is simply as to a matter of fact, what _was_ the rank held by a man whose intellectual development has long ago been completed, this becomes a mere question of curiosity. the tree has fallen; it is confessedly the noblest of all the forest; and we must therefore conclude that the soil in which it flourished was either the best possible, or, if not so, that any thing bad in its properties had been disarmed and neutralized by the vital forces of the plant, or by the benignity of nature. if any future shakspeare were likely to arise, it might be a problem of great interest to agitate, whether the condition of a poor man or of a gentleman were best fitted to nurse and stimulate his faculties. but for the actual shakspeare, since what he was he was, and since nothing greater can be imagined, it is now become a matter of little moment whether his course lay for fifteen or twenty years through the humilities of absolute poverty, or through the chequered paths of gentry lying in the shade. whatever _was_, must, in this case at least, have been the best, since it terminated in producing shakspeare: and thus far we must all be optimists. yet still, it will be urged, the curiosity is not illiberal which would seek to ascertain the precise career through which shakspeare ran. this we readily concede; and we are anxious ourselves to contribute any thing in our power to the settlement of a point so obscure. what we have wished to protest against, is the spirit of partisanship in which this question has too generally been discussed. for, whilst some with a foolish affectation of plebeian sympathies overwhelm us with the insipid commonplaces about birth and ancient descent, as honors containing nothing meritorious, and rush eagerly into an ostentatious exhibition of all the circumstances which favor the notion of a humble station and humble connections; others, with equal forgetfulness of true dignity, plead with the intemperance and partiality of a legal advocate for the pretensions of shakspeare to the hereditary rank of gentleman. both parties violate the majesty of the subject. when we are seeking for the sources of the euphrates or the st. lawrence, we look for no proportions to the mighty volume of waters in that particular summit amongst the chain of mountains which embosoms its earliest fountains, nor are we shocked at the obscurity of these fountains. pursuing the career of mahommed, or of any man who has memorably impressed his own mind or agency upon the revolutions of mankind, we feel solicitude about the circumstances which might surround his cradle to be altogether unseasonable and impertinent. whether he were born in a hovel or a palace, whether he passed his infancy in squalid poverty, or hedged around by the glittering spears of bodyguards, as mere questions of fact may be interesting; but, in the light of either accessories or counteragencies to the native majesty of the subject, are trivial and below all philosophic valuation. so with regard to the creator of lear and hamlet, of othello and macbeth; to him from whose golden urns the nations beyond the far atlantic, the multitude of the isles, and the generations unborn in australian climes, even to the realms of the rising sun (the greek: anatolai haedlioio,) must in every age draw perennial streams of intellectual life, we feel that the little accidents of birth and social condition are so unspeakably below the grandeur of the theme, are so irrelevant and disproportioned to the real interest at issue, so incommensurable with any of its relations, that a biographer of shakspeare at once denounces himself as below his subject if he can entertain such a question as seriously affecting the glory of the poet. in some legends of saints, we find that they were born with a lambent circle or golden aureola about their heads. this angelic coronet shed light alike upon the chambers of a cottage or a palace, upon the gloomy limits of a dungeon, or the vast expansion of a cathedral; but the cottage, the palace, the dungeon, the cathedral, were all equally incapable of adding one ray of color or one pencil of light to the supernatural halo. having, therefore, thus pointedly guarded ourselves from misconstruction, and consenting to entertain the question as one in which we, the worshippers of shakspeare, have an interest of curiosity, but in which he, the object of our worship, has no interest of glory, we proceed to state what appears to us the result of the scanty facts surviving when collated with each other. by his mother's side, shakspeare was an authentic gentleman. by his father's he would have stood in a more dubious position; but the effect of municipal honors to raise and illustrate an equivocal rank, has always been acknowledged under the popular tendencies of our english political system. from the sort of lead, therefore, which john shakspeare took at one time amongst his fellow-townsmen, and from his rank of first magistrate, we may presume that, about the year , he had placed himself at the head of the stratford community. afterwards he continued for some years to descend from this altitude; and the question is, at what point this gradual degradation may be supposed to have settled. now we shall avow it as our opinion, that the composition of society in stratford was such that, even had the shakspeare family maintained their superiority, the main body of their daily associates must still have been found amongst persons below the rank of gentry. the poet must inevitably have mixed chiefly with mechanics and humble tradesmen, for such people composed perhaps the total community. but had there even been a gentry in stratford, since they would have marked the distinctions of their rank chiefly by greater reserve of manners, it is probable that, after all, shakspeare, with his enormity of delight in exhibitions of human nature, would have mostly cultivated that class of society in which the feelings are more elementary and simple, in which the thoughts speak a plainer language, and in which the restraints of factitious or conventional decorum are exchanged for the restraints of mere sexual decency. it is a noticeable fact to all who have looked upon human life with an eye of strict attention, that the abstract image of womanhood, in. its loveliness, its delicacy, and its modesty, nowhere makes itself more impressive or more advantageously felt than in the humblest cottages, because it is there brought into immediate juxtaposition with the grossness of manners, and the careless license of language incident to the fathers and brothers of the house. and this is more especially true in a nation of unaffected sexual gallantry, [endnote: ] such as the english and the gothic races in general; since, under the immunity which their women enjoy from all servile labors of a coarse or out-of-doors order, by as much lower as they descend in the scale of rank, by so much more do they benefit under the force of contrast with the men of their own level. a young man of that class, however noble in appearance, is somewhat degraded in the eyes of women, by the necessity which his indigence imposes of working under a master; but a beautiful young woman, in the very poorest family, unless she enters upon a life of domestic servitude, (in which case her labors are light, suited to her sex, and withdrawn from the public eye,) so long in fact as she stays under her father's roof, is as perfectly her own mistress and _sui juris_ as the daughter of an earl. this personal dignity, brought into stronger relief by the mercenary employments of her male connections, and the feminine gentleness of her voice and manners, exhibited under the same advantages of contrast, oftentimes combine to make a young cottage beauty as fascinating an object as any woman of any station. hence we may in part account for the great event of shakspeare's early manhood, his premature marriage. it has always been known, or at least traditionally received for a fact, that shakspeare had married whilst yet a boy, and that his wife was unaccountably older than himself. in the very earliest biographical sketch of the poet, compiled by rowe, from materials collected by betterton the actor, it was stated, (and that statement is now ascertained to have been correct,) that he had married anne hathaway, "the daughter of a substantial yeoman." further than this nothing was known. but in september, , was published a very remarkable document, which gives the assurance of law to the time and fact of this event, yet still, unless collated with another record, does nothing to lessen the mystery which had previously surrounded its circumstances. this document consists of two parts; the first, and principal, according to the logic of the case, though second according to the arrangement, being a _license_ for the marriage of william shakspeare with anne hathaway, under the condition "of _once_ asking of the bannes of matrimony," that is, in effect, dispensing with two out of the three customary askings; the second or subordinate part of the document being a _bond_ entered into by two sureties, viz.: fulke sandells and john rychardson, both described as _agricolae_ or yeomen, and both marksmen, (that is, incapable of writing, and therefore subscribing by means of _marks,_) for the payment of forty pounds sterling, in the event of shakspeare, yet a minor, and incapable of binding himself, failing to fulfil the conditions of the license. in the bond, drawn up in latin, there is no mention of shakspeare's name; but in the license, which is altogether english, _his_ name, of course, stands foremost; and as it may gratify the reader to see the very words and orthography of the original, we here extract the _operative_ part of this document, prefacing only, that the license is attached by way of explanation to the bond. "the condition of this obligation is suche, that if hereafter there shall not appere any lawfull lett or impediment, by reason of any precontract, &c., but that willm. shagspere, one thone ptie," [on the one party,] "and anne hathwey of stratford, in the diocess of worcester, maiden, may lawfully solemnize matrimony together; and in the same afterwards remaine and continew like man and wiffe. and, moreover, if the said willm. shagspere do not proceed to solemnization of mariadg with the said anne hathwey, without the consent of hir frinds;--then the said obligation" [viz., to pay forty pounds]" to be voyd and of none effect, or els to stand & abide in full force and vertue." what are we to think of this document? trepidation and anxiety are written upon its face. the parties are not to be married by a special license; not even by an ordinary license; in that case no proclamation of banns, no public asking at all, would have been requisite. economical scruples are consulted; and yet the regular movement of the marriage "through the bell-ropes" [endnote: ] is disturbed. economy, which retards the marriage, is here evidently in collision with some opposite principle which precipitates it. how is all this to be explained? much light is afforded by the date when illustrated by another document. the bond bears date on the th day of november, in the th year of our lady the queen, that is, in . now the baptism of shakspeare's eldest child, susanna, is registered on the th of may in the year following. suppose, therefore, that his marriage was solemnized on the st day of december; it was barely possible that it could be earlier, considering that the sureties, drinking, perhaps, at worcester throughout the th of november, would require the th, in so dreary a season, for their return to stratford; after which some preparation might be requisite to the bride, since the marriage was _not_ celebrated at stratford. next suppose the birth of miss susanna to have occurred, like her father's, two days before her baptism, viz., on the th of may. from december the st to may the th, both days inclusively, are one hundred and seventy-five days; which, divided by seven, gives precisely twenty-five weeks, that is to say, six months short by one week. oh, fie, miss susanna, you came rather before you were wanted. mr. campbell's comment upon the affair is, that "_if_ this was the case, "viz., if the baptism were really solemnized on the th of may," the poet's first child would _appear_ to have been born only six months and eleven days after the bond was entered into. "and he then concludes that, on this assumption," miss susanna shakspeare came into the world a little prematurely." but this is to doubt where there never was any ground for doubting; the baptism was _certainly_ on the th of may; and, in the next place, the calculation of six months and eleven days is sustained by substituting lunar months for calendar, and then only by supposing the marriage to have been celebrated on the very day of subscribing the bond in worcester, and the baptism to have been coincident with the birth; of which suppositions the latter is improbable, and the former, considering the situation of worcester, impossible. strange it is, that, whilst all biographers have worked with so much zeal upon the most barren dates or most baseless traditions in the great poet's life, realizing in a manner the chimeras of laputa, and endeavoring "to extract sunbeams from cucumbers," such a story with regard to such an event, no fiction of village scandal, but involved in legal documents, a story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, should formerly have been dismissed without notice of any kind, and even now, after the discovery of , with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. for our parts, we should have been the last amongst the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or, after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral censures at a simple case of natural frailty, youthful precipitancy of passion, of all trespasses the most venial, where the final intentions are honorable. but in this case there seems to have been something more in motion than passion or the ardor of youth. "i like not," says parson evans, (alluding to falstaff in masquerade,) "i like not when a woman has a great peard; i spy a great peard under her muffler." neither do we like the spectacle of a mature young woman, five years past her majority, wearing the semblance of having been led astray by a boy who had still two years and a half to run of his minority. shakspeare himself, looking back on this part of his youthful history from his maturest years, breathes forth pathetic counsels against the errors into which his own inexperience had been insnared. the disparity of years between himself and his wife he notices in a beautiful scene of the twelfth night. the duke orsino, observing the sensibility which the pretended cesario had betrayed on hearing some touching old snatches of a love strain, swears that his beardless page must have felt the passion of love, which the other admits. upon this the dialogue proceeds thus: duke. what kind of woman is't? viola. of your complexion. duke. she is not worth thee then. what years? viola. i' faith, about your years, my lord. duke. too old, by heaven. _let still the woman take an elder than herself: so wears she to him, so sways she level in her husband's heart._ for, boy, however we do praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, than women's are. viola. i think it well, my lord. duke. _then let thy love be younger than thyself, or thy affection cannot hold the bent;_ for women are as roses, whose fair flower, being once display'd, doth fall that very hour. these counsels were uttered nearly twenty years after the event in his own life, to which they probably look back; for this play is supposed to have been written in shakspeare's thirty-eighth year. and we may read an earnestness in pressing the point as to the _inverted_ disparity of years, which indicates pretty clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experience. but his other indiscretion, in having yielded so far to passion and opportunity as to crop by prelibation, and before they were hallowed, those flowers of paradise which belonged to his marriage day; this he adverts to with even more solemnity of sorrow, and with more pointed energy of moral reproof, in the very last drama which is supposed to have proceeded from his pen, and therefore with the force and sanctity of testamentary counsel. the tempest is all but ascertained to have been composed in , that is, about five years before the poet's death; and indeed could not have been composed much earlier; for the very incident which suggested the basis of the plot, and of the local scene, viz., the shipwreck of sir george somers on the bermudas, (which were in consequence denominated the somers' islands,) did not occur until the year . in the opening of the fourth act, prospero formally betrothes his daughter to ferdinand; and in doing so he pays the prince a well-merited compliment of having "worthily purchas'd" this rich jewel, by the patience with which, for her sake, he had supported harsh usage, and other painful circumstances of his trial. but, he adds solemnly, "if thou dost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite be minister'd;" in that case what would follow? "no sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall, to make this contract grow; _but barren hate, sour-ey'd disdain and discord, shall bestrew the union of your bed with weeds so loathly that you shall hate it both._ therefore take heed, as hymen's lamps shall light you." the young prince assures him in reply, that no strength of opportunity, concurring with the uttermost temptation, not "the murkiest den, the most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion our worser genius can----," should ever prevail to lay asleep his jealousy of self-control, so as to take any advantage of miranda's innocence. and he adds an argument for this abstinence, by way of reminding prospero, that not honor only, but even prudential care of his own happiness, is interested in the observance of his promise. any unhallowed anticipation would, as he insinuates, "take away the edge of that day's celebration, when i shall think, or phoebus' steeds are founder'd, or night kept chain'd below;" that is, when even the winged hours would seem to move too slowly. even thus prospero is not quite satisfied. during his subsequent dialogue with ariel, we are to suppose that ferdinand, in conversing apart with miranda, betrays more impassioned ardor than the wise magician altogether approves. the prince's caresses have not been unobserved; and thus prospero renews his warning: "look thou be true: do not give dalliance too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious, or else--good night your vow." the royal lover reassures him of his loyalty to his engagements; and again the wise father, so honorably jealous for his daughter, professes himself satisfied with the prince's pledges. now in all these emphatic warnings, uttering the language "of that sad wisdom folly leaves behind," who can avoid reading, as in subtle hieroglyphics, the secret record of shakspeare's own nuptial disappointments? we, indeed, that is, universal posterity through every age, have reason to rejoice in these disappointments; for to them, past all doubt, we are indebted for shakspeare's subsequent migration to london, and his public occupation, which, giving him a deep pecuniary interest in the productions of his pen, such as no other literary application of his powers could have approached in that day, were eventually the means of drawing forth those divine works which have survived their author for our everlasting benefit. our own reading and deciphering of the whole case is as follows. the shakspeares were a handsome family, both father and sons. this we assume upon the following grounds: first, on the presumption arising out of john shakspeare's having won the favor of a young heiress higher in rank than himself; secondly, on the presumption involved in the fact of three amongst his four sons having gone upon the stage, to which the most obvious (and perhaps in those days a _sine qua non_) recommendation would be a good person and a pleasing countenance; thirdly, on the direct evidence of aubrey, who assures us that william shakspeare was a handsome and a well-shaped man; fourthly, on the implicit evidence of the stratford monument, which exhibits a man of good figure and noble countenance; fifthly, on the confirmation of this evidence by the chandos portrait, which exhibits noble features, illustrated by the utmost sweetness of expression; sixthly, on the selection of theatrical parts, which it is known that shakspeare personated, most of them being such as required some dignity of form, viz., kings, the athletic (though aged) follower of an athletic young man, and supernatural beings. on these grounds, direct or circumstantial, we believe ourselves warranted in assuming that william shakspeare was a handsome and even noble looking boy. miss anne hathaway had herself probably some personal attractions; and, if an indigent girl, who looked for no pecuniary advantages, would probably have been early sought in marriage. but as the daughter of "a substantial yeoman," who would expect some fortune in his daughter's suitors, she had, to speak coarsely, a little outlived her market. time she had none to lose. william shakspeare pleased her eye; and the gentleness of his nature made him an apt subject for female blandishments, possibly for female arts. without imputing, however, to this anne hathaway any thing so hateful as a settled plot for insnaring him, it was easy enough for a mature woman, armed with such inevitable advantages of experience and of self-possession, to draw onward a blushing novice; and, without directly creating opportunities, to place him in the way of turning to account such as naturally offered. young boys are generally flattered by the condescending notice of grown-up women; and perhaps shakspeare's own lines upon a similar situation, to a young boy adorned with the same natural gifts as himself, may give us the key to the result: "gentle thou art, and therefore to be won; beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd; and, when a woman woos, what woman's son will sourly leave her till he have prevail'd?" once, indeed, entangled in such a pursuit, any person of manly feelings would be sensible that he had no retreat; _that_ would be--to insult a woman, grievously to wound her sexual pride, and to insure her lasting scorn and hatred. these were consequences which the gentle-minded shakspeare could not face. he pursued his good fortunes, half perhaps in heedlessness, half in desperation, until he was roused by the clamorous displeasure of her family upon first discovering the situation of their kinswoman. for such a situation there could be but one atonement, and that was hurried forward by both parties; whilst, out of delicacy towards the bride, the wedding was not celebrated in stratford, (where the register contains no notice of such an event); nor, as malone imagined, in weston-upon-avon, that being in the diocese of gloucester; but in some parish, as yet undiscovered, in the diocese of worcester. but now arose a serious question as to the future maintenance of the young people. john shakspeare was depressed in his circumstances, and he had other children besides william, viz., three sons and a daughter. the elder lives have represented him as burdened with ten; but this was an error, arising out of the confusion between john shakspeare the glover, and john shakspeare a shoemaker. this error has been thus far of use, that, by exposing the fact of two john shakspeares (not kinsmen) residing in stratford-upon-avon, it has satisfactorily proved the name to be amongst those which are locally indigenous to warwickshire. meantime it is now ascertained that john shakspeare the glover had only eight children, viz., four daughters and four sons. the order of their succession was this: joan, margaret, william, gilbert, a second joan, anne, richard, and edmund. three of the daughters, viz., the two eldest of the family, joan and margaret, together with anne, died in childhood. all the rest attained mature ages, and of these william was the eldest. this might give him some advantage in his father's regard; but in a question of pecuniary provision precedency amongst the children of an insolvent is nearly nominal. for the present john shakspeare could do little for his son; and, under these circumstances, perhaps the father of anne hathaway would come forward to assist the new-married couple. this condition of dependency would furnish matter for painful feelings and irritating words. the youthful husband, whose mind would be expanding as rapidly as the leaves and blossoms of spring-time in polar latitudes, would soon come to appreciate the sort of wiles by which he had been caught. the female mind is quick, and almost gifted with the power of witchcraft, to decipher what is passing in the thoughts of familiar companions. silent and forbearing as william shakspeare might be, anne, his staid wife, would read his secret reproaches; ill would she dissemble her wrath, and the less so from the consciousness of having deserved them. it is no uncommon case for women to feel anger in connection with one subject, and to express it in connection with another; which other, perhaps, (except as a serviceable mask,) would have been a matter of indifference to their feelings. anne would, therefore, reply to those inevitable reproaches which her own sense must presume to be lurking in her husband's heart, by others equally stinging, on his inability to support his family, and on his obligations to her father's purse. shakspeare, we may be sure, would be ruminating every hour on the means of his deliverance from so painful a dependency; and at length, after four years' conjugal discord, he would resolve upon that plan of solitary emigration to the metropolis, which, at the same time that it released him from the humiliation of domestic feuds, succeeded so splendidly for his worldly prosperity, and with a train of consequences so vast for all future ages. such, we are persuaded, was the real course of shakspeare's transition from school-boy pursuits to his public career. and upon the known temperament of shakspeare, his genial disposition to enjoy life without disturbing his enjoyment by fretting anxieties, we build the conclusion, that had his friends furnished him with ampler funds, and had his marriage been well assorted or happy, we--the world of posterity--should have lost the whole benefit and delight which we have since reaped from his matchless faculties. the motives which drove him _from_ stratford are clear enough; but what motives determined his course _to_ london, and especially to the stage, still remains to be explained. stratford-upon-avon, lying in the high road from london through oxford to birmingham, (or more generally to the north,) had been continually visited by some of the best comedians during shakspeare's childhood. one or two of the most respectable metropolitan actors were natives of stratford. these would be well known to the elder shakspeare. but, apart from that accident, it is notorious that mere legal necessity and usage would compel all companies of actors, upon coming into any town, to seek, in the first place, from the chief magistrate, a license for opening a theatre, and next, over and above this public sanction, to seek his personal favor and patronage. as an alderman, therefore, but still more whilst clothed with the official powers of chief magistrate, the poet's father would have opportunities of doing essential services to many persons connected with the london stage. the conversation of comedians acquainted with books, fresh from the keen and sparkling circles of the metropolis, and filled with racy anecdotes of the court, as well as of public life generally, could not but have been fascinating, by comparison with the stagnant society of stratford. hospitalities on a liberal scale would be offered to these men. not impossibly this fact might be one principal key to those dilapidations which the family estate had suffered. these actors, on _their_ part, would retain a grateful sense of the kindness they had received, and would seek to repay it to john shakspeare, now that he was depressed in his fortunes, as opportunities might offer. his eldest son, growing up a handsome young man, and beyond all doubt from his earliest days of most splendid colloquial powers, (for assuredly of _him_ it may be taken for granted), "nec licuit populis parvum te, nile, videre," would be often reproached in a friendly way for burying himself in a country life. these overtures, prompted alike by gratitude to the father, and a real selfish interest in the talents of the son, would at length take a definite shape; and, upon, some clear understanding as to the terms of such an arrangement, william shakspeare would at length, (about , according to the received account, that is, in the fifth year of his married life, and the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of his age,) unaccompanied by wife or children, translate himself to london. later than it could not well be; for already in it has been recently ascertained that he held a share in the property of a leading theatre. we must here stop to notice, and the reader will allow us to notice with summary indignation, the slanderous and idle tale which represents shakspeare as having fled to london in the character of a criminal, from the persecutions of sir thomas lucy of charlecot. this tale has long been propagated under two separate impulses. chiefly, perhaps, under the vulgar love of pointed and glaring contrasts; the splendor of the man was in this instance brought into a sort of epigrammatic antithesis with the humility of his fortunes; secondly, under a baser impulse, the malicious pleasure of seeing a great man degraded. accordingly, as in the case of milton, [endnote: ] it has been affirmed that shakspeare had suffered corporal chastisement, in fact, (we abhor to utter such words,) that he had been judicially whipped. now, first of all, let us mark the inconsistency of this tale. the poet was whipped, that is, he was punished most disproportionately, and yet he fled to avoid punishment. next, we are informed that his offence was deer-stealing, and from the park of sir thomas lucy. and it has been well ascertained that sir thomas had no deer, and had no park. moreover, deer-stealing was regarded by our ancestors exactly as poaching is regarded by us. deer ran wild in all the great forests; and no offence was looked upon as so venial, none so compatible with a noble robin-hood style of character, as this very trespass upon what were regarded as _ferae naturae_, and not at all as domestic property. but had it been otherwise, a trespass was not punishable with whipping; nor had sir thomas lucy the power to irritate a whole community like stratford-upon-avon, by branding with permanent disgrace a young man so closely connected with three at least of the best families in the neighborhood. besides, had shakspeare suffered any dishonor of that kind, the scandal would infallibly have pursued him at his very heels to london; and in that case greene, who has left on record, in a posthumous work of , his malicious feelings towards shakspeare, could not have failed to notice it. for, be it remembered, that a judicial flagellation contains a twofold ignominy. flagellation is ignominious in its own nature, even though unjustly inflicted, and by a ruffian; secondly, any judicial punishment is ignominous, even though not wearing a shade of personal degradation. now a judicial flagellation includes both features of dishonor. and is it to be imagined that an enemy, searching with the diligence of malice for matter against shakspeare, should have failed, six years after the event, to hear of that very memorable disgrace which had exiled him from stratford, and was the very occasion of his first resorting to london; or that a leading company of players in the metropolis, _one of whom_, and a chief one, _was his own townsman_, should cheerfully adopt into their society, as an honored partner, a young man yet flagrant from the lash of the executioner or the beadle? this tale is fabulous, and rotten to its core; yet even this does less dishonor to shakspeare's memory than the sequel attached to it. a sort of scurrilous rondeau, consisting of nine lines, so loathsome in its brutal stupidity, and so vulgar in its expression, that we shall not pollute our pages by transcribing it, has been imputed to shakspeare ever since the days of the credulous rowe. the total point of this idiot's drivel consists in calling sir thomas "an asse;" and well it justifies the poet's own remark, "let there be gall enough in thy ink, no matter though thou write with a goose pen." our own belief is, that these lines were a production of charles ii.'s reign, and applied to a sir thomas lucy, not very far removed, if at all, from the age of him who first picked up the pecious filth. the phrase "parliament _member_" we believe to be quite unknown in the colloquial use of queen elizabeth's reign. but, that we may rid ourselves once and for ever of this outrageous calumny upon shakspeare's memory, we shall pursue the story to its final stage. even malone has been thoughtless enough to accredit this closing chapter, which contains, in fact, such a superfetation of folly as the annals of human dullness do not exceed. let us recapitulate the points of the story. a baronet, who has no deer and no park, is supposed to persecute a poet for stealing these aerial deer out of this aerial park, both lying in _nephelococcygia_. the poet sleeps upon this wrong for eighteen years; but at length, hearing that his persecutor is dead and buried, he conceives bloody thoughts of revenge. and this revenge he purposes to execute by picking a hole in his dead enemy's coat-of-arms. is this coat-of-arms, then, sir thomas lucy's? why, no; malone admits that it is not. for the poet, suddenly recollecting that this ridicule would settle upon the son of his enemy, selects another coat-of-arms, with which his dead enemy never had any connection, and he spends his thunder and lighting upon this irrelevant object; and, after all, the ridicule itself lies in a welchman's mispronouncing one single heraldic term--a welchman who mispronounces all words. the last act of the poet's malice recalls to us a sort of jest-book story of an irishman, the vulgarity of which the reader will pardon in consideration of its relevancy. the irishman having lost a pair of silk stockings, mentions to a friend that he has taken steps for recovering them by an advertisement, offering a reward to the finder. his friend objects that the costs of advertising, and the reward, would eat out the full value of the silk stockings. but to this the irishman replies, with a knowing air, that he is not so green as to have overlooked _that_; and that, to keep down the reward, he had advertised the stockings as worsted. not at all less flagrant is the bull ascribed to shakspeare, when he is made to punish a dead man by personalities meant for his exclusive ear, through his coat-of-arms, but at the same time, with the express purpose of blunting and defeating the edge of his own scurrility, is made to substitute for the real arms some others which had no more relation to the dead enemy than they had to the poet himself. this is the very sublime of folly, beyond which human dotage cannot advance. it is painful, indeed, and dishonorable to human nature, that whenever men of vulgar habits and of poor education wish to impress us with a feeling of respect for a man's talents, they are sure to cite, by way of evidence, some gross instance of malignity. power, in their minds, is best illustrated by malice or by the infliction of pain. to this unwelcome fact we have some evidence in the wretched tale which we have just dismissed; and there is another of the same description to be found in all lives of shakspeare, which we will expose to the contempt of the reader whilst we are in this field of discussion, that we may not afterwards have to resume so disgusting a subject. this poet, who was a model of gracious benignity in his manners, and of whom, amidst our general ignorance, thus much is perfectly established, that the term _gentle_ was almost as generally and by prescriptive right associated with his name as the affix of _venerable_ with bede, or _judicious_ with hooker, is alleged to have insulted a friend by an imaginary epitaph beginning "_ten in the hundred_" and supposing him to be damned, yet without wit enough (which surely the stratford bellman could have furnished) for devising any, even fanciful, reason for such a supposition; upon which the comment of some foolish critic is," the _sharpness of the satire_ is said to have stung the man so much that he never forgave it. "we have heard of the sting in the tail atoning for the brainless head; but in this doggerel the tail is surely as stingless as the head is brainless. for, st, _ten in the hundred_ could be no reproach in shakspeare's time, any more than to call a man _three-and-a-half-per-cent_. in this present year, ; except, indeed, amongst those foolish persons who built their morality upon the jewish ceremonial law. shakspeare himself took ten per cent. _ dly_, it happens that john combe, so far from being the object of the poet's scurrility, or viewing the poet as an object of implacable resentment, was a stratford friend; that one of his family was affectionately remembered in shakspeare's will by the bequest of his sword; and that john combe himself recorded his perfect charity with shakspeare by leaving him a legacy of l sterling. and in this lies the key to the whole story. for, _ dly_, the four lines were written and printed before shakspeare was born. the name combe is a common one; and some stupid fellow, who had seen the name in shakspeare's will, and happened also to have seen the lines in a collection of epigrams, chose to connect the cases by attributing an identity to the two john combes, though at war with chronology. finally, there is another specimen of doggerel attributed to shakspeare, which is not equally unworthy of him, because not equally malignant, but otherwise equally below his intellect, no less than his scholarship; we mean the inscription on his grave-stone. this, as a sort of _siste viator_ appeal to future sextons, is worthy of the grave-digger or the parish-clerk, who was probably its author. or it may have been an antique formula, like the vulgar record of ownership in books-- "anthony timothy dolthead's hook, god give him grace therein to look." thus far the matter is of little importance; and it might have been supposed that malignity itself could hardly have imputed such trash to shakspeare. but when we find, even in this short compass, scarcely wider than the posy of a ring, room found for traducing the poet's memory, it becomes important to say, that the leading sentiment, the horror expressed at any disturbance offered to his bones, is not one to which shakspeare could have attached the slightest weight; far less could have outraged the sanctities of place and subject, by affixing to any sentiment whatever (and, according to the fiction of the case, his farewell sentiment) the sanction of a curse. filial veneration and piety towards the memory of this great man, have led us into a digression that might have been unseasonable in any cause less weighty than one, having for its object to deliver his honored name from a load of the most brutal malignity. never more, we hope and venture to believe, will any thoughtless biographer impute to shakspeare the asinine doggerel with which the uncritical blundering of his earliest biographer has caused his name to be dishonored. we now resume the thread of our biography. the stream of history is centuries in working itself clear of any calumny with which it has once been polluted. most readers will be aware of an old story, according to which shakspeare gained his livelihood for some time after coming to london by holding the horses of those who rode to the play. this legend is as idle as any one of those which we have just exposed. no custom ever existed of riding on horseback to the play. gentlemen, who rode valuable horses, would assuredly not expose them systematically to the injury of standing exposed to cold for two or even four hours; and persons of inferior rank would not ride on horseback in the town. besides, had such a custom ever existed, stables (or sheds at least) would soon have arisen to meet the public wants; and in some of the dramatic sketches of the day, which noticed every fashion as it arose, this would not have been overlooked. the story is traced originally to sir william davenant. betterton the actor, who professed to have received it from him, passed it onwards to rowe, he to pope, pope to bishop newton, the editor of milton, and newton to dr. johnson. this pedigree of the fable, however, adds nothing to its credit, and multiplies the chances of some mistake. another fable, not much less absurd, represents shakspeare as having from the very first been borne upon the establishment of the theatre, and so far contradicts the other fable, but originally in the very humble character of _call-boy_ or deputy prompter, whose business it was to summon each performer according to his order of coming upon the stage. this story, however, quite as much as the other, is irreconcileable with the discovery recently made by mr. collier, that in shakspeare was a shareholder in the important property of a principal london theatre. it seems destined that all the undoubted facts of shakspeare's life should come to us through the channel of legal documents, which are better evidence even than imperial medals; whilst, on the other hand, all the fabulous anecdotes, not having an attorney's seal to them, seem to have been the fictions of the wonder maker. the plain presumption from the record of shakspeare's situation in , coupled with the fact that his first arrival in london was possibly not until , but according to the earliest account not before , a space of time which leaves but little room for any remarkable changes of situation, seems to be, that, either in requital of services done to the players by the poet's family, or in consideration of money advanced by his father-in-law, or on account of shakspeare's personal accomplishments as an actor, and as an adapter of dramatic works to the stage; for one of these reasons, or for all of them united, william shakspeare, about the d year of his age, was adopted into the partnership of a respectable histrionic company, possessing a first-rate theatre in the metropolis. if were the year in which he came up to london, it seems probable enough that his immediate motive to that step was the increasing distress of his father; for in that year john shakspeare resigned the office of alderman. there is, however, a bare possibility that shakspeare might have gone to london about the time when he completed his twenty-first year, that is, in the spring of , but not earlier. nearly two years after the birth of his eldest daughter susanna, his wife lay in for a second and a _last_ time; but she then brought her husband twins, a son and a daughter. these children were baptized in february of the year ; so that shakspeare's whole family of three children were born and baptized two months before he completed his majority. the twins were baptized by the names of hamnet and judith, those being the names of two amongst their sponsors, viz., mr. sadler and his wife. hamnet, which is a remarkable name in itself, becomes still more so from its resemblance to the immortal name of hamlet [endnote: ] the dane; it was, however, the real baptismal name of mr. sadler, a friend of shakspeare's, about fourteen years older than himself. shakspeare's son must then have been most interesting to his heart, both as a twin child and as his only boy. he died in , when he was about eleven years old. both daughters survived their father; both married; both left issue, and thus gave a chance for continuing the succession from the great poet. but all the four grandchildren died without offspring. of shakspeare personally, at least of shakspeare the man, as distinguished from the author, there remains little more to record. already in , greene, in his posthumous groat's-worth of wit, had expressed the earliest vocation of shakspeare in the following sentence: "there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; in his own conceit the only _shakscene_ in a country!" this alludes to shakspeare's office of recasting, and even recomposing, dramatic works, so as to fit them for representation; and master greene, it is probable, had suffered in his self-estimation, or in his purse, by the alterations in some piece of his own, which the duty of shakspeare to the general interests of the theatre had obliged him to make. in it has been supposed that shakspeare wrote his first drama, the two gentlemen of verona; the least characteristically marked of all his plays, and, with the exception of love's labors lost, the least interesting. from this year, to that of , are just twenty years, within which space lie the whole dramatic creations of shakspeare, averaging nearly one for every six months. in was written the tempest, which is supposed to have been the last of all shakspeare's works. even on that account, as mr. campbell feelingly observes, it has "a sort of sacredness;" and it is a most remarkable fact, and one calculated to make a man superstitious, that in this play the great enchanter prospero, in whom," _as if conscious_, "says mr. campbell," _that this would be his last work_, the poet has been _inspired to typify himself as_ a wise, potent, and _benevolent magician_" of whom, indeed, as of shakspeare himself, it may be said, that "within that circle" (the circle of his own art)" none durst tread but he, "solemnly and for ever renounces his mysterious functions, symbolically breaks his enchanter's wand, and declares that he will bury his books, his science, and his secrets, "deeper than did ever plummet sound." nay, it is even ominous, that in this play, and from the voice of prospero, issues that magnificent prophecy of the total destruction which should one day swallow up "the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea all which it inherit." and this prophecy is followed immediately by a most profound ejaculation, gathering into one pathetic abstraction the total philosophy of life: "we are such stuff as dreams are made of; and our little life is rounded by a sleep;" that is, in effect, our life is a little tract of feverish vigils, surrounded and islanded by a shoreless ocean of sleep--sleep before birth, sleep after death. these remarkable passages were probably not undesigned; but if we suppose them to have been thrown off without conscious notice of their tendencies, then, according to the superstition of the ancient grecians, they would have been regarded as prefiguring words, prompted by the secret genius that accompanies every man, such as insure along with them their own accomplishment. with or without intention, however, it is believed that shakspeare wrote nothing more after this exquisite romantic drama. with respect to the remainder of his personal history, dr. drake and others have supposed, that during the twenty years from to , he visited stratford often, and latterly once a year. in he had possessed some share in a theatre; in he had a considerable share. through lord southampton, as a surviving friend of lord essex, who was viewed as the martyr to his scottish politics, there can be no doubt that shakspeare had acquired the favor of james i.; and accordingly, on the th of may, , about two months after the king's accession to the throne of england, a patent was granted to the company of players who possessed the globe theatre; in which patent shakspeare's name stands second. this patent raised the company to the rank of his majesty's servants, whereas previously they are supposed to have been simply the servants of the lord chamberlain. perhaps it was in grateful acknowledgment of this royal favor that shakspeare afterwards, in , paid that sublime compliment to the house of stuart, which is involved in the vision shown to macbeth. this vision is managed with exquisite skill. it was impossible to display the whole series of princes from macbeth to james i.; but he beholds the posterity of banquo, one "gold-bound brow" succeeding to another, until he comes to an eighth apparition of a scottish king, "who bears a glass which shows him many more; and some he sees who twofold balls and treble sceptres carry;" thus bringing down without tedium the long succession to the very person of james i., by the symbolic image of the two crowns united on one head. about the beginning of the century shakspeare had become rich enough to purchase the best house in stratford, called _the great house_, which name he altered to _new place_; and in he bought one hundred and seven acres adjacent to this house for a sum ( l) corresponding to about guineas of modern money. malone thinks that he purchased the house as early as ; and it is certain that about that time he was able to assist his father in obtaining a renewed grant of arms from the herald's college, and therefore, of course, to re-establish his father's fortunes. ten years of well-directed industry, viz., from to , and the prosperity of the theatre in which he was a proprietor, had raised him to affluence; and after another ten years, improved with the same success, he was able to retire with an income of l, or (according to the customary computations) in modern money of l, per annum. shakspeare was in fact the first man of letters, pope the second, and sir walter scott the third, who, in great britain, has ever realized a large fortune by literature; or in christendom, if we except voltaire, and two dubious cases in italy. the four or five latter years of his life shakspeare passed in dignified ease, in profound meditation, we may be sure, and in universal respect, at his native town of stratford; and there he died, on the d of april, . [endnote: ] his daughter susanna had been married on the th of june of the year , to dr. john hall, [endnote: ] a physician in stratford. the doctor died in november, , aged sixty; his wife, at the age of sixty-six, on july , . they had one child, a daughter, named elizabeth, born in , married april , , to thomas nashe, esq., left a widow in , and subsequently remarried to sir john barnard; but this lady barnard, the sole grand-daughter of the poet, had no children by either marriage. the other daughter, judith, on february , , (about ten weeks before her father's death,) married mr. thomas quincy of stratford, by whom she had three sons, shakspeare, richard, and thomas. judith was about thirty-one years old at the time of her marriage; and living just forty-six years afterwards, she died in february, , at the age of seventy-seven. her three sons died without issue; and thus, in the direct lineal descent, it is certain that no representative has survived of this transcendent poet, the most august amongst created intellects. after this review of shakspeare's life, it becomes our duty to take a summary survey of his works, of his intellectual powers, and of his station in literature, a station which is now irrevocably settled, not so much (which happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance of favorable suffrages, as by acclamation; not so much by the _voices_ of those who admire him up to the verge of idolatry, as by the _acts_ of those who everywhere seek for his works among the primal necessities of life, demand them, and crave them as they do their daily bread; not so much by eulogy openly proclaiming itself, as by the silent homage recorded in the endless multiplication of what he has bequeathed us; not so much by his own compatriots, who, with regard to almost every other author, [endnote: ] compose the total amount of his _effective_ audience, as by the unanimous "all hail!" of intellectual christendom; finally, not by the hasty partisanship of his own generation, nor by the biassed judgment of an age trained in the same modes of feeling and of thinking with himself,--but by the solemn award of generation succeeding to generation, of one age correcting the obliquities or peculiarities of another; by the verdict of two hundred and thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very _latest_ of his creations, or of two hundred and forty-seven years if we date from the earliest; a verdict which has been continually revived and re-opened, probed, searched, vexed, by criticism in every spirit, from the most genial and intelligent, down to the most malignant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads and great ignorance could suggest when cooperating with impure hearts and narrow sensibilities; a verdict, in short, sustained and countersigned by a longer series of writers, many of them eminent for wit or learning, than were ever before congregated upon any inquest relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient [endnote: ] or modern, pagan or christian. it was a most witty saying with respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, who made a trade of insulting the memories of deceased authors by forged writings, that he was "among the new terrors of death." but in the gravest sense it may be affirmed of shakspeare, that he is among the modern luxuries of life; that life, in fact, is a new thing, and one more to be coveted, since shakspeare has extended the domains of human consciousness, and pushed its dark frontiers into regions not so much as dimly descried or even suspected before his time, far less illuminated (as now they are) by beauty and tropical luxuriance of life. for instance,--a single instance, indeed one which in itself is a world of new revelation, --the possible beauty of the female character had not been seen as in a dream before shakspeare called into perfect life the radiant shapes of desdemona, of imogene, of hermione, of perdita, of ophelia, of miranda, and many others. the una of spenser, earlier by ten or fifteen years than most of these, was an idealized portrait of female innocence and virgin purity, but too shadowy and unreal for a dramatic reality. and as to the grecian classics, let not the reader imagine for an instant that any prototype in this field of shakspearian power can be looked for there. the _antigone_ and the _electra_ of the tragic poets are the two leading female characters that classical antiquity offers to our respect, but assuredly not to our impassioned love, as disciplined and exalted in the school of shakspeare. they challenge our admiration, severe, and even stern, as impersonations of filial duty, cleaving to the steps of a desolate and afflicted old man; or of sisterly affection, maintaining the rights of a brother under circumstances of peril, of desertion, and consequently of perfect self-reliance. iphigenia, again, though not dramatically coming before us in her own person, but according to the beautiful report of a spectator, presents us with a fine statuesque model of heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even in the very agonies of her cruel immolation, refused to forget, by a single indecorous gesture, or so much as a moment's neglect of her own princely descent, and that she herself was "a lady in the land." these are fine marble groups, but they are not the warm breathing realities of shakspeare; there is "no speculation" in their cold marble eyes; the breath of life is not in their nostrils; the fine pulses of womanly sensibilities are not throbbing in their bosoms. and besides this immeasurable difference between the cold moony reflexes of life, as exhibited by the power of grecian art, and the true sunny life of shakspeare, it must he observed that the antigones, &c. of the antique put forward but one single trait of character, like the aloe with its single blossom. this solitary feature is presented to us as an abstraction, and as an insulated quality; whereas in shakspeare all is presented in the _concrete_; that is to say, not brought forward in relief, as by some effort of an anatomical artist; but embodied and imbedded, so to speak, as by the force of a creative nature, in the complex system of a human life; a life in which all the elements move and play simultaneously, and with something more than mere simultaneity or co-existence, acting and re-acting each upon the other, nay, even acting by each other and through each other. in shakspeare's characters is felt for ever a real _organic_ life, where each is for the whole and in the whole, and where the whole is for each and in each. they only are real incarnations. the greek poets could not exhibit any approximations to _female_ character, without violating the truth of grecian life, and shocking the feelings of the audience. the drama with the greeks, as with us, though much less than with us, was a picture of human life; and that which could not occur in life could not wisely be exhibited on the stage. now, in ancient greece, women were secluded from the society of men. the conventual sequestration of the hareem, or female apartment [endnote: ] of the house, and the mahommedan consecration of its threshold against the ingress of males, had been transplanted from asia into greece thousands of years perhaps before either convents or mahommed existed. thus barred from all open social intercourse, women could not develop or express any character by word or action. even to _have_ a character, violated, to a grecian mind, the ideal portrait of feminine excellence; whence, perhaps, partly the too generic, too little individualized, style of grecian beauty. but prominently to _express_ a character was impossible under the common tenor of grecian life, unless when high tragical catastrophes transcended the decorums of that tenor, or for a brief interval raised the curtain which veiled it. hence the subordinate part which women play upon the greek stage in all but some half dozen cases. in the paramount tragedy on that stage, the model tragedy, the (_oedipus tyrannus_ of sophocles), there is virtually no woman at all; for jocasta is a party to the story merely as the dead laius or the self-murdered sphinx was a party, viz., by her contributions to the fatalities of the event, not by anything she does or says spontaneously. in fact, the greek poet, if a wise poet, could not address himself genially to a task in which he must begin by shocking the sensibilities of his countrymen. and hence followed, not only the dearth of female characters in the grecian drama, but also a second result still more favorable to the sense of a new power evolved by shakspeare. whenever the common law of grecian life did give way, it was, as we have observed, to the suspending force of some great convulsion or tragical catastrophe. this for a moment (like an earthquake in a nunnery) would set at liberty even the timid, fluttering grecian women, those doves of the dove-cot, and would call some of them into action. but which? precisely those of energetic and masculine minds; the timid and feminine would but shrink the more from public gaze and from tumult. thus it happened, that such female characters as _were_ exhibited in greece, could not but be the harsh and the severe. if a gentle ismene appeared for a moment in contest with some energetic sister antigone, (and chiefly, perhaps, by way of drawing out the fiercer character of that sister,) she was soon dismissed as unfit for scenical effect. so that not only were female characters few, but, moreover, of these few the majority were but repetitions of masculine qualities in female persons. female agency being seldom summoned on the stage, except when it had received a sort of special dispensation from its sexual character, by some terrific convulsions of the house or the city, naturally it assumed the style of action suited to these circumstances. and hence it arose, that not woman as she differed from man, but woman as she resembled man--woman, in short, seen under circumstances so dreadful as to abolish the effect of sexual distinction, was the woman of the greek tragedy. [endnote: ] and hence generally arose for shakspeare the wider field, and the more astonishing by its perfect novelty, when he first introduced female characters, not as mere varieties or echoes of masculine characters, a medea or clytemnestra, or a vindictive hecuba, the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, but female characters that had the appropriate beauty of female nature; woman no longer grand, terrific, and repulsive, but woman "after her kind"--the other hemisphere of the dramatic world; woman, running through the vast gamut of womanly loveliness; woman, as emancipated, exalted, ennobled, under a new law of christian morality; woman, the sister and coequal of man, no longer his slave, his prisoner, and sometimes his rebel." it is a far cry to loch awe; "and from the athenian stage to the stage of shakspeare, it may be said, is a prodigious interval. true; but prodigious as it is, there is really nothing between them. the roman stage, at least the tragic stage, as is well known, was put out, as by an extinguisher, by the cruel amphitheatre, just as a candle is made pale and ridiculous by daylight. those who were fresh from the real murders of the bloody amphitheatre regarded with contempt the mimic murders of the stage. stimulation too coarse and too intense had its usual effect in making the sensibilities callous. christian emperors arose at length, who abolished the amphitheatre in its bloodier features. but by that time the genius of the tragic muse had long slept the sleep of death. and that muse had no resurrection until the age of shakspeare. so that, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen centuries and upwards separates shakspeare from euripides, the last of the surviving greek tragedians, the one is still the nearest successor of the other, just as connaught and the islands in clew bay are next neighbors to america, although three thousand watery columns, each of a cubic mile in dimensions, divide them from each other. a second reason, which lends an emphasis of novelty and effective power to shakspeare's female world, is a peculiar fact of contrast which exists between that and his corresponding world of men. let us explain. the purpose and the intention of the grecian stage was not primarily to develop human _character_, whether in men or in women: human _fates_ were its object; great tragic situations under the mighty control of a vast cloudy destiny, dimly descried at intervals, and brooding over human life by mysterious agencies, and for mysterious ends. man, no longer the representative of an august _will_, man the passion-puppet of fate, could not with any effect display what we call a character, which is a distinction between man and man, emanating originally from the will, and expressing its determinations, moving under the large variety of human impulses. the will is the central pivot of character; and this was obliterated, thwarted, cancelled, by the dark fatalism which brooded over the grecian stage. that explanation will sufficiently clear up the reason why marked or complex variety of character was slighted by the great principles of the greek tragedy. and every scholar who has studied that grand drama of greece with feeling,--that drama, so magnificent, so regal, so stately,--and who has thoughtfully investigated its principles, and its difference from the english drama, will acknowledge that powerful and elaborate character, character, for instance, that could employ the fiftieth part of that profound analysis which has been applied to hamlet, to falstaff, to lear, to othello, and applied by mrs. jamieson so admirably to the full development of the shakspearian heroines, would have been as much wasted, nay, would have been defeated, and interrupted the blind agencies of fate, just in the same way as it would injure the shadowy grandeur of a ghost to individualize it too much. milton's angels are slightly touched, superficially touched, with differences of character; but they are such differences, so simple and general, as are just sufficient to rescue them from the reproach applied to virgil's "_fortemque gyan, forlemque cloanthem;_" just sufficient to make them knowable apart. pliny speaks of painters who painted in one or two colors; and, as respects the angelic characters, milton does so; he is _monochromatic_. so, and for reasons resting upon the same ultimate philosophy, were the mighty architects of the greek tragedy. they also were monochromatic; they also, as to the characters of their persons, painted in one color. and so far there might have been the same novelty in shakspeare's men as in his women. there _might_ have been; but the reason why there is _not_, must be sought in the fact, that history, the muse of history, had there even been no such muse as melpomene, would have forced us into an acquaintance with human character. history, as the representative of actual life, of real man, gives us powerful delineations of character in its chief agents, that is, in men; and therefore it is that shakspeare, the absolute creator of female character, was but the mightiest of all painters with regard to male character. take a single instance. the antony of shakspeare, immortal for its execution, is found, after all, as regards the primary conception, in history. shakspeare's delineation is but the expansion of the germ already preexisting, by way of scattered fragments, in cicero's philippics, in cicero's letters, in appian, &c. but cleopatra, equally fine, is a pure creation of art. the situation and the scenic circumstances belong to history, but the character belongs to shakspeare. in the great world, therefore, of woman, as the interpreter of the shifting phases and the lunar varieties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely satellite of man, shakspeare stands not the first only, not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic oracle of truth. woman, therefore, the beauty of the female mind, _this_ is one great field of his power. the supernatural world, the world of apparitions, _that_ is another. for reasons which it would be easy to give, reasons emanating from the gross mythology of the ancients, no grecian, [endnote: ] no roman, could have conceived a ghost. that shadowy conception, the protesting apparition, the awful projection of the human conscience, belongs to the christian mind. and in all christendom, who, let us ask, who, who but shakspeare has found the power for effectually working this mysterious mode of being? in summoning back to earth "the majesty of buried denmark," how like an awful necromancer does shakspeare appear! all the pomps and grandeurs which religion, which the grave, which the popular superstition had gathered about the subject of apparitions, are here converted to his purpose, and bend to one awful effect. the wormy grave brought into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn; the trumpet of resurrection suggested, and again as an antagonist idea to the crowing of the cock, (a bird ennobled in the christian mythus by the part he is made to play at the crucifixion;) its starting "as a guilty thing" placed in opposition to its majestic expression of offended dignity when struck at by the partisans of the sentinels; its awful allusions to the secrets of its prison-house; its ubiquity, contrasted with its local presence; its aerial substance, yet clothed in palpable armor; the heart-shaking solemnity of its language, and the appropriate scenery of its haunt, viz., the ramparts of a capital fortress, with no witnesses but a few gentlemen mounting guard at the dead of night,--what a mist, what a _mirage_ of vapor, is here accumulated, through which the dreadful being in the centre looms upon us in far larger proportions, than could have happened had it been insulated and left naked of this circumstantial pomp! in the _tempest_, again, what new modes of life, preternatural, yet far as the poles from the spiritualities of religion! ariel in antithesis to caliban! what is most ethereal to what is most animal! a phantom of air, an abstraction of the dawn and of vesper sun-lights, a bodiless sylph on the one hand; on the other a gross carnal monster, like the miltonic asmodai, "the fleshliest incubus" among the fiends, and yet so far ennobled into interest by his intellectual power, and by the grandeur of misanthropy! [endnote: ] in the _midsummer-night's dream_, again, we have the old traditional fairy, a lovely mode of preternatural life, remodified by shakspeare's eternal talisman. oberon and titania remind us at first glance of ariel. they approach, but how far they recede. they are like--"like, but, oh, how different!" and in no other exhibition of this dreamy population of the moonlight forests and forest-lawns, are the circumstantial proprieties of fairy life so exquisitely imagined, sustained, or expressed. the dialogue between oberon and titania is, of itself, and taken separately from its connection, one of the most delightful poetic scenes that literature affords. the witches in macbeth are another variety of supernatural life, in which shakspeare's power to enchant and to disenchant are alike portentous. the circumstances of the blasted heath, the army at a distance, the withered attire of the mysterious hags, and the choral litanies of their fiendish sabbath, are as finely imagined in their kind as those which herald and which surround the ghost in hamlet. there we see the _positive_ of shakspeare's superior power. but now turn and look to the _negative_. at a time when the trials of witches, the royal book on demonology, and popular superstition (all so far useful, as they prepared a basis of undoubting faith for the poet's serious use of such agencies) had degraded and polluted the ideas of these mysterious beings by many mean associations, shakspeare does not fear to employ them in high tragedy, (a tragedy moreover which, though not the very greatest of his efforts as an intellectual whole, nor as a struggle of passion, is _among_ the greatest in any view, and positively _the_ greatest for scenical grandeur, and in that respect makes the nearest approach of all english tragedies to the grecian model;) he does not fear to introduce, for the same appalling effect as that for which aeschylus introduced the eumenides, a triad of old women, concerning whom an english wit has remarked this grotesque peculiarity in the popular creed of that day,--that although potent over winds and storms, in league with powers of darkness, they yet stood in awe of the constable,--yet relying on his own supreme power to disenchant as well as to enchant, to create and to uncreate, he mixes these women and their dark machineries with the power of armies, with the agencies of kings, and the fortunes of martial kingdoms. such was the sovereignty of this poet, so mighty its compass! a third fund of shakspeare's peculiar power lies in his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. from his works alone might be gathered a golden bead-roll of thoughts the deepest, subtilest, most pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelligible; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of every human being, under all the accidents of life, and all vicissitudes of fortune. but this subject offers so vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the prerogative of shakspeare to have thought more finely and more extensively than all other poets combined, that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by doing more, in our narrow limits, than simply noticing it as one of the emblazonries upon shakspeare's shield. fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, _barely_ indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to offer any inadequate illustrations) one mode of shakspeare's dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not attracted any special or separate notice. we allude to the forms of life, and natural human passion, as apparent in the structure of his dialogue. among the many defects and infirmities of the french and of the italian drama, indeed, we may say of the greek, the dialogue proceeds always by independent speeches, replying indeed to each other, but never modified in its several openings by the momentary effect of its several terminal forms immediately preceding. now, in shakspeare, who first set an example of that most important innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous speech. every form of natural interruption, breaking through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses of tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interrogative, ardent reiteration when a question has been evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the hostile words; every impatient continuation of the hostile statement; in short, all modes and formulae by which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of commencement, --these are as rife in shakspeare's dialogue as in life itself; and how much vivacity, how profound a verisimilitude, they add to the scenic effect as an imitation of human passion and real life, we need not say. a volume might be written illustrating the vast varieties of shakspeare's art and power in this one field of improvement; another volume might be dedicated to the exposure of the lifeless and unnatural result from the opposite practice in the foreign stages of france and italy. and we may truly say, that were shakspeare distinguished from them by this single feature of nature and propriety, he would on that account alone have merited a great immortality. the dramatic works of shakspeare generally acknowledged to be genuine consist of thirty-five pieces. the following is the chronological order in which they are supposed to have been written, according to mr. malone, as given in his second edition of shakspeare, and by mr. george chalmers in his supplemental apology for the believers in the shakspeare papers: chalmers. malone. . the comedy of errors, . love's labors lost, . romeo and juliet, . henry vi., the first part, . henry vi., the second part, . henry vl, the third part, . the two gentlemen of verona, . richard iii., . richard ii, . the merry wives of windsor, . henry iv., the first part, . henry iv., the second part, . henry v., . the merchant of venice, . hamlet, . king john, . a midsummer-night's dream, . the taming of the shrew, . all's well that ends well, . much ado about nothing, . as you like it, . troilus and cressida, . timon of athens, . the winter's tale, . measure for measure, . king lear, . cymbeline, . macbeth, . julius caesar, . antony and cleopatra, . coriolanus, . the tempest, . the twelfth night, . henry viii., . othello, pericles and titus andronicus, although inserted in all the late editions of shakspeare's plays, are omitted in the above list, both by malone and chalmers, as not being shakspeare's. the first edition of the works was published in , in a folio volume, entitled mr. william shakspeare's comedies, histories, and tragedies. the second edition was published in , the third in , and the fourth in , all in folio; but the edition of is considered the most authentic. rowe published an edition in seven vols. vo, in . editions were published by pope, in six vols. to, in ; by warburton, in eight vols. vo, in ; by dr. johnson, in eight vols. vo, in ; by stevens, in four vols. vo, in ; by malone, in ten vols. vo, in ; by alexander chalmers, in nine vols. vo, in ; by johnson and stevens, revised by isaac reed, in twenty-one vols. vo, in ; and the plays and poems, with notes by malone, were edited by james boswell, and published in twenty-one vols. vo, in . besides these, numerous editions have been published from time to time. notes. note . mr. campbell, the latest editor of shakspeare's dramatic works, observes that "the poet's name has been variously written shax-peare, shackspeare, shakspeare, and shakspere;" to which varieties might be added shagspere, from the worcester marriage license, published in . but the fact is, that by combining with all the differences in spelling the first syllable, all those in spelling the second, more than twenty-five distinct varieties of the name may be expanded, (like an algebraic series,) for the choice of the curious in mis-spelling. above all things, those varieties which arise from the intercalation of the middle _e, _(that is, the _e_ immediately before the final syllable _spear,_) can never be overlooked by those who remember, at the opening of the dunciad, the note upon this very question about the orthography of shakspeare's name, as also upon the other great question about the title of the immortal satire, whether it ought not to have been the dunceiade, seeing that dunce, its great author and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense with the letter _e._ meantime we must remark, that the first three of mr. campbell's variations are mere caprices of the press; as is shagspere; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety arose out of the gross clownish pronunciation of the two hiccuping _"marksmen"_ who rode over to worcester for the license; and one cannot forbear laughing at the bishop's secretary for having been so misled by two varlets, professedly incapable of signing their own names. the same drunken villains had cut down the bride's name _hathaway_ into _hathwey._ finally, to treat the matter with seriousness, sir frederick madden has shown, in his recent letter to the society of antiquaries, that the poet himself in all probability _wrote_ the name uniformly _shakspere._ orthography, both of proper names, of appellatives, and of words universally, was very unsettled up to a period long subsequent to that of shakspeare. still it must usually have happened that names written variously and laxly by others, would be written uniformly by the owners; especially by those owners who had occasion to sign their names frequently, and by literary people, whose attention was often, as well as consciously, directed to the proprieties of spelling. _shakspeare_ is now too familiar to the eye for any alteration to be attempted; but it is pretty certain that sir frederick madden is right in stating the poet's own signature to have been uniformly _shakspere._ it is so written twice in the course of his will, and it is so written on a blank leaf of florio's english translation of montaigne's essays; a book recently discovered, and sold, on account of its autograph, for a hundred guineas. note . but, as a proof that, even in the case of royal christenings, it was not thought pious to "tempt god," as it were, by delay, edward vi., the only son of henry viii., was born on the th day of october in the year . and there was a delay on account of the sponsors, since the birth was not in london. yet how little that delay was made, may be seen by this fact: the birth took place in the dead of the night, the day was friday; and yet, in spite of all delay, the christening was most pompously celebrated on the succeeding monday. and prince arthur, the elder brother of henry viii., was christened on the very next sunday succeeding to his birth, notwithstanding an inevitable delay, occasioned by the distance of lord oxford, his godfather, and the excessive rains, which prevented the earl being reached by couriers, or himself reaching winchester, without extraordinary exertions. note . a great modern poet refers to this very case of music entering "the mouldy chambers of the dull idiot's brain;" but in support of what seems to us a baseless hypothesis. note . probably addison's fear of the national feeling was a good deal strengthened by his awe of milton and of dryden, both of whom had expressed a homage towards shakspeare which language cannot transcend. amongst his political friends also were many intense admirers of shakspeare. note . he who is weak enough to kick and spurn his own native literature, even if it were done with more knowledge than is shown by lord shaftesbury, will usually be kicked and spurned in his turn; and accordingly it has been often remarked, that the characteristics are unjustly neglected in our days. for lord shaftesbury, with all his pedantry, was a man of great talents. leibnitz had the sagacity to see this through the mists of a translation. note . perhaps the most bitter political enemy of charles i. will have the candor to allow that, for a prince of those times, he was truly and eminently accomplished. his knowledge of the arts was considerable; and, as a patron of art, he stands foremost amongst all british sovereigns to this hour. he said truly of himself, and wisely as to the principle, that he understood english law as well as a gentleman ought to understand it; meaning that an attorney's minute knowledge of forms and technical niceties was illiberal. speaking of him as an author, we must remember that the _eikon basilike_ is still unappropriated; that question is still open. but supposing the king's claim negatived, still, in his controversy with henderson, in his negotiations at the isle of wight and elsewhere, he discovered a power of argument, a learning, and a strength of memory, which are truly admirable; whilst the whole of his accomplishments are recommended by a modesty and a humility as rare as they are unaffected. note . the necessity of compression obliges us to omit many arguments and references by which we could demonstrate the fact, that shakspeare's reputation was always in a progressive state; allowing only for the interruption of about seventeen years, which this poet, in common with all others, sustained, not so much from the state of war, (which did not fully occupy four of those years,) as from the triumph of a gloomy fanaticism. deduct the twenty-three years of the seventeenth century, which had elapsed before the first folio appeared, to this space add seventeen years of fanatical madness, during fourteen of which _all_ dramatic entertainments were suppressed, the remainder is sixty years. and surely the sale of four editions of a vast folio in that space of time was an expression of an abiding interest. _no other poet, except spenser, continued to sell throughout the century_. besides, in arguing the case of a _dramatic_ poet, we must bear in mind, that although readers of learned books might be diffused over the face of the land, the readers of poetry would be chiefly concentred in the metropolis; and such persons would have no need to buy what they heard at the theatres. but then comes the question, whether shakspeare kept possession of the theatres. and we are really humiliated by the gross want of sense which has been shown, by malone chiefly, but also by many others, in discussing this question. from the restoration to , says malone, no more than four plays of shakspeare's were performed by a principal company in london. "such was the lamentable taste of those times, that the plays of fletcher, jonson, and shirley, were much oftener exhibited than those of our author." what cant is this! if that taste were "lamentable," what are we to think of our own times, when plays a thousand times below those of fletcher, or even of shirley, continually displace shakspeare? shakspeare would himself have exulted in finding that he gave way only to dramatists so excellent. and, as we have before observed, both then and now, it is the very familiarity with shakspeare, which often banishes him from audiences honestly in quest of relaxation and amusement. novelty is the very soul of such relaxation; but in our closets, when we are _not_ unbending, when our minds are in a state of tension from intellectual cravings, then it is that we resort to shakspeare; and oftentimes those who honor him most, like ourselves, are the most impatient of seeing his divine scenes disfigured by unequal representation, (good, perhaps, in a single personation, bad in all the rest;) or to hear his divine thoughts mangled in the recitation; or, (which is worst of all,) to hear them dishonored and defeated by imperfect apprehension in the audience, or by defective sympathy. meantime, if one theatre played only four of shakspeare's dramas, another played at least seven. but the grossest folly of malone is, in fancying the numerous alterations so many insults to shakspeare, whereas they expressed as much homage to his memory as if the unaltered dramas had been retained. the substance _was_ retained. the changes were merely concessions to the changing views of scenical propriety; sometimes, no doubt, made with a simple view to the revolution effected by davenant at the restoration, in bringing _scenes_(in the painter's sense) upon the stage; sometimes also with a view to the altered fashions of the audience during the suspensions of the action, or perhaps to the introduction of _after-pieces,_ by which, of course, the time was abridged for the main performance. a volume might be written upon this subject. meantime let us never be told, that a poet was losing, or had lost his ground, who found in his lowest depression, amongst his almost idolatrous supporters, a great king distracted by civil wars, a mighty republican poet distracted by puritanical fanaticism, the greatest successor by far of that great poet, a papist and a bigoted royalist, and finally, the leading actor of the century, who gave and reflected the ruling impulses of his age. note . one of the profoundest tests by which we can measure the congeniality of an author with the national genius and temper, is the degree in which his thoughts or his phrases interweave themselves with our daily conversation, and pass into the currency of the language. _few french authors, if any, have imparted one phrase to the colloquial idiom;_ with respect to shakspeare, a large dictionary might be made of such phrases as "win golden opinions," "in my mind's eye," "patience on a monument," "o'erstep the modesty of nature," "more honor'd in the breach than in the observance," "palmy state," "my poverty and not my will consents, "and so forth, without end. this reinforcement of the general language, by aids from the mintage of shakspeare, had already commenced in the seventeenth century. note . in fact, by way of representing to himself the system or scheme of the english roads, the reader has only to imagine one great letter x, or a st. andrew's cross, laid down from north to south, and decussating at birmingham. even coventry, which makes a slight variation for one or two roads, and so far disturbs this decussation, by shifting it eastwards, is still in warwickshire. note . and probably so called by some remote ancestor who had emigrated from the forest of ardennes, in the netherlands, and _now_ for ever memorable to english ears from its proximity to waterloo. note . let not the reader impute to us the gross anachronism of making an estimate for shakspeare's days in a coin which did not exist until a century, within a couple of years, after shakspeare's birth, and did not settle to the value of twenty-one shillings until a century after his death. the nerve of such an anachronism would lie in putting the estimate into a mouth of that age. and this is precisely the blunder into which the foolish forger of vortigern, &c., has fallen. he does not indeed directly mention guineas; but indirectly and virtually he does, by repeatedly giving us accounts imputed to shakspearian contemporaries, in which the sum total amounts to l s.; or to l s.; or, again, to l s. d. a man is careful to subscribe l s. and so forth. but how could such amounts have arisen unless under a secret reference to guineas, which were not in existence until charles ii.'s reign; and, moreover, to guineas at their final settlement by law into twenty-one shillings each, which did not take place until george i. 's reign. note . thomas campbell, the poet, in his eloquent remarks on the life and writings of william shakspeare, prefixed to a popular edition of the poet's dramatic works. london, . note . after all the assistance given to such equations between different times or different places by sir george shuckborough's tables, and other similar investigations, it is still a very difficult problem, complex, and, after all, merely tentative in the results, to assign the true value in such cases; not only for the obvious reason, that the powers of money have varied in different directions with regard to different objects, and in different degrees where the direction has on the whole continued the same, but because the very objects to be taken into computation are so indeterminate, and vary so much, not only as regards century and century, kingdom and kingdom, but also, even in the same century and the same kingdom, as regards rank and rank. that which is a mere necessary to one, is a luxurious superfluity to another. and, in order to ascertain these differences, it is an indispensable qualification to have studied the habits and customs of the several classes concerned, together with the variations of those habits and customs. note . never was the _esse quain videri_ in any point more strongly discriminated than in this very point of gallantry to the female sex, as between england and france. in france, the verbal homage to woman is so excessive as to betray its real purpose, viz. that it is a mask for secret contempt. in england, little is said; but, in the mean time, we allow our sovereign ruler to be a woman; which in france is impossible. even that fact is of some importance, but less so than what follows. in every country whatsoever, if any principle has a deep root in the moral feelings of the people, we may rely upon its showing itself, by a thousand evidences amongst the very lowest ranks, and in their daily intercourse, and their _undress_ manners. now in england there is, and always has been, a manly feeling, most widely diffused, of unwillingness to see labors of a coarse order, or requiring muscular exertions, thrown upon women. pauperism, amongst other evil effects, has sometimes locally disturbed this predominating sentiment of englishmen; but never at any time with such depth as to kill the root of the old hereditary manliness. sometimes at this day a gentleman, either from carelessness, or from overruling force of convenience, or from real defect of gallantry, will allow a female servant to carry his portmanteau for him; though, after all, that spectacle is a rare one. and everywhere women of all ages engage in the pleasant, nay elegant, labors of the hay field; but in great britain women are never suffered to mow, which is a most athletic and exhausting labor, nor to load a cart, nor to drive a plough or hold it. in france, on the other hand, before the revolution, (at which period the pseudo-homage, the lip-honor, was far more ostentatiously professed towards the female sex than at present,) a frenchman of credit, and vouching for his statement by the whole weight of his name and personal responsibility, (m simond, now an american citizen,) records the following abominable scene as one of no uncommon occurrence. a woman was in some provinces yoked side by side with an ass to the plough or the harrow; and m. simond protests that it excited no horror to see the driver distributing his lashes impartially between the woman and her brute yoke-fellow. so much for the wordy pomps of french gallantry. in england, we trust, and we believe, that any man, caught in such a situation, and in such an abuse of his power, (supposing the case, otherwise a possible one,) would be killed on the spot. note . amongst people of humble rank in england, who only were ever asked in church, until the new-fangled systems of marriage came up within the last ten or fifteen years, during the currency of the three sundays on which the banns were proclaimed by the clergyman from the reading desk, the young couple elect were said jocosely to le "hanging in the bell-ropes;" alluding perhaps to the joyous peal contingent on the final completion of the marriage. note . in a little memoir of milton, which the author of this article drew up some years ago for a public society, and which is printed in an abridged shape, he took occasion to remark, that dr. johnson, who was meanly anxious to revive this slander against milton, as well as some others, had supposed milton himself to have this flagellation in his mind, and indirectly to confess it, in one of his latin poems, where, speaking of cambridge, and declaring that he has no longer any pleasure in the thoughts of revisiting that university, he says, "nee duri libet usque minas preferre magislri, coeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo." this last line the malicious critic would translate--"and other things insufferable to a man of my temper." but, as we then observed, _ingenium_ is properly expressive of the _intellectual _ constitution, whilst it is the _moral_ constitution that suffers degradation from personal chastisement--the sense of honor, of personal dignity, of justice, &c. _indoles_ is the proper term for this latter idea; and in using the word _ingenium,_ there cannot be a doubt that milton alluded to the dry scholastic disputations, which were shocking and odious to his fine poetical genius. if, therefore, the vile story is still to be kept up in order to dishonor a great man, at any rate let it not in future be pretended that any countenance to such a slander can be drawn from the confessions of the poet himself. note . and singular enough it is, as well as interesting, that shakspeare had so entirely superseded to his own ear and memory the name hamnet by the dramatic name of hamlet, that in writing his will, he actually mis-spells the name of his friend sadler, and calls him hamlet. his son, however, who should have familiarized the true name to his ear, had then been dead for twenty years. note . "i have heard that mr. shakspeare was a natural wit, without any art at all. hee frequented the plays all his younger time, but in his elder days lived at stanford, and supplied the stage with two plays every year, and for it had an allowance so large, that he spent at the rate of , guineas a-year, as i have heard. shakespeare, dray ton, arid ben jonson, had a merie meeting, and it seems drank too hard, for shakespear died of a feavour there contracted" (diary of the rev john ward, a m vicar of stratford upon avon, extending from to , p lond. , vo) note . it is naturally to be supposed that dr hall would attend the sick bed of his father in law, and the discovery of this gentleman's medical diary promised some gratification to our curiosity as to the cause of shakspeare's death. unfortunately, it does not commence until the year . note . an exception ought perhaps to be made for sir walter scott and for cervantes, but with regard to all other writers, dante, suppose, or anosto amongst italians, camoens amongst those of portugal, schiller amongst germans, however ably they may have been naturalized in foreign languages, as all of those here mentioned (excepting only anosto) have in one part of their works been most powerfully naturalized in english, it still remains true, (and the very sale of the books is proof sufficient,) that an alien author never does take root in the general sympathies out of his own country, he takes his station in libraries, he is lead by the man of learned leisure, he is known and valued by the refined and the elegant, but he is not (what shakspeare is for germany and america) in any proper sense a _popular_ favorite. note . it will occur to many readers, that perhaps homer may furnish the sole exception to this sweeping assertion. any _but_ homer is clearly and ludicrously below the level of the competition, but even homer "with his tail on," (as the scottish highlanders say of then chieftains when belted by their ceremonial retinues,) musters nothing like the force which _already_ follows shakspeare, and be it remembered, that homer sleeps and has long slept as a subject of criticism or commentary, while in germany as well as england, and _now even in france_, the gathering of wits to the vast equipage of shakspeare is advancing in an accelerated ratio. there is, in fact, a great delusion current upon this subject. innumerable references to homer, and brief critical remarks on this or that pretension of homer, this or that scene, this or that passage, lie scattered over literature ancient and modern; but the express works dedicated to the separate service of homer are, after all, not many. in greek we have only the large commentary of eustathius, and the scholia of didymus, &c.; in french little or nothing before the prose translation of the seventeenth century, which pope esteemed "elegant, "and the skirmishings of madame dacier, la motte, &c.; in english, besides the various translations and their prefaces, (which, by the way, began as early as ,) nothing of much importance until the elaborate preface of pope to the iliad, and his elaborate postscript to the odyssey--nothing certainly before that, and very little indeed since that, except wood's essay on the life and genius of homer. on the other hand, of the books written in illustration or investigation of shakspeare, a very considerable library might be formed in england, and another in germany. note . apartment is here used, as the reader will observe, in its true and continental acceptation, as a division or _compartment_ of a house including many rooms; a suite of chambers, but a suite which is partitioned off, (as in palaces,) not a single chamber; a sense so commonly and so erroneously given to this word in england. note . and hence, by parity of reason, under the opposite circumstances, under the circumstances which, instead of abolishing, most emphatically drew forth the sexual distinctions, viz., in the _comic_ aspects of social intercourse, the reason that we see no women on the greek stage; the greek comedy, unless when it affects the extravagant fun of farce, rejects women. note . it may be thought, however, by some readers, that aeschylus, in his fine phantom of darius, has approached the english ghost. as a foreign ghost, we would wish (and we are sure that our excellent readers would wish) to show every courtesy and attention to this apparition of darius. it has the advantage of being royal, an advantage which it shares with the ghost of the royal dane. yet how different, how removed by a total world, from that or any of shakspeare's ghosts! take that of banquo, for instance. how shadowy, how unreal, yet how real! darius is a mere state ghost--a diplomatic ghost. but banquo--he exists only for macbeth; the guests do not see him, yet how solemn, how real, how heart--searching he is. note . caliban has not yet been thoroughly fathomed. for all shakspeare's great creations are like works of nature, subjects of unexhaustible study. it was this character of whom charles i. and some of his ministers expressed such fervent admiration; and, among other circumstances, most justly they admired the new language almost with which he is endowed, for the purpose of expressing his fiendish and yet carnal thoughts of hatred to his master. caliban is evidently not meant for scorn, but for abomination mixed with fear and partial respect. he is purposely brought into contrast with the drunken trinculo and stephano, with an advantageous result. he is much more intellectual than either, uses a more elevated language, not disfigured by vulgarisms, and is not liable to the low passion for plunder as they are. he is mortal, doubtless, as his "dam" (for shakspeare will not call her mother) sycorax. but he inherits from her such qualities of power as a witch could be supposed to bequeath. he trembles indeed before prospero; but that is, as we are to understand, through the moral superiority of prospero in christian wisdom; for when he finds himself in the presence of dissolute and unprincipled men, he rises at once into the dignity of intellectual power. pope. alexander lexander pope, the most brilliant of all wits who have at any period applied themselves to the poetic treatment of human manners, to the selecting from the play of human character what is picturesque, or the arresting what is fugitive, was born in the city of london on the st day of may, in the memorable year ; about six months, therefore, before the landing of the prince of orange, and the opening of that great revolution which gave the final ratification to all previous revolutions of that tempestuous century. by the "city" of london the reader is to understand us as speaking with technical accuracy of that district, which lies within the ancient walls and the jurisdiction of the lord mayor. the parents of pope, there is good reason to think, were of "gentle blood," which is the expression of the poet himself when describing them in verse. his mother was so undoubtedly; and her illustrious son, in speaking of her to lord harvey, at a time when any exaggeration was open to an easy refutation, and writing in a spirit most likely to provoke it, does not scruple to say, with a tone of dignified haughtiness not unbecoming the situation of a filial champion on behalf of an insulted mother, that by birth and descent she was not below that young lady, (one of the two beautiful miss lepels,) whom his lordship had selected from all the choir of court beauties as the future mother of his children. of pope's extraction and immediate lineage for a space of two generations we know enough. beyond that we know little. of this little a part is dubious; and what we are disposed to receive as _not_ dubious, rests chiefly on his own authority. in the prologue to his satires, having occasion to notice the lampooners of the times, who had represented his father as "a mechanic, a hatter, a farmer, nay a bankrupt," he feels himself called upon to state the truth about his parents; and naturally much more so at a time when the low scurrilities of these obscure libellers had been adopted, accredited, and diffused by persons so distinguished in all points of personal accomplishment and rank as lady mary wortley montagu and lord harvey: _"hard as thy heart"_ was one of the lines in their joint pasquinade, _" hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obscure."_ accordingly he makes the following formal statement: "mr. pope's father was of a gentleman's family in oxfordshire, the head of which was the earl of downe. his mother was the daughter of william turner, esq., of york. she had three brothers, one of whom was killed; another died in the service of king charles [meaning charles i.]; the eldest, following his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in spain, left _her_ what estate remained after the sequestrations and forfeitures of her family." the sequestrations here spoken of were those inflicted by the commissioners for the parliament; and usually they levied a fifth, or even two fifths, according to the apparent delinquency of the parties. but in such cases two great differences arose in the treatment of the royalists; first, that the report was colored according to the interest which a man possessed, or other private means for biassing the commissioners; secondly, that often, when money could not be raised on mortgage to meet the sequestration, it became necessary to sell a family estate suddenly, and. therefore in those times at great loss; so that a nominal fifth might be depressed by favor to a tenth, or raised by the necessity of selling to a half. and hence might arise the small dowry of mrs. pope, notwithstanding the family estate in yorkshire had centred in her person. but, by the way, we see from the fact of the eldest brother having sought service in spain, that mrs. pope was a papist; not, like her husband, by conversion, but by hereditary faith. this account, as publicly thrown out in the way of challenge by pope, was, however, sneered at by a certain mr. pottinger of those days, who, together with his absurd name, has been safely transmitted to posterity in connection with this single feat of having contradicted alexander pope. we read in a diary published by the microcosm," _met a large hat, with a man under it_. "and so, here, we cannot so properly say that mr. pottinger brings down the contradiction to our times, as that the contradiction brings down mr. pottinger." cousin pope, "said pottinger," had made himself out a fine pedigree, but he wondered where he got it. "and he then goes on to plead in abatement of pope's pretensions," that an old maiden aunt, equally related," (that is, standing in the same relation to himself and to the poet,) "a great genealogist, who was always talking of her family, never mentioned this circumstance." and again we are told, from another quarter, that the earl of guildford, after express investigation of this matter, "was sure that," amongst the descendants of the earls of downe, "there was none of the name of pope." how it was that lord guildford came to have any connection with the affair, is not stated by the biographers of pope; but we have ascertained that, by marriage with a female descendant from the earls of downe, he had come into possession of their english estates. finally, though it is rather for the honor of the earls of downe than of pope to make out the connection, we must observe that lord guildford's testimony, _if ever given at all_, is simply negative; he had found no proofs of the connection, but he had not found any proofs to destroy it; whilst, on the other hand, it ought to be mentioned, though unaccountably overlooked by all previous biographers, that one of pope's anonymous enemies, who hated him personally, but was apparently master of his family history, and too honorable to belie his own convictions, expressly affirms of his own authority, and without reference to any claim put forward by pope, that he was descended from a junior branch of the downe family. which testimony has a double value; first, as corroborating the probability of pope's statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as a disingenuous fiction put forward by pope to confute lord harvey. it is probable to us, that the popes, who had been originally transplanted from england to ireland, had in the person of some cadet been re-transplanted to england; and that having in that way been disconnected from all personal recognition, and all local memorials of the capital house, by this sort of _postliminium_, the junior branch had ceased to cherish the honor of a descent which was now divided from all direct advantage. at all events, the researches of pope's biographers have not been able to trace him farther back in the paternal line than to his grandfather; and he (which is odd enough, considering the popery of his descendants) was a clergyman of the established church in hampshire. this grandfather had two sons. of the eldest nothing is recorded beyond the three facts, that he went to oxford, that he died there, and that he spent the family estate. [endnote: ] the younger son, whose name was alexander, had been sent when young, in some commercial character, to lisbon; [endnote: ] and there it was, in that centre of bigotry, that he became a sincere and most disinterested catholic. he returned to england; married a catholic young widow; and became the father of a second alexander pope, _ultra sauromatas notus et antipodes._ by his own account to spence, pope learned "very early to read;" and writing he taught himself "by copying, from printed books;" all which seems to argue, that, as an only child, with an indolent father and a most indulgent mother, he was not molested with much schooling in his infancy. only one adventure is recorded of his childhood, viz., that he was attacked by a cow, thrown down, and wounded in the throat. pope escaped this disagreeable kind of vaccination without serious injury, and was not farther tormented by cows or schoolmasters until he was about eight years old, when the family priest, that is, we presume, the confessor of his parents, taught him, agreeably to the jesuit system, the rudiments of greek and latin concurrently. this priest was named banister; and his name is frequently employed, together with other fictitious names, by way of signature to the notes in the dunciad, an artifice which was adopted for the sake of giving a characteristic variety to the notes, according to the tone required for the illustration of the text. from his tuition pope was at length dismissed to a catholic school at twyford, near winchester. the selection of a school in this neighborhood, though certainly the choice of a catholic family was much limited, points apparently to the old hampshire connection of his father. here an incident occurred which most powerfully illustrates the original and constitutional determination to satire of this irritable poet. he knew himself so accurately, that in after times, half by way of boast, half of confession, he says, "but touch me, and no minister so sore: whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time slides into verse and hitches in a rhyme, sacred to ridicule his whole life long, and the sad burthen of some merry song." already, it seems, in childhood he had the same irresistible instinct, victorious over the strongest sense of personal danger. he wrote a bitter satire upon the presiding pedagogue, was brutally punished for this youthful indiscretion, and indignantly removed by his parents from the school. mr. roscoe speaks of pope's personal experience as necessarily unfavorable to public schools; but in reality he knew nothing of public schools. all the establishments for papists were narrow, and suited to their political depression; and his parents were too sincerely anxious for their son's religious principles to risk the contagion of protestant association by sending him elsewhere. from the scene [endnote: ] of his disgrace and illiberal punishment, he passed, according to the received accounts, under the tuition of several other masters in rapid succession. but it is the less necessary to trouble the reader with their names, as pope himself assures us, that he learned nothing from any of them. to banister he had been indebted for such trivial elements of a schoolboy's learning as he possessed at all, excepting those which he had taught himself. and upon himself it was, and his own admirable faculties, that he was now finally thrown for the rest of his education, at an age so immature that many boys are then first entering their academic career. pope is supposed to have been scarcely twelve years old when he assumed the office of self-tuition, and bade farewell for ever to schools and tutors. such a phenomenon is at any rate striking. it is the more so, under the circumstances which attended the plan, and under the results which justified its execution. it seems, as regards the plan, hardly less strange that prudent parents should have acquiesced in a scheme of so much peril to his intellectual interests, than that the son, as regards the execution, should have justified their confidence by his final success. more especially this confidence surprises us in the father. a doating mother might shut her eyes to all remote evils in the present gratification to her affections; but pope's father was a man of sense and principle; he must have weighed the risks besetting a boy left to his own intellectual guidance; and to these risks he would allow the more weight from his own conscious defect of scholarship and inability to guide or even to accompany his son's studies. he could neither direct the proper choice of studies; nor in any one study taken separately could he suggest the proper choice of books. the case we apprehend to have been this. alexander pope, the elder, was a man of philosophical desires and unambitious character. quiet and seclusion and innocence of life,--these were what he affected for himself; and that which had been found available for his own happiness, he might reasonably wish for his son. the two hinges upon which his plans may be supposed to have turned, were, first, the political degradation of his sect; and, secondly, the fact that his son was an only child. had he been a protestant, or had he, though a papist, been burthened with a large family of children, he would doubtless have pursued a different course. but to him, and, as he sincerely hoped, to his son, the strife after civil honors was sternly barred. apostasy only could lay it open. and, as the sentiments of honor and duty in this point fell in with the vices of his temperament, high principle concurring with his constitutional love of ease, we need not wonder that he should early retire from commerce with a very moderate competence, or that he should suppose the same fortune sufficient for one who was to stand in the same position. this son was from his birth deformed. that made it probable that he might not marry. if he should, and happened to have children, a small family would find an adequate provision in the patrimonial funds; and a large one at the worst could only throw him upon the same commercial exertions to which he had been obliged himself. the roman catholics, indeed, were just then situated as our modern quakers are. law to the one, as conscience to the other, closed all modes of active employment except that of commercial industry. either his son, therefore, would be a rustic recluse, or, like himself, he would be a merchant. with such prospects, what need of an elaborate education? and where was such an education to be sought? at the petty establishments of the suffering catholics, the instruction, as he had found experimentally, was poor. at the great national establishments his son would be a degraded person; one who was permanently repelled from every arena of honor, and sometimes, as in cases of public danger, was banished from the capital, deprived of his house, left defenceless against common ruffians, and rendered liable to the control of every village magistrate. to one in these circumstances solitude was the wisest position, and the best qualification, for that was an education that would furnish aids to solitary thought. no need for brilliant accomplishments to him who must never display them; forensic arts, pulpit erudition, senatorial eloquence, academical accomplishments--these would be lost to one against whom the courts, the pulpit, the senate, the universities, were closed. nay, by possibility worse than lost; they might prove so many snares or positive bribes to apostasy. plain english, therefore, and the high thinking of his compatriot authors, might prove the best provision for the mind of an english papist destined to seclusion. such are the considerations under which we read and interpret the conduct of pope's parents; and they lead us to regard as wise and conscientious a scheme which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been pitiably foolish. and be it remembered, that to these considerations, derived exclusively from the civil circumstances of the family, were superadded others derived from the astonishing prematurity of the individual. that boy who could write at twelve years of age the beautiful and touching stanzas on solitude, might well be trusted with the superintendence of his own studies. and the stripling of sixteen, who could so far transcend in good sense the accomplished statesmen or men of the world with whom he afterwards corresponded, might challenge confidence for such a choice of books as would best promote the development of his own faculties. in reality, one so finely endowed as alexander pope, could not easily lose his way in the most extensive or ill-digested library. and though he tells atterbury, that at one time he abused his opportunities by reading controversial divinity, we may be sure that his own native activities, and the elasticity of his mind, would speedily recoil into a just equilibrium of study, under wider and happier opportunities. reading, indeed, for a person like pope, is rather valuable as a means of exciting his own energies, and of feeding his own sensibilities, than for any direct acquisitions of knowledge, or for any trains of systematic research. all men are destined to devour much rubbish between the cradle and the grave; and doubtless the man who is wisest in the choice of his books, will have read many a page before he dies that a thoughtful review would pronounce worthless. this is the fate of all men. but the reading of pope, as a general result or measure of his judicious choice, is best justified in his writings. they show him well furnished with whatsoever he wanted for matter or for embellishment, for argument or illustration, for example and model, or for direct and explicit imitation. possibly, as we have already suggested, within the range of english literature pope might have found all that he wanted. but variety the widest has its uses; and, for the extension of his influence with the polished classes amongst whom he lived, he did wisely to add other languages; and a question has thus arisen with regard to the extent of pope's attainments as a self-taught linguist. a man, or even a boy, of great originality, may happen to succeed best, in working his own native mines of thought, by his unassisted energies. here it is granted that a tutor, a guide, or even a companion, may be dispensed with, and even beneficially. but in the case of foreign languages, in attaining this machinery of literature, though anomalies even here do arise, and men there are, like joseph scaliger, who form their own dictionaries and grammars in the mere process of reading an unknown language, by far the major part of students will lose their time by rejecting the aid of tutors. as there has been much difference of opinion with regard to pope's skill in languages, we shall briefly collate and bring into one focus the stray notices. as to the french, voltaire, who knew pope personally, declared that he "could hardly _read_ it, and spoke not one syllable of the language." but perhaps voltaire might dislike pope? on the contrary, he was acquainted with his works, and admired them to the very level of their merits. speaking of him _after death_ to frederick of prussia, he prefers him to horace and boileau, asserting that, by comparison with _them_, "pope _approfondit_ ce qu'ils ont _effleura_. d'un esprit plus hardi, d'un pas plus assure, il porta le flambeau dans l'abeme de l'otre; et l'homme _avec lui seul_ apprit a se connoetre. l'art quelquefois frivole, et quelquefois divine, l'art des vers est dans pope utile au genre humain." this is not a wise account of pope, for it does not abstract the characteristic feature of his power; but it is a very kind one. and of course voltaire could not have meant any unkindness in denying his knowledge of french. but he was certainly wrong. pope, in _his_ presence, would decline to speak or to read a language of which the pronunciation was confessedly beyond him. or, if he did, the impression left would be still worse. in fact, no man ever will pronounce or talk a language which he does not use, for some part of every day, in the real intercourse of life. but that pope read french of an ordinary cast with fluency enough, is evident from the extensive use which he made of madame dacier's labors on the iliad, and still more of la valterie's prose translation of the iliad. already in the year , and long before his personal knowledge of voltaire, pope had shown his accurate acquaintance with some voluminous french authors, in a way which, we suspect, was equally surprising and offensive to his noble correspondent. the duke of buckingham [endnote: ] had addressed to pope a letter, containing some account of the controversy about homer, which had then been recently carried on in france between la motte and madame dacier. this account was delivered with an air of teaching, which was very little in harmony with its excessive shallowness. pope, who sustained the part of pupil in this interlude, replied in a manner that exhibited a knowledge of the parties concerned in the controversy much superior to that of the duke. in particular, he characterized the excellent notes upon horace of m. dacier, the husband, in very just terms, as distinguished from those of his conceited and half-learned wife; and the whole reply of pope seems very much as though he had been playing off a mystification on his grace. undoubtedly the pompous duke felt that he had caught a tartar. now m. dacier's horace, which, with the text, fills nine volumes, pope could not have read _except_ in french; for they are not even yet translated into english. besides, pope read critically the french translations of his own essay on man, essay on criticism, rape of the lock, &c. he spoke of them as a critic; and it was at no time a fault of pope's to make false pretensions. all readers of pope's satires must also recollect numerous proofs, that he had read boileau with so much feeling of his peculiar merit, that he has appropriated and naturalized in english some of his best passages. voltaire was, therefore, certainly wrong. of italian literature, meantime, pope knew little or nothing; and simply because he knew nothing of the language. tasso, indeed, he admired; and, which is singular, more than ariosto. but we believe that he had read him only in english; and it is certain that he could not take up an italian author, either in prose or verse, for the unaffected amusement of his leisure. greek, we all know has been denied to pope, ever since he translated homer, and chiefly in consequence of that translation. this seems at first sight unfair, because criticism has not succeeded in fixing upon pope any errors of ignorance. his deviations from homer were uniformly the result of imperfect sympathy with the naked simplicity of the antique, and therefore wilful deviations, not (like those of his more pretending competitors, addison and tickell) pure blunders of misapprehension. but yet it is not inconsistent with this concession to pope's merits, that we must avow our belief in his thorough ignorance of greek when he first commenced his task. and to us it seems astonishing that nobody should have adverted to that fact as a sufficient solution, and in fact the only plausible solution, of pope's excessive depression of spirits in the earliest stage of his labors. this depression, after he had once pledged himself to his subscribers for the fulfilment of his task, arose from, and could have arisen from nothing else than, his conscious ignorance of greek in connection with the solemn responsibilities he had assumed in the face of a great nation. nay, even countries as presumptuously disdainful of tramontane literature as italy took an interest in this memorable undertaking. bishop berkeley found salvini reading it at florence; and madame dacier even, who read little but greek, and certainly no english until then, condescended to study it. pope's dejection, therefore, or rather agitation (for it impressed by sympathy a tumultuous character upon his dreams, which lasted for years after the cause had ceased to operate) was perfectly natural under the explanation we have given, but not otherwise. and how did he surmount this unhappy self-distrust? paradoxical as it may sound, we will venture to say, that, with the innumerable aids for interpreting homer which even then existed, a man sufficiently acquainted with latin might make a translation even critically exact. this pope was not long in discovering. other alleviations of his labor concurred, and in a ratio daily increasing. the same formulae were continually recurring, such as, _"but him answering, thus addressed the swift-footed achilles;"_ or, _"but him sternly beholding, thus spoke agamemnon the king of men."_ then, again, universally the homeric greek, from many causes, is easy; and especially from these two: _st_, the simplicity of the thought, which never gathers into those perplexed knots of rhetorical condensation, which we find in the dramatic poets of a higher civilization. _dly_, from the constant hounds set to the expansion of the thought by the form of the metre; an advantage of verse which makes the poets so much easier to a beginner in the german language than the illimitable weavers of prose. the line or the stanza reins up the poet tightly to his theme, and will not suffer him to expatiate. gradually, therefore, pope came to read the homeric greek, but never accurately; nor did he ever read eustathius without aid from latin. as to any knowledge of the attic greek, of the greek of the dramatists, the greek of plato, the greek of demosthenes, pope neither had it nor affected to have it. indeed it was no foible of pope's, as we will repeat, to make claims which he had not, or even to dwell ostentatiously upon those which he had. and with respect to greek in particular, there is a manuscript letter in existence from pope to a mr. bridges at falham, which, speaking of the original homer, distinctly records the knowledge which he had of his own "imperfectness in the language." chapman, a most spirited translator of homer, probably had no very critical skill in greek; and hobbes was, beyond all question, as poor a grecian as he was a doggerel translator; yet in this letter pope professes his willing submission to the "authority" of chapman and hobbes, as superior to his own. finally, in _latin_ pope was a "considerable proficient," even by the cautious testimony of dr. johnson; and in this language only the doctor was an accomplished critic. if pope had really the proficiency here ascribed to him, he must have had it already in his boyish years; for the translation from statius, which is the principal monument of his skill, was executed _before_ he was fourteen. we have taken the trouble to throw a hasty glance over it; and whilst we readily admit the extraordinary talent which it shows, as do all the juvenile essays of pope, we cannot allow that it argues any accurate skill in latin. the word malea, as we have seen noticed by some editor, he makes malea; which in itself, as the name was not of common occurrence, would not have been an error worth noticing; but, taken in connection with the certainty that pope had the original line before him-- "arripit ex templo maleae de valle resurgens," when not merely the scanning theoretically, but the whole rhythm is practically, to the most obtuse ear, would be annihilated by pope's false quantity, is a blunder which serves to show his utter ignorance of prosody. but, even as a version of the sense, with every allowance for a poet's license of compression and expansion, pope's translation is defective, and argues an occasional inability to construe the text. for instance, at the council summoned by jupiter, it is said that he at his first entrance seats himself upon his starry throne, but not so the inferior gods; "nec protinus ausi coelicolae, veniam donee pater ipse sedendi tranquilla jubet esse manu." in which passage there is a slight obscurity, from the ellipsis of the word _sedere_, or _sese locare_; but the meaning is evidently that the other gods did not presume to sit down _protinus_, that is, in immediate succession to jupiter, and interpreting his example as a tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his hand, the supreme father signifies his express permission to take their seats. but pope, manifestly unable to extract any sense from the passage, translates thus: "at jove's assent the deities around in solemn slate the consistory _crown'd_;" where at once the whole picturesque solemnity of the celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities. again, at v. , _ruptaeque vices_ is translated," _and all the ties of nature broke_; "but by vices is indicated the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by eteocles. other mistakes might be cited, which seem to prove that pope, like most self-taught linguists, was a very imperfect one. [endnote: ] pope, in short, never rose to such a point in classical literature as to read either greek or latin authors without effort, and for his private amusement. the result, therefore, of pope's self-tuition appears to us, considered in the light of an attempt to acquire certain accomplishments of knowledge, a most complete failure. as a linguist, he read no language with ease; none with pleasure to himself; and none with so much accuracy as could have carried him through the most popular author with a general independence on interpreters. but, considered with a view to his particular faculties and slumbering originality of power, which required perhaps the stimulation of accident to arouse them effectually, we are very much disposed to think that the very failure of his education as an artificial training was a great advantage finally for inclining his mind to throw itself, by way of indemnification, upon its native powers. had he attained, as with better tuition he would have attained, distinguished excellence as a scholar, or as a student of science, the chances are many that he would have settled down into such studies as thousands could pursue not less successfully than he; whilst as it was, the very dissatisfaction which he could not but feel with his slender attainments, must have given him a strong motive for cultivating those impulses of original power which he felt continually stirring within him, and which were vivified into trials of competition as often as any distinguished excellence was introduced to his knowledge. pope's father, at the time of his birth, lived in lombard street; [endnote: ] a street still familiar to the public eye, from its adjacency to some of the chief metropolitan establishments, and to the english ear possessing a degree of historical importance; first, as the residence of those lombards, or milanese, who affiliated our infant commerce to the matron splendors of the adriatic and the mediterranean; next, as the central resort of thrme jewellers, or "goldsmiths," as they were styled, who performed all the functions of modern bankers from the period of the parliamentary war to the rise of the bank of england, that is, for six years after the birth of pope; and, lastly, as the seat, until lately, of that vast post office, through which, for so long a period, has passed the correspondence of all nations and languages, upon a scale unknown to any other country. in this street alexander pope the elder had a house, and a warehouse, we presume, annexed, in which he conducted the wholesale business of a linen merchant. as soon as he had made a moderate fortune he retired from business, first to kensington, and afterwards to binfield, in windsor forest. the period of this migration is not assigned by any writer. it is probable that a prudent man would not adopt it with any prospect of having more children. but this chance might be considered as already extinguished at the birth of pope; for though his father had then only attained his forty-fourth year, mrs. pope had completed her forty-eighth. it is probable, from the interval of seven days which is said to have elapsed between pope's punishment and his removal from the school, that his parents were then living at such a distance from him as to prevent his ready communication with them, else we may be sure that mrs. pope would have flown on the wings of love and wrath to the rescue of her darling. supposing, therefore, as we _do_ suppose, that mr. bromley's school in london was the scene of his disgrace, it would appear on this argument that his parents were then living in windsor forest. and this hypothesis falls in with another anecdote in pope's life, which we know partly upon his own authority. he tells wycherley that he had seen dryden, and barely seen him. _virgilium vidi tantum_. this is presumed to have been in will's coffee-house, whither any person in search of dryden would of course resort; and it must have been before pope was twelve years old, for dryden died in . now there is a letter of sir charles wogan's, stating that he first took pope to will's; and his words are, "from our forest." consequently, at that period, when he had not completed his twelfth year, pope was already living in the forest. from this period, and so long as the genial spirits of youth lasted, pope's life must have been one dream of pleasure. he tells lord harvey that his mother did not spoil him; but that was no doubt because there was no room for wilfulness or waywardness on either side, when all was one placid scene of parental obedience and gentle filial authority. we feel persuaded that, if not in words, in spirit and inclination, they would, in any notes they might have occasion to write, subscribe themselves "your dutiful parents." and of what consequence in whose hands were the reins which were never needed? every reader must be pleased to know that these idolizing parents lived to see their son at the very summit of his public elevation; even his father lived two years and a half after the publication of his homer had commenced, and when his fortune was made; and his mother lived for nearly eighteen years more. what a felicity for her, how rare and how perfect, to find that he, who to her maternal eyes was naturally the most perfect of human beings, and the idol of her heart, had already been the idol of the nation before he had completed his youth. she had also another blessing not always commanded by the most devoted love; many sons there are who think it essential to manliness that they should treat their mother's doating anxiety with levity, or even ridicule. but pope, who was the model of a good son, never swerved in words, manners, or conduct, from the most respectful tenderness, or intermitted the piety of his attentions. and so far did he carry this regard for his mother's comfort, that, well knowing how she lived upon his presence or by his image, he denied himself for many years all excursions which could not be fully accomplished within the revolution of a week. and to this cause, combined with the excessive length of his mother's life, must be ascribed the fact that pope never went abroad; not to italy with thomson or with berkeley, or any of his diplomatic friends; not to ireland, where his presence would have been hailed as a national honor; not even to france, on a visit to his admiring and admired friend lord bolingbroke. for as to the fear of sea-sickness, _that_ did not arise until a late period of his life; and at any period would not have operated to prevent his crossing from dover to calais. it is possible that, in his earlier and more sanguine years, all the perfection of his filial love may not have availed to prevent him from now and then breathing a secret murmur at confinement so constant. but it is certain that, long before he passed the meridian of his life, pope had come to view this confinement with far other thoughts. experience had then taught him, that to no man is the privilege granted of possessing more than one or two friends who are such in extremity. by that time he had come to view his mother's death with fear and anguish. she, he knew by many a sign, would have been happy to lay down her life for his sake; but for others, even those who were the most friendly and the most constant in their attentions, he felt but too certainly that his death, or his heavy affliction, might cost them a few sighs, but would not materially disturb their peace of mind. "it is but in a very narrow circle," says he, in a confidential letter, "that friendship walks in this world, and i care not to tread out of it more than i needs must; knowing well it is but to two or three, (if quite so many,) that any man's welfare or memory can be of consequence." after such acknowledgments, we are not surprised to find him writing thus of his mother, and his fearful struggles to fight off the shock of his mother's death, at a time when it was rapidly approaching. after having said of a friend's death, "the subject is beyond writing upon, beyond cure or ease by reason or reflection, beyond all but one thought, that it is the will of god," he goes on thus, "so will the death of my mother be, which now i tremble at, now resign to, now bring close to me, now set farther off; every day alters, turns me about, confuses my whole frame of mind." there is no pleasure, he adds, which the world can give "equivalent to countervail either the death of one i have so long lived with, or of one i have so long lived for." how will he comfort himself after her death? "i have nothing left but to turn my thoughts to one comfort, the last we usually think of, though the only one we should in wisdom depend upon. i sit in her room, and she is always present before me but when i sleep. i wonder i am so well. i have shed many tears; but now i weep at nothing." a man, therefore, happier than pope in his domestic relations cannot easily have lived. it is true these relations were circumscribed; had they been wider, they could not have been so happy. but pope was equally fortunate in his social relations. what, indeed, most of all surprises us, is the courteous, flattering, and even brilliant reception which pope found from his earliest boyhood amongst the most accomplished men of the world. wits, courtiers, statesmen, grandees the most dignified, and men of fashion the most brilliant, all alike treated him not only with pointed kindness, but with a respect that seemed to acknowledge him as their intellectual superior. without rank, high birth, fortune, without even a literary name, and in defiance of a deformed person, pope, whilst yet only sixteen years of age, was caressed, and even honored; and all this with no one recommendation but simply the knowledge of his dedication to letters, and the premature expectations which he raised of future excellence. sir william trumbull, a veteran statesman, who had held the highest stations, both diplomatic and ministerial, made him his daily companion. wycherley, the old _roue_ of the town, a second-rate wit, but not the less jealous on that account, showed the utmost deference to one whom, as a man of fashion, he must have regarded with contempt, and between whom and himself there were nearly "fifty good years of fair and foul weather." cromwell, [endnote: ] a fox-hunting country gentleman, but uniting with that character the pretensions of a wit, and affecting also the reputation of a rake, cultivated his regard with zeal and conscious inferiority. nay, which never in any other instance happened to the most fortunate poet, his very inaugural essays in verse were treated, not as prelusive efforts of auspicious promise, but as finished works of art, entitled to take their station amongst the literature of the land; and in the most worthless of all his poems, walsh, an established authority, and whom dryden pronounced the ablest critic of the age, found proofs of equality with virgil. the literary correspondence with these gentlemen is interesting, as a model of what once passed for fine letter-writing. every nerve was strained to outdo each other in carving all thoughts into a fillagree work of rhetoric; and the amoebaean contest was like that between two village cocks from neighboring farms endeavoring to overcrow each other. to us, in this age of purer and more masculine taste, the whole scene takes the ludicrous air of old and young fops dancing a minuet with each other, practising the most elaborate grimaces, sinkings and risings the most awful, bows the most overshadowing, until plain walking, running, or the motions of natural dancing, are thought too insipid for endurance. in this instance the taste had perhaps really been borrowed from france, though often enough we impute to france what is the native growth of all minds placed in similar circumstances. madame de sevigne's letters were really models of grace. but balzac, whose letters, however, are not without interest, had in some measure formed himself upon the truly magnificent rhetoric of pliny and seneca. pope and his correspondents, meantime, degraded the dignity of rhetoric, by applying it to trivial commonplaces of compliment; whereas seneca applied it to the grandest themes which life or contemplation can supply. lady mary wortley montagu, on first coming amongst the wits of the day, naturally adopted their style. she found this sort of _euphuism_ established; and it was not for a very young woman to oppose it. but her masculine understanding and powerful good sense, shaken free, besides, from all local follies by travels and extensive commerce with the world, first threw off these glittering chains of affectation. dean swift, by the very constitution of his mind, plain, sinewy, nervous, and courting only the strength that allies itself with homeliness, was always indisposed to this mode of correspondence. and, finally, pope himself, as his earlier friends died off, and his own understanding acquired strength, laid it aside altogether. one reason doubtless was, that he found it too fatiguing; since in this way of letter-writing he was put to as much expense of wit in amusing an individual correspondent, as would for an equal extent have sufficed to delight the whole world. a funambulist may harass his muscles and risk his neck on the tight-rope, but hardly to entertain his own family. pope, however, had another reason for declining this showy system of fencing; and strange it is that he had not discovered this reason from the very first. as life advanced, it happened unavoidably that real business advanced; the careless condition of youth prompted no topics, or at least prescribed none, but such as were agreeable to the taste, and allowed of an ornamental coloring. but when downright business occurred, exchequer bills to be sold, meetings to be arranged, negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here and there by possibility a jest or two might be scattered, a witty allusion thrown in, or a sentiment interwoven; but for the main body of the case, it neither could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if, by any effort of ingenuity, it _had_, could it look otherwise than silly and unreasonable: "ornari les a ipsa negat, contenta doceri." pope's idleness, therefore, on the one hand, concurring with good sense and the necessities of business on the other, drove him to quit his gay rhetoric in letter-writing. but there are passages surviving in his correspondence which indicate, that, after all, had leisure and the coarse perplexities of life permitted it, he still looked with partiality upon his youthful style, and cherished it as a first love. but in this harsh world, as the course of true love, so that of rhetoric, never did run smooth; and thus it happened that, with a lingering farewell, he felt himself forced to bid it adieu. strange that any man should think his own sincere and confidential overflowings of thought and feeling upon books, men, and public affairs, less valuable in a literary view than the legerdemain of throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of watching their prismatic hues, like an indian juggler with his cups and balls. we of this age, who have formed our notions of epistolary excellence from the chastity of gray's, the brilliancy of lady mary wortley montagu's during her later life, and the mingled good sense and fine feeling of cowper's, value only those letters of pope which he himself thought of inferior value. and even with regard to these, we may say that there is a great mistake made; the best of those later letters between pope and swift, &c., are not in themselves at all superior to the letters of sensible and accomplished women, such as leave every town in the island by every post. their chief interest is a derivative one; we are pleased with any letter, good or bad, which relates to men of such eminent talent; and sometimes the subjects discussed have a separate interest for themselves. but as to the quality of the discussion, apart from the person discussing and the thing discussed, so trivial is the value of these letters in a large proportion, that we cannot but wonder at the preposterous value which was set upon them by the writers. [endnote: ] pope especially ought not to have his ethereal works loaded by the mass of trivial prose which is usually attached to them. this correspondence, meantime, with the wits of the time, though one mode by which, in the absence of reviews, the reputation of an author was spread, did not perhaps serve the interests of pope so effectually as the poems which in this way he circulated in those classes of english society whose favor he chiefly courted. one of his friends, the truly kind and accomplished sir william trumbull, served him in that way, and perhaps in another eventually even more important. the library of pope's father was composed exclusively of polemical divinity, a proof, by the way, that he was not a blind convert to the roman catholic faith; or, if he was so originally, had reviewed the grounds of it, and adhered to it after strenuous study. in this dearth of books at his own home, and until he was able to influence his father in buying more extensively, pope had benefited by the loans of his friends; amongst whom it is probable that sir william, as one of the best scholars of the whole, might assist him most. he certainly offered him the most touching compliment, as it was also the wisest and most paternal counsel, when he besought him, as one _goddess-born_, to quit the convivial society of deep-drinkers: "heu, fuge nate dea, teque his, ait, eripe malis." with these aids from friends of rank, and his way thus laid open to public favor, in the year pope first came forward upon the stage of literature. the same year which terminated his legal minority introduced him to the public. _miscellanies_ in those days were almost periodical repositories of fugitive verse. tonson happened at this time to be publishing one of some extent, the sixth volume of which offered a sort of ambush to the young aspirant of windsor forest, from which he might watch the public feeling. the volume was opened by mr. ambrose philips, in the character of pastoral poet; and in the same character, but stationed at the end of the volume, and thus covered by his bucolic leader, as a soldier to the rear by the file in advance, appeared pope; so that he might win a little public notice, without too much seeming to challenge it. this half-clandestine emersion upon the stage of authorship, and his furtive position, are both mentioned by pope as accidents, but as accidents in which he rejoiced, and not improbably accidents which tonson had arranged with a view to his satisfaction. it must appear strange that pope at twenty-one should choose to come forward for the first time with a work composed at sixteen. a difference of five years at that stage of life is of more effect than of twenty at a later; and his own expanding judgment could hardly fail to inform him, that his pastorals were by far the worst of his works. in reality, let us not deny, that had pope never written any thing else, his name would not have been known as a name even of promise, but would probably have been redeemed from oblivion by some satirist or writer of a dunciad. were a man to meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, viz.," _love out of mount mlna by whirlwind_"he would suppose himself reading the racing calendar. yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological monsters to whom the pastorals introduce us: "i know thee. love! on foreign mountains born. wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed. thou wert from aetna's burning entrails torn. got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born." but the very names "damon" and "strephon," "phillis" and "delia," are rank with childishness. arcadian life is, at the best, a feeble conception, and rests upon the false principle of crowding together all the luscious sweets of rural life, undignified by the danger which attends pastoral life in our climate, and unrelieved by shades, either moral or physical. and the arcadia of pope's age was the spurious arcadia of the opera theatre, and, what is worse, of the french opera. the hostilities which followed between these rival wooers of the pastoral muse are well known. pope, irritated at what he conceived the partiality shown to philips in the guardian, pursued the review ironically; and, whilst affecting to load his antagonist with praises, draws into pointed relief some of his most flagrant faults. the result, however, we cannot believe. that all the wits, except addison, were duped by the irony, is quite impossible. could any man of sense mistake for praise the remark, that philips had imitated "_every_ line of strada; "that he had introduced wolves into england, and proved himself the first of gardeners by making his flowers "blow all in the same season." or, suppose those passages unnoticed, could the broad sneer escape him, where pope taxes the other writer (viz., himself) with having deviated" into downright poetry; "or the outrageous ridicule of philip's style, as setting up for the ideal type of the pastoral style, the quotation from gay, beginning, "rager, go vetch tha kee, or else tha zun will quite bego before ch' 'avs half a don!" philips is said to have resented this treatment by threats of personal chastisement to pope, and even hanging up a rod at button's coffee-house. we may be certain that philips never disgraced himself by such ignoble conduct. if the public indeed were universally duped by the paper, what motive had philips for resentment? or, in any case, what plea had he for attacking pope, who had not come forward as the author of the essay? but, from pope's confidential account of the matter, we know that philips saw him daily, and never offered him "any indecorum;" though, for some cause or other, pope pursued philips with virulence through life. in the year , pope published his essay on criticism, which some people have very unreasonably fancied his best performance; and in the same year his rape of the lock, the most exquisite monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers. it wanted, however, as yet, the principle of its vitality, in wanting the machinery of sylphs and gnomes, with which addition it was first published in . in the year , pope appeared again before the public as the author of the temple of fame, and the elegy to the memory of an unfortunate lady. much speculation has arisen on the question concerning the name of this lady, and the more interesting question concerning the nature of the persecutions and misfortunes which she suffered. pope appears purposely to decline answering the questions of his friends upon that point; at least the questions have reached us, and the answers have not. joseph warton supposed himself to have ascertained four facts about her: that her name was wainsbury; that she was deformed in person; that she retired into a convent from some circumstances connected with an attachment to a young man of inferior rank; and that she killed herself, not by a sword, as the poet insinuates, but by a halter. as to the latter statement, it may very possibly be true; such a change would be a very slight exercise of the poet's privileges. as to the rest, there are scarcely grounds enough for an opinion. pope certainly speaks of her under the name of mrs. (_i. e._ miss) w--, which at least argues a poetical exaggeration in describing her as a being "that once had _titles_, honor, wealth, and fame;" and he may as much have exaggerated her pretensions to beauty. it is indeed noticeable, that he speaks simply of her _decent_ limbs, which, in any english use of the word, does not imply much enthusiasm of praise. she appears to have been the niece of a lady a--; and mr. craggs, afterwards secretary of state, wrote to lady a--on her behalf, and otherwise took an interest in her fate. as to her being a relative of the duke of buckingham's, that rests upon a mere conjectural interpretation applied to a letter of that nobleman's. but all things about this unhappy lady are as yet enveloped in mystery. and not the least part of the mystery is a letter of pope's to a mr. c--, bearing date , that is, just twenty years after the publication of the poem, in which pope, in a manly tone, justifies himself for his estrangement, and presses against his unknown correspondent the very blame which he had applied generally to the kinsman of the poor victim in . now, unless there is some mistake in the date, how are we to explain this gentleman's long lethargy, and his sudden sensibility to pope's anathema, with which the world had resounded for twenty years? pope had now established his reputation with the public as the legitimate successor and heir to the poetical supremacy of dryden. his rape of the lock was unrivalled in ancient or modern literature, and the time had now arrived when, instead of seeking to extend his fame, he might count upon a pretty general support in applying what he had already established to the promotion of his own interest. accordingly, in the autumn of , he formed a final resolution of undertaking a new translation of the iliad. it must be observed, that already in , concurrently with his pastorals, he had published specimens of such a translation; and these had been communicated to his friends some time before. in particular, sir william trumbull, on the th of april, , urged upon pope a complete translation of both iliad and odyssey. defective skill in the greek language, exaggeration of the difficulties, and the timidity of a writer as yet unknown, and not quite twenty years old, restrained pope for five years and more. what he had practised as a sort of _bravura_, for a single effort of display, he recoiled from as a daily task to be pursued through much toil, and a considerable section of his life. however, he dallied with the purpose, starting difficulties in the temper of one who wishes to hear them undervalued; until at length sir richard steele determined him to the undertaking, a fact overlooked by the biographers, but which is ascertained by ayre's account of that interview between pope and addison, probably in , which sealed the rupture between them. in the autumn of , he made his design known amongst his friends. accordingly, on the st of october, we have lord lansdown's letter, expressing his great pleasure at the communication; on the th, we have addison's letter encouraging him to the task; and in november of the same year occurs the amusing scene so graphically described by bishop kennet, when dean swift presided in the conversation, and, amongst other indications of his conscious authority, "instructed a young nobleman, that the best poet in england was mr. pope, who had _begun_ a translation of homer into english verse, for which he must have them all subscribe; for," says he," _the author shall not begin to print until i have a thousand guineas for him_." if this were the extent of what swift anticipated from the work, he fell miserably below the result. but, perhaps, he spoke only of a cautionary _arrha_ or earnest. as this was unquestionably the greatest literary labor, as to profit, ever executed, not excepting the most lucrative of sir walter scott's, if due allowance be made for the altered value of money, and if we consider the odyssey as forming part of the labor, it may be right to state the particulars of pope's contract with lintot. the number of subscribers to the iliad was , and the number of copies subscribed for was . the work was to be printed in six quarto volumes; and the subscription was a guinea a volume. consequently by the subscription pope obtained six times guineas, or l. s., (for the guinea then passed for s. d.); and for the copyright of each volume lintot offered l, consequently l for the whole six; so that from the iliad the profit exactly amounted to l. s. of the odyssey, copies were subscribed for. it was to be printed in five quarto volumes, and the subscription was a guinea a volume. consequently by the subscription pope obtained five times guineas, or l. s.; and for the copyright lintot offered l. the total sum received, therefore, by pope, on account of the odyssey, was l. s. but in this instance he had two coadjutors, broome and fenton; between them they translated twelve books, leaving twelve to pope. the notes also were compiled by broome; but the postscript to the notes was written by pope. fenton received l, broome l. such at least is warton's account, and more probable than that of ruffhead, who not only varies the proportions, but increases the whole sum given to the assistants by l. thus far we had followed the guidance of mere probabilities, as they lie upon the face of the transaction. but we have since detected a written statement of pope's, unaccountably overlooked by the biographers, and serving of itself to show how negligently they have read the works of their illustrious subject. the statement is entitled to the fullest attention and confidence, not being a hasty or casual notice of the transaction, but pointedly shaped to meet a calumnious rumor against pope in his character of paymaster; as if he who had found so much liberality from publishers in his own person, were niggardly or unjust as soon as he assumed those relations to others. broome, it was alleged, had expressed himself dissatisfied with pope's remuneration. perhaps he had. for he would be likely to frame his estimate for his own services from the scale of pope's reputed gains; and those gains would, at any rate, be enormously exaggerated, as uniformly happens where there is a basis of the marvellous to begin with. and, secondly, it would be natural enough to assume the previous result from the iliad as a fair standard for computation; but in this, as we know, all parties found themselves disappointed, and broome had the less right to murmur at this, since the arrangement with himself as chief journeyman in the job was one main cause of the disappointment. there was also another reason why broome should be less satisfied than fenton. verse for verse, any one thousand lines of a translation so purely mechanical might stand against any other thousand; and so far the equation of claims was easy. a book-keeper, with a pen behind his ear, and cocker's golden rule open before him, could do full justice to mr. broome _as a poet_ every saturday night. but broome had a separate account current for pure prose against pope. one he had in conjunction with fenton for verses delivered on the premises at so much per hundred, on which there could be no demur, except as to the allowance for tare and tret as a discount in favor of pope. but the prose account, the account for notes, requiring very various degrees of reading and research, allowed of no such easy equation. there it was, we conceive, that broome's discontent arose. pope, however, declares, that he had given him l, thus confirming the proportions of warton against ruffhead, (that is, in effect, warburton,) and some other advantages which were not in money, nor deductions at all from his own money profits, but which may have been worth so much money to broome, as to give some colorable truth to ruffhead's allegation of an additional l. in direct money, it remains certain that fenton had three, and broome five hundred pounds. it follows, therefore, that for the iliad and odyssey jointly he received a sum of l. s., and paid for assistance l, which leaves to himself a clear sum of l. s. and, in fact, his profits ought to be calculated without deduction, since it was his own choice, from indolence, to purchase assistance. the iliad was commenced about october, . in the summer of the following year he was so far advanced as to begin making arrangements with lintot for the printing; and the first two books, in manuscript, were put into the hands of lord halifax. in june, , between the th and th, the subscribers received their copies of the first volume; and in july lintot began to publish that volume generally. some readers will inquire, who paid for the printing and paper, &c.? all this expense fell upon lintot, for whom pope was superfluously anxious. the sagacious bookseller understood what he was about; and, when a pirated edition was published in holland, he counteracted the injury by printing a cheap edition, of which copies were sold in a few weeks; an extraordinary proof of the extended interest in literature. the second, third, and fourth volumes of the iliad, each containing, like the first, four books, were published successively in , , ; and in , pope completed the work by publishing the fifth volume, containing five books, and the sixth, containing the last three, with the requisite supplementary apparatus. the odyssey was commenced in , (not , as mr. roscoe virtually asserts at p. ,) and the publication of it was finished in . the sale, however, was much inferior to that of the iliad; for which more reasons than one might be assigned. but there can be no doubt that pope himself depreciated the work, by his undignified arrangements for working by subordinate hands. such a process may answer in sculpture, because there a quantity of rough-hewing occurs, which can no more be improved by committing it to a phidias, than a common shop-bill could be improved in its arithmetic by sir isaac newton. but in literature such arrangements are degrading; and, above all, in a work which was but too much exposed already to the presumption of being a mere effort of mechanic skill, or (as curll said to the house of lords)" _a knack_; "it was deliberately helping forward that idea to let off parts of the labor. only think of milton letting off by contract to the lowest offer, and to be delivered by such a day, (for which good security to be found,) six books of paradise lost. it is true, the great dramatic authors were often _collaborateurs_, but their case was essentially different. the loss, however, fell not upon pope, but upon lintot, who, on this occasion, was out of temper, and talked rather broadly of prosecution. but that was out of the question. pope had acted indiscreetly, but nothing could be alleged against his honor; for he had expressly warned the public, that he did not, as in the other case, profess _to translate_, but _to undertake [endnote: ] a translation_ of the odyssey. lintot, however, was no loser absolutely, though he might be so in relation to his expectations; on the contrary, he grew rich, bought land, and became sheriff of the county in which his estates lay. we have pursued the homeric labors uninterruptedly from their commencement in , till their final termination in , a period of twelve years or nearly; because this was the task to which pope owed the dignity, if not the comforts, of his life, since it was this which enabled him to decline a pension from all administrations, and even from his friend craggs, the secretary, to decline the express offer of l per annum. indeed pope is always proud to own his obligations to homer. in the interval, however, between the iliad and the odyssey, pope listened to proposals made by jacob tonson, that he should revise an edition of shakspeare. for this, which was in fact the first attempt at establishing the text of the mighty poet, pope obtained but little money, and still less reputation. he received, according to tradition, only l. s. for his trouble of collation, which must have been considerable, and some other trifling editorial labor. and the opinion of all judges, from the first so unfavorable as to have depreciated the money-value of the book enormously, perhaps from a prepossession of the public mind against the fitness of pope for executing the dull labors of revision, has ever since pronounced this work the very worst edition in existence. for the edition we have little to plead; but for the editor it is but just to make three apologies. in the _first_ place, he wrote a brilliant preface, which, although (like other works of the same class) too much occupied in displaying his own ability, and too often, for the sake of an effective antithesis, doing deep injustice to shakspeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole, extended his fame, by giving the sanction and countersign of a great wit to the national admiration. _secondly_, as dr. johnson admits, pope's failure pointed out the right road to his successors. _thirdly_, even in this failure it is but fair to say, that in a graduated scale of merit, as distributed amongst the long succession of editors through that century, pope holds a rank proportionable to his age. for the year , he is no otherwise below theobald, hanmer, capell, warburton, or even johnson, than as they are successively below each other, and all of them as to accuracy below steevens, as he again was below malone and read. the gains from shakspeare would hardly counterbalance the loss which pope sustained this year from the south sea bubble. one thing, by the way, is still unaccountably neglected by writers on this question. how it was that the great mississippi bubble, during the orleans regency in paris, should have happened to coincide with that of london. if this were accident, how marvellous that the same insanity should possess the two great capitals of christendom in the same year? if, again, it were not accident, but due to some common cause, why is not that cause explained? pope to his nearest friends never stated the amount of his loss. the biographers report that at one time his stock was worth from twenty to thirty thousand pounds. but that is quite impossible. it is true, that as the stock rose at one time a thousand per cent., this would not imply on pope's part an original purchase beyond twenty-five hundred pounds or thereabouts. but pope has furnished an argument against _that, _ which we shall improve. he quotes, more than once, as applicable to his own case, the old proverbial riddle of hesiod, _----- ----- ------, the half is more than the whole_. what did he mean by that? we understand it thus: that between the selling and buying, the variations had been such as to sink his shares to one half of the price they had once reached, but, even at that depreciation, to leave him richer on selling out than he had been at first. but the half of , would be a far larger sum than pope could have ventured to risk upon a fund confessedly liable to daily fluctuation. english pounds would be the utmost he could risk; in which case the half of , pounds would have left him so very much richer, that he would have proclaimed his good fortune as an evidence of his skill and prudence. yet, on the contrary, he wished his friends to understand at times that he had lost. but his friends forgot to ask one important question: was the word _loss_ to be understood in relation to the imaginary and nominal wealth which he once possessed, or in relation to the absolute sum invested in the south sea fund? the truth is, pope practised on this, as on other occasions, a little finessing, which is the chief foible in his character. his object was, that, according to circumstances, he might vindicate his own freedom from the common mania, in case his enemies should take that handle for attacking him; or might have it in his power to plead poverty, and to account for it, in case he should ever accept that pension which had been so often tendered but never sternly rejected. in pope lost one of his dearest friends, bishop atterbury, by banishment; a sentence most justly incurred, and mercifully mitigated by the hostile whig government. on the bishop's trial a circumstance occurred to pope which flagrantly corroborated his own belief in his natural disqualification for public life. he was summoned as an evidence on his friend's behalf. he had but a dozen words to say, simply explaining the general tenor of his lordship's behavior at bromley, and yet, under this trivial task, though supported by the enthusiasm of his friendship, he broke down. lord bolingbroke, returning from exile, met the bishop at the sea-side; upon which it was wittily remarked that they were "exchanged." lord bolingbroke supplied to pope the place, or perhaps more than supplied the place, of the friend he had lost; for bolingbroke was a free-thinker, and so far more entertaining to pope, even whilst partially dissenting, than atterbury, whose clerical profession laid him under restraints of decorum, and latterly, there is reason to think, of conscience. in , on closing the odyssey, pope announces his intention to swift of quitting the labors of a translator, and thenceforwards applying himself to original composition. this resolution led to the essay on man, which appeared soon afterwards; and, with the exception of two labors, which occupied pope in the interval between and , the rest of his life may properly be described as dedicated to the further extension of that essay. the two works which he interposed were a collection of the fugitive papers, whether prose or verse, which he and dean swift had scattered amongst their friends at different periods of life. the avowed motive for this publication, and, in fact, the secret motive, as disclosed in pope's confidential letters, was to make it impossible thenceforwards for piratical publishers like curll. both pope and swift dreaded the malice of curll in case they should die before him. it was one of curll's regular artifices to publish a heap of trash on the death of any eminent man, under the title of his remains; and in allusion to that practice, it was that arbuthnot most wittily called curll "one of the new terrors of death." by publishing _all_, pope would have disarmed curll beforehand; and that was in fact the purpose; and that plea only could be offered by two grave authors, one forty, the other sixty years old, for reprinting _jeux d'esprit_ that never had any other apology than the youth of their authors. yet, strange to say, after all, some were omitted; and the omission of one opened the door to curll as well as that of a score. let curll have once inserted the narrow end of the wedge, he would soon have driven it home. this miscellany, however, in three volumes, (published in , but afterwards increased by a fourth in ,) though in itself a trifling work, had one vast consequence. it drew after it swarms of libels and lampoons, levelled almost exclusively at pope, although the cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon the title-page. these libels in _their_ turn produced a second reaction; and, by stimulating pope to effectual anger, eventually drew forth, for the everlasting admiration of posterity, the very greatest of pope's works; a monument of satirical power the greatest which man has produced, not excepting the macfleckno of dryden, namely, the immortal dunciad. in october of the year , this poem, in its original form, was completed. many editions, not spurious altogether, nor surreptitious, but with some connivance, not yet explained, from pope, were printed in dublin and in london. but the first quarto and acknowledged edition was published in london early in " - ," as the editors choose to write it, that is, (without perplexing the reader,) in . on march of which year it was presented by the prime minister, sir robert walpole, to the king and queen at st. james's. like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the wound, and afterwards to languish away, pope felt so greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his homeric labors put together,) that he prepared his friends to expect for the future only an indolent companion and a hermit. events rapidly succeeded which tended to strengthen the impression he had conceived of his own decay, and certainly to increase his disgust with the world. in died his friend atterbury; and on december the th of the same year gay, the most unpretending of all the wits whom he knew, and the one with whom he had at one time been domesticated, expired, after an illness of three days, which dr. arbuthnot declares to have been "the most precipitate" he ever knew. but in fact gay had long been decaying, from the ignoble vice of too much and too luxurious eating. six months after this loss, which greatly affected pope, came the last deadly wound which this life could inflict, in the death of his mother. she had for some time been in her dotage, and recognized no face but that of her son, so that her death was not unexpected; but that circumstance did not soften the blow of separation to pope. she died on the th of june, , being then ninety-three years old. three days after, writing to richardson the painter, for the purpose of urging him to come down and take her portrait before the coffin was closed, he says, "i thank god, her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan, nor even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression of tranquillity," that "it would afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever painting drew. adieu, may you die as happily." the funeral took place on the th; pope then quitted the house, unable to support the silence of her chamber, and did not return for months, nor in fact ever reconciled himself to the sight of her vacant apartment. swift also he had virtually lost for ever. in april, , this unhappy man had visited pope for the last time. during this visit occurred the death of george i. great expectations arose from that event amongst the tories, in which, of course,' swift shared. it was reckoned upon as a thing of course that walpole would be dismissed. but this bright gleam of hope proved as treacherous as all before; and the anguish of this final disappointment perhaps it was which brought on a violent attack of swift's constitutional malady. on the last of august he quitted pope's house abruptly, concealed himself in london, and finally quitted it, as stealthily as he had before quitted twickenham, for ireland, never more to return. he left a most affectionate letter for pope; but his affliction, and his gloomy anticipations of insanity, were too oppressive to allow of his seeking a personal interview. pope might now describe himself pretty nearly as _ultimus suorum_; and if he would have friends in future, he must seek them, as he complains bitterly, almost amongst strangers and another generation. this sense of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. between and , he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. his essay on man was but one link in a general course which he had projected of moral philosophy, here and there pursuing his themes into the fields of metaphysics, but no farther in either field of morals or metaphysics than he could make compatible with a poetical treatment. these works, however, naturally entangled him in feuds of various complexions with people of very various pretensions; and to admirers of pope so fervent as we profess ourselves, it is painful to acknowledge that the dignity of his latter years, and the becoming tranquillity of increasing age, are sadly disturbed by the petulance and the tone of irritation which, alike to those in the wrong and in the right, inevitably besiege all personal disputes. he was agitated, besides, by a piratical publication of his correspondence. this emanated of course from the den of curll, the universal robber and "_blatant beast_" of those days; and, besides the injury offered to his feelings by exposing some youthful sallies which he wished to have suppressed, it drew upon him a far more disgraceful imputation, most assuredly unfounded, but accredited by dr. johnson, and consequently in full currency to this day, of having acted collusively with curll, or at least through curll, for the publication of what he wished the world to see, but could not else have devised any decent pretext for exhibiting. the disturbance of his mind on this occasion led to a circular request, dispersed amongst his friends, that they would return his letters. all complied except swift. he only delayed, and in fact shuffled. but it is easy to read in his evasions, and pope, in spite of his vexation, read the same tale, viz., that, in consequence of his recurring attacks and increasing misery, he was himself the victim of artifices amongst those who surrounded him. what pope apprehended happened. the letters were all published in dublin and in london, the originals being then only returned when they had done their work of exposure. such a tenor of life, so constantly fretted by petty wrongs, or by leaden insults, to which only the celebrity of their object lent force or wings, allowed little opportunity to pope for recalling his powers from angry themes, and converging them upon others of more catholic philosophy. to the last he continued to conceal vipers beneath his flowers; or rather, speaking proportionately to the case, he continued to sheath amongst the gleaming but innocuous lightnings of his departing splendors, the thunderbolts which blasted for ever. his last appearance was his greatest. in he published the fourth book of the dunciad; to which it has with much reason been objected, that it stands in no obvious relation to the other three, but which, taken as a separate whole, is by far the most brilliant and the weightiest of his works. pope was aware of the _hiatus_ between this last book and the rest, on which account he sometimes called it the greater dunciad; and it would have been easy for him, with a shallow warburtonian ingenuity, to invent links that might have satisfied a mere _verbal_ sense of connection. but he disdained this puerile expedient. the fact was, and could not be disguised from any penetrating eye, that the poem was not a pursuit of the former subjects; it had arisen spontaneously at various times, by looking at the same general theme of dulness (which, in pope's sense, includes all aberrations of the intellect, nay, even any defective equilibrium amongst the faculties) under a different angle of observation, and from a different centre. in this closing book, not only bad authors, as in the other three, but all abuses of science or antiquarian knowledge, or connoisseurship in the arts, are attacked. virtuosi, medalists, butterfly-hunters, florists, erring metaphysicians, &c., are all pierced through and through as with the shafts of apollo. but the imperfect plan of the work as to its internal economy, no less than its exterior relations, is evident in many places; and in particular the whole catastrophe of the poem, if it can be so called, is linked to the rest by a most insufficient incident. to give a closing grandeur to his work, pope had conceived the idea of representing the earth as lying universally under the incubation of one mighty spirit of dulness; a sort of millennium, as we may call it, for ignorance, error, and stupidity. this would take leave of the reader with effect; but how was it to be introduced? at what era? under what exciting cause? as to the eras, pope could not settle that; unless it were a _future_ era, the description of it could not be delivered as a prophecy; and, not being prophetic, it would want much of its grandeur. yet, _as_ a part of futurity, how is it connected with our present times? do they and their pursuits lead to it as a possibility, or as a contingency upon certain habits which we have it in our power to eradicate, (in which case this vision of dulness has a _practical_ warning,) or is it a mere necessity, one amongst the many changes attached to the cycles of human destiny, or which chance brings round with the revolutions of its wheel? all this pope could not determine; but the exciting cause he has determined, and it is preposterously below the effect. the goddess of dulness yawns; and her yawn, which, after all, should rather express the fact and state of universal dulness than its cause, produces a change over all nations tantamount to a long eclipse. meantime, with all its defects of plan, the poem, as to execution, is superior to all which pope has done; the composition is much superior to that of the essay on man, and more profoundly poetic. the parodies drawn from milton, as also in the former books, have a beauty and effect which cannot be expressed; and, if a young lady wished to cull for her album a passage from all pope's writings, which, without a trace of irritation or acrimony, should yet present an exquisite gem of independent beauty, she could not find another passage equal to the little story of the florist and the butterfly-hunter. they plead their cause separately before the throne of dulness; the florist telling how he had reared a superb carnation, which, in honor of the queen, he called caroline, when his enemy, pursuing a butterfly which settled on the carnation, in securing his own object, had destroyed that of the plaintiff. the defendant replies with equal beauty; and it may certainly be affirmed, that, for brilliancy of coloring and the art of poetical narration, the tale is not surpassed by any in the language. this was the last effort of pope worthy of separate notice. he was now decaying rapidly, and sensible of his own decay. his complaint was a dropsy of the chest, and he knew it to be incurable. under these circumstances, his behavior was admirably philosophical. he employed himself in revising and burnishing all his later works, as those upon which he wisely relied for his reputation with future generations. in this task he was assisted by dr. warburton, a new literary friend, who had introduced himself to the favorable notice of pope about four years before, by a defence of the essay on man, which crousaz had attacked, but in general indirectly and ineffectually, by attacking it through the blunders of a very faulty translation. this poem, however, still labors, to religious readers, under two capital defects. if man, according to pope, is now so admirably placed in the universal system of things, that evil only could result from any change, then it seems to follow, either that a fall of man is inadmissible; or at least, that, by placing him in his true centre, it had been a blessing universally. the other objection lies in this, that if all is right already, and in this earthly station, then one argument for a future state, as the scene in which evil is to be redressed, seems weakened or undermined. as the weakness of pope increased, his nearest friends, lord bolingbroke, and a few others, gathered around him. the last scenes were passed almost with ease and tranquillity. he dined in company two days before he died: and on the very day preceding his death he took an airing on blackheath. a few mornings before he died, he was found very early in his library writing on the immortality of the soul. this was an effort of delirium; and he suffered otherwise from this affection of the brain, and from inability to think in his closing hours. but his humanity and goodness, it was remarked, had survived his intellectual faculties. he died on the th of may, ; and so quietly, that the attendants could not distinguish the exact moment of his dissolution. we had prepared an account of pope's quarrels, in which we had shown that, generally, he was not the aggressor; and often was atrociously ill used before he retorted. this service to pope's memory we had judged important, because it is upon these quarrels chiefly that the erroneous opinion has built itself of pope's fretfulness and irritability. and this unamiable feature of his nature, together with a proneness to petty manoeuvring, are the main foibles that malice has been able to charge upon pope's moral character. yet, with no better foundation for their malignity than these doubtful propensities, of which the first perhaps was a constitutional defect, a defect of his temperament rather than his will, and the second has been much exaggerated, many writers have taken upon themselves to treat pope as a man, if not absolutely unprincipled and without moral sensibility, yet as mean, little-minded, indirect, splenetic, vindictive, and morose. now the difference between ourselves and these writers is fundamental. they fancy that in pope's character a basis of ignoble qualities was here and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, on the contrary, believe that in pope lay a disposition radically noble and generous, clouded and overshadowed by superficial foibles, or, to adopt the distinction of shakspeare, they see nothing but "dust a little gilt," and we "gold a little dusted." a very rapid glance we will throw over the general outline of his character. as a friend, it is noticed emphatically by martha blount and other contemporaries, who must have had the best means of judging, that no man was so warm-hearted, or so much sacrificed himself for others, as pope; and in fact many of his quarrels grew out of this trait in his character. for once that he levelled his spear in his own quarrel, at least twice he did so on behalf of his insulted parents or his friends. pope was also noticeable for the duration of his friendships; [endnote: ] some dropped him,--but he never any throughout his life. and let it be remembered, that amongst pope's friends were the men of most eminent talents in those days; so that envy at least, or jealousy of rival power, was assuredly no foible of his. in that respect how different from addison, whose petty manoeuvring against pope proceeded entirely from malignant jealousy. that addison was more in the wrong even than has generally been supposed, and pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more generous, we have the means at a proper opportunity of showing decisively. as a son, we need not insist on pope's preeminent goodness. dean swift, who had lived for months together at twickenham, declares that he had not only never witnessed, but had never heard of anything like it. as a christian, pope appears in a truly estimable light. he found himself a roman catholic by accident of birth; so was his mother; but his father was so upon personal conviction and conversion, yet not without extensive study of the questions at issue. it would have laid open the road to preferment, and preferment was otherwise abundantly before him, if pope would have gone over to the protestant faith. and in his conscience he found no obstacle to that change; he was a philosophical christian, intolerant of nothing but intolerance, a bigot only against bigots. but he remained true to his baptismal profession, partly on a general principle of honor in adhering to a distressed and dishonored party, but chiefly out of reverence and affection to his mother. in his relation to women, pope was amiable and gentlemanly; and accordingly was the object of affectionate regard and admiration to many of the most accomplished in that sex. this we mention especially because we would wish to express our full assent to the manly scorn with which mr. roscoe repels the libellous insinuations against pope and miss martha blount. a more innocent connection we do not believe ever existed. as an author, warburton has recorded that no man ever displayed more candor or more docility to criticisms offered in a friendly spirit. finally, we sum up all in saying, that pope retained to the last a true and diffusive benignity; that this was the quality which survived all others, notwithstanding the bitter trial which his benignity must have stood through life, and the excitement to a spiteful reaction of feeling which was continually pressed upon him by the scorn and insult which his deformity drew upon him from the unworthy. but the moral character of pope is of secondary interest. we are concerned with it only as connected with his great intellectual power. there are three errors which seem current upon this subject. _first_, that pope drew his impulses from french literature; _secondly_, that he was a poet of inferior rank; _thirdly_, that his merit lies in superior "correctness." with respect to the first notion, it has prevailed by turns in every literature. one stage of society, in every nation, brings men of impassioned minds to the contemplation of manners, and of the social affections of man as exhibited in manners. with this propensity cooperates, no doubt, some degree of despondency when looking at the great models of the literature who have usually preoccupied the grander passions, and displayed their movements in the earlier periods of literature. now it happens that the french, from an extraordinary defect in the higher qualities of passion, have attracted the notice of foreign nations chiefly to that field of their literature, in which the taste and the unimpassioned understanding preside. but in all nations such literature is a natural growth of the mind, and would arise equally if the french literature had never existed. the wits of queen anne's reign, or even of charles ii.'s, were not french by their taste or their imitation. butler and dryden were surely not french; and of milton we need not speak; as little was pope french, either by his institution or by his models. boileau he certainly admired too much; and, for the sake of a poor parallelism with a passage about greece in horace, he has falsified history in the most ludicrous manner, without a shadow of countenance from facts, in order to make out that we, like the romans, received laws of taste from those whom we had conquered. but these are insulated cases and accidents, not to insist on his known and most profound admiration, often expressed, for both chaucer, and shakspeare, and milton. secondly, that pope is to be classed as an inferior poet, has arisen purely from a confusion between the departments of poetry which he cultivated and the merit of his culture. the first place must undoubtedly be given for ever,--it cannot be refused,--to the impassioned movements of the tragic, and to the majestic movements of the epic muse. we cannot alter the relations of things out of favor to an individual. but in his own department, whether higher or lower, that man is supreme who has not yet been surpassed; and such a man is pope. as to the final notion, first started by walsh, and propagated by warton, it is the most absurd of all the three; it is not from superior correctness that pope is esteemed more correct, but because the compass and sweep of his performances lies more within the range of ordinary judgments. many questions that have been raised upon milton or shakspeare, questions relating to so subtile a subject as the flux and reflux of human passion, lie far above the region of ordinary capacities; and the indeterminateness or even carelessness of the judgment is transferred by a common confusion to its objects. but waiving this, let us ask, what is meant by "correctness?" correctness in what? in developing the thought? in connecting it, or effecting the transitions? in the use of words? in the grammar? in the metre? under every one of these limitations of the idea, we maintain that pope is _not_ distinguished by correctness; nay, that, as compared with shakspeare, he is eminently incorrect. produce us from any drama of shakspeare one of those leading passages that all men have by heart, and show us any eminent defect in the very sinews of the thought. it is impossible; defects there may be, but they will always be found irrelevant to the main central thought, or to its expression. now turn to pope; the first striking passage which offers itself to our memory, is the famous character of addison, ending thus: "who would not laugh, if such a man there be, who but must weep if atticus were he?" why must we laugh? because we find a grotesque assembly of noble and ignoble qualities. very well; but why then must we weep? because this assemblage is found actually existing in an eminent man of genius. well, that is a good reason for weeping; we weep for the degradation of human nature. but then revolves the question, why must we laugh? because, if the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient reason for weeping, so much we know from the very first. the very first line says, "peace to all such. but were there one whose fires _true genius kindles_ and fair fame inspires." thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous character. we are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden discovery that the character belonged to a man of genius; and this we had already known from the beginning. match us this prodigious oversight in shakspeare. again, take the essay on criticism. it is a collection of independent maxims, tied together into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural order or logical dependency; generally so vague as to mean nothing. like the general rules of justice, &c., in ethics, to which every man assents; but when the question comes about any practical case, _is_ it just? the opinions fly asunder far as the poles. and, what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man so often as by pope, and by pope nowhere so often as in this very poem. as a single instance, he proscribes monosyllabic lines; and in no english poem of any pretensions are there so many lines of that class as in this. we have counted above a score, and the last line of all is monosyllabic. not, therefore, for superior correctness, but for qualities the very same as belong to his most distinguished brethren, is pope to be considered a great poet; for impassioned thinking, powerful description, pathetic reflection, brilliant narration. his characteristic difference is simply that he carried these powers into a different field, and moved chiefly amongst the social paths of men, and viewed their characters as operating through their manners. and our obligations to him arise chiefly on this ground, that having already, in the persons of earlier poets, carried off the palm in all the grander trials of intellectual strength, for the majesty of the epopee and the impassioned vehemence of the tragic drama, to pope we owe it that we can now claim an equal preeminence in the sportive and aerial graces of the mock heroic and satiric muse; that in the dunciad we possess a peculiar form of satire, in which (according to a plan unattempted by any other nation) we see alternately her festive smile and her gloomiest scowl; that the grave good sense of the nation has here found its brightest mirror; and, finally, that through pope the cycle of our poetry is perfected and made orbicular, that from that day we might claim the laurel equally, whether for dignity or grace. notes. note . dr. johnson, however, and joseph warton, for reasons not stated, have placed his birth on the d. to this statement, as opposed to that which comes from the personal friends of pope, little attention is due. ruffhead and spence, upon such questions, must always be of higher authority than johnson and warton, and _a fortiori_ than bowles. but it ought not to be concealed, though hitherto unnoticed by any person, that some doubt after all remains whether any of the biographers is right. an anonymous writer, contemporary with pope, and evidently familiar with his personal history, declares that he was born on the th of june; and he connects it with an event that, having a public and a partisan interest, (the birth of that prince of wales, who was known twenty-seven years afterwards as the pretender,) would serve to check his own recollections, and give them a collateral voucher. it is true he wrote for an ill-natured purpose; but no purpose whatever could have been promoted by falsifying this particular date. what is still more noticeable, however, pope himself puts a most emphatic negative upon all these statements. in a pathetic letter to a friend, when his attention could not have been wandering, for he is expressly insisting upon a sentiment which will find an echo in many a human heart, viz., that a birthday, though from habit usually celebrated as a festal day, too often is secretly a memorial of disappointment, and an anniversary of sorrowful meaning, he speaks of the very day on which he is then writing as his own birthday; and indeed what else could give any propriety to the passage? now the date of this letter is january , . surely pope knew his own birthday better than those who have adopted a random rumor without investigation. but, whilst we are upon this subject, we must caution the readers of pope against too much reliance upon the chronological accuracy of his editors. _all_ are scandalously careless; and generally they are faithless. many allusions are left unnoticed, which a very little research would have illustrated; many facts are omitted, even yet recoverable, which are essential to the just appreciation of pope's satirical blows; and dates are constantly misstated. mr. roscoe is the most careful of pope's editors; but even he is often wrong. for instance, he has taken the trouble to write a note upon pope's humorous report to lord burlington of his oxford journey on horseback with lintot; and this note involves a sheer impossibility. the letter is undated, except as to the month; and mr. roscoe directs the reader to supply as the true date, which is a gross anachronism. for a ludicrous anecdote is there put into lintot's mouth, representing some angry critic, who had been turning over pope's homer, with frequent _pshaws_, as having been propitiated, by mr. lintot's dinner, into a gentler feeling towards pope, and, finally, by the mere effect of good cheer, without an effort on the publisher's part, as coming to a confession, that what he ate and what he had been reading were equally excellent. but in the year , _no part_ of pope's homer was printed; june, , was the month in which even the subscribers first received the four earliest books of the iliad; and the public generally not until july. this we notice by way of specimen; in itself, or as an error of mere negligence, it would be of little importance; but it is a case to which mr. roscoe has expressly applied his own conjectural skill, and solicited the attention of his reader. we may judge, therefore, of his accuracy in other cases which he did not think worthy of examination. there is another instance, presenting itself in every page, of ignorance concurring with laziness, on the part of all pope's editors, and with the effect not so properly of misleading as of perplexing the general reader. until lord macclesfield's bill for altering the style in the very middle of the eighteenth century, six years, therefore, after the death of pope, there was a custom, arising from the collision between the civil and ecclesiastical year, of dating the whole period that lies between december st and march th, (both days _exclusively,_) as belonging indifferently to the past or the current year. this peculiarity had nothing to do with the old and new style, but was, we believe, redressed by the same act of parliament. now in pope's time it was absolutely necessary that a man should use this double date, because else he was liable to be seriously misunderstood. for instance, it was then always said that charles i had suffered on the th of january / , and why? because, had the historian fixed the date to what it really was, , in that case all those (a very numerous class) who supposed the year to commence on ladyday, or march , would have understood him to mean that this event happened in what we _now_ call , for not until was there any january which _they_ would have acknowledged as belonging to , since _they_ added to the year all the days from january to march . on the other hand, if he had said simply that charles suffered in , he would have been truly understood by the class we have just mentioned; but by another class, who began the year from the st of january, he would have been understood to mean what we _now_ mean by the year . there would have been a sheer difference, not of one, as the reader might think at first sight, but of _two_ entire years in the chronology of the two parties; which difference, and all possibility of doubt, is met and remedied by the fractional date / for that date says in effect it was to you who do not open the new year till ladyday; it was to you who open it from january . thus much to explain the real sense of the case, and it follows from this explanation, that no part of the year ever _can_ have the fractional or double date except the interval from january to march inclusively. and hence arises a practical inference, viz, that the very same reason, and no other, which formerly enjoined the use of the compound or fractional date, viz, the prevention of a capital ambiguity or dilemma, now enjoins its omission. for in our day, when the double opening of the year is abolished, what sense is there in perplexing a reader by using a fraction which offers him a choice without directing him how to choose? in fact, it is the _denominator_ of the fraction, if one may so style the lower figure, which expresses to a modern eye the true year. yet the editors of pope, as well as many other writers, have confused their readers by this double date; and why? simply because they were confused themselves. (period omitted in original; but there is a double space following, suggesting one should have been there) many errors in literature of large extent have arisen from this confusion. thus it was said properly enough in the contemporary accounts, for instance, in lord monmouth's memoirs that queen elizabeth died on the last day of the year , for she died on the th of march, and by a careful writer this event would have been dated as march , / . but many writers, misled by the phrase above cited, have asserted that james i. was proclaimed on the st of january, . heber, bishop of calcutta, again, has ruined the entire chronology of the life of jeremy taylor, and unconsciously vitiated the facts, by not understanding this fractional date. mr roscoe even too often leaves his readers to collect the true year as they can. thus, e. g. at p. , of his life, he quotes from pope's letter to warburton, in great vexation for the surreptitious publication of his letters in ireland, under date of february , - / . but why not have printed it intelligibly as ? incidents there are in most men's lives, which are susceptible of a totally different moral value, according as the are dated in one year or another that might be a kind and honorable liberality in , which would be a fraud upon creditors in . exile to a distance of ten miles from london in january, might argue, that a man was a turbulent citizen, and suspected of treason, whilst the same exile in january, , would simply argue that, as a papist, he had been included amongst his whole body in a general measure of precaution to meet the public dangers of that year. this explanation we have thought it right to make both for its extensive application to all editions of pope, and on account of the serious blunders which have arisen from the case when ill understood, and because, in a work upon education, written jointly by messrs lant carpenter and shephard though generally men of ability and learning, this whole point is erroneously explained. note . it is apparently with allusion to this part of his history, which he would often have heard from the lips of his own father, that pope glances at his uncle's memory somewhat disrespectfully in his prose letter to lord harvey. note . some accounts, however, say to flanders, in which case, perhaps, antwerp or brussels would have the honor of his conversion. note . this however was not twyford, according to an anonymous pamphleteer of the times but a catholic seminary in devonshire street that is, in the bloomsbury district of london, and the same author asserts, that the scene of his disgrace as indeed seems probable beforehand, was not the first but the last of his arenas as a schoolboy which indeed was first, and which last, is very unimportant; but with a view to another point, which is not without interest, namely, as to the motive of pope for so bitter a lampoon as we must suppose it to have been, as well as with regard to the topics which he used to season it, this anonymous letter throws the only light which has been offered; and strange it is, that no biographer of pope should have hunted upon the traces indicated by him. any solution of pope's virulence, and of the master's bitter retaliation, even _as_ a solution, is so far entitled to attention; apart from which the mere straightforwardness of this man's story, and its minute circumstantiality, weigh greatly in its favor. to our thinking, he unfolds the whole affair in the simple explanation, nowhere else to be found, that the master of the school, the mean avenger of a childish insult by a bestial punishment, was a mr. bromley, one of james ii.'s popish apostates; whilst the particular statements which he makes with respect to himself and the young duke of norfolk of , as two schoolfellows of pope at that time and place, together with his voluntary promise to come forward in person, and verify his account if it should happen to be challenged,--are all, we repeat, so many presumptions in favor of his veracity. "mr. alexander pope," says he, "before he had been four months at this school, or was able to construe tully's offices, employed his muse in satirizing his master. it was a libel of at least one hundred verses, which (a fellow-student having given information of it) was found in his pocket; and the young satirist was soundly whipped, and kept a prisoner to his room for seven days; whereupon his father fetched him away, and i have been told he never went to school more." this bromley, it has been ascertained, was the son of a country gentleman in worcestershire, and must have had considerable prospects at one time, since it appears that he had been a gentleman-commoner at christ's church, oxford. there is an error in the punctuation of the letter we have just quoted, which affects the sense in a way very important to the question before us. bromley is described as "one of king james's converts in oxford, some years _after_ that prince's abdication;" but, if this were really so, he must have been a conscientious convert. the latter clause should be connected with what follows:" _some years after that prince's abdication he kept a little seminary_; "that is, when his mercenary views in quitting his religion were effectually defeated, when the boyne had sealed his despair, he humbled himself into a petty schoolmaster. these facts are interesting, because they suggest at once the motive for the merciless punishment inflicted upon pope. his own father was a papist like bromley, but a sincere and honest papist, who had borne double taxes, legal stigmas, and public hatred for conscience' sake. his contempt was habitually pointed at those who tampered with religion for interested purposes. his son inherited these upright feelings. and we may easily guess what would be the bitter sting of any satire he would write on bromley. such a topic was too true to be forgiven, and too keenly barbed by bromley's conscience. by the way, this writer, like ourselves, reads in this juvenile adventure a prefiguration of pope's satirical destiny. note . that is, sheffield, and, legally speaking, of buckingham _shire_. for he would not take the title of buckingham, under a fear that there was lurking somewhere or other a claim to that title amongst the connections of the villiers family. he was a pompous grandee, who lived in uneasy splendor, and, as a writer, most extravagantly overrated; accordingly, he is now forgotten. such was his vanity, and his ridiculous mania for allying himself with royalty, that he first of all had the presumption to court the princess (afterwards queen) anne. being rejected, he then offered himself to the illegitimate daughter of james ii., by the daughter of sir charles sedley. she was as ostentatious as himself, and accepted him. note . meantime, the felicities of this translation are at times perfectly astonishing; and it would be scarcely possible to express more nervously or amply the words, --"_jurisque secundi_ _ambitus impatiens_, et summo dulcius unum stare loco,"---- than this child of fourteen has done in the following couplet, which, most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of fusing them into connection. "and impotent desire to reign alone, _that scorns the dull reversion of a throne_." but the passage for which beyond all others we must make room, is a series of eight lines, corresponding to six in the original; and this for two reasons: first, because dr. joseph warton has deliberately asserted, that in our whole literature, "we have scarcely eight more beautiful lines than these;" and though few readers will subscribe to so sweeping a judgment, yet certainly these must be wonderful lines for a boy, which could challenge such commendation from an experienced _polyhistor_ of infinite reading. secondly, because the lines contain a night-scene. now it must be well known to many readers, that the famous night scene in the iliad, so familiar to every schoolboy, has been made the subject, for the last thirty years, of severe, and, in many respects, of just criticisms. this description will therefore have a double interest by comparison, whilst, whatever may be thought of either taken separately for itself, considered as a translation, this which we now quote is as true to statius as the other is undoubtedly faithless to homer "_jamque per emeriti surgens confima phoebi titanis, late mundo subvecta silenti rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aera biga jam pecudes volucresque tacent. jam somnus avaris inserpit curis, pronusque per aera nutat, grata laboratae referens oblivia vitae_" theb i - . "'twas now the time when phoebus yields to night, and rising cynthia sheds her silver light, wide o'er the world in solemn pomp she drew her airy chariot hung with pearly dew all birds and beasts he hush'd. sleep steals away the wild desires of men and toils of day, and brings, descending through the silent air, a sweet forgetfulness of human care." note . one writer of that age says, in cheapside, but probably this difference arose from contemplating lombard street as a prolongation of cheapside. note . dr johnson said, that all he could discover about mr cromwell, was the fact of his going a hunting in a tie wig, but gay has added another fact to dr johnson's, by calling him "honest _hatless_ cromwell with red breeches" this epithet has puzzled the commentators, but its import is obvious enough cromwell, as we learn from more than one person, was anxious to be considered a fine gentleman, and devoted to women. now it was long the custom in that age for such persons, when walking with ladies, to carry their hats in their hand. louis xv. used to ride by the side of madame de pompadour hat in hand. note . it is strange indeed to find, not only that pope had so frequently kept rough copies of his own letters, and that he thought so well of them as to repeat the same letter to different persons, as in the case of the two lovers killed by lightning, or even to two sisters, martha and therese blount (who were sure to communicate their letters,) but that even swift had retained copies of _his. _ note . the word _undertake_ had not yet lost the meaning of shakspeare's age, in which it was understood to describe those cases where, the labor being of a miscellaneous kind, some person in chief offered to overlook and conduct the whole, whether with or without personal labor. the modern _undertaker,_ limited to the care of funerals, was then but one of numerous cases to which the term was applied. note . we may illustrate this feature in the behavior of pope to savage. when all else forsook him, when all beside pleaded the insults of savage for withdrawing their subscriptions, pope sent his in advance. and when savage had insulted _him_ also, arrogantly commanding him never "to presume to interfere or meddle in his affairs," dignity and self-respect made pope obedient to these orders, except when there was an occasion of serving savage. on his second visit to bristol (when he returned from glamorganshire,) savage had been thrown into the jail of the city. one person only interested himself for this hopeless profligate, and was causing an inquiry to be made about his debts at the time savage died. so much dr. johnson admits; but he _forgets_ to mention the name of this long suffering friend. it was pope. meantime, let us not be supposed to believe the lying legend of savage; he was doubtless no son of lady macclesfield's, but an impostor, who would not be sent to the tread-mill. charles lamb. it sounds paradoxical, but is not so in a bad sense, to say, that in every literature of large compass some authors will be found to rest much of the interest which surrounds them on their essential _non_-popularity. they are good for the very reason that they are not in conformity to the current taste. they interest because to the world they are _not_ interesting. they attract by means of their repulsion. not as though it could separately furnish a reason for loving a book, that the majority of men had found it repulsive. _prima facie_, it must suggest some presumption _against_ a book, that it has failed to gain public attention. to have roused hostility indeed, to have kindled a feud against its own principles or its temper, may happen to be a good sign. _that_ argues power. hatred may be promising. the deepest revolutions of mind sometimes begin in hatred. but simply to have left a reader unimpressed, is in itself a neutral result, from which the inference is doubtful. yet even _that_, even simple failure to impress, may happen at times to be a result from positive powers in a writer, from special originalities, such as rarely reflect themselves in the mirror of the ordinary understanding. it seems little to be perceived, how much the great scriptural [endnote: ] idea of the _worldly_ and the _unworldly_ is found to emerge in literature as well as in life. in reality the very same combinations of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. a library divides into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides into that same majority and minority. the world has an instinct for recognizing its own; and recoils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real life. from qualities for instance of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect; and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, than it does in the realities of life. charles lamb, if any ever _was_ is amongst the class here contemplated; he, if any ever _has_, ranks amongst writers whose works are destined to be forever unpopular, and yet forever interesting; interesting, moreover, by means of those very qualities which guarantee their non-popularity. the same qualities which will be found forbidding to the worldly and the thoughtless, which will be found insipid to many even amongst robust and powerful minds, are exactly those which will continue to command a select audience in every generation. the prose essays, under the signature of _elia_, form the most delightful section amongst lamb's works. they traverse a peculiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest; and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. but this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness chequered by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross-lights of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects casually described, whether men, or things, or usages, and, in the rear of all this, the constant recurrence to ancient recollections and to decaying forms of household life, as things retiring before the tumult of new and revolutionary generations; these traits in combination communicate to the papers a grace and strength of originality which nothing in any literature approaches, whether for degree or kind of excellence, except the most felicitous papers of addison, such as those on sir roger de coverly, and some others in the same vein of composition. they resemble addison's papers also in the diction, which is natural and idiomatic, even to carelessness. they are equally faithful to the truth of nature; and in this only they differ remarkably--that the sketches of elia reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's own character, whereas in all those of addison the personal peculiarities of the delineator (though known to the reader from the beginning through the account of the club) are nearly quiescent. now and then they are recalled into a momentary notice, but they do not act, or at all modify his pictures of sir roger or will wimble. _they_ are slightly and amiably eccentric; but the spectator him-self, in describing them, takes the station of an ordinary observer. everywhere, indeed, in the writings of lamb, and not merely in his _elia_, the character of the writer cooperates in an under current to the effect of the thing written. to understand in the fullest sense either the gaiety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind, whether native and original, or impressed gradually by the accidents of situation; whether simply developed out of predispositions by the action of life, or violently scorched into the constitution by some fierce fever of calamity. there is in modern literature a whole class of writers, though not a large one, standing within the same category; some marked originality of character in the writer become a coefficient with what he says to a common result; you must sympathize with this _personality_ in the author before you can appreciate the most significant parts of his views. in most books the writer figures as a mere abstraction, without sex or age or local station, whom the reader banishes from his thoughts. what is written seems to proceed from a blank intellect, not from a man clothed with fleshly peculiarities and differences. these peculiarities and differences neither do, nor (generally speaking)_could_ intermingle with the texture of the thoughts so as to modify their force or their direction. in such books, and they form the vast majority, there is nothing to be found or to be looked for beyond the direct objective. (_sit venia verbo_!) but, in a small section of books, the objective in the thought becomes confluent with the subjective in the thinker--the two forces unite for a joint product; and fully to enjoy that product, or fully to apprehend either element, both must be known. it is singular, and worth inquiring into, for the reason that the greek and roman literature had no such books. timon of athens, or diogenes, one may conceive qualified for this mode of authorship, had journalism existed to rouse them in those days; their "articles" would no doubt have been fearfully caustic. but, as _they_ failed to produce anything, and lucian in an after age is scarcely characteristic enough for the purpose, perhaps we may pronounce rabelais and montaigne the earliest of writers in the class described. in the century following _theirs_, came sir thomas brown, and immediately after _him_ la fontaine. then came swift, sterne, with others less distinguished; in germany, hippel, the friend of kant, harmann, the obscure; and the greatest of the whole body--john paul fr. richter. in _him_, from the strength and determinateness of his nature as well as from the great extent of his writing, the philosophy of this interaction between the author as a human agency and his theme as an intellectual reagency, might best be studied. from _him_ might be derived the largest number of cases, illustrating boldly this absorption of the universal into the concrete--of the pure intellect into the human nature of the author. but nowhere could illustrations be found more interesting--shy, delicate, evanescent--shy as lightning, delicate and evanescent as the colored pencillings on a frosty night from the northern lights, than in the better parts of lamb. to appreciate lamb, therefore, it is requisite that his character and temperament should be understood in their coyest and most wayward features. a capital defect it would be if these could not be gathered silently from lamb's works themselves. it would be a fatal mode of dependency upon an alien and separable accident if they needed an external commentary. but they do _not_. the syllables lurk up and down the writings of lamb which decipher his eccentric nature. his character lies there dispersed in anagram; and to any attentive reader the regathering and restoration of the total word from its scattered parts is inevitable without an effort. still it is always a satisfaction in knowing a result, to know also its _why_ and _how_; and in so far as every character is likely to be modified by the particular experience, sad or joyous, through which the life has travelled, it is a good contribution towards the knowledge of that resulting character as a whole to have a sketch of that particular experience. what trials did it impose? what energies did it task? what temptations did it unfold? these calls upon the moral powers, which in music so stormy, many a life is doomed to hear, how were they faced? the character in a capital degree moulds oftentimes the life, but the life _always_ in a subordinate degree moulds the character. and the character being in this case of lamb so much of a key to the writings, it becomes important that the life should be traced, however briefly, as a key to the character. that is _one_ reason for detaining the reader with some slight record of lamb's career. such a record by preference and of right belongs to a case where the intellectual display, which is the sole ground of any public interest at all in the man, has been intensely modified by the _humanities_ and moral _personalities_ distinguishing the subject. we read a physiology, and need no information as to the life and conversation of its author; a meditative poem becomes far better understood by the light of such information; but a work of genial and at the same time eccentric sentiment, wandering upon untrodden paths, is barely intelligible without it. there is a good reason for arresting judgment on the writer, that the court may receive evidence on the life of the man. but there is another reason, and, in any other place, a better; which reason lies in the extraordinary value of the life considered separately for itself. logically, it is not allowable to say that _here;_ and, considering the principal purpose of this paper, any possible _independent_ value of the life must rank as a better reason for reporting it. since, in a case where the original object is professedly to estimate the writings of a man, whatever promises to further that object must, merely by that tendency, have, in relation to that place, a momentary advantage which it would lose if valued upon a more abstract scale. liberated from this casual office of throwing light upon a book--raised to its grander station of a solemn deposition to the moral capacities of man in conflict with calamity--viewed as a return made into the chanceries of heaven--upon an issue directed from that court to try the amount of power lodged in a poor desolate pair of human creatures for facing the very anarchy of storms--this obscure life of the two lambs, brother and sister, (for the two lives were one life,) rises into a grandeur that is not paralleled once in a generation. rich, indeed, in moral instruction was the life of charles lamb; and perhaps in one chief result it offers to the thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that is awful, and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz., in the record which it furnishes, that by meekness of submission, and by earnest conflict with evil, in the spirit of cheerfulness, it is possible ultimately to disarm or to blunt the very heaviest of curses--even the curse of lunacy. had it been whispered, in hours of infancy, to lamb, by the angel who stood by his cradle--"thou, and the sister that walks by ten years before thee, shall be through life, each to each, the solitary fountain of comfort; and except it be from this fountain of mutual love, except it be as brother and sister, ye shall not taste the cup of peace on earth!"--here, if there was sorrow in reversion, there was also consolation. but what funeral swamps would have instantly ingulfed this consolation, had some meddling fiend prolonged the revelation, and, holding up the curtain from the sad future a little longer, had said scornfully--"peace on earth! peace for you two, charles and mary lamb! what peace is possible under the curse which even now is gathering against your heads? is there peace on earth for the lunatic--peace for the parenticide--peace for the girl that, without warning, and without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, sends her mother to the last audit?" and then, without treachery, speaking bare truth, this prophet of woe might have added--"thou also, thyself, charles lamb, thou in thy proper person, shalt enter the skirts of this dreadful hail-storm; even thou shalt taste the secrets of lunacy, and enter as a captive its house of bondage; whilst over thy sister the accursed scorpion shall hang suspended through life, like death hanging over the beds of hospitals, striking at times, but more often threatening to strike; or withdrawing its instant menaces only to lay bare her mind more bitterly to the persecutions of a haunted memory!" considering the nature of the calamity, in the first place; considering, in the second place, its life-long duration; and, in the last place, considering the quality of the resistance by which it was met, and under what circumstances of humble resources in money or friends--we have come to the deliberate judgment, that the whole range of history scarcely presents a more affecting spectacle of perpetual sorrow, humiliation, or conflict, and that was supported to the end, (that is, through forty years,) with more resignation, or with more absolute victory. charles lamb was born in february of the year . his immediate descent was humble; for his father, though on one particular occasion civilly described as a "scrivener," was in reality a domestic servant to mr. salt--a bencher (and therefore a barrister of some standing) in the inner temple. john lamb the father belonged by birth to lincoln; from which city, being transferred to london whilst yet a boy, he entered the service of mr. salt without delay; and apparently from this period throughout his life continued in this good man's household to support the honorable relation of a roman client to his _patronus_, much more than that of a mercenary servant to a transient and capricious master. the terms on which he seems to live with the family of the lambs, argue a kindness and a liberality of nature on both sides. john lamb recommended himself as an attendant by the versatility of his accomplishments; and mr. salt, being a widower without children, which means in effect an old bachelor, naturally valued that encyclopaedic range of dexterity which made his house independent of external aid for every mode of service. to kill one's own mutton is but an operose way of arriving at a dinner, and often a more costly way; whereas to combine one's own carpenter, locksmith, hair-dresser, groom, &c., all in one man's person,--to have a robinson crusoe, up to all emergencies of life, always in waiting, --is a luxury of the highest class for one who values his ease. a consultation is held more freely with a man familiar to one's eye, and more profitably with a man aware of one's peculiar habits. and another advantage from such an arrangement is, that one gets any little alteration or repair executed on the spot. to hear is to obey, and by an inversion of pope's rule-- "one always _is_, and never _to be_, blest." people of one sole accomplishment, like the _homo unius libri, _ are usually within that narrow circle disagreeably perfect, and therefore apt to be arrogant. people who can do all things, usually do every one of them ill; and living in a constant effort to deny this too palpable fact, they become irritably vain. but mr. lamb the elder seems to have been bent on perfection. he did all things; he did them all well; and yet was neither gloomily arrogant, nor testily vain. and being conscious apparently that all mechanic excellencies tend to illiberal results, unless counteracted by perpetual sacrifices to the muses, he went so far as to cultivate poetry; he even printed his poems, and were we possessed of a copy, (which we are _not_, nor probably is the vatican,) it would give us pleasure at this point to digress for a moment, and to cut them up, purely on considerations of respect to the author's memory. it is hardly to be supposed that they did not really merit castigation; and we should best show the sincerity of our respect for mr. lamb, senior, in all those cases where we _could_ conscientiously profess respect by an unlimited application of the knout in the cases where we could _not_. the whole family of the lambs seem to have won from mr. salt the consideration which is granted to humble friends; and from acquaintances nearer to their own standing, to have won a tenderness of esteem such as is granted to decayed gentry. yet naturally, the social rank of the parents, as people still living, must have operated disadvantageously for the children. it is hard, even for the practised philosopher, to distinguish aristocratic graces of manner, and capacities of delicate feeling, in people whose very hearth and dress bear witness to the servile humility of their station. yet such distinctions as wild gifts of nature, timidly and half-unconsciously asserted themselves in the unpretending lambs. already in _their_ favor there existed a silent privilege analogous to the famous one of lord kinsale. he, by special grant from the crown, is allowed, when standing before the king, to forget that he is not himself a king; the bearer of that peerage, through all generations, has the privilege of wearing his hat in the royal presence. by a general though tacit concession of the same nature, the rising generation of the lambs, john and charles, the two sons, and mary lamb, the only daughter, were permitted to forget that their grandmother had been a housekeeper for sixty years, and that their father had worn a livery. charles lamb, individually, was so entirely humble, and so careless of social distinctions, that he has taken pleasure in recurring to these very facts in the family records amongst the most genial of his elia recollections. he only continued to remember, without shame, and with a peculiar tenderness, these badges of plebeian rank, when everybody else, amongst the few survivors that could have known of their existence, had long dismissed them from their thoughts. probably, through mr. salt's interest, charles lamb, in the autumn of , when he wanted something more than four months of completing his eighth year, received a presentation to the magnificent school of christ's hospital. the late dr. arnold, when contrasting the school of his own boyish experience, winchester, with rugby, the school confided to his management, found nothing so much to regret in the circumstances of the latter as its forlorn condition with respect to historical traditions. wherever these were wanting, and supposing the school of sufficient magnitude, it occurred to dr. arnold that something of a compensatory effect for impressing the imagination might be obtained by connecting the school with the nation through the link of annual prizes issuing from the exchequer. an official basis of national patronage might prove a substitute for an antiquarian or ancestral basis. happily for the great educational foundations of london, none of them is in the naked condition of rugby. westminster, st. paul's, merchant tailors', the charter-house, &c., are all crowned with historical recollections; and christ's hospital, besides the original honors of its foundation, so fitted to a consecrated place in a youthful imagination--an asylum for boy-students, provided by a boy-king--innocent, religious, prematurely wise, and prematurely called away from earth--has also a mode of perpetual connection with the state. it enjoys, therefore, _both_ of dr. arnold's advantages. indeed, all the great foundation schools of london, bearing in their very codes of organization the impress of a double function--viz., the conservation of sound learning and of pure religion--wear something of a monastic or cloisteral character in their aspect and usages, which is peculiarly impressive, and even pathetic, amidst the uproars of a capital the most colossal and tumultuous upon earth. here lamb remained until his fifteenth year, which year threw him on the world, and brought him alongside the golden dawn of the french revolution. here he learned a little elementary greek, and of latin more than a little; for the latin notes to mr. cary (of dante celebrity) though brief, are sufficient to reveal a true sense of what is graceful and idiomatic in latinity. _we_ say this, who have studied that subject more than most men. it is not that lamb would have found it an easy task to compose a long paper in latin--nobody _can,_ find it easy to do what he has no motive for habitually practising; but a single sentence of latin wearing the secret countersign of the "sweet roman hand," ascertains sufficiently that, in reading latin classics, a man feels and comprehends their peculiar force or beauty. that is enough. it is requisite to a man's expansion of mind that he should make acquaintance with a literature so radically differing from all modern literatures as is the latin. it is _not_ requisite that he should practise latin composition. here, therefore, lamb obtained in sufficient perfection one priceless accomplishment, which even singly throws a graceful air of liberality over all the rest of a man's attainments: having rarely any pecuniary value, it challenges the more attention to its intellectual value. here also lamb commenced the friendships of his life; and, of all which he formed, he lost none. here it was, as the consummation and crown of his advantages from the time-honored hospital, that he came to know "poor s. t. c." [greek text: ton thaumasiotaton.] until , it is probable that he lost sight of coleridge, who was then occupied with cambridge, having been transferred thither as a "grecian" from the house of christ church. that year, , was a year of change and fearful calamity for charles lamb. on that year revolved the wheels of his after-life. during the three years succeeding to his school days, he had held a clerkship in the south sea house. in , he was transferred to the india house. as a junior clerk, he could not receive more than a slender salary; but even this was important to the support of his parents and sister. they lived together in lodgings near holborn; and in the spring of , miss lamb, (having previously shown signs of lunacy at intervals,) in a sudden paroxysm of her disease, seized a knife from the dinner table, and stabbed her mother, who died upon the spot. a coroner's inquest easily ascertained the nature of a case which was transparent in all its circumstances, and never for a moment indecisive as regarded the medical symptoms. the poor young lady was transferred to the establishment for lunatics at hoxton. she soon recovered, we believe; but her relapses were as sudden as her recoveries, and she continued through life to revisit, for periods of uncertain seclusion, this house of woe. this calamity of his fireside, followed soon after by the death of his father, who had for some time been in a state of imbecility, determined the future destiny of lamb. apprehending, with the perfect grief of perfect love, that his sister's fate was sealed for life--viewing her as his own greatest benefactress, which she really _had_ been through her advantage by ten years of age--yielding with impassioned readiness to the depth of his fraternal affection, what at any rate he would have yielded to the sanctities of duty as interpreted by his own conscience--he resolved forever to resign all thoughts of marriage with a young lady whom he loved, forever to abandon all ambitious prospects that might have tempted him into uncertainties, humbly to content himself with the _certainties_ of his indian clerkship, to dedicate himself for the future to the care of his desolate and prostrate sister, and to leave the rest to god. these sacrifices he made in no hurry or tumult, but deliberately, and in religious tranquillity. these sacrifices were accepted in heaven--and even on this earth they _had_ their reward. she, for whom he gave up all, in turn gave up all for _him_. she devoted herself to his comfort. many times she returned to the lunatic establishment, but many times she was restored to illuminate the household hearth for _him_; and of the happiness which for forty years and more he had, no hour seemed true that was not derived from her. hence forwards, therefore, until he was emancipated by the noble generosity of the east india directors, lamb's time, for nine-and-twenty years, was given to the india house. "_o fortunati nimium, sua si bona narint,_" is applicable to more people than "_agricolae_." clerks of the india house are as blind to their own advantages as the blindest of ploughmen. lamb was summoned, it is true, through the larger and more genial section of his life, to the drudgery of a copying clerk--making confidential entries into mighty folios, on the subject of calicoes and muslins. by this means, whether he would or not, he became gradually the author of a great "serial" work, in a frightful number of volumes, on as dry a department of literature as the children of the great desert could have suggested. nobody, he must have felt, was ever likely to study this great work of his, not even dr. dryasdust. he had written in vain, which is not pleasant to know. there would be no second edition called for by a discerning public in leadenhall street; not a chance of that. and consequently the _opera omnia_ of lamb, drawn up in a hideous battalion, at the cost of labor so enormous, would be known only to certain families of spiders in one generation, and of rats in the next. such a labor of sysyphus,--the rolling up a ponderous stone to the summit of a hill only that it might roll back again by the gravitation of its own dulness,--seems a bad employment for a man of genius in his meridian energies. and yet, perhaps not. perhaps the collective wisdom of europe could not have devised for lamb a more favorable condition of toil than this very india house clerkship. his works (his leadenhall street works) were certainly not read; popular they _could_ not be, for they were not read by anybody; but then, to balance _that,_ they were not reviewed. his folios were of that order, which (in cowper's words) "not even critics criticise." is _that_ nothing? is it no happiness to escape the hands of scoundrel reviewers? many of us escape being _read;_ the worshipful reviewer does not find time to read a line of us; but we do not for that reason escape being criticised, "shown up," and martyred. the list of _errata_ again, committed by lamb, was probably of a magnitude to alarm any possible compositor; and yet these _errata_ will never be known to mankind. they are dead and buried. they have been cut off prematurely; and for any effect upon their generation, might as well never have existed. then the returns, in a pecuniary sense, from these folios--how important were _they!_ it is not common, certainly, to write folios; but neither is it common to draw a steady income of from _l._ to _l._ per annum from volumes of any size. this will be admitted; but would it not have been better to draw the income without the toil? doubtless it would always be more agreeable to have the rose without the thorn. but in the case before us, taken with all its circumstances, we deny that the toil is truly typified as a thorn; so far from being a thorn in lamb's daily life, on the contrary, it was a second rose ingrafted upon the original rose of the income, that he had to earn it by a moderate but continued exertion. holidays, in a national establishment so great as the india house, and in our too fervid period, naturally could not be frequent; yet all great english corporations are gracious masters, and indulgences of this nature could be obtained on a special application. not to count upon these accidents of favor, we find that the regular toil of those in lamb's situation, began at ten in the morning and ended as the clock struck four in the afternoon. six hours composed the daily contribution of labor, that is precisely one fourth part of the total day. only that, as sunday was exempted, the rigorous expression of the quota was one fourth of six-sevenths, which makes sixty twenty-eighths and not six twenty-fourths of the total time. less toil than this would hardly have availed to deepen the sense of value in that large part of the time still remaining disposable. had there been any resumption whatever of labor in the evening, though but for half an hour, that one encroachment upon the broad continuous area of the eighteen free hours would have killed the tranquillity of the whole day, by _sowing_ it (so to speak) with intermitting anxieties--anxieties that, like tides, would still be rising and falling. whereas now, at the early hour of four, when daylight is yet lingering in the air, even at the dead of winter, in the latitude of london, and when the _enjoying_ section of the day is barely commencing, everything is left which a man would care to retain. a mere dilettante or amateur student, having no mercenary interest concerned, would, upon a refinement of luxury--would, upon choice, give up so much time to study, were it only to sharpen the value of what remained for pleasure. and thus the only difference between the scheme of the india house distributing his time for lamb, and the scheme of a wise voluptuary distributing his time for himself, lay, not in the _amount_ of time deducted from enjoyment, but in the particular mode of appropriating that deduction. an _intellectual_ appropriation of the time, though casually fatiguing, must have pleasures of its own; pleasures denied to a task so mechanic and so monotonous as that of reiterating endless records of sales or consignments not _essentially_ varying from each other. true; it is pleasanter to pursue an intellectual study than to make entries in a ledger. but even an intellectual toil is toil; few people can support it for more than six hours in a day. and the only question, therefore, after all, is, at what period of the day a man would prefer taking this pleasure of study. now, upon that point, as regards the case of lamb, there is no opening for doubt. he, amongst his _popular fallacies_, admirably illustrates the necessity of evening and artificial lights to the prosperity of studies. after exposing, with the perfection of fun, the savage unsociality of those elder ancestors who lived (if life it was) before lamp-light was invented, showing that "jokes came in with candles," since "what repartees could have passed" when people were "grumbling at one another in the dark," and "when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's cheek to be sure that he understood it?"--he goes on to say," this accounts for the seriousness of the elder poetry, "viz., because they had no candle-light. even eating he objects to as a very imperfect thing in the dark; you are not convinced that a dish tastes as it should do by the promise of its name, if you dine in the twilight without candles. seeing is believing." the senses absolutely give and take reciprocally. "the sight guarantees the taste. for instance," can you tell pork from veal in the dark, or distinguish sherries from pure malaga? "to all enjoyments whatsoever candles are indispensable as an adjunct; but, as to _reading_," there is, "says lamb," absolutely no such thing but by a candle. we have tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, but it was labor thrown away. it is a mockery, all that is reported of the influential phoebus. no true poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. the mild internal light, that reveals the fine shapings of poetry, like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. milton's morning hymn in paradise, we would hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and taylor's rich description of a sunrise smells decidedly of the taper. "this view of evening and candle-light as involved in literature may seem no more than a pleasant extravaganza; and no doubt it is in the nature of such gayeties to travel a little into exaggeration, but substantially it is certain that lamb's feelings pointed habitually in the direction here indicated. his literary studies, whether taking the color of tasks or diversions, courted the aid of evening, which, by means of physical weariness, produces a more luxurious state of repose than belong to the labor hours of day, and courted the aid of lamp-light, which, as lord bacon remarked, gives a gorgeousness to human pomps and pleasures, such as would be vainly sought from the homeliness of day-light. the hours, therefore, which were withdrawn from his own control by the india house, happened to be exactly that part of the day which lamb least valued, and could least have turned to account. the account given of lamb's friends, of those whom he endeavored to love because he admired them, or to esteem intellectually because he loved them personally, is too much colored for general acquiescence by sergeant talfourd's own early prepossessions. it is natural that an intellectual man like the sergeant, personally made known in youth to people, whom from childhood he had regarded as powers in the ideal world, and in some instances as representing the eternities of human speculation, since their names had perhaps dawned upon his mind in concurrence with the very earliest suggestion of topics which they had treated, should overrate their intrinsic grandeur. hazlitt accordingly is styled "the great thinker." but had he been such potentially, there was an absolute bar to his achievement of that station in act and consummation. no man _can_ be a great thinker in our days upon large and elaborate questions without being also a great student. to think profoundly, it is indispensable that a man should have read down to his own starting point, and have read as a collating student to the particular stage at which he himself takes up the subject. at this moment, for instance, how could geology be treated otherwise than childishly by one who should rely upon the encyclopaedias of ? or comparative physiology by the most ingenious of men unacquainted with marshall hall, and with the apocalyptic glimpses of secrets unfolding under the hands of professor owen? in such a condition of undisciplined thinking, the ablest man thinks to no purpose. he lingers upon parts of the inquiry that have lost the importance which once they had, under imperfect charts of the subject; he wastes his strength upon problems that have become obsolete; he loses his way in paths that are not in the line of direction upon which the improved speculation is moving; or he gives narrow conjectural solutions of difficulties that have long since received sure and comprehensive ones. it is as if a man should in these days attempt to colonize, and yet, through inertia or through ignorance, should leave behind him all modern resources of chemistry, of chemical agriculture, or of steam-power. hazlitt had read nothing. unacquainted with grecian philosophy, with scholastic philosophy, and with the recomposition of these philosophies in the looms of germany during the last sixty and odd years, trusting merely to the unrestrained instincts of keen mother-wit--whence should hazlitt have had the materials for great thinking? it is through the collation of many abortive voyages to polar regions that a man gains his first chance of entering the polar basin, or of running ahead on the true line of approach to it. the very reason for hazlitt's defect in eloquence as a lecturer, is sufficient also as a reason why he could not have been a comprehensive thinker. "he was not eloquent," says the sergeant, "in the true sense of the term." but why? because it seems "his thoughts were too weighty to be moved along by the shallow stream of feeling which an evening's excitement can rouse,"--an explanation which leaves us in doubt whether hazlitt forfeited his chance of eloquence by accommodating himself to this evening's excitement, or by gloomily resisting it. our own explanation is different, hazlitt was not eloquent, because he was discontinuous. no man can he eloquent whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and (to borrow an impressive word from coleridge) non-sequacious. eloquence resides not in separate or fractional ideas, but in the relations of manifold ideas, and in the mode of their evolution from each other. it is not indeed enough that the ideas should be many, and their relations coherent; the main condition lies in the key of the evolution, in the _law_ of the succession. the elements are nothing without the atmosphere that moulds, and the dynamic forces that combine. now hazlitt's brilliancy is seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase or image which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintillation for a moment, but spread no deep suffusions of color, and distribute no masses of mighty shadow. a flash, a solitary flash, and all is gone. rhetoric, according to its quality, stands in many degrees of relation to the permanencies of truth; and all rhetoric, like all flesh, is partly unreal, and the glory of both is fleeting. even the mighty rhetoric of sir thomas brown, or jeremy taylor, to whom only it has been granted to open the trumpet-stop on that great organ of passion, oftentimes leaves behind it the sense of sadness which belongs to beautiful apparitions starting out of darkness upon the morbid eye, only to be reclaimed by darkness in the instant of their birth, or which belongs to pageantries in the clouds. but if all rhetoric is a mode of pyrotechny, and all pyrotechnics are by necessity fugacious, yet even in these frail pomps, there are many degrees of frailty. some fireworks require an hour's duration for the expansion of their glory; others, as if formed from fulminating powder, expire in the very act of birth. precisely on that scale of duration and of power stand the glitterings of rhetoric that are not worked into the texture, but washed on from the outside. hazlitt's thoughts were of the same fractured and discontinuous order as his illustrative images--seldom or never self-diffusive; and _that_ is a sufficient argument that he had never cultivated philosophic thinking. not, however, to conceal any part of the truth, we are bound to acknowledge that lamb thought otherwise on this point, manifesting what seemed to us an extravagant admiration of hazlitt, and perhaps even in part for that very glitter which we are denouncing--at least he did so in a conversation with ourselves. but, on the other hand, as this conversation travelled a little into the tone of a disputation, and _our_ frost on this point might seem to justify some undue fervor by way of balance, it is very possible that lamb did not speak his absolute and most dispassionate judgment. and yet again, if he _did_, may we, with all reverence for lamb's exquisite genius, have permission to say--that his own constitution of intellect sinned by this very habit of discontinuity. it was a habit of mind not unlikely to be cherished by his habits of life. amongst these habits was the excess of his social kindness. he scorned so much to deny his company and his redundant hospitality to any man who manifested a wish for either by calling upon him, that he almost seemed to think it a criminality in himself if, by accident, he really _was_ from home on your visit, rather than by possibility a negligence in you, that had not forewarned him of your intention. all his life, from this and other causes, he must have read in the spirit of one liable to sudden interruption; like a dragoon, in fact, reading with one foot in the stirrup, when expecting momentarily a summons to mount for action. in such situations, reading by snatches, and by intervals of precarious leisure, people form the habit of seeking and unduly valuing condensations of the meaning, where in reality the truth suffers by this short-hand exhibition, or else they demand too vivid illustrations of the meaning. lord chesterfield himself, so brilliant a man by nature, already therefore making a morbid estimate of brilliancy, and so hurried throughout his life as a public man, read under this double coercion for craving instantaneous effects. at one period, his only time for reading was in the morning, whilst under the hands of his hair-dresser; compelled to take the hastiest of flying shots at his author, naturally he demanded a very conspicuous mark to fire at. but the author could not, in so brief a space, be always sure to crowd any very prominent objects on the eye, unless by being audaciously oracular and peremptory as regarded the sentiment, or flashy in excess as regarded its expression. "come now, my friend," was lord chesterfield's morning adjuration to his author;" come now, cut it short--don't prose--don't hum and haw. "the author had doubtless no ambition to enter his name on the honorable and ancient roll of gentlemen prosers; probably he conceived himself not at all tainted with the asthmatic infirmity of humming and hawing; but, as to "cutting it short," how could he be sure of meeting his lordship's expectations in that point, unless by dismissing the limitations that might be requisite to fit the idea for use, or the adjuncts that might be requisite to integrate its truth, or the final consequences that might involve some deep _arriere pensee_, which, coming last in the succession, might oftentimes be calculated to lie deepest on the mind. to be lawfully and usefully brilliant after this rapid fashion, a man must come forward as a refresher of old truths, where _his_ suppressions are supplied by the reader's memory; not as an expounder of new truths, where oftentimes a dislocated fraction of the true is more dangerous than the false itself. to read therefore habitually, by hurried instalments, has this bad tendency--that it is likely to found a taste for modes of composition too artificially irritating, and to disturb the equilibrium of the judgment in relation to the colorings of style. lamb, however, whose constitution of mind was even ideally sound in reference to the natural, the simple, the genuine, might seem of all men least liable to a taint in this direction. and undoubtedly he _was_ so, as regarded those modes of beauty which nature had specially qualified him for apprehending. else, and in relation to other modes of beauty, where his sense of the true, and of its distinction from the spurious, had been an acquired sense, it is impossible for us to hide from ourselves--that not through habits only, not through stress of injurious accidents only, but by original structure and temperament of mind, lamb had a bias towards those very defects on which rested the startling characteristics of style which we have been noticing. he himself, we fear, not bribed by indulgent feelings to another, not moved by friendship, but by native tendency, shrank from the continuous, from the sustained, from the elaborate. the elaborate, indeed, without which much truth and beauty must perish in germ, was by name the object of his invectives. the instances are many, in his own beautiful essays, where he literally collapses, literally sinks away from openings suddenly offering themselves to flights of pathos or solemnity in direct prosecution of his own theme. on any such summons, where an ascending impulse, and an untired pinion were required, he _refuses_ himself (to use military language) invariably. the least observing reader of _elia_ cannot have failed to notice that the most felicitous passages always accomplish their circuit in a few sentences. the gyration within which his sentiment wheels, no matter of what kind it may be, is always the shortest possible. it does not prolong itself, and it does not repeat itself. but in fact, other features in lamb's mind would have argued this feature by analogy, had we by accident been left unaware of it directly. it is not by chance, or without a deep ground in his nature, _common_ to all his qualities, both affirmative and negative, that lamb had an insensibility to music more absolute than can have been often shared by any human creature, or perhaps than was ever before acknowledged so candidly. the sense of music,--as a pleasurable sense, or as any sense at all other than of certain unmeaning and impertinent differences in respect to high and low, sharp or flat, --was utterly obliterated as with a sponge by nature herself from lamb's organization. it was a corollary, from the same large _substratum_ in his nature, that lamb had no sense of the rhythmical in prose composition. rhythmus, or pomp of cadence, or sonorous ascent of clauses, in the structure of sentences, were effects of art as much thrown away upon him as the voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. we ourselves, occupying the very station of polar opposition to that of lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in the one excess as he in the other, naturally detected this omission in lamb's nature at an early stage of our acquaintance. not the fabled regulus, with his eyelids torn away, and his uncurtained eye-balls exposed to the noon-tide glare of a carthaginian sun, could have shrieked with more anguish of recoil from torture than we from certain sentences and periods in which lamb perceived no fault at all. _pomp_, in our apprehension, was an idea of two categories; the pompous might be spurious, but it might also be genuine. it is well to love the simple--_we_ love it; nor is there any opposition at all between _that_ and the very glory of pomp. but, as we once put the case to lamb, if, as a musician, as the leader of a mighty orchestra, you had this theme offered to you--"belshazzar the king gave a great feast to a thousand of his lords"--or this," and on a certain day, marcus cicero stood up, and in a set speech rendered solemn thanks to caius caesar for quintus ligarius pardoned, and for marcus marcellus restored "--surely no man would deny that, in such a case, simplicity, though in a passive sense not lawfully absent, must stand aside as totally insufficient for the positive part. simplicity might guide, even here, but could not furnish the power; a rudder it might be, but not an oar or a sail. this, lamb was ready to allow; as an intellectual _quiddity_, he recognized pomp in the character of a privileged thing; he was obliged to do so; for take away from great ceremonial festivals, such as the solemn rendering of thanks, the celebration of national anniversaries, the commemoration of public benefactors, &c., the element of pomp, and you take away their very meaning and life; but, whilst allowing a place for it in the rubric of the logician, it is certain that, _sensuously_, lamb would not have sympathized with it, nor have _felt_ its justification in any concrete instance. we find a difficulty in pursuing this subject, without greatly exceeding our limits. we pause, therefore, and add only this one suggestion as partly explanatory of the case. lamb had the dramatic intellect and taste, perhaps in perfection; of the epic, he had none at all. here, as happens sometimes to men of genius preternaturally endowed in one direction, he might be considered as almost starved. a favorite of nature, so eminent in some directions, by what right could he complain that her bounties were not indiscriminate? from this defect in his nature it arose, that, except by culture and by reflection, lamb had no genial appreciation of milton. the solemn planetary wheelings of the paradise lost were not to his taste. what he _did_ comprehend, were the motions like those of lightning, the fierce angular coruscations of that wild agency which comes forward so vividly in the sudden _peripetteia_, in the revolutionary catastrophe, and in the tumultuous conflicts, through persons or through situations, of the tragic drama. there is another vice in mr. hazlitt's mode of composition, viz., the habit of trite quotation, too common to have challenged much notice, were it not for these reasons: st, that sergeant talfourd speaks of it in equivocal terms, as a fault perhaps, but as a "felicitous" fault, "trailing after it a line of golden associations;" dly, because the practice involves a dishonesty. on occasion of no. , we must profess our belief that a more ample explanation from the sergeant would have left him in substantial harmony with ourselves. we cannot conceive the author of ion, and the friend of wordsworth, seriously to countenance that paralytic "mouth-diarrhoea," (to borrow a phrase of coleridge's)--that _fluxe de bouche_(to borrow an earlier phrase of archbishop huet's) which places the reader at the mercy of a man's tritest remembrances from his most school-boy reading. to have the verbal memory infested with tags of verse and "cues" of rhyme is in itself an infirmity as vulgar and as morbid as the stableboy's habit of whistling slang airs upon the mere mechanical excitement of a bar or two whistled by some other blockhead in some other stable. the very stage has grown weary of ridiculing a folly, that having been long since expelled from decent society has taken refuge amongst the most imbecile of authors. was mr. hazlitt then of that class? no; he was a man of great talents, and of capacity for greater things than he ever attempted, though without any pretensions of the philosophic kind ascribed to him by the sergeant. meantime the reason for resisting the example and practice of hazlitt lies in this--that essentially it is at war with sincerity, the foundation of all good writing, to express one's own thoughts by another man's words. this dilemma arises. the thought is, or it is not, worthy of that emphasis which belongs to a metrical expression of it. if it is _not_, then we shall be guilty of a mere folly in pushing into strong relief that which confessedly cannot support it. if it _is_, then how incredible that a thought strongly conceived, and bearing about it the impress of one's own individuality, should naturally, and without dissimulation or falsehood, bend to another man's expression of it! simply to back one's own view by a similar view derived from another, may be useful; a quotation that repeats one's own sentiment, but in a varied form, has the grace which belongs to the _idem in alio_, the same radical idea expressed with a difference--similarity in dissimilarity; but to throw one's own thoughts, matter, and form, through alien organs so absolutely as to make another man one's interpreter for evil and good, is either to confess a singular laxity of thinking that can so flexibly adapt itself to any casual form of words, or else to confess that sort of carelessness about the expression which draws its real origin from a sense of indifference about the things to be expressed. utterly at war this distressing practice is with all simplicity and earnestness of writing; it argues a state of indolent ease inconsistent with the pressure and coercion of strong fermenting thoughts, before we can be at leisure for idle or chance quotations. but lastly, in reference to no. , we must add that the practice is signally dishonest. it "trails after it a line of golden associations." yes, and the burglar, who leaves an army-tailor's after a midnight visit, trails after him perhaps a long roll of gold bullion epaulettes which may look pretty by lamplight. but _that_, in the present condition of moral philosophy amongst the police, is accounted robbery; and to benefit too much by quotations is little less. at this moment we have in our eye a work, at one time not without celebrity, which is one continued _cento_ of splendid passages from other people. the natural effect from so much fine writing is, that the reader rises with the impression of having been engaged upon a most eloquent work. meantime the whole is a series of mosaics; a tessellation made up from borrowed fragments: and first, when the reader's attention is expressly directed upon the fact, he becomes aware that the nominal author has contributed nothing more to the book than a few passages of transition or brief clauses of connection. in the year , the main incident occurring of any importance for english literature was the publication by southey of an epic poem. this poem, the _joan of arc_, was the earliest work of much pretension amongst all that southey wrote; and by many degrees it was the worst. in the four great narrative poems of his later years, there is a combination of two striking qualities, viz., a peculiar command over the _visually_ splendid, connected with a deep-toned grandeur of moral pathos. especially we find this union in the _thalaba_ and the _roderick_; but in the _joan of arc_ we miss it. what splendor there is for the fancy and the eye belongs chiefly to the vision, contributed by coleridge, and this was subsequently withdrawn. the fault lay in southey's political relations at that era; his sympathy with the french revolution in its earlier stages had been boundless; in all respects it was a noble sympathy, fading only as the gorgeous coloring faded from the emblazonries of that awful event, drooping only when the promises of that golden dawn sickened under stationary eclipse. in , southey was yet under the tyranny of his own earliest fascination: in _his_ eyes the revolution had suffered a momentary blight from refluxes of panic; but blight of some kind is incident to every harvest on which human hopes are suspended. bad auguries were also ascending from the unchaining of martial instincts. but that the revolution, having ploughed its way through unparalleled storms, was preparing to face other storms, did but quicken the apprehensiveness of his love--did but quicken the duty of giving utterance to this love. hence came the rapid composition of the poem, which cost less time in writing than in printing. hence, also, came the choice of his heroine. what he needed in his central character was, a heart with a capacity for the wrath of hebrew prophets applied to ancient abuses, and for evangelic pity applied to the sufferings of nations. this heart, with this double capacity--where should he seek it? a french heart it must be, or how should it follow with its sympathies a french movement? _there_ lay southey's reason for adopting the maid of orleans as the depositary of hopes and aspirations on behalf of france as fervid as his own. in choosing this heroine, so inadequately known at that time, southey testified at least his own nobility of feeling; [endnote: ] but in executing his choice, he and his friends overlooked two faults fatal to his purpose. one was this: sympathy with the french revolution meant sympathy with the opening prospects of man--meant sympathy with the pariah of every clime--with all that suffered social wrong, or saddened in hopeless bondage. that was the movement at work in the french revolution. but the movement of joanne d'arc took a different direction. in her day also, it is true, the human heart had yearned after the same vast enfranchisement for the children of labor as afterwards worked in the great vision of the french revolution. in her days also, and shortly before them, the human hand had sought by bloody acts to realize this dream of the heart. and in her childhood, joanna had not been insensible to these premature motions upon a path too bloody and too dark to be safe. but this view of human misery had been utterly absorbed to _her_ by the special misery then desolating france. the lilies of france had been trampled under foot by the conquering stranger. within fifty years, in three pitched battles that resounded to the ends of the earth, the chivalry of france had been exterminated. her oriflamme had been dragged through the dust. the eldest son of baptism had been prostrated. the daughter of france had been surrendered on coercion as a bride to her english conqueror. the child of that marriage, so ignominious to the land, was king of france by the consent of christendom; that child's uncle domineered as regent of france; and that child's armies were in military possession of the land. but were they undisputed masters? no; and there precisely lay the sorrow of the time. under a perfect conquest there would have been repose; whereas the presence of the english armies did but furnish a plea, masking itself in patriotism, for gatherings everywhere of lawless marauders; of soldiers that had deserted their banners; and of robbers by profession. this was the woe of france more even than the military dishonor. that dishonor had been palliated from the first by the genealogical pretensions of the english royal family to the french throne, and these pretensions were strengthened in the person of the present claimant. but the military desolation of france, this it was that woke the faith of joanna in her own heavenly mission of deliverance. it was the attitude of her prostrate country, crying night and day for purification from blood, and not from feudal oppression, that swallowed up the thoughts of the impassioned girl. but _that_ was not the cry that uttered itself afterwards in the french revolution. in joanna's days, the first step towards rest for france was by expulsion of the foreigner. independence of a foreign yoke, liberation as between people and people, was the one ransom to be paid for french honor and peace. _that_ debt settled, there might come a time for thinking of civil liberties. but this time was not within the prospects of the poor shepherdess the field--the area of her sympathies never coincided with that of the revolutionary period. it followed therefore, that southey _could_ not have raided joanna (with her condition of feeling) by any management, into the interpreter of his own. that was the first error in his poem, and it was irremediable. the second was--and strangely enough this also escaped notice--that the heroine of southey is made to close her career precisely at the point when its grandeur commences. she believed herself to have a mission for the deliverance of france; and the great instrument which she was authorized to use towards this end, was the king, charles vii. him she was to crown. with this coronation, her triumph, in the plain historical sense, ended. and _there_ ends southey's poem. but exactly at this point, the grander stage of her mission commences, viz., the ransom which she, a solitary girl, paid in her own person for the national deliverance. the grander half of the story was thus sacrificed, as being irrelevant to southey's political object; and yet, after all, the half which he retained did not at all symbolize that object. it is singular, indeed, to find a long poem, on an ancient subject, adapting itself hieroglyphically to a modern purpose; dly, to find it failing of this purpose; and dly, if it had not failed, so planned that it could have succeeded only by a sacrifice of all that was grandest in the theme. to these capital oversights, southey, coleridge, and lamb, were all joint parties; the two first as concerned in the composition, the last as a frank though friendly reviewer of it in his private correspondence with coleridge. it is, however, some palliation of these oversights, and a very singular fact in itself, that neither from english authorities nor from french, though the two nations were equally brought into close connection with the career of that extraordinary girl, could any adequate view be obtained of her character and acts. the official records of her trial, apart from which nothing can be depended upon, were first in the course of publication from the paris press during the currency of last year. first in , about four hundred and sixteen years after her ashes had been dispersed to the winds, could it be seen distinctly, through the clouds of fierce partisanships and national prejudices, what had been the frenzy of the persecution against her, and the utter desolation of her position; what had been the grandeur of her conscientious resistance. anxious that our readers should see lamb from as many angles as possible, we have obtained from an old friend of his a memorial--slight, but such as the circumstances allowed--of an evening spent with charles and mary lamb, in the winter of - . the record is of the most unambitious character; it pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so much as to a pun, which it really required some singularity of luck to have missed from charles lamb, who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all through the evening. but the more unpretending this record is, the more appropriate it becomes by that very fact to the memory of _him_ who, amongst all authors, was the humblest and least pretending. we have often thought that the famous epitaph written for his grave by piron, the cynical author of _la metromanie_, might have come from lamb, were it not for one objection; lamb's benign heart would have recoiled from a sarcasm, however effective, inscribed upon a grave-stone; or from a jest, however playful, that tended to a vindictive sneer amongst his own farewell words. we once translated this piron epitaph into a kind of rambling drayton couplet; and the only point needing explanation is, that, from the accident of scientific men, fellows of the royal society being usually very solemn men, with an extra chance, therefore, for being dull men in conversation, naturally it arose that some wit amongst our great-grandfathers translated f. r. s. into a short-hand expression for a fellow remarkably stupid; to which version of the three letters our english epitaph alludes. the french original of piron is this: "ci git piron; qui ne fut rien; pas meme acadamicien." the bitter arrow of the second line was feathered to hit the french acadamie, who had declined to elect him a member. our translation is this: "here lies piron; who was--nothing; or, if _that_ could be, was less: how!--nothing? yes, nothing; not so much as f. r. s." but now to our friend's memorandum: october , . my dear x.--you ask me for some memorial, however trivial, of any dinner party, supper party, water party, no matter what, that i can circumstantially recall to recollection, by any features whatever, puns or repartees, wisdom or wit, connecting it with charles lamb. i grieve to say that my meetings of any sort with lamb were few, though spread through a score of years. that sounds odd for one that loved lamb so entirely, and so much venerated his character. but the reason was, that i so seldom visited london, and lamb so seldom quitted it. somewhere about and i must have met lamb repeatedly at the _courier office_ in the strand; that is, at coleridge's, to whom, as an intimate friend, mr. stuart (a proprietor of the paper) gave up for a time the use of some rooms in the office. thither, in the london season, (may especially and june,) resorted lamb, godwin, sir h. davy, and, once or twice, wordsworth, who visited sir george beaumont's leicestershire residence of coleorton early in the spring, and then travelled up to grosvenor square with sir george and lady beaumont; _spectatum veniens, veniens spectetur ut ipse_. but in these miscellaneous gatherings, lamb said little, except when an opening arose for a pun. and how effectual that sort of small shot was from _him_, i need not say to anybody who remembers his infirmity of stammering, and his dexterous management of it for purposes of light and shade. he was often able to train the roll of stammers into settling upon the words immediately preceding the effective one; by which means the key-note of the jest or sarcasm, benefiting by the sudden liberation of his embargoed voice, was delivered with the force of a pistol shot. that stammer was worth an annuity to him as an ally of his wit. firing under cover of that advantage, he did triple execution; for, in the first place, the distressing sympathy of the hearers with _his_ distress of utterance won for him unavoidably the silence of deep attention; and then, whilst he had us all hoaxed into this attitude of mute suspense by an appearance of distress that he perhaps did not really feel, down came a plunging shot into the very thick of us, with ten times the effect it would else have had. if his stammering, however, often did him true "yeoman's service," sometimes it led him into scrapes. coleridge told me of a ludicrous embarrassment which it caused him at hastings. lamb had been medically advised to a course of sea-bathing; and accordingly at the door of his bathing machine, whilst he stood shivering with cold, two stout fellows laid hold of him, one at each shoulder, like heraldic supporters; they waited for the word of command from their principal, who began the following oration to them: "hear me, men! take notice of this--i am to be dipped." what more he would have said is unknown to land or sea or bathing machines; for having reached the word dipped, he commenced such a rolling fire of di--di--di--di, that when at length he descended _a plomb_ upon the full word _dipped_, the two men, rather tired of the long suspense, became satisfied that they had reached what lawyers call the "operative" clause of the sentence; and both exclaiming at once, "oh yes, sir, we're quite aware of _that_," down they plunged him into the sea. on emerging, lamb sobbed so much from the cold, that he found no voice suitable to his indignation; from necessity he seemed tranquil; and again addressing the men, who stood respectfully listening, he began thus: "men! is it possible to obtain your attention?" "oh surely, sir, by all means." "then listen: once more i tell you, i am to be di--di--di--"--and then, with a burst of indignation," dipped, i tell you,"--"oh decidedly, sir," rejoined the men, "decidedly," and down the stammerer went for the second time. petrified with cold and wrath, once more lamb made a feeble attempt at explanation--" grant me pa--pa--patience; is it mum--um--murder you me--me--mean? again and a--ga--ga--gain, i tell you, i'm to be di--di--di--dipped," now speaking furiously, with the voice of an injured man. "oh yes, sir," the men replied, "we know that, we fully understood it," and for the third time down went lamb into the sea." oh limbs of satan!" he said, on coming up for the third time, "it's now too late; i tell you that i am--no, that i _was_--to be di--di--di--dipped only _once_." since the rencontres with lamb at coleridge's, i had met him once or twice at literary dinner parties. one of these occurred at the house of messrs. taylor & hessey, the publishers. i myself was suffering too much from illness at the time to take any pleasure in what passed, or to notice it with any vigilance of attention. lamb, i remember, as usual, was full of gayety; and as usual he rose too rapidly to the zenith of his gayety; for he shot upwards like a rocket, and, as usual, people said he was "tipsy." to me lamb never seemed intoxicated, but at most arborily elevated. he never talked nonsense, which is a great point gained; nor polemically, which is a greater; for it is a dreadful thing to find a drunken man bent upon converting oneself; nor sentimentally, which is greatest of all. you can stand a man's fraternizing with you; or if he swears an eternal friendship, only once in an hour, you do not think of calling the police; but once in every three minutes is too much (period omitted here in original, but there is a double space following for a new sentence) lamb did none of these things; he was always rational, quiet, and gentlemanly in his habits. nothing memorable, i am sure, passed upon this occasion, which was in november of ; and yet the dinner was memorable by means of one fact not discovered until many years later. amongst the company, all literary men, sate a murderer, and a murderer of a freezing class; cool, calculating, wholesale in his operations, and moving all along under the advantages of unsuspecting domestic confidence and domestic opportunities. this was mr. wainwright, who was subsequently brought to trial, but not for any of his murders, and transported for life. the story has been told both by sergeant talfourd, in the second volume of these "final memoirs," and previously by sir edward b. lytton. both have been much blamed for the use made of this extraordinary case; but we know not why. in itself it is a most remarkable case for more reasons than one. it is remarkable for the appalling revelation which it makes of power spread through the hands of people not liable to suspicion, for purposes the most dreadful. it is remarkable also by the contrast which existed in this case between the murderer's appearance and the terrific purposes with which he was always dallying. he was a contributor to a journal in which i also had written several papers. this formed a shadowy link between us; and, ill as i was, i looked more attentively at _him_ than at anybody else. yet there were several men of wit and genius present, amongst whom lamb (as i have said) and thomas hood, hamilton reynolds, and allan cunningham. but _them_ i already knew, whereas mr. w. i now saw for the first time and the last. what interested me about _him_ was this, the papers which had been pointed out to me as his, (signed _janus weathercock, vinklooms_, &c.) were written in a spirit of coxcombry that did not so much disgust as amuse. the writer could not conceal the ostentatious pleasure which he took in the luxurious fittings-up of his rooms, in the fancied splendor of his _bijouterie_, &c. yet it was easy for a man of any experience to read two facts in all this idle _etalage_; one being, that his finery was but of a second-rate order; the other, that he was a parvenu, not at home even amongst his second-rate splendor. so far there was nothing to distinguish mr. w--'s papers from the papers of other triflers. but in this point there was, viz., that in his judgments upon the great italian masters of painting, da vinci, titian, &c., there seemed a tone of sincerity and of native sensibility, as in one who spoke from himself, and was not merely a copier from books. this it was that interested me; as also his reviews of the chief italian engravers, morghen, volpato, &c.; not for the manner, which overflowed with levities and impertinence, but for the substance of his judgments in those cases where i happened to have had an opportunity of judging for myself. here arose also a claim upon lamb's attention; for lamb and his sister had a deep feeling for what was excellent in painting. accordingly lamb paid him a great deal of attention, and continued to speak of him for years with an interest that seemed disproportioned to his pretensions. this might be owing in part to an indirect compliment paid to miss lamb in one of w--'s papers; else his appearance would rather have repelled lamb; it was commonplace, and better suited to express the dandyism which overspread the surface of his manner, than the unaffected sensibility which apparently lay in his nature. dandy or not, however, this man, on account of the schism in his papers, so much amiable puppyism on one side, so much deep feeling on the other, (feeling, applied to some of the grandest objects that earth has to show,) did really move a trifle of interest in me, on a day when i hated the face of man and woman. yet again, if i had known this man for the murderer that even then he was, what sudden loss of interest, what sudden growth of another interest, would have changed the face of that party! trivial creature, that didst carry thy dreadful eye kindling with perpetual treasons! dreadful creature, that didst carry thy trivial eye, mantling with eternal levity, over the sleeping surfaces of confiding household life--oh, what a revolution for man wouldst thou have accomplished had thy deep wickedness prospered! what _was_ that wickedness? in a few words i will say. at this time (october, ) the whole british island is appalled by a new chapter in the history of poisoning. locusta in ancient rome, madame brinvilliers in paris, were people of original genius: not in any new artifice of toxicology, not in the mere management of poisons, was the audacity of their genius displayed. no; but in profiting by domestic openings for murder, unsuspected through their very atrocity. such an opening was made some years ago by those who saw the possibility of founding purses for parents upon the murder of their children. this was done upon a larger scale than had been suspected, and upon a plausible pretence. to bury a corpse is costly; but of a hundred children only a few, in the ordinary course of mortality, will die within a given time. five shillings a-piece will produce l annually, and _that_ will bury a considerable number. on this principle arose infant burial societies. for a few shillings annually, a parent could secure a funeral for every child. if the child died, a few guineas fell due to the parent, and the funeral was accomplished without cost of _his_. but on this arose the suggestion--why not execute an insurance of this nature twenty times over? one single insurance pays for the funeral--the other nineteen are so much clear gain, a _lucro ponatur_, for the parents. yes; but on the supposition that the child died! twenty are no better than one, unless they are gathered into the garner. now, if the child died naturally, all was right; but how, if the child did _not_ die? why, clearly this, --the child that _can_ die, and won't die, may be made to die. there are many ways of doing that; and it is shocking to know, that, according to recent discoveries, poison is comparatively a very merciful mode of murder. six years ago a dreadful communication was made to the public by a medical man, viz., that three thousand children were annually burned to death under circumstances showing too clearly that they had been left by their mothers with the means and the temptations to set themselves on fire in her absence. but more shocking, because more lingering, are the deaths by artificial appliances of wet, cold, hunger, bad diet, and disturbed sleep, to the frail constitutions of children. by that machinery it is, and not by poison, that the majority qualify themselves for claiming the funeral allowances. here, however, there occur to any man, on reflection, two eventual restraints on the extension of this domestic curse:-- st, as there is no pretext for wanting more than one funeral on account of one child, any insurances beyond one are in themselves a ground of suspicion. now, if any plan were devised for securing the _publication_ of such insurances, the suspicions would travel as fast as the grounds for them. dly, it occurs, that eventually the evil checks itself, since a society established on the ordinary rates of mortality would be ruined when a murderous stimulation was applied to that rate too extensively. still it is certain that, for a season, this atrocity _has_ prospered in manufacturing districts for some years, and more recently, as judicial investigations have shown, in one agricultural district of essex. now, mr. w--'s scheme of murder was, in its outline, the very same, but not applied to the narrow purpose of obtaining burials from a public fund he persuaded, for instance, two beautiful young ladies, visitors in his family, to insure their lives for a short period of two years. this insurance was repeated in several different offices, until a sum of , pounds had been secured in the event of their deaths within the two years. mr. w--took care that they _should_ die, and very suddenly, within that period; and then, having previously secured from his victims an assignment to himself of this claim, he endeavored to make this assignment available. but the offices, which had vainly endeavored to extract from the young ladies any satisfactory account of the reasons for this limited insurance, had their suspicions at last strongly roused. one office had recently experienced a case of the same nature, in which also the young lady had been poisoned by the man in whose behalf she had effected the insurance; all the offices declined to pay; actions at law arose; in the course of the investigation which followed, mr. w--'s character was fully exposed. finally, in the midst of the embarrassments which ensued, he committed forgery, and was transported. from this mr. w--, some few days afterwards, i received an invitation to a dinner party, expressed in terms that were obligingly earnest. he mentioned the names of his principal guests, and amongst them rested most upon those of lamb and sir david wilkie. from an accident i was unable to attend, and greatly regretted it. sir david one might rarely happen to see, except at a crowded party. but as regarded lamb, i was sure to see him or to hear of him again in some way or other within a short time. this opportunity, in fact, offered itself within a month through the kindness of the lambs themselves. they had heard of my being in solitary lodgings, and insisted on my coming to dine with them, which more than once i did in the winter of - . the mere reception by the lambs was so full of goodness and hospitable feeling, that it kindled animation in the most cheerless or torpid of invalids. i cannot imagine that any _memorabilia_ occurred during the visit; but i will use the time that would else be lost upon the settling of that point, in putting down any triviality that occurs to my recollection. both lamb and myself had a furious love for nonsense, headlong nonsense. excepting professor wilson, i have known nobody who had the same passion to the same extent. and things of that nature better illustrate the _realities_ of lamb's social life than the gravities, which weighing so sadly on his solitary hours he sought to banish from his moments of relaxation. there were no strangers; charles lamb, his sister, and myself made up the party. even this was done in kindness. they knew that i should have been oppressed by an effort such as must be made in the society of strangers; and they placed me by their own fireside, where i could say as little or as much as i pleased. we dined about five o'clock, and it was one of the hospitalities inevitable to the lambs, that any game which they might receive from rural friends in the course of the week, was reserved for the day of a friend's dining with them. in regard to wine, lamb and myself had the same habit--perhaps it rose to the dignity of a principle--viz., to take a great deal _during_ dinner--none _after_ it. consequently, as miss lamb (who drank only water) retired almost with the dinner itself, nothing remained for men of our principles, the rigor of which we had illustrated by taking rather too much of old port before the cloth was drawn, except talking; amoebaean colloquy, or, in dr. johnson's phrase, a dialogue of "brisk reciprocation." but this was impossible; over lamb, at this period of his life, there passed regularly, after taking wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. it descended upon him as softly as a shadow. in a gross person, laden with superfluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this would have been disagreeable; but in lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and wiry as an arab of the desert, or as thomas aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a network of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb--more like a golden haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh. motionless in his chair as a bust, breathing so gently as scarcely to seem certainly alive, he presented the image of repose midway between life and death, like the repose of sculpture; and to one who knew his history a repose affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal storms of his life. i have heard more persons than i can now distinctly recall, observe of lamb when sleeping, that his countenance in that state assumed an expression almost seraphic, from its intellectual beauty of outline, its childlike simplicity, and its benignity. it could not be called a transfiguration that sleep had worked in his face; for the features wore essentially the same expression when waking; but sleep spiritualized that expression, exalted it, and also harmonized it. much of the change lay in that last process. the eyes it was that disturbed the unity of effect in lamb's waking face. they gave a restlessness to the character of his intellect, shifting, like northern lights, through every mode of combination with fantastic playfulness, and sometimes by fiery gleams obliterating for the moment that pure light of benignity which was the predominant reading on his features. some people have supposed that lamb had jewish blood in his veins, which seemed to account for his gleaming eyes. it might be so; but this notion found little countenance in lamb's own way of treating the gloomy medieval traditions propagated throughout europe about the jews, and their secret enmity to christian races. lamb, indeed, might not be more serious than shakspeare is supposed to have been in his shylock; yet he spoke at times as from a station of wilful bigotry, and seemed (whether laughingly or not) to sympathize with the barbarous christian superstitions upon the pretended bloody practices of the jews, and of the early jewish physicians. being himself a lincoln man, he treated sir hugh [endnote: ] of lincoln, the young child that suffered death by secret assassination in the jewish quarter rather than suppress his daily anthems to the virgin, as a true historical personage on the rolls of martyrdom; careless that this fable, like that of the apprentice murdered out of jealousy by his master, the architect, had destroyed its own authority by ubiquitous diffusion. all over europe the same legend of the murdered apprentice and the martyred child reappears under different names--so that in effect the verification of the tale is none at all, because it is unanimous; is too narrow, because it is too impossibly broad. lamb, however, though it was often hard to say whether he were not secretly laughing, swore to the truth of all these old fables, and treated the liberalities of the present generation on such points as mere fantastic and effeminate affectations, which, no doubt, they often are as regards the sincerity of those who profess them. the bigotry, which it pleased his fancy to assume, he used like a sword against the jew, as the official weapon of the christian, upon the same principle that a capulet would have drawn upon a montague, without conceiving it any duty of _his_ to rip up the grounds of so ancient a quarrel; it was a feud handed down to him by his ancestors, and it was _their_ business to see that originally it had been an honest feud. i cannot yet believe that lamb, if seriously aware of any family interconnection with jewish blood, would, even in jest, have held that one-sided language. more probable it is, that the fiery eye recorded not any alliance with jewish blood, but that disastrous alliance with insanity which tainted his own life, and laid desolate his sister's. on awakening from his brief slumber, lamb sat for some time in profound silence, and then, with the most startling rapidity, sang out--"diddle, diddle, dumpkins;" not looking at me, but as if soliloquizing. for five minutes he relapsed into the same deep silence; from which again he started up into the same abrupt utterance of--"diddle, diddle, dumpkins." i could not help laughing aloud at the extreme energy of this sudden communication, contrasted with the deep silence that went before and followed. lamb smilingly begged to know what i was laughing at, and with a look of as much surprise as if it were i that had done something unaccountable, and not himself. i told him (as was the truth) that there had suddenly occurred to me the possibility of my being in some future period or other called on to give an account of this very evening before some literary committee. the committee might say to me--(supposing the case that i outlived him)--"you dined with mr. lamb in january, ; now, can you remember any remark or memorable observation which that celebrated man made before or after dinner?" i as _respondent_. "oh yes, i can." _com_. "what was it?" _resp_. "diddle, diddle, dumpkins." _com_. "and was this his only observation? did mr. lamb not strengthen this remark by some other of the same nature?" _resp_. "yes, he did." _com_. "and what was it?" _resp_. "diddle, diddle, dumpkins." _com_. "what is your secret opinion of dumpkins?" _com_. "do you conceive dumpkins to have been a thing or a person?" _resp_. "i conceive dumpkins to have been a person, having the rights of a person." _com_. "capable, for instance, of suing and being sued?" _resp_. "yes, capable of both; though i have reason to think there would have been very little use in suing dumpkins." _com_. "how so? are the committee to understand that you, the respondent, in your own case, have found it a vain speculation, countenanced only by visionary lawyers, to sue dumpkins?" _resp_. "no; i never lost a shilling by dumpkins, the reason for which may be that dumpkins never owed me a shilling; but from his _pronomen_ of 'diddle,' i apprehend that he was too well acquainted with joint-stock companies!" _com_. "and your opinion is, that he may have diddled mr. lamb?" _resp_. "i conceive it to be not unlikely." _com_. "and, perhaps, from mr. lamb's pathetic reiteration of his name, 'diddle, diddle,' you would be disposed to infer that dumpkins had practised his diddling talents upon mr. l. more than once?" _resp_. "i think it probable." lamb laughed, and brightened up; tea was announced; miss lamb returned. the cloud had passed away from lamb's spirits, and again he realized the pleasure of evening, which, in _his_ apprehension, was so essential to the pleasure of literature. on the table lay a copy of wordsworth, in two volumes; it was the edition of longman, printed about the time of waterloo. wordsworth was held in little consideration, i believe, amongst the house of longman; at any rate, _their_ editions of his works were got up in the most slovenly manner. in particular, the table of contents was drawn up like a short-hand bill of parcels. by accident the book lay open at a part of this table, where the sonnet beginning-- "alas! what boots the long laborious quest"-- had been entered with mercantile speed, as-- "alas! what boots,"---- "yes," said lamb, reading this entry in a dolorous tone of voice, "he may well say _that_. i paid hoby three guineas for a pair that tore like blotting paper, when i was leaping a ditch to escape a farmer that pursued me with a pitch-fork for trespassing. but why should w. wear boots in westmoreland? pray, advise him to patronize shoes." the mercurialities of lamb were infinite, and always uttered in a spirit of absolute recklessness for the quality or the prosperity of the sally. it seemed to liberate his spirits from some burthen of blackest melancholy which oppressed it, when he had thrown off a jest: he would not stop one instant to improve it; nor did he care the value of a straw whether it were good enough to be remembered, or so mediocre as to extort high moral indignation from a collector who refused to receive into his collection of jests and puns any that were not felicitously good or revoltingly bad. after tea, lamb read to me a number of beautiful compositions, which he had himself taken the trouble to copy out into a blank paper folio from unsuccessful authors. neglected people in every class won the sympathy of lamb. one of the poems, i remember, was a very beautiful sonnet from a volume recently published by lord thurlow--which, and lamb's just remarks upon it, i could almost repeat _verbatim_ at this moment, nearly twenty-seven years later, if your limits would allow me. but these, you tell me, allow of no such thing; at the utmost they allow only twelve lines more. now all the world knows that the sonnet itself would require fourteen lines; but take fourteen from twelve, and there remains very little, i fear; besides which, i am afraid two of my twelve are already exhausted. this forces me to interrupt my account of lamb's reading, by reporting the very accident that _did_ interrupt it in fact; since that no less characteristically expressed lamb's peculiar spirit of kindness, (always quickening itself towards the ill-used or the down-trodden,) than it had previously expressed itself in his choice of obscure readings. two ladies came in, one of whom at least had sunk in the scale of worldly consideration. they were ladies who would not have found much recreation in literary discussions; elderly, and habitually depressed. on _their_ account, lamb proposed whist, and in that kind effort to amuse them, which naturally drew forth some momentary gayeties from himself, but not of a kind to impress themselves on the recollection, the evening terminated. we have left ourselves no room for a special examination of lamb's writings, some of which were failures, and some were so memorably beautiful as to be unique in their class. the character of lamb it is, and the life-struggle of lamb, that must fix the attention of many, even amongst those wanting in sensibility to his intellectual merits. this character and this struggle, as we have already observed, impress many traces of themselves upon lamb's writings. even in that view, therefore, they have a ministerial value; but separately, for themselves, they have an independent value of the highest order. upon this point we gladly adopt the eloquent words of sergeant talfourd:-- "the sweetness of lamb's character, breathed through his writings, was felt even by strangers; but its heroic aspect was unguessed even by many of his friends. let them now consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its self-devotion exhibits? it was not merely that he saw, through the ensanguined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon his family, the unstained excellence of his sister, whose madness had caused it; that he was ready to take her to his own home with reverential affection, and cherish her through life; and he gave up, for _her_ sake, all meaner and more selfish love, and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion which disturbs and ennobles it; not even that he did all this cheerfully, without pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness as a virtue, or seeking to repay himself (as some uneasy martyrs do) by small instalments of long repining; but that he carried the spirit of the hour in which he first knew and took his course to his last. so far from thinking that his sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a license to follow his own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even in the lightest matters, he always wrote and spoke of her as his wiser self, his generous benefactress, of whose protecting care he was scarcely worthy." it must be remembered, also, which the sergeant does not overlook, that lamb's efforts for the becoming support of his sister lasted through a period of forty years. twelve years before his death, the munificence of the india house, by granting him a liberal retiring allowance, had placed his own support under shelter from accidents of any kind. but this died with himself; and he could not venture to suppose that, in the event of his own death, the india house would grant to his sister the same allowance as by custom is granted to a wife. this they did; but not venturing to calculate upon such nobility of patronage, lamb had applied himself through life to the saving of a provision for his sister under any accident to himself. and this he did with a persevering prudence, so little known in the literary class, amongst a continued tenor of generosities, often so princely as to be scarcely known in any class. was this man, so memorably good by life-long sacrifice of himself, in any profound sense a christian? the impression is, that he was _not_. we, from private communications with him, can undertake to say that, according to his knowledge and opportunities for the study of christianity, he _was_. what has injured lamb on this point is, that his early opinions (which, however, from the first were united with the deepest piety) are read by the inattentive, as if they had been the opinions of his mature days; secondly, that he had few religious persons amongst his friends, which made him reserved in the expression of his own views; thirdly, that in any case where he altered opinions for the better, the credit of the improvement is assigned to coleridge. lamb, for example, beginning life as a unitarian, in not many years became a trinitarian. coleridge passed through the same changes in the same order; and, here, at least, lamb is supposed simply to have obeyed the influence, confessedly great, of coleridge. this, on our own knowledge of lamb's views, we pronounce to be an error. and the following extracts from lamb's letters will show, not only that he was religiously disposed on impulses self-derived, but that, so far from obeying the bias of coleridge, he ventured, on this one subject, firmly as regarded the matter, though humbly as regarded the manner, affectionately to reprove coleridge. in a letter to coleridge, written in , the year after his first great affliction, he says: "coleridge, i have not one truly elevated character among my acquaintance; not one christian; not one but undervalues christianity. singly, what am i to do? wesley--[have you read his life?]--was not he an elevated character? wesley has said religion was not a solitary thing. alas! it is necessarily so with me, or next to solitary. 'tis true you write to me; but correspondence by letter and personal intimacy are widely different. do, do write to me; and do some good to my mind--already how much 'warped and relaxed' by the world!" in a letter written about three months previously, he had not scrupled to blame coleridge at some length for audacities of religious speculation, which seemed to him at war with the simplicities of pure religion. he says: "do continue to write to me. i read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. especially they please us two when you talk in a religious strain. not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy than consistent with the humility of genuine piety." then, after some instances of what he blames, he says: "be not angry with me, coleridge. i wish not to cavil; i know i cannot instruct you; i only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the christian character. god, in the new testament, our best guide, is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent; and, in my poor mind, 'tis best for us so to consider him as our heavenly father, and our best friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of his character." about a month later, he says: "few but laugh at me for reading my testament. they talk a language i understand not; i conceal sentiments that would be a puzzle to _them_." we see by this last quotation _where_ it was that lamb originally sought for consolation. we personally can vouch that, at a maturer period, when he was approaching his fiftieth year, no change had affected his opinions upon that point; and, on the other hand, that no changes had occurred in his needs for consolation, we see, alas! in the records of his life. whither, indeed, could he fly for comfort, if not to his bible? and to whom was the bible an indispensable resource, if not to lamb? we do not undertake to say, that in his knowledge of christianity he was everywhere profound or consistent, but he was always earnest in his aspirations after its spiritualities, and had an apprehensive sense of its power. charles lamb is gone; his life was a continued struggle in the service of love the purest, and within a sphere visited by little of contemporary applause. even his intellectual displays won but a narrow sympathy at any time, and in his earlier period were saluted with positive derision and contumely on the few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire neglect. but slowly all things right themselves. all merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a higher sensory; reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged in a selecter audience. but the original obtuseness or vulgarity of feeling that thwarted lamb's just estimation in life, will continue to thwart its popular diffusion. there are even some that continue to regard him with the old hostility. and we, therefore, standing by the side of lamb's grave, seemed to hear, on one side, (but in abated tones, ) strains of the ancient malice--"this man, that thought himself to be somebody, is dead--is buried--is forgotten!" and, on the other side, seemed to hear ascending, as with the solemnity of an anthem--"this man, that thought himself to be nobody, is dead--is buried; his life has been searched; and his memory is hallowed forever!" notes. note . "_scriptural_" we call it, because this element of thought, so indispensable to a profound philosophy of morals, is not simply _more_ used in scripture than elsewhere, but is so exclusively significant or intelligible amidst the correlative ideas of scripture, as to be absolutely insusceptible of translation into classical greek or classical latin. it is disgraceful that more reflection has not been directed to the vast causes and consequences of so pregnant a truth. note . "_poor s t. c._"-the affecting expression by which coleridge indicates himself in the few lines written during his last illness for an inscription upon his grave, lines ill constructed in point of diction and compression, but otherwise speaking from the depths of his heart. note . it is right to remind the reader of this, for a reason applying forcibly to the present moment michelet has taxed englishmen with yielding to national animosities in the case of joan, having no plea whatever for that insinuation but the single one drawn from shakspeare's henry vi. to this the answer is, first, that shakspeare's share in that trilogy is not nicely ascertained secondly, that m michelet forgot (or, which is far worse, _not_ forgetting it, he dissembled) the fact, that in undertaking a series of dramas upon the basis avowedly of national chronicles, and for the very purpose of profiting by old traditionary recollections connected with ancestral glories, it was mere lunacy to recast the circumstances at the bidding of antiquarian research, so as entirely to disturb these glories. besides that, to shakspeare's age no such spirit of research had blossomed. writing for the stage, a man would have risked lapidation by uttering a whisper in that direction. and, even if not, what sense could there have been in openly running counter to the very motive that had originally prompted that particular class of chronicle plays? thirdly, if one englishman had, in a memorable situation, adopted the popular view of joan's conduct, (_popular_ as much in france as in england;) on the other hand, fifty years before m. michelet was writing this flagrant injustice, another englishman (viz., southey) had, in an epic poem, reversed this mis-judgment, and invested the shepherd girl with a glory nowhere else accorded to her, unless indeed by schiller. fourthly, we are not entitled to view as an _attack_ upon joanna, what, in the worst construction, is but an unexamining adoption of the contemporary historical accounts. a poet or a dramatist is not responsible for the accuracy of chronicles. but what _is_ an attack upon joan, being briefly the foulest and obscenest attempt ever made to stifle the grandeur of a great human struggle, viz., the french burlesque poem of _la pucelle_--what memorable man was it that wrote _that_? was he a frenchman, or was he not? that m. michelet should _pretend_ to have forgotten this vilest of pasquinades, is more shocking to the general sense of justice than any special untruth as to shakspeare _can_ be to the particular nationality of an englishman. note . the story which furnishes a basis to the fine ballad in percy's reliques, and to the canterbury tale of chaucer's lady abbess. goethe john wolfgang von goethe, a man of commanding influence in the literature of modern germany throughout the latter half of his long life, and possessing two separate claims upon our notice; one in right of his own unquestionable talents; and another much stronger, though less direct, arising out of his position, and the extravagant partisanship put forward on his behalf for the last forty years. the literary body in all countries, and for reasons which rest upon a sounder basis than that of private jealousies, have always been disposed to a republican simplicity in all that regards the assumption of rank and personal pretensions. _valeat quantum valere potest_, is the form of license to every man's ambition, coupled with its caution. let his influence and authority be commensurate with his attested value; and, because no man in the present infinity of human speculation, and the present multiformity of human power, can hope for more than a very limited superiority, there is an end at once to all _absolute_ dictatorship. the dictatorship in any case could be only _relative_, and in relation to a single department of art or knowledge; and this for a reason stronger even than that already noticed, viz., the vast extent of the field on which the intellect is now summoned to employ itself. that objection, as it applies only to the _degree_ of the difficulty, might be met by a corresponding degree of mental energy; such a thing may be supposed, at least. but another difficulty there is, of a profounder character, which cannot be so easily parried. those who have reflected at all upon the fine arts, know that power of one kind is often inconsistent, positively incompatible, with power of another kind. for example, the _dramatic_ mind is incompatible with the _epic_. and though we should consent to suppose that some intellect might arise endowed upon a scale of such angelic comprehensiveness, as to vibrate equally and indifferently towards either pole, still it is next to impossible, in the exercise and culture of the two powers, but some bias must arise which would give that advantage to the one over the other which the right arm has over the left. but the supposition, the very case put, is baseless, and countenanced by no precedent. yet, under this previous difficulty, and with regard to a literature convulsed, if any ever was, by an almost total anarchy, it is a fact notorious to all who take an interest in germany and its concerns, that goethe did in one way or other, through the length and breadth of that vast country, establish a supremacy of influence wholly unexampled; a supremacy indeed perilous in a less honorable man, to those whom he might chance to hate, and with regard to himself thus far unfortunate, that it conferred upon every work proceeding from his pen a sort of papal indulgence, an immunity from criticism, or even from the appeals of good sense, such as it is not wholesome that any man should enjoy. yet we repeat that german literature was and is in a condition of total anarchy. with this solitary exception, no name, even in the most narrow section of knowledge or of power, has ever been able in that country to challenge unconditional reverence; whereas, with us and in france, name the science, name the art, and we will name the dominant professor; a difference which partly arises out of the fact that england and france are governed in their opinions by two or three capital cities, whilst germany looks for its leadership to as many cities as there are _residenzen_ and universities. for instance, the little territory with which goethe was connected presented no less than two such public lights; weimar, the _residenz_ or privileged abode of the grand duke, and jena, the university founded by that house. partly, however, this difference may be due to the greater restlessness, and to the greater energy as respects mere speculation, of the german mind. but no matter whence arising, or how interpreted, the fact is what we have described; absolute confusion, the "anarch old" of milton, is the one deity whose sceptre is there paramount; and yet _there_ it was, in that very realm of chaos, that goethe built his throne. that he must have looked with trepidation and perplexity upon his wild empire and its "dark foundations," may be supposed. the tenure was uncertain to _him_ as regarded its duration; to us it is equally uncertain, and in fact mysterious, as regards its origin. meantime the mere fact, contrasted with the general tendencies of the german literary world, is sufficient to justify a notice, somewhat circumstantial, of the man in whose favor, whether naturally by force of genius, or by accident concurring with intrigue, so unexampled a result was effected. goethe was born at noonday on the th of august, , in his father's house at frankfort on the maine. the circumstances of his birth were thus far remarkable, that, unless goethe's vanity deceived him, they led to a happy revolution hitherto retarded by female delicacy falsely directed. from some error of the midwife who attended his mother, the infant goethe appeared to be still-born. sons there were as yet none from this marriage; everybody was therefore interested in the child's life; and the panic which arose in consequence, having survived its immediate occasion, was improved into a public resolution, (for which no doubt society stood ready at that moment,) to found some course of public instruction from this time forward for those who undertook professionally the critical duties of accoucheur. we have noticed the house in which goethe was born, as well as the city. both were remarkable, and fitted to leave lasting impressions upon a young person of sensibility. as to the city, its antiquity is not merely venerable, but almost mysterious; towers were at that time to be found in the mouldering lines of its earliest defences, which belonged to the age of charlemagne, or one still earlier; battlements adapted to a mode of warfare anterior even to that of feudalism or romance. the customs, usages, and local privileges of frankfort, and the rural districts adjacent, were of a corresponding character. festivals were annually celebrated at a short distance from the walls, which had descended from a dateless antiquity. every thing which met the eye spoke the language of elder ages; whilst the river on which the place was seated, its great fair, which still held the rank of the greatest in christendom, and its connection with the throne of caesar and his inauguration, by giving to frankfort an interest and a public character in the eyes of all germany, had the effect of countersigning, as it were, by state authority, the importance which she otherwise challenged to her ancestral distinctions. fit house for such a city, and in due keeping with the general scenery, was that of goethe's father. it had in fact been composed out of two contiguous houses; that accident had made it spacious and rambling in its plan; whilst a further irregularity had grown out of the original difference in point of level between the corresponding stories of the two houses, making it necessary to connect the rooms of the same _suite_ by short flights of steps. some of these features were no doubt removed by the recast of the house under the name of "repairs," (to evade a city bye-law, ) afterwards executed by his father; but such was the house of goethe's infancy, and in all other circumstances of style and furnishing equally antique. the spirit of society in frankfort, without a court, a university, or a learned body of any extent, or a resident nobility in its neighborhood, could not be expected to display any very high standard of polish. yet, on the other hand, as an independent city, governed by its own separate laws and tribunals, (that privilege of _autonomy_ so dearly valued by ancient greece,) and possessing besides a resident corps of jurisprudents and of agents in various ranks for managing the interests of the german emperor and other princes, frankfort had the means within herself of giving a liberal tone to the pursuits of her superior citizens, and of cooperating in no inconsiderable degree with the general movement of the times, political or intellectual. the memoirs of goethe himself, and in particular the picture there given of his own family, as well as other contemporary glimpses of german domestic society in those days, are sufficient to show that much knowledge, much true cultivation of mind, much sound refinement of taste, were then distributed through the middle classes of german society; meaning by that very indeterminate expression those classes which for frankfort composed the aristocracy, viz., all who had daily leisure, and regular funds for employing it to advantage. it is not necessary to add, because that is a fact applicable to all stages of society, that frankfort presented many and various specimens of original talent, moving upon all directions of human speculation. yet, with this general allowance made for the capacities of the place, it is too evident that, for the most part, they lay inert and undeveloped. in many respects frankfort resembled an english cathedral city, according to the standard of such places seventy years ago, not, that is to say, like carlisle in this day, where a considerable manufacture exists, but like chester as it is yet. the chapter of a cathedral, the resident ecclesiastics attached to the duties of so large an establishment, men always well educated, and generally having families, compose the original _nucleus_, around which soon gathers all that part of the local gentry who, for any purpose, whether of education for their children, or of social enjoyment for themselves, seek the advantages of a town. hither resort all the timid old ladies who wish for conversation, or other forms of social amusement; hither resort the valetudinarians, male or female, by way of commanding superior medical advice at a cost not absolutely ruinous to themselves; and multitudes besides, with narrow incomes, to whom these quiet retreats are so many cities of refuge. such, in one view, they really are; and yet in another they have a vicious constitution. cathedral cities in england, imperial cities without manufactures in germany, are all in an improgressive condition. the public employments of every class in such places continue the same from generation to generation. the amount of superior families oscillates rather than changes; that is, it fluctuates within fixed limits; and, for all inferior families, being composed either of shopkeepers or of menial servants, they are determined by the number, or, which, on a large average, is the same, by the pecuniary power, of their employers. hence it arises, that room is made for one man, in whatever line of dependence, only by the death of another; and the constant increments of the population are carried off into other cities. not less is the difference of such cities as regards the standard of manners. how striking is the soft and urbane tone of the lower orders in a cathedral city, or in a watering place dependent upon ladies, contrasted with the bold, often insolent, demeanor of a self-dependent artisan or mutinous mechanic of manchester and glasgow. children, however, are interested in the state of society around them, chiefly as it affects their parents. those of goethe were respectable, and perhaps tolerably representative of the general condition in their own rank. an english authoress of great talent, in her _characteristics of goethe_, has too much countenanced the notion that he owed his intellectual advantages exclusively to his mother. of this there is no proof. his mother wins more esteem from the reader of this day, because she was a cheerful woman, of serene temper, brought into advantageous comparison with a husband much older than herself, whom circumstances had rendered moody, fitful, sometimes capricious, and confessedly obstinate in that degree which pope has taught us to think connected with inveterate error: "stiff in opinion, always in the wrong," unhappily presents an association too often actually occurring in nature, to leave much chance for error in presuming either quality from the other. and, in fact, goethe's father was so uniformly obstinate in pressing his own views upon all who belonged to him, whenever he did come forward in an attitude of activity, that his family had much reason to be thankful for the rarity of such displays. fortunately for them, his indolence neutralized his obstinacy. and the worst shape in which his troublesome temper showed itself, was in what concerned the religious reading of the family. once begun, the worst book as well as the best, the longest no less than the shortest, was to be steadfastly read through to the last word of the last volume; no excess of yawning availed to obtain a reprieve, not, adds his son, though he were himself the leader of the yawners. as an illustration, he mentions bowyer's _history of the popes_; which awful series of records, the catacombs, as it were, in the palace of history, were actually traversed from one end to the other of the endless suite by the unfortunate house of goethe. allowing, however, for the father's unamiableness in this one point, upon all intellectual ground both parents seem to have met very much upon a level. two illustrations may suffice, one of which occurred during the infancy of goethe. the science of education was at that time making its first rude motions towards an ampler development; and, amongst other reforms then floating in the general mind, was one for eradicating the childish fear of ghosts, &c. the young goethes, as it happened, slept not in separate beds only, but in separate rooms; and not unfrequently the poor children, under the stinging terrors of their lonely situation, stole away from their "forms," to speak in the hunter's phrase, and sought to rejoin each other. but in these attempts they were liable to surprises from the enemy; papa and mamma were both on the alert, and often intercepted the young deserter by a cross march or an ambuscade; in which cases each had a separate policy for enforcing obedience. the father, upon his general system of "perseverance," compelled the fugitive back to his quarters, and, in effect, exhorted him to persist in being frightened out of his wits. to his wife's gentle heart that course appeared cruel, and she reclaimed the delinquent by bribes; the peaches which her garden walls produced being the fund from which she chiefly drew her supplies for this branch of the secret service. what were her winter bribes, when the long nights would seem to lie heaviest on the exchequer, is not said. speaking seriously, no man of sense can suppose that a course of suffering from terrors the most awful, under whatever influence supported, whether under the naked force of compulsion, or of _that_ connected with bribes, could have any final effect in mitigating the passion of awe, connected, by our very dreams, with the shadowy and the invisible, or in tranquillizing the infantine imagination. a second illustration involves a great moral event in the history of goethe, as it was, in fact, the first occasion of his receiving impressions at war with his religious creed. piety is so beautiful an ornament of the youthful mind, doubt or distrust so unnatural a growth from confiding innocence, that an infant freethinker is heard of not so much with disgust as with perplexity. a sense of the ludicrous is apt to intermingle; and we lose our natural horror of the result in wonder at its origin. yet in this instance there is no room for doubt; the fact and the occasion are both on record; there can be no question about the date; and, finally, the accuser is no other than the accused. goethe's own pen it is which proclaims, that already, in the early part of his seventh year, his reliance upon god as a moral governor had suffered a violent shock, was shaken, if not undermined. on the st of november, , occurred the great earthquake at lisbon. upon a double account, this event occupied the thoughts of all europe for an unusual term of time; both as an expression upon a larger scale than usual of the mysterious physical agency concerned in earthquakes, and also for the awful human tragedy [endnote: ] of this no picture can ever hope to rival that hasty one sketched in the letter of the chaplain to the lisbon factory. the plague of athens as painted by thucydides or lucretius, nay even the fabulous plague of london by de foe, contain no scenes or situations equal in effect to some in this plain historic statement. nay, it would perhaps be difficult to produce a passage from ezekiel, from aeschylus, or from shakspeare, which would so profoundly startle the sense of sublimity as one or two of his incidents, which attended either the earthquake itself, or its immediate sequel in the sudden irruption of the tagus. sixty thousand persons, victims to the dark power in its first or its second _avatar_, attested the titanic scale upon which it worked. here it was that the shallow piety of the germans found a stumbling-block. those who have read any circumstantial history of the physical signs which preceded this earthquake, are aware that in england and northern germany many singular phenomena were observed, more or less manifestly connected with the same dark agency which terminated at lisbon, and running before this final catastrophe at times so accurately varying with the distances, as to furnish something like a scale for measuring the velocity with which it moved. these german phenomena, circulated rapidly over all germany by the journals of every class, had seemed to give to the germans a nearer and more domestic interest in the great event, than belonged to them merely in their universal character of humanity. it is also well known to observers of national characteristics, that amongst the germans the household charities, the _pieties of the hearth_, as they may be called, exist, if not really in greater strength, yet with much less of the usual balances or restraints. a german father, for example, is like the grandfather of other nations; and thus a piety, which in its own nature scarcely seems liable to excess, takes, in its external aspect, too often an air of effeminate imbecility. these two considerations are necessary to explain the intensity with which this lisbon tragedy laid hold of the german mind, and chiefly under the one single aspect of its _undistinguishing_ fury. women, children, old men--these, doubtless, had been largely involved in the perishing sixty thousand; and that reflection, it would seem from goethe's account, had so far embittered the sympathy of the germans with their distant portuguese brethren, that, in the frankfort discussions, sullen murmurs had gradually ripened into bold impeachments of providence. there can be no gloomier form of infidelity than that which questions the moral attributes of the great being, in whose hands are the final destinies of us all. such, however, was the form of goethe's earliest scepticism, such its origin; caught up from the very echoes which rang through the streets of frankfort when the subject occupied all men's minds. and such, for anything that appears, continued to be its form thenceforwards to the close of his life, if speculations so crude could be said to have any form at all. many are the analogies, some close ones, between england and germany with regard to the circle of changes they have run through, political or social, for a century back. the challenges are frequent to a comparison; and sometimes the result would be to the advantage of germany, more often to ours. but in religious philosophy, which in reality is the true _popular_ philosophy, how vast is the superiority on the side of this country. not a shopkeeper or mechanic, we may venture to say, but would have felt this obvious truth, that surely the lisbon earthquake yielded no fresh lesson, no peculiar moral, beyond what belonged to every man's experience in every age. a passage in the new testament about the fall of the tower of siloam, and the just construction of that event, had already anticipated the difficulty, if such it could be thought. not to mention, that calamities upon the same scale in the earliest age of christianity, the fall of the amphitheatre at fidenae, or the destruction of pompeii, had presented the same problem at the lisbon earthquake. nay, it is presented daily in the humblest individual case, where wrong is triumphant over right, or innocence confounded with guilt in one common disaster. and that the parents of goethe should have authorized his error, if only by their silence, argues a degree of ignorance in them, which could not have co-existed with much superior knowledge in the public mind. goethe, in his memoirs, (book vi.,) commends his father for the zeal with which he superintended the education of his children. but apparently it was a zeal without knowledge. many things were taught imperfectly, but all casually, and as chance suggested them. italian was studied a little, because the elder goethe had made an italian tour, and had collected some italian books, and engravings by italian masters. hebrew was studied a little, because goethe the son had a fancy for it, partly with a view to theology, and partly because there was a jewish quarter, gloomy and sequestrated, in the city of frankfort. french offered itself no doubt on many suggestions, but originally on occasion of a french theatre, supported by the staff of the french army when quartered in the same city. latin was gathered in a random way from a daily sense of its necessity. english upon the temptation of a stranger's advertisement, promising upon moderate terms to teach that language in four weeks; a proof, by the way, that the system of bold innovations in the art of tuition had already commenced. riding and fencing were also attempted under masters apparently not very highly qualified, and in the same desultory style of application. dancing was taught to his family, strange as it may seem, by mr. goethe himself. there is good reason to believe that not one of all these accomplishments was possessed by goethe, when ready to visit the university, in a degree which made it practically of any use to him. drawing and music were pursued confessedly as amusements; and it would be difficult to mention any attainment whatsoever which goethe had carried to a point of excellence in the years which he spent under his father's care, unless it were his mastery over the common artifices of metre and the common topics of rhetoric, which fitted him for writing what are called occasional poems and _impromptus_. this talent he possessed in a remarkable degree, and at an early age; but he owed its cultivation entirely to himself. in a city so orderly as frankfort, and in a station privileged from all the common hardships of poverty, it can hardly be expected that many incidents should arise, of much separate importance in themselves, to break the monotony of life; and the mind of goethe was not contemplative enough to create a value for common occurrences through any peculiar impressions which he had derived from them. in the years and , when he must have been from fourteen to fifteen years old, goethe witnessed the inauguration and coronation of a king of the romans, a solemn spectacle connected by prescription with the city of frankfort. he describes it circumstantially, but with very little feeling, in his memoirs. probably the prevailing sentiment, on looking back at least to this transitory splendor of dress, processions, and ceremonial forms, was one of cynical contempt. but this he could not express, as a person closely connected with a german court, without giving much and various offence. it is with some timidity even that he hazards a criticism upon single parts of the costume adopted by some of the actors in that gorgeous scene. white silk stockings, and pumps of the common form, he objects to as out of harmony with the antique and heraldic aspects of the general costume, and ventures to suggest either boots or sandals as an improvement. had goethe felt himself at liberty from all restraints of private consideration in composing these memoirs, can it be doubted that he would have taken his retrospect of this frankfort inauguration from a different station; from the station of that stern revolution which, within his own time, and partly under his own eyes, had shattered the whole imperial system of thrones, in whose equipage this gay pageant made so principal a figure, had humbled caesar himself to the dust, and left him an emperor without an empire? we at least, for our parts, could not read without some emotion one little incident of these gorgeous scenes recorded by goethe, namely, that when the emperor, on rejoining his wife for a few moments, held up to her notice his own hands and arms arrayed in the antique habiliments of charlemagne, maria theresa--she whose children where summoned to so sad a share in the coming changes--gave way to sudden bursts of loud laughter, audible to the whole populace below her. that laugh on surveying the departing pomps of charlemagne, must, in any contemplative ear, have rung with a sound of deep significance, and with something of the same effect which belongs to a figure of death introduced by a painter, as mixing in the festal dances of a bridal assembly. these pageants of - occupy a considerable space in goethe's memoirs, and with some _logical_ propriety at least, in consideration of their being exclusively attached to frankfort, and connected by manifold links of person and office with the privileged character of the city. perhaps he might feel a sort of narrow local patriotism in recalling these scenes to public notice by description, at a time when they had been irretrievably extinguished as realities. but, after making every allowance for their local value to a frankfort family, and for their memorable splendor, we may venture to suppose that by far the most impressive remembrances which had gathered about the boyhood of goethe, were those which pointed to frederick of prussia. this singular man, so imbecile as a pretender to philosophy and new lights, so truly heroic under misfortunes, was the first german who created a german interest, and gave a transient unity to the german name, under all its multiplied divisions. were it only for this conquest of difficulties so peculiar, he would deserve his german designation of fred. the unique, (_fritz der einzige_.) he had been partially tried and known previously; but it was the seven years' war which made him the popular idol. this began in ; and to frankfort, in a very peculiar way, that war brought dissensions and heart-burnings in its train. the imperial connections of the city with many public and private interests, pledged it to the anti-prussian cause. it happened also that the truly german character of the reigning imperial family, the domestic habits of the empress and her young daughters, and other circumstances, were of a nature to endear the ties of policy; self-interest and affection pointed in the same direction. and yet were all these considerations allowed to melt away before the brilliant qualities of one man, and the romantic enthusiasm kindled by his victories. frankfort was divided within herself; the young and the generous were all dedicated to frederick. a smaller party, more cautious and prudent, were for the imperialists. families were divided upon this question against families, and often against themselves; feuds, begun in private, issued often into public violence; and, according to goethe's own illustration, the streets were vexed by daily brawls, as hot and as personal as of old between the capulets and montagues. these dissensions, however, were pursued with not much personal risk to any of the goethes, until a french army passed the rhine as allies of the imperialists. one corps of this force took up their quarters in frankfort; and the comte thorane, who held a high appointment on the staff, settled himself for a long period of time in the spacious mansion of goethe's father. this officer, whom his place made responsible for the discipline of the army in relation to the citizens, was naturally by temper disposed to moderation and forbearance. he was indeed a favorable specimen of french military officers under the old system; well bred, not arrogant, well informed, and a friend of the fine arts. for painting, in particular, he professed great regard and some knowledge. the goethes were able to forward his views amongst german artists; whilst, on the other hand, they were pleased to have thus an opportunity of directing his patronage towards some of their own needy connections. in this exchange of good offices, the two parties were for some time able to maintain a fair appearance of reciprocal good-will. this on the comte's side, if not particularly warm, was probably sincere; but in goethe the father it was a masque for inveterate dislike. a natural ground of this existed in the original relations between them. under whatever disguise or pretext, the frenchman was in fact a military intruder. he occupied the best suite of rooms in the house, used the furniture as his own; and, though upon private motives he abstained from doing all the injury which his situation authorized, (so as in particular to have spread his fine military maps upon the floor, rather than disfigure the decorated walls by nails,) still he claimed credit, if not services of requital, for all such instances of forbearance. here were grievances enough; but, in addition to these, the comte's official appointments drew upon him a weight of daily business, which kept the house in a continual uproar. farewell to the quiet of a literary amateur, and the orderliness of a german household. finally, the comte was a frenchman. these were too many assaults upon one man's patience. it will be readily understood, therefore, how it happened, that, whilst goethe's gentle minded mother, with her flock of children, continued to be on the best terms with comte thorane, the master of the house kept moodily aloof, and retreated from all intercourse. goethe, in his own memoir, enters into large details upon this subject; and from him we shall borrow the _denouement_ of the tale. a crisis had for some time been lowering over the french affairs in frankfort; things seemed ripening for a battle; and at last it came. flight, siege, bombardment, possibly a storm, all danced before the eyes of the terrified citizens. fortunately, however, the battle took place at the distance of four or five miles from frankfort. monsieur le comte was absent, of course, on the field of battle. his unwilling host thought that on such an occasion he also might go out in quality of spectator; and with this purpose he connected another, worthy of a parson adams. it is his son who tells the story, whose filial duty was not proof against his sense of the ludicrous. the old gentleman's hatred of the french had by this time brought him over to his son's admiration of the prussian hero. not doubting for an instant that victory would follow that standard, he resolved on this day to offer in person his congratulations to the prussian army, whom he already viewed as his liberator from a domestic nuisance. so purposing, he made his way cautiously to the suburbs; from the suburbs, still listening at each advance, he went forward to the country; totally forgetting, as his son insists, that, however completely beaten, the french army must still occupy some situation or other between himself and his german deliverer. coming, however, at length to a heath, he found some of those marauders usually to be met with in the rear of armies, prowling about, and at intervals amusing themselves with shooting at a mark. for want of a better, it seemed not improbable that a large german head might answer their purpose. certain signs admonished him of this, and the old gentleman crept back to frankfort. not many hours after came back also the comte, by no means creeping, however; on the contrary, crowing with all his might for a victory which he averred himself to have won. there had in fact been an affair, but on no very great scale, and with no distinguished results. some prisoners, however, he brought, together with some wounded; and naturally he expected all well disposed persons to make their compliments of congratulation upon this triumph. of this duty poor mrs. goethe and her children cheerfully acquitted themselves that same night; and monsieur le comte was so well pleased with the sound opinions of the little goethes, that he sent them in return a collection of sweetmeats and fruits. all promised to go well; intentions, after all, are not acts; and there certainly is not, nor ever was, any treason in taking a morning's walk. but, as ill luck would have it, just as mr. goethe was passing the comte's door, out came the comte in person, purely by accident, as we are told; but we suspect that the surly old german, either under his morning hopes or his evening disappointments, had talked with more frankness than prudence. "good evening to you, herr goethe," said the comte; "you are come, i see, to pay your tribute of congratulation. somewhat of the latest, to be sure; but no matter." "by no means," replied the german;" by no means; _mit nichten_. heartily i wished, the whole day long, that you and your cursed gang might all go to the devil together. "here was plain speaking, at least. the comte thorane could no longer complain of dissimulation. his first movement was to order an arrest; and the official interpreter of the french army took to himself the whole credit that he did not carry it into effect. goethe takes the trouble to report a dialogue, of length and dulness absolutely incredible, between this interpreter and the comte. no such dialogue, we may be assured, ever took place. goethe may, however, be right in supposing that, amongst a foreign soldiery, irritated by the pointed contrasts between the frankfort treatment of their own wounded, and of their prisoners who happened to be in the same circumstances, and under a military council not held to any rigorous responsibility, his father might have found no very favorable consideration of his case. it is well, therefore, that after some struggle the comte's better nature triumphed. he suffered mrs. goethe's merits to outweigh her husband's delinquency; countermanded the order for arrest, and, during the remainder of their connection, kept at such a distance from his moody host as was equally desirable for both. fortunately that remainder was not very long. comte thorane was soon displaced; and the whole army was soon afterwards withdrawn from frankfort. in his fifteenth year goethe was entangled in some connection with young people of inferior rank, amongst whom was margaret, a young girl about two years older than himself, and the object of his first love. the whole affair, as told by goethe, is somewhat mysterious. what might be the final views of the elder parties it is difficult to say; but goethe assures us that they used his services only in writing an occasional epithalamium, the pecuniary acknowledgment for which was spent jovially in a general banquet. the magistrates, however, interfered, and endeavored to extort a confession from goethe. he, as the son of a respectable family, was to be pardoned; the others to be punished. no confession, however, could be extorted; and for his own part he declares that, beyond the offence of forming a clandestine connection, he had nothing to confess. the affair terminated, as regarded himself, in a severe illness. of the others we hear no more. the next event of importance in goethe's life was his removal to college. his own wishes pointed to goettingen, but his father preferred leipsic. thither accordingly he went, but he carried his obedience no farther. declining the study of jurisprudence, he attached himself to general literature. subsequently he removed to the university of strasburg; but in neither place could it be said that he pursued any regular course of study. his health suffered at times during this period of his life; at first from an affection of the chest, caused by an accident on his first journey to leipsic; the carriage had stuck fast in the muddy roads, and goethe exerted himself too much in assisting to extricate the wheels. a second illness connected with the digestive organs brought him into considerable danger. after his return to frankfort, goethe commenced his career as an author. in , and the following year, he made his maiden essay in _goetz of berlichingen_, a drama, (the translation of which, remarkably enough, was destined to be the literary _coup d'essai_ of sir walter scott,) and in the far-famed _werther_. the first of these was pirated; and in consequence the author found some difficulty in paying for the paper of the genuine edition, which part of the expense, by his contract with the publisher, fell upon himself. the general and early popularity of the second work is well known. yet, except in so far as it might spread his name abroad, it cannot be supposed to have had much influence in attracting that potent patronage which now began to determine the course of his future life. so much we collect from the account which goethe himself has left us of this affair in its earliest stages. "i was sitting alone in my room," says he, "at my father's house in frankfort, when a gentleman entered, whom at first i took for frederick jacobi, but soon discovered by the dubious light to be a stranger. he had a military air; and announcing himself by the name of von knebel, gave me to understand in a short explanation, that being in the prussian service, he had connected himself, during a long residence at berlin and potsdam, with the literati of those places; but that at present he held the appointment from the court of weimar of travelling tutor to the prince constantine. this i heard with pleasure; for many of our friends had brought us the most interesting accounts from weimar, in particular that the duchess amelia, mother of the young grand duke and his brother, summoned to her assistance in educating her sons the most distinguished men in germany; and that the university of jena cooperated powerfully in all her liberal plans. i was aware also that wieland was in high favor; and that the german mercury (a literary journal of eminence) was itself highly creditable to the city of jena, from which it issued. a beautiful and well-conducted theatre had besides, as i knew, been lately established at weimar. this, it was true, had been destroyed; but that event, under common circumstances so likely to be fatal as respected the present, had served only to call forth the general expression of confidence in the young prince as a restorer and upholder of all great interests, and true to his purposes under any calamity." thinking thus, and thus prepossessed in favor of weimar, it was natural that goethe should be eager to see the prince. nothing was easier. it happened that he and his brother constantine were at this moment in frankfort, and von knebel willingly offered to present goethe. no sooner said than done; they repaired to the hotel, where they found the illustrious travellers, with count goertz, the tutor of the elder. upon this occasion an accident, rather than any previous reputation of goethe, was probably the determining occasion which led to his favor with the future sovereign of weimar. a new book lay upon the table; that none of the strangers had read it, goethe inferred from observing that the leaves were as yet uncut. it was a work of moser, (_patriotische phantasien_;) and, being political rather than literary in its topics, it presented to goethe, previously acquainted with its outline, an opportunity for conversing with the prince upon subjects nearest to his heart, and of showing that he was not himself a mere studious recluse. the opportunity was not lost; the prince and his tutor were much interested, and perhaps a little surprised. such subjects have the further advantage, according to goethe's own illustration, that, like the arabian thousand and one nights, as conducted by sultana scheherezade, "never ending, still beginning," they rarely come to any absolute close, but so interweave one into another, as still to leave behind a large arrear of interest in order to pursue the conversation, goethe was invited to meet them soon after at mentz. he kept the appointment punctually; made himself even more agreeable; and finally received a formal invitation to enter the service of this excellent prince, who was now beginning to collect around him all those persons who have since made weimar so distinguished a name in connection with the german literature. with some opposition from his father, who held up the rupture between voltaire and frederick of prussia as a precedent applying to all possible connections of princes and literati, goethe accepted the invitation; and hence forwards, for upwards of fifty-five years, his fortunes were bound up with those of the ducal house of weimar. the noble part which that house played in the great modern drama of german politics is well known, and would have been better known had its power been greater. but the moral value of its sacrifices and its risks is not the less. had greater potentates shown equal firmness, germany would not have been laid at the feet of napoleon. in the grand duke was aware of the peril which awaited the allies of prussia; but neither his heart nor his conscience would allow of his deserting a friend in whose army he held a principal command. the decisive battle took place in his own territory, and not far from his own palace and city of weimar. personally he was with the prussian army; but his excellent consort stayed in the palace to encourage her subjects, and as far as possible to conciliate the enemy by her presence. the fortune of that great day, the th of october, , was decided early; and the awful event was announced by a hot retreat and a murderous pursuit through the streets of the town. in the evening napoleon arrived in person; and now came the trying moment. "the duchess," says an englishman well acquainted with weimar and its court, "placed herself on the top of the staircase to greet him with the formality of a courtly reception. napoleon started when he beheld her, _qui etes vous_? he exclaimed with characteristic abruptness. _je suis la duchesse de weimar. je vous plains_, he retorted fiercely, j'ecraserai votre mari; he then added, 'i shall dine in my apartment,' and rushed by her. the night was spent on the part of the soldiery in all the horrid excesses of rapine. in the morning the duchess sent to inquire concerning the health of his majesty the emperor, and to solicit an audience. he, who had now benefited by his dreams, or by his reflections, returned a gracious answer, and invited himself to breakfast with her in her apartment." in the conversation which ensued, napoleon asked her if her husband were mad, upon which she justified the duke by appealing to his own magnanimity, asking in her turn if his majesty would have approved of his deserting the king of prussia at the moment when he was attacked by so potent a monarch as himself. the rest of the conversation was in the same spirit, uniting with a sufficient concession to the circumstances of the moment a dignified vindication of a high-minded policy. napoleon was deeply impressed with respect for her, and loudly expressed it. for her sake, indeed, he even affected to pardon her husband, thus making a merit with her of the necessity which he felt, from other motives, for showing forbearance towards a family so nearly allied to that of st. petersburg. in the grand duke was found at his post in that great gathering of the nations which took place on the stupendous fields of leipsic, and was complimented by the allied sovereigns as one of the most faithful amongst the faithful to the great cause, yet undecided, of national independence. with respect to goethe, as a councillor so near the duke's person, it may be supposed that his presence was never wanting where it promised to be useful. in the earlier campaigns of the duke, goethe was his companion; but in the final contest with napoleon be was unequal to the fatigues of such a post. in all the functions of peace, however, he continued to be a useful servant to the last, though long released from all official duties. each had indeed most honorably earned the gratitude of the other. goethe had surrendered the flower of his years and the best energies of his mind to the service of his serene master. on the other hand, that master had to him been at once his augustus and his maecenas; such is his own expression. under him he had founded a family, raised an estate, obtained titles and decorations from various courts; and in the very vigor of his life he had been allowed to retire, with all the honors of long service, to the sanctuary of his own study, and to the cultivation of his leisure, as the very highest mode in which he could further the public interest. the life of goethe was so quiet and so uniform after the year , when he may first be said to have entered into active life, by taking service with the duke of weimar, that a biographer will find hardly any event to notice, except two journeys to italy, and one campaign in , until he draws near the close of his long career. it cannot interest an english reader to see the dates of his successive appointments. it is enough to know that they soon raised him to as high a station as was consistent with literary leisure; and that he had from the beginning enjoyed the unlimited confidence of his sovereign. nothing remained, in fact, for the subject to desire which the prince had not previously volunteered. in , they were able to look back upon a course of uninterrupted friendship, maintained through good and evil fortunes, unexampled in their agitation and interest for fifty years. the duke commemorated this remarkable event by a jubilee, and by a medal in honor of goethe. full of years and honor, this eminent man might now begin to think of his departure. however, his serenity continued unbroken nearly for two years more, when his illustrious patron died. that shock was the first which put his fortitude to trial. in others followed; the duchess, who had won so much admiration from napoleon, died; then followed his own son; and there remained little now to connect his wishes with the earth. the family of his patron he had lived to see flourishing in his descendants to the fourth generation. his own grandchildren were prosperous and happy. his intellectual labors were now accomplished. all that remained to wish for was a gentle dismission. this he found in the spring of . after a six days' illness, which caused him no apparent suffering, on the morning of the d of march he breathed away as if into a gentle sleep, surrounded by his daughter-in-law and her children. never was a death more in harmony with the life it closed; both had the same character of deep and absolute serenity. such is the outline of goethe's life, traced through its principal events. but as these events, after all, borrow their interest mainly from the consideration allowed to goethe as an author, and as a model in the german literature,--_that_ being the centre about which all secondary feelings of interest in the man must finally revolve,--it thus becomes a duty to throw a glance over his principal works. dismissing his songs, to which has been ascribed by some critics a very high value for their variety and their lyrical enthusiasm; dismissing also a large body of short miscellaneous poems, suited to the occasional circumstances in which they arose; we may throw the capital works of goethe into two classes, philosophic novels, and dramas. the novels, which we call _philosophic_ by way of expressing their main characteristic in being written to serve a preconceived purpose, or to embody some peculiar views of life, or some aspects of philosophic truth, are three, viz., the _werther's leiden_; secondly, the _wilhelm meister_; and, lastly, the _wahloer-wand-schaften_. the first two exist in english translations; and though the _werther_ had the disadvantage of coming to us through a french version, already, perhaps, somewhat colored and distorted to meet the parisian standards of sentiment, yet, as respects goethe and his reputation amongst us, this wrong has been redressed, or compensated at least, by the good fortune of his _wilhelm meister_, in falling into the hands of a translator whose original genius qualified him for sympathizing even to excess with any real merits in that work. this novel is in its own nature and purpose sufficiently obscure; and the commentaries which have been written upon it by the hurnboldts, schlegels, &c., make the enigma still more enigmatical. we shall not venture abroad upon an ocean of discussion so truly dark, and at the same time so illimitable. whether it be qualified to excite any deep and _sincere_ feeling of one kind or another in the german mind,--in a mind trained under german discipline,--this we will consent to waive as a question not immediately interesting to ourselves. enough that it has not gained, and will not gain, any attention in this country; and this not only because it is thoroughly deficient in all points of attraction to readers formed upon our english literature, but because in some capital circumstances it is absolutely repulsive. we do not wish to offend the admirers of goethe; but the simplicity of truth will not allow us to conceal, that in various points of description or illustration, and sometimes in the very outline of the story, the _wilhelm meister_ is at open war, not with decorum and good taste merely, but with moral purity and the dignity of human nature. as a novelist, goethe and his reputation are problems, and likely to continue such, to the countrymen of mrs. inchbald, miss harriet lee, miss edgeworth, and sir walter scott. to the dramatic works of goethe we are disposed to pay more homage; but neither in the absolute amount of our homage at all professing to approach his public admirers, nor to distribute the proportions of this homage amongst his several performances according to the graduations of _their_ scale. the _iphigenie_ is built upon the old subject of iphigenia in tauris, as treated by euripides and other grecian dramatists; and, if we are to believe a schlegel, it is in beauty and effect a mere echo or reverberation from the finest strains of the old grecian music. that it is somewhat nearer to the greek model than a play after the fashion of racine, we grant. setting aside such faithful transcripts from the antique as the samson agonistes, we might consent to view goethe as that one amongst the moderns who had made the closest approximation to the greek stage. _proximus_, we might say, with quintilian, but with him we must add," _sed lango intervallo_; "and if in the second rank, yet nearer to the third than to the first. two other dramas, the _clavigo_ and the _egmont_, fall below the _iphigenie_ by the very character of their pretensions; the first as too openly renouncing the grandeurs of the ideal; the second as confessedly violating the historic truth of character, without temptation to do so, and without any consequent indemnification. the _tasso_ has been supposed to realize an italian beauty of genial warmth and of sunny repose; but from the common defect of german criticism--the absence of all sufficient illustrations--it is as difficult to understand the true nature and constituents of the supposed italian standard set up for the regulation of our judgments, as it is to measure the degree of approach made to that standard in this particular work. _eugenie_ is celebrated for the artificial burnish of the style, but otherwise has been little relished. it has the beauty of marble sculpture, say the critics of goethe, but also the coldness. we are not often disposed to quarrel with these critics as _below_ the truth in their praises; in this instance we are. the _eugenie_ is a fragment, or (as goethe himself called it in conversation) a _torso_, being only the first drama in a trilogy or series of three dramas, each having a separate plot, whilst all are parts of a more general and comprehensive plan. it may be charged with languor in the movement of the action, and with excess of illustration. thus, _e. g_. the grief of the prince for the supposed death of his daughter, is the monotonous topic which occupies one entire act. but the situations, though not those of _scenical_ distress, are so far from being unexciting, that, on the contrary, they are too powerfully afflicting. the lustre of all these performances, however, is eclipsed by the unrivalled celebrity amongst german critics of the _faust_. upon this it is better to say nothing than too little. how trifling an advance has been made towards clearing the ground for any sane criticism, may be understood from this fact, that as yet no two people have agreed about the meaning of any separate scene, or about the drift of the whole. neither is this explained by saying, that until lately the _faust_ was a fragment; for no additional light has dawned upon the main question since the publication of the latter part. one work there is of goethe's which falls into neither of the classes here noticed; we mean the _hermann and dorothea_, a narrative poem, in hexameter verse. this appears to have given more pleasure to readers not critical, than any other work of its author; and it is remarkable that it traverses humbler ground, as respects both its subject, its characters, and its scenery. from this, and other indications of the same kind, we are disposed to infer that goethe mistook his destination; that his aspiring nature misled him; and that his success would have been greater had he confined himself to the _real_ in domestic life, without raising his eyes to the _ideal_. we must also mention, that goethe threw out some novel speculations in physical science, and particularly in physiology, in the doctrine of colors, and in comparative anatomy, which have divided the opinions of critics even more than any of those questions which have arisen upon points more directly connected with his avowed character of poet. it now remains to say a few words by way of summing up his pretensions as a man, and his intellectual power in the age to which he belonged. his rank and value as a moral being are so plain as to be legible to him who runs. everybody must feel that his temperament and constitutional tendency was of that happy quality, the animal so nicely balanced with the intellectual, that with any ordinary measure of prosperity he could not be otherwise than a good man. he speaks himself of his own "virtue," _sans phrase_; and we tax him with no vanity in doing so. as a young man even at the universities, which at that time were barbarously sensual in germany, he was (for so much we collect from his own memoirs) eminently capable of self-restraint. he preserves a tone of gravity, of sincerity, of respect for female dignity, which we never find associated with the levity and recklessness of vice. we feel throughout, the presence of one who, in respecting others, respects himself; and the cheerfulness of the presiding tone persuades us at once that the narrator is in a healthy moral condition, fears no ill, and is conscious of having meditated none. yet at the same time we cannot disguise from ourselves, that the moral temperament of goethe was one which demanded prosperity. had he been called to face great afflictions, singular temptations, or a billowy and agitated course of life, our belief is that his nature would have been found unequal to the strife; he would have repeated the mixed and moody character of his father. sunny prosperity was essential to his nature; his virtues were adapted to that condition. and happily that was his fate. he had no personal misfortunes; his path was joyous in this life; and even the reflex sorrow from the calamities of his friends did not press too heavily on his sympathies; none of these were in excess either as to degree or duration. in this estimate of goethe as a moral being, few people will differ with us, unless it were the religious bigot. and to him we must concede thus much, that goethe was not that religious creature which by nature he was intended to become. this is to be regretted. goethe was naturally pious, and reverential towards higher natures; and it was in the mere levity or wantonness of youthful power, partly also through that early false bias growing out of the lisbon earthquake, that he falsified his original destination. do we mean, then, that a childish error could permanently master his understanding? not so; _that_ would have been corrected with his growing strength. but having once arisen, it must for a long time have moulded his feelings; _until_ corrected, it must have impressed a corresponding false bias upon his practical way of viewing things; and that sort of false bias, once established, might long survive a mere error of the understanding. one thing is undeniable,--goethe had so far corrupted and clouded his natural mind, that he did not look up to god, or the system of things beyond the grave, with the interest of reverence and awe, but with the interest of curiosity. goethe, however, in a moral estimate, will be viewed pretty uniformly. but goethe intellectually, goethe as a power acting upon the age in which he lived, that is another question. let us put a case; suppose that goethe's death had occurred fifty years ago, that is, in the year , what would have been the general impression? would europe have felt a shock? would europe have been sensible even of the event? not at all; it would have been obscurely noticed in the newspapers of germany, as the death of a novelist who had produced some effect about ten years before. in , it was announced by the post-horns of all europe as the death of him who had written the _wilhelm meister_, the _iphigenie_, and the _faust_, and who had been enthroned by some of his admirers on the same seat with homer and shakspeare, as composing what they termed the _trinity of men of genius_. and yet it is a fact, that, in the opinion of some amongst the acknowledged leaders of our own literature for the last twenty-five years, the _werther_ was superior to all which followed it, and for mere power was the paramount work of goethe. for ourselves, we must acknowledge our assent upon the whole to this verdict; and at the same time we will avow our belief that the reputation of goethe must decline for the next generation or two, until it reaches its just level. three causes, we are persuaded, have concurred to push it so far beyond the proportion of real and genuine interest attached to his works, for in germany his works are little read, and in this country not at all. _first_, his extraordinary age; for the last twenty years goethe had been the patriarch of the german literature. _secondly_, the splendor of his official rank at the court of weimar; he was the minister and private friend of the patriot sovereign amongst the princes of germany. _thirdly_, the quantity of enigmatical and unintelligible writing which he has designedly thrown into his latter works, by way of keeping up a system of discussion and strife upon his own meaning amongst the critics of his country. these disputes, had his meaning been of any value in his own eyes, he would naturally have settled by a few authoritative words from himself; but it was his policy to keep alive the feud in a case where it was of importance, that his name should continue to agitate the world, but of none at all that he should be rightly interpreted. schiller. john christopher frederick von schiller, was born at marbach, a small town in the duchy of wurtemberg, on the th day of november, . it will aid the reader in synchronizing the periods of this great man's life with the corresponding events throughout christendom, if we direct his attention to the fact, that schiller's birth nearly coincided in point of time with that of robert burns, and that it preceded that of napoleon by about ten years. the position of schiller is remarkable. in the land of his birth, by those who undervalue him the most, he is ranked as the second name in german literature; everywhere else he is ranked as the first. for us, who are aliens to germany, schiller is the representative of the german intellect in its highest form; and to him, at all events, whether first or second, it is certainly due, that the german intellect has become a known power, and a power of growing magnitude, for the great commonwealth of christendom. luther and kepler, potent intellects as they were, did not make themselves known as germans. the revolutionary vigor of the one, the starry lustre of the other, blended with the convulsions of reformation, or with the aurora of ascending science, in too kindly and genial a tone to call off the attention from the work which they performed, from the service which they promoted, to the circumstances of their personal position. their country, their birth, their abode, even their separate existence, was merged in the mighty cause to which they lent their cooperation. and thus at the beginning of the sixteenth century, thus at the beginning of the seventeenth, did the titan sons of germany defeat their own private pretensions by the very grandeur of their merits. their interest as patriots was lost and confounded in their paramount interest as cosmopolites. what they did for man and for human dignity eclipsed what they had designed for germany. after them there was a long interlunar period of darkness for the land of the rhine and the danube. the german energy, too spasmodically excited, suffered a collapse. throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, but one vigorous mind arose for permanent effects in literature. this was opitz, a poet who deserves even yet to be read with attention, but who is no more worthy to be classed as the dryden, whom his too partial countrymen have styled him, than the germany of the thirty years' war of taking rank by the side of civilized and cultured england during the cromwellian era, or klopstock of sitting on the same throne with milton. leibnitz was the one sole potentate in the fields of intellect whom the germany of this country produced; and he, like luther and kepler, impresses us rather as a european than as a german mind, partly perhaps from his having pursued his self-development in foreign lands, partly from his large circle of foreign connections, but most of all from his having written chiefly in french or in latin. passing onwards to the eighteenth century, we find, through its earlier half, an absolute wilderness, unreclaimed and without promise of natural vegetation, as the barren arena on which the few insipid writers of germany paraded. the torpor of academic dulness domineered over the length and breadth of the land. and as these academic bodies were universally found harnessed in the equipage of petty courts, it followed that the lethargies of pedantic dulness were uniformly deepened by the lethargies of aulic and ceremonial dulness; so that, if the reader represents to himself the very abstract of birthday odes, sycophantish dedications, and court sermons, he will have some adequate idea of the sterility and the mechanical formality which at that era spread the sleep of death over german literature. literature, the very word literature, points the laughter of scorn to what passed under that name during the period of gottsched. that such a man indeed as this gottsched, equal at the best to the composition of a latin grammar or a school arithmetic, should for a moment have presided over the german muses, stands out as in itself a brief and significant memorial, too certain for contradiction, and yet almost too gross for belief, of the apoplectic sleep under which the mind of central europe at that era lay oppressed. the rust of disuse had corroded the very principles of activity. and, as if the double night of academic dulness, combined with the dulness of court inanities, had not been sufficient for the stifling of all native energies, the feebleness of french models (and of these moreover naturalized through still feebler imitations) had become the law and standard for all attempts at original composition. the darkness of night, it is usually said, grows deeper as it approaches the dawn; and the very enormity of that prostration under which the german intellect at this time groaned, was the most certain pledge to any observing eye of that intense reaction soon to stir and kindle among the smouldering activities of this spell-bound people. this re-action, however, was not abrupt and theatrical. it moved through slow stages and by equable gradations. it might be said to commence from the middle of the eighteenth century, that is, about nine years before the birth of schiller; but a progress of forty years had not carried it so far towards its meridian altitude, as that the sympathetic shock from the french revolution was by one fraction more rude and shattering than the public torpor still demanded. there is a memorable correspondency throughout all members of protestant christendom in whatsoever relates to literature and intellectual advance. however imperfect the organization which binds them together, it was sufficient even in these elder times to transmit reciprocally from one to every other, so much of that illumination which could be gathered into books, that no christian state could be much in advance of another, supposing that popery opposed no barriers to free communication, unless only in those points which depended upon local gifts of nature, upon the genius of a particular people, or upon the excellence of its institutions. these advantages were incommunicable, let the freedom of intercourse have been what it might. england could not send off by posts or by heralds her iron and coals; she could not send the indomitable energy of her population; she could not send the absolute security of property; she could not send the good faith of her parliaments. these were gifts indigenous to herself, either through the temperament of her people, or through the original endowments of her soil. but her condition of moral sentiment, her high-toned civic elevation, her atmosphere of political feeling and popular boldness; much of these she could and did transmit, by the radiation of the press, to the very extremities of the german empire. not only were our books translated, but it is notorious to those acquainted with german novels, or other pictures of german society, that as early as the seven years' war, ( - ,) in fact, from the very era when cave and dr. johnson first made the parliamentary debates accessible to the english themselves, most of the german journals repeated, and sent forward as by telegraph, these senatorial displays to every village throughout germany. from the polar latitudes to the mediterranean, from the mouths of the rhine to the euxine, there was no other exhibition of free deliberative eloquence in any popular assembly. and the _luise_ of voss alone, a metrical idyl not less valued for its truth of portraiture than our own vicar of wakefield, will show, that the most sequestered clergyman of a rural parish did not think his breakfast equipage complete without the latest report from the great senate that sat in london. hence we need not be astonished that german and english literature were found by the french revolution in pretty nearly the same condition of semi-vigilance and imperfect animation. that mighty event reached us both, reached us all, we may say, (speaking of protestant states,) at the same moment, by the same tremendous galvanism. the snake, the intellectual snake, that lay in ambush among all nations, roused itself, sloughed itself, renewed its youth, in all of them at the same period. a new world opened upon us all; new revolutions of thought arose; new and nobler activities were born; "and other palms were won." but by and through schiller it was, as its main organ, that this great revolutionary impulse expressed itself. already, as we have said, not less than forty years before the earthquake by which france exploded and projected the scoria of her huge crater over all christian lands, a stirring had commenced among the dry bones of intellectual germany; and symptoms arose that the breath of life would soon disturb, by nobler agitations than by petty personal quarrels, the deathlike repose even of the german universities. precisely in those bodies, however, it was, in those as connected with tyrannical governments, each academic body being shackled to its own petty centre of local despotism, that the old spells remained unlinked; and to them, equally remarkable as firm trustees of truth, and as obstinate depositories of darkness or of superannuated prejudice, we must ascribe the slowness of the german movement on the path of reascent. meantime the earliest torch-bearer to the murky literature of this great land, this crystallization of political states, was bodmer. this man had no demoniac genius, such as the service required; but he had some taste, and, what was better, he had some sensibility. he lived among the alps; and his reading lay among the alpine sublimities of milton and shakspeare. through his very eyes he imbibed a daily scorn of gottsched and his monstrous compound of german coarseness with french sensual levity. he could not look at his native alps, but he saw in them, and their austere grandeurs or their dread realities, a spiritual reproach to the hollowness and falsehood of that dull imposture which gottsched offered by way of substitute for nature. he was taught by the alps to crave for something nobler and deeper. bodmer, though far below such a function, rose by favor of circumstances into an apostle or missionary of truth for germany. he translated passages of english literature. he inoculated with his own sympathies the more fervent mind of the youthful klopstock, who visited him in switzerland. and it soon became evident that germany was not dead, but sleeping; and once again, legibly for any eye, the pulses of life began to play freely through the vast organization of central europe. klopstock, however, though a fervid, a religious, and for that reason an anti-gallican mind, was himself an abortion. such at least is our own opinion of this poet. he was the child and creature of enthusiasm, but of enthusiasm not allied with a masculine intellect, or any organ for that capacious vision and meditative range which his subjects demanded. he vas essentially thoughtless, betrays everywhere a most effeminate quality of sensibility, and is the sport of that pseudo-enthusiasm and baseless rapture which we see so often allied with the excitement of strong liquors. in taste, or the sense of proportions and congruencies, or the harmonious adaptations, he is perhaps the most defective writer extant. but if no patriarch of german literature, in the sense of having shaped the moulds in which it was to flow, in the sense of having disciplined its taste or excited its rivalship by classical models of excellence, or raised a finished standard of style, perhaps we must concede that, on a minor scale, klopstock did something of that service in every one of these departments. his works were at least miltonic in their choice of subjects, if ludicrously non-miltonic in their treatment of those subjects. and, whether due to him or not, it is undeniable that in his time the mother-tongue of germany revived from the most absolute degradation on record, to its ancient purity. in the time of gottsched, the authors of germany wrote a macaronic jargon, in which french and latin made up a considerable proportion of every sentence: nay, it happened often that foreign words were inflected with german forms; and the whole result was such as to remind the reader of the medical examination in the _malade imaginaire_ of moliere, "quid poetea est a faire? saignare baignare ensuita purgare," &c. now is it reasonable to ascribe some share in the restoration of good to klopstock, both because his own writings exhibit nothing of this most abject euphuism, (a euphuism expressing itself not in fantastic refinements on the staple of the language, but altogether in rejecting it for foreign words and idioms,) and because he wrote expressly on the subject of style and composition? wieland, meantime, if not enjoying so intense an acceptation as klopstock, had a more extensive one; and it is in vain to deny him the praise of a festive, brilliant, and most versatile wit. the schlegels showed the haughty malignity of their ungenerous natures, in depreciating wieland, at a time when old age had laid a freezing hand upon the energy which he would once have put forth in defending himself. he was the voltaire of germany, and very much more than the voltaire; for his romantic and legendary poems are above the level of voltaire. but, on the other hand, he was a voltaire in sensual impurity. to work, to carry on a plot, to affect his readers by voluptuous impressions,--these were the unworthy aims of wieland; and though a good-natured critic would not refuse to make some allowance for a youthful poet's aberrations in this respect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself to mature years. an old man corrupting his readers, attempting to corrupt them, or relying for his effect upon corruptions already effected, in the purity of their affections, is a hideous object; and that must be a precarious influence indeed which depends for its durability upon the licentiousness of men. wieland, therefore, except in parts, will not last as a national idol; but such he was nevertheless for a time. burger wrote too little of any expansive compass to give the measure of his powers, or to found national impression; lichtenberg, though a very sagacious observer, never rose into what can be called a power, he did not modify his age; yet these were both men of extraordinary talent, and burger a man of undoubted genius. on the other hand, lessing was merely a man of talent, but of talent in the highest degree adapted to popularity. his very defects, and the shallowness of his philosophy, promoted his popularity; and by comparison with the french critics on the dramatic or scenical proprieties he is ever profound. his plummet, if not suited to the soundless depths of shakspeare, was able ten times over to fathom the little rivulets of parisian philosophy. this he did effectually, and thus unconsciously levelled the paths for shakspeare, and for that supreme dominion which he has since held over the german stage, by crushing with his sarcastic shrewdness the pretensions of all who stood in the way. at that time, and even yet, the functions of a literary man were very important in germany; the popular mind and the popular instinct pointed one way, those of the little courts another. multitudes of little german states (many of which were absorbed since by the process of _mediatizing_) made it their ambition to play at keeping mimic armies in their pay, and to ape the greater military sovereigns, by encouraging french literature only, and the french language at their courts. it was this latter propensity which had generated the anomalous macaronic dialect, of which we have already spoken as a characteristic circumstance in the social features of literary germany during the first half of the eighteenth century. nowhere else, within the records of human follies, do we find a corresponding case, in which the government and the patrician orders in the state, taking for granted, and absolutely postulating the utter worthlessness for intellectual aims of those in and by whom they maintained their own grandeur and independence, undisguisedly and even professedly sought to ally themselves with a foreign literature, foreign literati, and a foreign language. in this unexampled display of scorn for native resources, and the consequent collision between the two principles of action, all depended upon the people themselves. for a time the wicked and most profligate contempt of the local governments for that native merit which it was their duty to evoke and to cherish, naturally enough produced its own justification. like jews or slaves, whom all the world have agreed to hold contemptible, the german literati found it hard to make head against so obstinate a prejudgment; and too often they became all that they were presumed to be. _sint maecenates, non deerunt, flacce, marones._ and the converse too often holds good--that when all who should have smiled scowl upon a man, he turns out the abject thing they have predicted. where frenchified fredericks sit upon german thrones, it should not surprise us to see a crop of gottscheds arise as the best fruitage of the land. but when there is any latent nobility in the popular mind, such scorn, by its very extremity, will call forth its own counteraction. it was perhaps good for germany that a prince so eminent in one aspect as _fritz der einziger,_[footnote: _" freddy the unique;"_ which is the name by which the prussians expressed their admiration of the martial and indomitable, though somewhat fantastic, king.] should put on record so emphatically his intense conviction, that no good thing could arise out of germany. this creed was expressed by the quality of the french minds which he attracted to his court. the very refuse and dregs of the parisian coteries satisfied his hunger for french garbage; the very offal of their shambles met the demand of his palate; even a maupertuis, so long as he could produce a french baptismal certificate, was good enough to manufacture into the president of a berlin academy. such scorn challenged a reaction: the contest lay between the thrones of germany and the popular intellect, and the final result was inevitable. once aware that they were insulted, once enlightened to the full consciousness of the scorn which trampled on them as intellectual and predestined helots, even the mild-tempered germans became fierce, and now began to aspire, not merely under the ordinary instincts of personal ambition, but with a vindictive feeling, and as conscious agents of retribution. it became a pleasure with the german author, that the very same works which elevated himself, wreaked his nation upon their princes, and poured retorted scorn upon their most ungenerous and unparental sovereigns. already, in the reign of the martial frederick, the men who put most weight of authority into his contempt of germans, --euler, the matchless euler, lambert, and immanuel kant,--had vindicated the preeminence of german mathematics. already, in , had the same immanuel kant, whilst yet a probationer for the chair of logic in a prussian university, sketched the outline of that philosophy which has secured the admiration, though not the assent of all men known and proved to have understood it, of all men able to state its doctrines in terms admissible by its disciples. already, and even previously, had haller, who wrote in german, placed himself at the head of the current physiology. and in the fields of science or of philosophy, the victory was already decided for the german intellect in competition with the french. but the fields of literature were still comparatively barren. klopstock was at least an anomaly; lessing did not present himself in the impassioned walks of literature; herder was viewed too much in the exclusive and professional light of a clergyman; and, with the exception of john paul bichter, a man of most original genius, but quite unfitted for general popularity, no commanding mind arose in germany with powers for levying homage from foreign nations, until the appearance, as a great scenical poet, of frederick schiller. the father of this great poet was caspar schiller, an officer in the military service of the duke of wurtemberg. he had previously served as a surgeon in the bavarian army; but on his final return to his native country of wurtemberg, and to the service of his native prince, he laid aside his medical character for ever, and obtained a commission as ensign and adjutant. in , the peace of paris threw him out of his military employment, with the nominal rank of captain. but, having conciliated the duke's favor, he was still borne on the books of the ducal establishment; and, as a planner of ornamental gardens, or in some other civil capacity, he continued to serve his serene highness for the rest of his life. the parents of schiller were both pious, upright persons, with that loyal fidelity to duty, and that humble simplicity of demeanor towards their superiors, which is so often found among the unpretending natives of germany. it is probable, however, that schiller owed to his mother exclusively the preternatural endowments of his intellect. she was of humble origin, the daughter of a baker, and not so fortunate as to have received much education. but she was apparently rich in gifts of the heart and the understanding. she read poetry with delight; and through the profound filial love with which she had inspired her son, she found it easy to communicate her own literary tastes. her husband was not illiterate, and had in mature life so laudably applied himself to the improvement of his own defective knowledge, that at length he thought himself capable of appearing before the public as an author. his book related simply to the subjects of his professional experience as a horticulturist, and was entitled _die baumzurht im grossen_(on the management of forests.) some merit we must suppose it to have had, since the public called for a second edition of it long after his own death, and even after that of his illustrious son. and although he was a plain man, of no pretensions, and possibly even of slow faculties, he has left behind him a prayer, in which there is one petition of sublime and pathetic piety, worthy to be remembered by the side of agar's wise prayer against the almost equal temptations of poverty and riches. at the birth of his son, he had been reflecting with sorrowful anxiety, not unmingled with self-reproach, on his own many disqualifications for conducting the education of the child. but at length, reading in his own manifold imperfections but so many reiterations of the necessity that he should rely upon god's bounty, converting his very defects into so many arguments of hope and confidence in heaven, he prayed thus: "oh god, that knowest my poverty in good gifts for my son's inheritance, graciously permit that, even as the want of bread became to thy son's hunger-stricken flock in the wilderness the pledge of overflowing abundance, so likewise my darkness may, in its sad extremity, carry with it the measure of thy unfathomable light; and because i, thy worm, cannot give to my son the least of blessings, do thou give the greatest; because in my hands there is not any thing, do thou from thine pour out all things; and that temple of a new-born spirit, which i cannot adorn even with earthly ornaments of dust and ashes, do thou irradiate with the celestial adornment of thy presence, and finally with that peace that passeth all understanding." reared at the feet of parents so pious and affectionate, schiller would doubtless pass a happy childhood; and probably to this utter tranquillity of his earlier years, to his seclusion from all that could create pain, or even anxiety, we must ascribe the unusual dearth of anecdotes from this period of his life; a dearth which has tempted some of his biographers into improving and embellishing some puerile stories, which a man of sense will inevitably reject as too trivial for his gravity or too fantastical for his faith. that nation is happy, according to a common adage, which furnishes little business to the historian; for such a vacuity in facts argues a condition of perfect peace and silent prosperity. that childhood is happy, or may generally be presumed such, which has furnished few records of external experience, little that has appeared in doing or in suffering to the eyes of companions; for the child who has been made happy by early thoughtfulness, and by infantine struggles with the great ideas of his origin and his destination, (ideas which settle with a deep, dove-like brooding upon the mind of childhood, more than of mature life, vexed with inroads from the noisy world,) will not manifest the workings of his spirit by much of external activity. the _fallentis semita vitae_, that path of noiseless life, which eludes and deceives the conscious notice both of its subject and of all around him, opens equally to the man and to the child; and the happiest of all childhoods will have been that of which the happiness has survived and expressed itself, not in distinct records, but in deep affection, in abiding love, and the hauntings of meditative power. such a childhood, in the bosom of maternal tenderness, was probably passed by schiller; and his first awaking to the world of strife and perplexity happened in his fourteenth year. up to that period his life had been vagrant, agreeably to the shifting necessities of the ducal service, and his education desultory and domestic. but in the year he was solemnly entered as a member of a new academical institution, founded by the reigning duke, and recently translated to his little capital of stuttgard. this change took place at the special request of the duke, who, under the mask of patronage, took upon himself the severe control of the whole simple family. the parents were probably both too humble and dutiful in spirit towards one whom they regarded in the double light of sovereign lord and of personal benefactor, ever to murmur at the ducal behests, far less to resist them. the duke was for them an earthly providence; and they resigned themselves, together with their child, to the disposal of him who dispensed their earthly blessings, not less meekly than of him whose vicegerent they presumed him to be. in such a frame of mind, requests are but another name for commands; and thus it happened that a second change arose upon the first, even more determinately fatal to the young schiller's happiness. hitherto he had cherished a day-dream pointing to the pastoral office in some rural district, as that which would harmonize best with his intellectual purposes, with his love of quiet, and by means of its preparatory requirements, best also with his own peculiar choice of studies. but this scheme he now found himself compelled to sacrifice; and the two evils which fell upon him concurrently in his new situation were, first, the formal military discipline and monotonous routine of duty; secondly, the uncongenial direction of the studies, which were shaped entirely to the attainment of legal knowledge, and the narrow service of the local tribunals. so illiberal and so exclusive a system of education was revolting to the expansive mind of schiller; and the military bondage under which this system was enforced, shocked the aspiring nobility of his moral nature, not less than the technical narrowness of the studies shocked his understanding. in point of expense the whole establishment cost nothing at all to those parents who were privileged servants of the duke: in this number were the parents of schiller, and that single consideration weighed too powerfully upon his filial piety to allow of his openly murmuring at his lot; while on _their_ part the parents were equally shy of encouraging a disgust which too obviously tended to defeat the promises of ducal favor. this system of monotonous confinement was therefore carried to its completion, and the murmurs of the young schiller were either dutifully suppressed, or found vent only in secret letters to a friend. in one point only schiller was able to improve his condition; jointly with the juristic department, was another for training young aspirants to the medical profession. to this, as promising a more enlarged scheme of study, schiller by permission transferred himself in . but whatever relief he might find in the nature of his new studies, he found none at all in the system of personal discipline which prevailed. under the oppression of this detested system, and by pure reaction against its wearing persecutions, we learn from schiller himself, that in his nineteenth year he undertook the earliest of his surviving plays, the robbers, beyond doubt the most tempestuous, the most volcanic, we might say, of all juvenile creations anywhere recorded. he himself calls it "a monster," and a monster it is; but a monster which has never failed to convulse the heart of young readers with the temperament of intellectual enthusiasm and sensibility. true it is, and nobody was more aware of that fact than schiller himself in after years, the characters of the three moors, father and sons, are mere impossibilities; and some readers, in whom the judicious acquaintance with human life in its realities has outrun the sensibilities, are so much shocked by these hypernatural phenomena, that they are incapable of enjoying the terrific sublimities which on that basis of the visionary do really exist. a poet, perhaps schiller might have alleged, is entitled to assume hypothetically so much in the previous positions or circumstances of his agents as is requisite to the basis from which he starts. it is undeniable that shakspeare and others have availed themselves of this principle, and with memorable success. shakspeare, for instance, _postulates_ his witches, his caliban, his ariel: grant, he virtually says, such modes of spiritual existence or of spiritual relations as a possibility; do not expect me to demonstrate this, and upon that single concession i will rear a superstructure that shall be self-consistent; every thing shall be _internally_ coherent and reconciled, whatever be its _external_ relations as to our human experience. but this species of assumption, on the largest scale, is more within the limits of credibility and plausible verisimilitude when applied to modes of existence, which, after all, are in such total darkness to us, (the limits of the possible being so undefined and shadowy as to what can or cannot exist,) than the very slightest liberties taken with human character, or with those principles of action, motives, and feelings, upon which men would move under given circumstances, or with the modes of action which in common prudence they would be likely to adopt. the truth is, that, as a coherent work of art, the robbers is indefensible; but, however monstrous it may be pronounced, it possesses a power to agitate and convulse, which will always obliterate its great faults to the young, and to all whose judgment is not too much developed. and the best apology for schiller is found in his own words, in recording the circumstances and causes under which this anomalous production arose. "to escape," says he, "from the formalities of a discipline which was odious to my heart, i sought a retreat in the world of ideas and shadowy possibilities, while as yet i knew nothing at all of that human world from which i was harshly secluded by iron bars. of men, the actual men in this world below, i knew absolutely nothing at the time when i composed my robbers. four hundred human beings, it is true, were my fellow-prisoners in this abode; but they were mere tautologies and reiterations of the self-same mechanic creature, and like so many plaster casts from the same original statue. thus situated, of necessity i failed. in making the attempt, my chisel brought out a monster, of which [and that was fortunate] the world had no type or resemblance to show." meantime this demoniac drama produced very opposite results to schiller's reputation. among the young men of germany it was received with an enthusiasm absolutely unparalleled, though it is perfectly untrue that it excited some persons of rank and splendid expectations (as a current fable asserted) to imitate charles moor in becoming robbers. on the other hand, the play was of too powerful a cast not in any case to have alarmed his serenity the duke of wurtemberg; for it argued a most revolutionary mind, and the utmost audacity of self-will. but besides this general ground of censure, there arose a special one, in a quarter so remote, that this one fact may serve to evidence the extent as well as intensity of the impression made. the territory of the grisons had been called by spiegelberg, one of the robbers, "the thief's athens." upon this the magistrates of that country presented a complaint to the duke; and his highness having cited schiller to his presence, and severely reprimanded him, issued a decree that this dangerous young student should henceforth confine himself to his medical studies. the persecution which followed exhibits such extraordinary exertions of despotism, even for that land of irresponsible power, that we must presume the duke to have relied more upon the hold which he had upon schiller through his affection for parents so absolutely dependent on his highness's power, than upon any laws, good or bad, which he could have pleaded as his warrant. germany, however, thought otherwise of the new tragedy than the serene critic of wurtemburg: it was performed with vast applause at the neighboring city of mannheim; and thither, under a most excusable interest in his own play, the young poet clandestinely went. on his return he was placed under arrest. and soon afterwards, being now thoroughly disgusted, and, with some reason, alarmed by the tyranny of the duke, schiller finally eloped to mannheim, availing himself of the confusion created in stuttgard by the visit of a foreign prince. at mannheim he lived in the house of dalberg, a man of some rank and of sounding titles, but in mannheim known chiefly as the literary manager (or what is called director) of the theatre. this connection aided in determining the subsequent direction of schiller's talents; and his fiesco, his intrigue and love, his don carlos, and his maria stuart, followed within a short period of years. none of these are so far free from the faults of the robbers as to merit a separate notice; for with less power, they are almost equally licentious. finally, however, he brought out his wallenstein, an immortal drama, and, beyond all competition, the nearest in point of excellence to the dramas of shakspeare. the position of the characters of max piccolomini and the princess thekla is the finest instance of what, in a critical sense, is called _relief,_ that literature offers. young, innocent, unfortunate, among a camp of ambitious, guilty, and blood-stained men, they offer a depth and solemnity of impression which is equally required by way of contrast and of final repose. from mannheim, where he had a transient love affair with laura dalberg, the daughter of his friend the director, schiller removed to jena, the celebrated university in the territory of weimar. the grand duke of that german florence was at this time gathering around him the most eminent of the german intellects; and he was eager to enroll schiller in the body of his professors. in schiller received the chair of civil history; and not long after he married miss lengefeld, with whom he had been for some time acquainted. in he was ennobled; that is, he was raised to the rank of gentleman, and entitled to attach the prefix of _von_ to his name. his income was now sufficient for domestic comfort and respectable independence; while in the society of goethe, herder, and other eminent wits, he found even more relaxation for his intellect, than his intellect, so fervent and so self-sustained, could require. meantime the health of schiller was gradually undermined: his lungs had been long subject to attacks of disease; and the warning indications which constantly arose of some deep-seated organic injuries in his pulmonary system ought to have put him on his guard for some years before his death. of all men, however, it is remarkable that schiller was the most criminally negligent of his health; remarkable, we say, because for a period of four years schiller had applied himself seriously to the study of medicine. the strong coffee, and the wine, which he drank, may not have been so injurious as his biographers suppose; but his habit of sitting up through the night, and defrauding his wasted frame of all natural and restorative sleep, had something in it of that guilt which belongs to suicide. on the th of may, , his complaint reached its crisis. early in the morning he became delirious; at noon his delirium abated; and at four in the afternoon he fell into a gentle unagitated sleep, from which he soon awoke. conscious that he now stood on the very edge of the grave, he calmly and fervently took a last farewell of his friends. at six in the evening he fell again into sleep, from which, however, he again awoke once more to utter the memorable declaration, "that many things were growing plain and clear to his understanding." after this the cloud of sleep again settled upon him; a sleep which soon changed into the cloud of death. this event produced a profound impression throughout germany. the theatres were closed at weimar, and the funeral was conducted with public honors. the position in point of time, and the peculiar services of schiller to the german literature, we have already stated: it remains to add, that in person he was tall, and of a strong bony structure, but not muscular, and strikingly lean. his forehead was lofty, his nose aquiline, and his mouth almost of grecian beauty. with other good points about his face, and with auburn hair, it may be presumed that his whole appearance was pleasing and impressive, while in latter years the character of sadness and contemplative sensibility deepened the impression of his countenance. we have said enough of his intellectual merit, which places him in our judgment at the head of the trans-rhenish literature. but we add in concluding, that frederick von schiller was something more than a great author; he was also in an eminent sense a great man; and his works are not more worthy of being studied for their singular force and originality, than his moral character from its nobility and aspiring grandeur. the youth of goethe by p. hume brown, ll.d., f.b.a. london john murray, albemarle street, w. to the viscount haldane of cloan, lord chancellor of great britain. my dear chancellor,--as the "only begetter" of this book, it seems almost obligatory that it should be associated with your name. the author. _goethe's biographie._ "anfangs ist es ein punkt der leise zum kreise sich öffnet, aber, wachsend, umfasst dieser am ende die welt." friedrich hebbel. "in the beginning a point that soft to the circle expandeth, but the circle at length, growing, enclaspeth the world." contents chapter i early years in frankfort -- page goethe's birthplace and its influence on him period of his birth his father his mother his sister family friends his education religious influences the _seven years' war_ french occupation of frankfort goethe's first love destined for the study of law the boy the father of the man his character and early tastes chapter ii student in leipzig october, --september, goes to leipzig his wild life there society of leipzig his irregular studies adopts leipzig fashions feminine influences dandyism falls in love with kÄthchen schÖnkopf friendship with behrisch his relations to kÄthchen miscellaneous interests friendship with oeser state of german literature poems of the period _die laune des verliebten_ _die mitschuldigen_ inspiration chapter iii at home in frankfort september, --april, returns to frankfort his broken health relations to his father his sister interest in religion friendship with frÄulein von klettenberg a mysterious medicine evolves a religious creed influence of frÄulein von klettenberg interest in literature and art lessing and wieland ripening powers chapter iv goethe in strassburg april, --august, settlement in strassburg influences of strassburg change in his religious feelings manner of life in strassburg friendship with dr. salzmann relations to jung stilling comes under the influence of herder young's _conjectures on original composition_ its influence on goethe's genius friederike brion his relations to her parting from her miscellaneous studies self-discipline poems addressed to friederike chapter v frankfort--_gÖtz von berlichingen_ august, --december, goethe's return to frankfort creative productiveness of the period poet or artist? mental conflict epochs in his last frankfort years his sister cornelia growing distaste for frankfort depression worship of shakespeare _gÖtz von berlichingen_ its influence on european literature chapter vi influence of merck and the darmstadt circle friendship with merck character of merck his influence on goethe the darmstadt circle its influence on goethe caroline flachsland and goethe poems of goethe inspired by the darmstadt circle _wanderers sturmlied_ _der wanderer_ chapter vii wetzlar and charlotte buff may--september, departure from wetzlar wetzlar and its society lotte buff goethe's relations to her kestner, lotte's betrothed goethe, kestner, and lotte departure from wetzlar kestner's characterisation of goethe chapter viii after wetzlar -- suicide of jerusalem goethe visits the family von la roche frau von la roche maximiliane von la roche unrest letters to kestner estrangement from his father solitude chapter ix satirical dramas and fragments poet or artist? literary activity _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_ _letter of the pastor_ _two biblical questions_ recasts _gÖtz von berlichingen_ satirical plays _prometheus_ _mahomet_ _adler und taube_ _kÜnstlers erdewallen_ chapter x _werther_--_clavigo_ goethe's need of external stimulus goethe and the brentanos origin of _werther_ english influence on _werther_ publication of _werther_ goethe and werther second part of _werther_ werther and goethe influence of _werther_ the kestners and _werther_ wertherism _clavigo_ dramatised from beaumarchais origin of _clavigo_ its plot constructed on classical models _clavigo_ and goethe chapter xi goethe and spinoza--_der ewige jude_ -- goethe's debt to spinoza misdates spinoza's influence _der ewige jude_ original plan of it as it was actually written its divisions its characteristics unpublished till after goethe's death chapter xii goethe in society johann kaspar lavater his character his interest in goethe visits frankfort his intercourse with goethe johann bernhard basedow his character and career his visit to frankfort goethe, lavater, and basedow at ems their voyage down the rhine jung stilling scene at elberfeldt fritz jacobi goethe makes his acquaintance their intercourse jacobi's estimate of goethe klopstock goethe's admiration of him their meeting in frankfort _an schwager kronos_ boie and werthes on goethe major von knebel and goethe goethe and the princes of weimar von knebel on goethe death of frÄulein von klettenberg chapter xiii lili schÖnemann the schÖnemann family goethe's introduction to lili schÖnemann his subsequent memory of her lili compared with his previous loves goethe's songs addressed to her countess stolberg goethe's relations to her _erwin und elmire_ _stella_ _claudine von villa bella_ a distracted lover betrothed to lili shrinks from marriage counts stolberg in frankfort goethe starts with them for switzerland visits his sister at emmendingen with lavater in zurich accompanies passavant to st. gothard lyrics to lili return to frankfort chapter xiv last months in frankfort--the _urfaust_ relations to lili on his return a crisis in their relations miscellaneous interests estimates of goethe by sulzer and zimmermann invitation to weimar proposed journey to italy a delayed messenger departs for weimar _egmont_ and the _urfaust_ the _urfaust_ characteristics preface "generally speaking," goethe has himself said, "the most important period in the life of an individual is that of his development--the period which, in my case, breaks off with the detailed narrative of _dichtung und wahrheit_." in reality, as we know, there is no complete breach at any point in the lives of either nations or individuals. but if in the life of goethe we are to fix upon a dividing point, it is his departure from frankfort and his permanent settlement in weimar in his twenty-seventh year. considered externally, that change of his surroundings is the most obvious event in his career, and for the world at large marks its division into two well-defined periods. in relation to his inner development his removal from frankfort to weimar may also be regarded as the most important fact in his life. from the date of his settlement in weimar he was subjected to influences which equally affected his character and his genius; had he continued to make his home in frankfort, it is probable that, both as man and literary artist, he would have developed characteristics essentially different from those by which the world knows him. there were later experiences--notably his italian journey and his intercourse with schiller--which profoundly influenced him, but none of these experiences penetrated his being so permanently as the atmosphere of weimar, which he daily breathed for more than half a century. as goethe himself has said, the first twenty-six years of his life are essentially the period of his "development." during that period we see him as he came from nature's hand. his words, his actions have then a stamp of spontaneity which they gradually lost with advancing years as the result of his social and official relations in weimar. he has told us that it was one of the painful conditions of his position there that it made impossible that frank and cordial relation with others which it was his nature to seek, and from which he had previously derived encouragement and stimulus; as a state official, he adds, he could be on easy terms with nobody without running the risk of a petition for some favour which he might or might not be able to confer. for the portrayal of the youthful goethe materials are even superabundant; of no other genius of the same order, indeed, have we a record comparable in fulness of detail for the same period of life. and it is this abundance of information and the extraordinary individuality to whom it relates that give specific interest to any study of goethe's youth. from month to month, even at times from day to day, we can trace the growth of his character, of his opinions, of his genius. and the testimonies of his contemporaries are unanimous as to the unique impression he made upon them. "he will always remain to me one of the most extraordinary apparitions of my life," wrote one; and he expressed the opinion of all who had the discernment to appreciate originality of gifts and character. what they found unique in him was inspiration, passion, a zest of life, at a pressure that foreshadowed either a remarkable career or (at times his own dread) disaster. it was said of goethe in his latest years that the world would come to believe that there had been, not one, but many goethes; and, as we follow him through the various stages of his youth, we receive the same impression. it results from this manifoldness of his nature that he defies every attempt to formulate his characteristics at any period of his life. in the present study of him the object has been to let his own words and actions speak for themselves; any conclusions that may be suggested, the reader will thus have it in his own power to check. after goethe's own writings, the works to which i have been chiefly indebted are _goethes gespräche, gesamtausgabe von freiherrn v. biedermann_, leipzig, - ( vols.), in which are collected references to goethe by his contemporaries; and _der junge goethe: neue ausgabe in sechs bänden, besorgt von max morris_, leipzig, - , containing the literary and artistic productions of goethe previous to his settlement in weimar. the references throughout are to the weimar edition of goethe's works. except where otherwise indicated, the author is responsible for the translations, both in prose and verse. i have cordially to express my gratitude to dr. g. schaaffs, lecturer in german in the university of st. andrews, and to mr. frank c. nicholson, librarian in the university of edinburgh, for the trouble they took in revising my proofs. p.h.b. edinburgh. the youth of goethe chapter i early years in frankfort -- in his seventy-fifth year goethe remarked to his secretary, eckermann, that he had always been regarded as one of fortune's chiefest favourites, and he admitted the general truth of the impression, though with significant reserves. "in truth," he added, "there has been nothing but toil and trouble, and i can affirm that throughout my seventy-five years i have not had a month's real freedom from care."[ ] goethe's biographers are generally agreed that his good fortune began with his birth, and that the circumstances of his childhood and boyhood were eminently favourable for his future development. yet goethe himself apparently did not, in his reserves, make an exception even in favour of these early years; and, as we shall see, we have other evidence from his own hand that these years were not years of unmingled happiness and of entirely auspicious augury. [footnote : _gespräche mit eckermann_, january th, .] in one circumstance, at least, goethe appears to have considered himself well treated by destiny. from the vivid and sympathetic description he has given of his native city of frankfort-on-the-main we may infer that he considered himself fortunate in the place of his birth.[ ] it is concurrent testimony that, at the date of goethe's birth, no german city could have offered greater advantages for the early discipline of one who was to be germany's national poet. its situation was central, standing as it did on the border line between north and south germany. no german city had a more impressive historic past, the memorials of which were visible in imposing architectural remains, in customs, and institutions. it was in frankfort that for generations the german emperors had received their crowns; and the spectacle of one of these ceremonies remained a vivid memory in goethe's mind throughout his long life. for the man goethe the actual present counted for more than the most venerable past;[ ] and, as a boy, he saw in frankfort not only the reminders of former generations, but the bustling activities of a modern society. the spring and autumn fairs brought traders from all parts of germany and from the neighbouring countries; and ships from every part of the globe deposited their miscellaneous cargoes on the banks of the river main. in the town itself there were sights fitted to stir youthful imagination; and the surrounding country presented a prospect of richness and variety in striking contrast to the tame environs of goethe's future home in weimar. dr. arnold used to say that he knew from his pupils' essays whether they had seen london or the sea, because the sight of either of these objects seemed to suggest a new measure of things. frankfort, with its , inhabitants, with its past memories and its bustling present, was at least on a sufficient scale to suggest the conception of a great society developing its life under modern conditions. for goethe, who was to pass most of his days in a town of some , inhabitants, and to whom no form of human activity was indifferent, it was a fortunate destiny that he did not, like herder, pass his most receptive years in a petty village remote from the movements of the great world.[ ] in these years he was able to accumulate a store of observations and experiences which laid a solid foundation for all his future thinking. [footnote : in , on the occasion of his being offered the honour of _rathsherr_ (town-councillor) in frankfort, he wrote to his mother that "it was an honour, not only in the eyes of europe, but of the whole world, to have been a citizen of frankfort." (goethe to his mother, december th, ). so, in , he told bettina von arnim that, had he had the choice of his birthplace, he would have chosen frankfort. as we shall see, goethe did not always speak so favourably of frankfort.] [footnote : die abgeschiednen betracht' ich gern, stünd' ihr verdienst auch noch so fern; doch mit den edlen lebendigen neuen mag ich wetteifernd mich lieber freuen.] [footnote : in his later years goethe preferred life in a small town. "zwar ist es meiner natur gemäss, an einem kleinen orte zu leben." (goethe to zelter, december th, .)] if goethe was fortunate in the place of his birth, was he equally fortunate in its date ( )? he has himself given the most explicit of answers to the question. in a remarkable paper, written at the age of forty-six, he has described the conditions under which he and his contemporaries produced their works in the different departments of literature. the paper had been called forth by a violent and coarse attack, which he described as _literarischer sansculottismus_, on the writers of the period, and with a testiness unusual with him he took up their defence. under what conditions, he asks, do classical writers appear? only, he answers, when they are members of a great nation and when great events are moving that nation at a period in its history when a high state of culture has been reached by the body of its people. only then can the writer be adequately inspired and find to his hand the materials requisite to the production of works of permanent value. but, at the epoch when he and his contemporaries entered on their career, none of these conditions existed. there was no german nation, there was no standard of taste, no educated public opinion, no recognised models for imitation; and in these circumstances goethe finds the explanation of the shortcomings of the generation of writers to which he belonged. on the truth of these conclusions goethe's adventures as a literary artist are the all-sufficient commentary. from first to last he was in search of adequate literary forms and of worthy subjects; and, as he himself admits, he not unfrequently went astray in the quest. on his own word, therefore, we may take it that under other conditions he might have produced more perfect works than he has actually given us. yet the world has had its compensations from those hampering conditions under which his creative powers were exercised. in the very attempt to grope his way to the most expressive forms of artistic presentation all the resources of his mind found their fullest play. it is in the variety of his literary product, unparalleled in the case of any other poet, that lies its inexhaustible interest; between _götz von berlichingen_ and the second part of _faust_ what a range of themes and forms does he present for his readers' appreciation! and to the anarchy of taste and judgment that prevailed when goethe began his literary career we in great measure owe another product of his manifold activities. he has been denied a place in the very first rank of poets, but by the best judges he is regarded as the greatest master of literary and artistic criticism. but, had he found fixed and acknowledged standards in german national literature and art, there would have been less occasion for his searching scrutiny of the principles which determine all art and literature. as it was, he was led from the first to direct his thoughts to the consideration of these principles; and the result is a body of reflections, marking every stage of his own development, on life, literature, and art, which, in the opinion of critics like edmond scherer and matthew arnold, gave him his highest claim to the consideration of posterity. as human lot goes, goethe was fortunate in his home and his home relations, though in the case of both there were disadvantages which left their mark on him throughout his later life. he was born in the middle-class, the position which, according to schiller, is most favourable for viewing mankind as a whole, and, therefore, advantageous for a poet who, like goethe, was open to universal impressions. though his maternal grandfather was chief magistrate of frankfort, and his father was an imperial councillor, the family did not belong to the _élite_ of the city; goethe, brilliant youth of genius though he was, was not regarded as an eligible match for the daughter of a frankfort banker. it was the father who was the dominating figure in the home life of the family; and the relations between father and son emphasise the fact that the early influences under which the son grew up left something to be desired. their permanent mutual attitude was misunderstanding, resulting from imperfect sympathy. "if"--so wrote goethe in his sixty-fourth year regarding his father and himself--"if, on his part as well as on the son's, a suggestion of mutual understanding had entered into our relationship, much might have been spared to us both. but that was not to be!" it is with dutiful respect but with no touch of filial affection that goethe has drawn his father's portrait in _dichtung und wahrheit_. as the father is there depicted, he is the embodiment of goethe's own definition of a philistine--one naturally incapable of entering into the views of other people.[ ] yet goethe might have had a worse parent; for, according to his lights, the father spared no pains to make his son an ornament of his generation. strictly conscientious, methodical, with a genuine love of art and letters, he did his best to furnish his son with every accomplishment requisite to distinction in the walk of life for which he destined him--the profession of law, in which he had himself failed through the defects of his temperament. directly and indirectly, he himself took in hand his son's instruction, but without appreciation or consideration of the affinities of a mind with precociously developed instincts. the natural result of the father's pedantic solicitude was that his son came to see in him the schoolmaster rather than the parent. knowledge in abundance was conveyed, but of the moulding influence of parental sympathy there was none. what dubious consequences followed from these relations of father and son we shall afterwards see. [footnote : to chancellor von müller goethe said: "mein vater war ein tüchtiger mann, aber freilich fehlte ihm gewandtheit und beweglichkeit des geistes."] goethe's mother has found a place in german hearts which is partly due to the portrait which her son has drawn of her, but still more to the impression conveyed by her own recorded sayings and correspondence. goethe's tone, when he speaks of his father, is always cool and critical; of his mother, on the other hand, he speaks with the feelings of a grateful son, conscious of the deep debt he owed to her.[ ] his relations to her in his later years have exposed him to severe animadversion, but their mutual relations in these early years present the most attractive chapter in the record of his private life. married at the age of seventeen to a husband approaching forty, the mother, as she herself said, stood rather as an elder sister than as a parent to her children. and her own character made this relation a natural one. an overflowing vitality, a lively and never-failing interest in all the details of daily life, and a temperament responsive to every call, kept her perennially young, and fitted her to be the companion of her children rather than the sober helpmate of such a husband as herr goethe.[ ] how, by her faculty of story-telling, she ministered to the side of her son's nature which he had inherited from herself goethe has related with grateful appreciation. but he owed her a larger debt. it was her spirit pervading the household that brought such happiness into his early home life as fell to his lot. a commonplace mother and a prosaic father would have created an atmosphere which, in the case of a child with goethe's impressionable nature, would permanently have affected his outlook on life. for the future poet, the mother was the admirable nurse; she fed his fancy with her own; she taught him the art of making the most of life--a lesson which he never forgot; and she gave him her own sane and cheerful view of the uncontrollable element in human destiny. for the future man, however, we may doubt whether she was the best of mothers. her education was meagre--a defect which her conscientious husband did his best to amend; and all her characteristics were fitted rather to evoke affection than to inspire respect. though her son always speaks of her with tender regard, his tone is that of an elder brother to a sister rather than of a son to a parent. she was herself conscious of her incompetence to discharge all the responsibilities of a mother which the character of the father made specially onerous. "we were young together," she said of herself and her son, and she confessed frankly that "she could educate no child." thus between an unsympathetic father and a mother incapable of influencing the deeper springs of character, goethe passed through childhood and boyhood without the discipline of temper and will which only the home can give. and the lack of this discipline is traceable in all his actions till he had reached middle life. wayward and impulsive by nature, he yielded to every motive, whether prompted by the intellect or the heart, with an abandonment which struck his friends as the leading trait of his character. "goethe," wrote one of them, "only follows his last notion, without troubling himself as to consequences," and of himself, when he was past his thirtieth year, he said that he was "as much a child as ever." [footnote : writing to her grandchild, goethe's mother says: "dein lieber vater hat mir nie kummer oder verdruss verursacht."] [footnote : when the son of frau von stein was about to visit her, goethe wrote: "da sie nicht so ernsthaft ist wie ich, so wirst du dich besser bei ihr befinden."] there was another member of the family of whom goethe speaks with even warmer feeling than of his mother. this was his sister cornelia, a year younger than himself, and destined to an unhappy marriage and an early death. of the many portraits he has drawn in his autobiography, none is touched with a tenderer hand and with subtler sympathy than that of cornelia. goethe does not imply that she permanently influenced his future development; for such influence she possessed neither the force of mind nor of character.[ ] but to her even more than to the mother he came to owe such home happiness as he enjoyed in the hours of freedom from the father's pedagogic discipline. she was his companion alike in his daily school tasks and his self-sought pleasures--the confidant and sharer of all his boyish troubles. to no other person throughout his long life did goethe ever stand in relations which give such a favourable impression of his heart as his relation with cornelia. the memory of her was the dearest which he retained of his early days; and the words in which he recalls her in his old age prove that she was an abiding memory to the end. [footnote : goethe's letters addressed to cornelia from leipzig, when he was in his eighteenth year, are in the tone at once of an affectionate brother and of a schoolmaster. their subsequent relations to each other will appear in the sequel.] it was an advantage on which goethe lays special stress that, outside his somewhat cramping home circle, he had a more or less intimate acquaintance with a number of persons, who by their different characters and accomplishments made lasting impressions on his youthful mind. the impressions must have been deep, since, writing in advanced age, he describes their personal appearance and their different idiosyncrasies with a minuteness which is at the same time a remarkable testimony to his precocious powers of observation. what is interesting in these intimacies as throwing light on goethe's early characteristics is, that all these persons were of mature age, and all of them more or less eccentric in their habits and ways of thinking. "even in god i discover defects," was the remark of one of them to his youthful listener--to whom he had been communicating his views on the world in general. in the company of these elders, with such or kindred opinions, goethe was early familiarised with the variability of human judgments on fundamental questions. and he laid the experience to heart, for on no point in the conduct of life does he insist with greater emphasis than the folly of expecting others to think as ourselves. the method of goethe's education was not such as to compensate for the lack of moral discipline which has already been noted. with the exception of a brief interval, he received instruction at home, either directly from his father or from tutors under his superintendence. thus he missed both the steady drill of school life and the influence of companions of his own age which might have made him more of a boy and less of a premature man.[ ] it is goethe's own expressed opinion that the object of education should be to foster tastes rather than to communicate knowledge. in this object, at least, his own education was perfectly successful; for the tastes which he acquired under his father's roof remained with him to the end. what strikes us in his course of study is its desultoriness and its comprehensiveness. at one time and another he gained an acquaintance with english, french, italian, latin, greek, and hebrew. he read widely in history, secular and sacred, and in the later stage of his early studies he took up law at the express desire of his father. it was the aim of his father's scheme of education that accomplishments should form an essential part of it. so his son was taught music, drawing, dancing, riding, and fencing. but there was another side to goethe's early training which, in his case, deserves to be specially emphasised. a striking characteristic of goethe's writings is the knowledge they display of the whole range of the manual arts, and this knowledge he owed to the circumstances of his home. his father, a virtuoso with the means of gratifying his tastes, freely employed artists of all kinds to execute designs of his own conception; and, as part of his son's education, entrusted him with the superintendence of his commissions. thus, in accordance with modern ideas, were combined in goethe's training the practical and the theoretical--a combination which is the distinguishing characteristic of his productive activity. generally considered, we see that the course of his studies was such as in any circumstances he would himself have probably followed. under no conditions would goethe have been content to restrict himself to a narrow field of study and to give the necessary application for its complete mastery. as it was, the multiplicity of his studies supplied the foundation for the manifold productivity of his maturer years. in no branch of knowledge was he ever a complete master; he devoted a large part of his life to the study of greek and roman antiquity, yet he never acquired a scholar's knowledge either of greek or roman literature.[ ] if on these subjects he has contributed many valuable reflections, it was due to the insight of genius which apprehends what passes the range of ordinary vision. [footnote : it was doubtless due to the absence of strict drill in his youth that goethe, as he himself tells us, never acquired the art of punctuating his own writings.] [footnote : goethe said of himself that he had no "grammatical vein."] a striking fact in goethe's account of his early years is the emphasis he lays on the religious side of his education. judging from the length at which he treats the subject, indeed, we are bound to assume that in his own estimation religion was the most important element in his early training, and in the case of one who came eventually to be known as the "great pagan" the fact is remarkable. had he sat down to write the narrative of these years at an earlier period of his life--after his return, say, from his italian journey--we may conceive that in his then anti-christian spirit he would have put these early religious experiences in a somewhat different light, and would hardly have assigned to them the same importance. but when he actually addressed himself to tell the story of his development, he had passed out of his anti-christian phase, and was fully convinced of the importance of religion in human culture. regarding this portion of his autobiography, as regarding others, we may have our doubts as to how far his record is coloured by his opinions when he wrote it. yet, after every reserve, there can be no question that religion engaged both his intellect and his emotions as a boy; and the fact is conclusive that religious instincts were not left out of his nature.[ ] [footnote : with reference to what he says of his biblical studies he wrote as follows to a correspondent (january th, ) [transcriber's note: corrected error " "]: "dass sie meine asiatischen weltanfänge so freundlich aufnehmen, ist mir von grossem wert. es schlingt sich die daher für mich gewonnene kultur durch mein ganzes leben...."] there was nothing in the influence of his home that was specially fitted to awaken religious feeling or to occasion abnormal spiritual experiences. in religion as in everything else the father was a formalist, and such religious views as he held were those of the _aufklärung_, for which all forms of spiritual emotion were the folly of unreason. religion was a permanent and sustaining influence in the life of goethe's mother, but her religion consisted simply in a cheerful acquiescence in the decrees of providence. of the soul's trials and sorrows, as they are recorded in the annals of the religious life, her nature was incapable, and she was always perfectly at ease in zion. by his mother, therefore, the son could not be deeply moved to concern regarding his spiritual welfare, nor to make religion the all-engrossing subject of his thoughts and affections. there was one friend of the family, indeed, the fräulein von klettenberg (the _schöne seele_ of _wilhelm meister_), in whom goethe saw the exemplar of the religious life in its more ecstatic manifestations, but her special influence on him belongs to a later date. in accordance with the family rule he regularly attended church, but the homilies to which he listened were not of a nature to quicken his religious feelings, while the doctrinal instruction he received at home he has himself described as "nothing but a dry kind of morality." against one article of the creed taught him--the doctrine of original and inherited sin--all his instincts rebelled; and the antipathy was so compact with all his later thinking that we may readily believe that it manifested itself thus early. if we may accept his own account of his youthful religious experiences, he was already on the way to that _ur-religion_, which was his maturest profession of faith, and which he held to be the faith of select minds in all stages of human history. now, as at all periods of his life, it was the beneficent powers in nature that most deeply impressed him, and he records how in crude childish fashion he secretly reared an altar to these powers, though an unlucky accident in the oblation prevented him from repeating his act of worship. like other children, he was quick to see the inconsistency of the creed he was taught with the actual facts of experience. one event in his childhood, the earthquake of lisbon, especially struck him as a confounding commentary on the accepted belief in the goodness of god; and the impression was deepened when in the following summer a violent thunder-storm played havoc with some of the most treasured books in his father's library. in all his soul's troubles, however, goethe, according to his own account, found refuge in a world where questionings of the ways of providence had never found an entrance. in the old testament, and specially in the book of genesis, with its picture of patriarchal life, he found a world which by engaging his feelings and imagination worked with tranquilising effect (_stille wirkung_) on his spirit, distracted by his miscellaneous studies and his varied interests. of all the elements that entered into his early culture, indeed, goethe gives the first place to the bible. "to it, almost alone," he expressly says, "did i owe my moral education." to the bible as an incomparable presentment of the national life and development of a people, and the most precious of possessions for human culture, goethe bore undeviating testimony at every period of his life. it need hardly be said that his attitude towards the bible was divided by an impassable gulf from the attitude of traditional christianity. for goethe it was a purely human production, the fortunate birth of a time and a race which in the nature of things can never be paralleled. what the churches have found in it was not for him its inherent virtue. even in his youth it was in its picturesque presentation of a primitive life that he found what satisfied the needs of his nature. the spiritual aspirations of the psalms, the moral indignation of the prophets, found no response in him either in youth or manhood. his ideal of life was never that of the saints, but it was an ideal, as his record of his early religious experience shows, which had its roots in the nature which had been allotted him. to certain events in his early life goethe assigned a decisive influence on his future development. to the gift of a set of puppets by his grandmother he attributes his first awakened interest in the drama; and the extraordinary detail with which wilhelm meister describes his youthful absorption in the play of his puppets proves that in his autobiography goethe does not lay undue stress on the significance of the gift. to another event which occurred when he was entering his seventh year, he ascribes the origin of an attitude of mind which in his own opinion he did not overcome till his later years. in broke out the seven years' war, in the course of which there was a cleavage in german public opinion that disturbed the peace of families and set the nearest relatives at bitter feud. such was the case in the goethe circle--the father passionately sympathising with frederick; the maternal grandfather, textor, the chief magistrate of frankfort, as passionately taking the side of maria theresa. in this case the son's sympathies were those of his father, and in boyish fashion he made a hero of the king of prussia, though, as he himself is careful to tell us, prussia and its interests were nothing to him. it was to the pain he felt when his hero was defamed by the supporters of austria that he traced that contempt of public opinion which he notes as a characteristic of the greater part of his manhood, yet we may doubt if any external event was needed to develop in him this special turn of mind. as his whole manner of thinking proves, it was neither in his character nor his genius to make a popular appeal like a burns or a schiller.[ ] in his old age goethe said of himself that he was conscious of an innate feeling of aristocracy which made him regard himself as the peer of princes; and we need no further explanation of his contempt of public opinion. yet if the worship of heroes has the moulding influence which carlyle ascribed to it, in goethe's youthful admiration of frederick this influence could not be wanting. to the end frederick appeared to him one of those "demonic" personalities, who from time to time cross the world's stage, and whose action is as incalculable as the phenomena of the natural world. "when such an one passes to his rest, how gladly would we be silent," were his memorable words when the news of frederick's death reached him during his italian travels, and the remark proves how deeply and permanently frederick's career had impressed him. [footnote : his remark to eckermann ( ) is well known: "meine sachen können nicht populär werden; wer daran denkt und dafür strebt, ist in einem irrthum."] more easily realised is the direct influence on goethe's youthful development of another event of his boyhood. as a result of the seven years' war, , french troops took possession of frankfort in the beginning of , and occupied it for more than three years. in the ways of a foreign soldiery at free quarters the frankforters saw a strange contrast to their own decorous habits of life, but the french occupation was brought more directly home to the goethe household. to the disgust and indignation of the father, to whom as a worshipper of frederick the french were objects of detestation, their chief officer, count thoranc, quartered in his own house. goethe has told in detail the history of this invasion of the quiet household--the never-failing courtesy and considerateness of thoranc, the abiding ill-humour of the father, the reconciling offices of the mother, exercised in vain to effect a mutual understanding between her husband and his unwelcome guest. as for goethe himself, devoted to frederick though he was, the presence of the french introduced him to a new world into which he entered with boyish delight. with the insatiable curiosity which was his characteristic throughout life, he threw himself into the pleasures and avocations of the novel society. thoranc was a connoisseur in art, and gave frequent commissions to the artists of the town; and goethe, already interested in art through his father's collections, found his opportunity in these tastes of thoranc, who was struck by the boy's precocity and even took hints from his suggestions. a theatre set up by the french was another source of pleasure and stimulus. the sight of the pieces that were acted prompted him to compose pieces of his own and led him to the study of the french classical drama. in the _coulisses_, to which he was admitted by special favour, he observed the ways of actors--an experience which supplied the materials for the portraiture of the actor's life in _wilhelm meister_. a remark which he makes in connection with the french theatre is a significant commentary on his respective relations to his father and mother, and indicates the atmosphere of evasion which permanently pervaded the household. it was against the will of his father, but with the connivance of his mother, that he paid his visits to the theatre and cultivated the society of the actors, and it was only by the consideration that his son's knowledge of french was thus improved that the practical father was reconciled to the delinquency. the direct results of his intercourse with the french soldiery on goethe's development were at once abiding and of high importance. it extended his knowledge of men and the world, and, more specifically, it gave him that interest in french culture and that insight into the french mind which he possessed in a degree beyond any of his contemporaries. but the most notable experience of these early years under his father's roof still remains to be mentioned. when he was in his fourteenth year, goethe fell in love--the first of the many similar experiences which were to form the successive crises of his future life. there can be little doubt that in his narrative of this his first love there is to the full as much "poetry" as "truth"; but there also can be as little doubt that all the circumstances attending it made his first love a turning-point in his life. it is a peculiarity of all goethe's love adventures that between him and the successive objects of his affections there was always some bar which made a regular union impossible or undesirable. so it was in the case of the girl whom he calls gretchen, and of whom we know nothing except what he chose to tell us. he made her acquaintance through his association with a set of youths of questionable character whom we are surprised to find as the chosen companions of the son of an imperial councillor. of all goethe's loves this was the one that was accompanied by the least pleasant complications and the most painful of disillusions. through his intercourse with gretchen's intimates he was led to recommend one of them for a municipal post in frankfort--a post which he did not hold long before he was found guilty of embezzlement and defalcation. the discovery was disastrous to goethe's relations with gretchen, and the disaster involved an experience of conflicting emotions which produced a crisis in his inner life. he had been rudely awakened to mistrust of mankind, and it was an awakening which, as he has himself emphasised, influenced all his thinking and feeling for many years to come. he had lived in a dream of phantasy and passion, and he learned to the shock of his whole nature that the object of his dreams had never at any moment regarded him otherwise than as an interesting boy whose talents and connections made him a desirable acquaintance. in the strained and morbid condition of his body and mind, which was the result of his disillusion, we see an experience which was often to be repeated in his maturer years, and which points to elements in his nature which were ever ready to pass beyond his control. as in the case of all his subsequent experiences of the same nature, he finally regained self-mastery, but a revolution had been accomplished in him as the result of the struggle. his boyhood was at an end, and it is with the consciousness of awakened manhood that he now looks out upon life. more than once in his future career a similar transformation was to be repeated--a great passion followed by a new direction of his activities, involving a saving breach with the past. goethe's father had determined from the beginning that his only son should follow the profession of law, in which, as we have seen, he had himself failed owing to his peculiarities of mind and temper. in this determination there was no consideration of the predilections of his son, and in this fact lay the permanent cause of their estrangement. the father's choice of a university for his son was another illustration of their divergent sympathies and interests. left to his own choice, the son would have preferred the university of göttingen as his place of study, but his father ruled that leipzig, his own university, was the proper school for the future civilian. in connection with his departure for leipzig goethe makes two confessions which are a striking commentary on the conditions of his home life in frankfort. he left frankfort, he tells us, with joy as intense as that of a prisoner who has broken through his gaol window, and finds himself a free man. and this repugnance to his native city, as a place where he could not expand freely, remained an abiding feeling with him. the burgher life of frankfort, he wrote to his mother during his first years at weimar, was intolerable to him, and to have made his permanent home there would have been fatal to the fulfilment of every ideal that gave life its value. his other confession is a still more significant illustration of the vital lack of sympathy between father and son. he left frankfort, he says, with the deliberate intention of following his own predilections and of disregarding the express wish of his father that he should apply himself specifically to the study of law. only his sister cornelia was made the confidant of his secret intention, and apparently no attempt was made to effect even a compromise between the aims of the father and those of the son. plain and direct dealing was a marked characteristic of goethe at every period of his life; that he should thus have deceived his father in a matter that lay nearest his heart is therefore the final proof that father and son were separated by a gulf which could not be bridged. as it was, in the course of life which goethe was to follow in leipzig we may detect a certain defiant heedlessness which points to an uneasy consciousness of duty ignored. we have it on goethe's own word that with his departure for leipzig begins that self-directed development which he was to pursue with the undeviating purpose and the wonderful result which make him the unique figure he is in the history of the human spirit. what, we may inquire, as he is now at the commencement of this career unparalleled, so far as our knowledge goes, in the case of any other of the world's greatest spirits--what were the specific characteristics, visible in him from the first, which gave the pledge and promise of this astonishing career? in his case, we can say with certainty, was fully verified the adage, that the boy is father of the man. alike in internal and external traits we note in him as a boy characteristics which were equally marked in the mature man. in his demeanour, he himself tells us, there was a certain stiff dignity which excited the ridicule of his companions. it was in his nature even as a boy, he also tells us, to assume airs of command: one of his own acquaintance and of his own years said of him, "we were all his lacqueys." here we have in anticipation the aged goethe whose jove-like presence put heine out of countenance; the god "cold, monosyllabic," of jean paul. but behind the stiff demeanour, in youth as in age, there was the mercurial temperament, the _etwas unendlich rührendes_, which made him a problem at all periods of his life even to those who knew him most intimately. he has himself noted his youthful reputation for eccentricity, "his lively, impetuous, and excitable temper"; and this was the side of him that most impressed his associates till he was past middle age. in boyhood, also, as even in his latest years, he was subject to bursts of violence in which he lost all self-control. when attacked by three of his schoolmates, he fell upon them with the fury of a wild beast, and mastered all three. on the loss of gretchen he "wept and raved," and, as the result of his morbid sensibility, his constitution, always abnormally influenced by his emotions, was seriously impaired. here we have the _weiblichkeit_, the feminine strain in his nature, which was noted by schiller, and which explains the shrinking from all forms of pain which he inherited from his mother. more than once these emotional elements in his nature were to bring him near to moral shipwreck, and it was doubtless the consciousness of such a possibility in his own case that explains his haunting interest in the character and career of byron. but underneath his "chameleon" temperament (the expression is his own[ ]) there was a solid foundation, the lack of which was the ruin of byron. goethe has himself told us what this saving element in him was. it was a strenuousness and seriousness implanted in him by nature (_von der natur in mich gelegter ernst_), which, he says, "exerted its influence [on him] at an early age, and showed itself more distinctly in after years." this side of his complex nature did not escape the notice even of his youthful contemporaries. "goethe," wrote one of them from leipzig, "is as great a philosopher as ever." here again we see in the boy the father of the man. increasingly, as the years went on, his innate tendency to reflection asserted itself, till at length in his latest period it so completely dominated him that the sage proved too much for the artist. [footnote : so weislingen (in _götz von berlichingen_), whom goethe meant to be a double of himself, says: "_ich bin ein chamaeleon_."] if the character of the boy foreshadowed that of the man, so did the tendencies of his genius the lines they were afterwards to follow. "turn a man whither he will," he remarks in his autobiography, "he will always return to the path marked out for him by nature," and his own development signally illustrates the truth of the remark. from his earliest youth, he tells us, he had "a passion for investigating natural things"; and towards middle life his interest in physical science became so absorbing as for many years to stifle his creative faculty. but in the retrospect of his life as a whole he had no doubt as to the supreme bent of his genius. the "laurel crown of the poet" was the goal of his youthful ambition, and the last bequest he made to posterity was the second part of _faust_. among the miscellaneous intellectual interests of his boyhood poetry evidently held the chief place, and, partly out of his own inspiration and partly at the suggestion of others, he diligently tried his hand at different forms of poetical composition. yet, if we may judge from his most notable boyish piece--_poetische gedanken über die höllenfahrt jesu christi_--there have been more "timely-happy spirits" than goethe. not, indeed, as we shall see, till his twentieth year, the age when, according to kant, the lyric poet is in fullest possession of his genius, does his verse attain the distinctiveness of original creative power.[ ] [footnote : all goethe's boyish productions that have been preserved will be found in _der junge goethe, neue ausgabe in sechs bänden besorgt von max morris_, leipzig, .] chapter ii student in leipzig october, --september, as we follow the life of byron, it has been said, we seem to hear the gallop of horses,[ ] and we are conscious of a similar tumult as we follow the career of goethe from the day he entered leipzig till the close of the "mad weimar times," when he was approaching his thirtieth year. _jugend ist trunkenheit ohne wein_, he says in his _west-ostlicher divan_, and, when he wrote the words, he may well have had specially in view the three whirling years he spent in leipzig. "if one did not play some mad pranks in youth," he said on another occasion, "what would one have to think of in old age?" assuredly during these leipzig years goethe played a sufficient number of pranks to supply him with materials for edifying retrospection. [footnote : x. doudan, _mélanges et lettres_, i. .] our difficulty in connection with these three years is to seize the essential lineaments in a character so full of contradictions that it eludes us at every turn, and has presented to each of his many biographers a problem which each has sought to solve after his own fashion. of materials for forming our conclusions there is certainly no lack. in his autobiography he has related in detail, even to tediousness, the events and experiences of his life in leipzig. contemporary testimony, also, we have in abundance. we have the letters of friends who freely wrote their impressions of him, and from his own hand we have poems which record the passing feelings of the hour; we have two plays which reveal moods and experiences more or less permanent; and above all we have a considerable number of his own letters addressed to his sister and different friends, all of which, it may be said, appear to give genuine expression to the promptings of the moment. the materials for forming our judgment, therefore, are even superabundant, but in their very multiplicity lies our difficulty. the narrative in the autobiography doubtless gives a correct general outline of his life in leipzig and of its main results for his general development, but its cool, detached tone leaves a totally inadequate impression of the froward youth, torn to distraction by conflicting passions and conflicting ideals. with the contemporary testimonies our difficulties are of another kind. the testimonies of his friends regarding his personal traits are often contradictory, and equally so are his own self-revelations. on one and the same day he writes a letter which exhibits him as the helpless victim of his emotions, and another which shows him quite at his ease and master of himself. and he himself has warned us against taking his wild words too seriously. in a letter to his sister (september th, ), he expressly says: "as for my melancholy, it is not so deep as i have pictured it; there are occasionally poetical licences in my descriptions which exaggerate the facts."[ ] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i., - .] fortunately or unfortunately, the town of leipzig, which his father had chosen for his first free contact with life, was of all german towns the one where he could see life in its greatest variety. "in accursed leipzig," he wrote after his three years' experience of its distractions, "one burns out as quickly as a bad torch." even the external appearance of the town was such as to suggest another world from that of frankfort. in frankfort the past overshadowed the present; while leipzig, goethe himself wrote, recording his first impressions of the place, "evoked no memories of bygone times." and if the exterior of the town suggested a new world, its social and intellectual atmosphere intensified the impression. "leipzig is the place for me," says frosch in the auerbach cellar scene in _faust_; "it is a little paris, and gives its folks a finish."[ ] the prevailing tone of leipzig society was, in point of fact, deliberately imitated from the pattern set to europe by the court of france. in contrast to the old-fashioned formality of frankfort, the leipziger aimed at a graceful _insouciance_ in social intercourse and light, cynical banter in the interchange of his ideas on every subject, trifling or serious. in such a society all free, spontaneous expression of emotions or opinions was a mark of rusticity, as goethe was not long in discovering. the true leipziger was, of course, a gallio in religion, and goethe, who, on leaving his father's house, had resolved to cut all connection with the church, found no difficulty in carrying out his intention during his residence in the little paris. but, so far as goethe was concerned, the most notable circumstance connected with leipzig was that it had long been the literary centre of germany. there the most eminent representatives of literature had made their residence, and thence had gone forth the dominant influences which had given the rule to all forms of literary production--poetry and criticism alike. at the time when goethe took up his residence in the town the two most prominent german men of letters, gellert and gottsched (the latter dubbed the "saxon swan" by frederick the great) were its most distinguished ornaments, though the rising generation was beginning to question both the intrinsic merit of their productions and the principles of taste which they had proclaimed. what these principles were and how goethe stood related to them we shall presently see. [footnote : on the occasion of a visit he paid to leipzig in , goethe says: "die leipziger sind als eine kleine, moralische republik anzusehn. jeder steht für sich, hat einige freunde und geht in seinem wesen fort."] into this world goethe was launched when he had just turned his sixteenth year--"a little, odd, coddled boy," and, as he elsewhere describes himself, with a tendency to morbid fancies. if he had come to leipzig with the resolve to fulfil his father's intentions, his course was clearly marked out for him. he would diligently sit at the feet of the professors of law in the university, and at the end of three years he would return to frankfort with the attainments requisite to make him a future ornament of the legal profession. but, as we have seen, he had other schemes in his head than the course which his father had prescribed for him, and, if we are to accept his own later testimony, in forming these schemes he was but following the deepest instincts of his nature. "anything," he exclaimed to his secretary riemer, when he was approaching his sixtieth year, "anything but an enforced profession! that is contrary to all my instincts. so far as i can, and so long as the humour lasts, i will carry out in a playful fashion what comes in my way. so i unconsciously trifled in my youth; so will i consciously continue to do to the end."[ ] the step he now took is a curious illustration of the solemn self-importance which was one of his characteristics as a youth. to the professor of history and law of all people he chose to announce his intention of studying _belles lettres_ instead of jurisprudence. the professor sensibly pointed out to him the folly and impropriety of his conduct in view of his father's wishes; and his counsels, seconded by the friendly advice of his wife, frau böhme, turned the youthful aspirant from his purpose for a time. on his own testimony he now became a model student, and was "as happy as a bird in a wood." he heard lectures on german history from böhme, though history was distasteful to him at every period of his life; lectures on literature from the popular gellert, on style from professor clodius, and on physics, logic, and philosophy from other professors. [footnote : _gespräche mit riemer_, anfang .] but alike by temperament and previous training, goethe was indisposed to profit by professorial prelections, however admirable. he had brought with him to the university a store of miscellaneous information which deprived them of the novelty they might have for the average listener. "application," he says, moreover, "was not my talent, since nothing gave me any pleasure except what came to me of itself." so it was that by the close of his first semester his attendance at lectures became a jest, and the professors the butt of his wit. it was characteristic that he found the prelections on philosophy and logic specially tedious and distasteful. of god and the world he thought he knew as much as his teacher, and the scholastic analysis of the processes of thought seemed to him only the deadening of the faculties which he had received from nature. of these dreary hours in the lecture-rooms the biting comments of faust and mephistopheles on university studies in general are the lively reminiscence. but while he was putting in a perfunctory attendance at lectures, his education was proceeding in another school--the school which, as in his after years he so insistently testified, affords the only real discipline for life--the world of real men and women.[ ] and the lessons of this school he took in with a zest that well illustrates what he called his "chameleon" nature. within a year the "little, odd, coddled boy" who had left his father's house was transformed into a fashionable leipzig youth who went even beyond his models. his home-made suit, which had passed muster in frankfort, but which excited ridicule in leipzig, was exchanged for a costume which went to the other extreme of dandyism. his inner man underwent a corresponding transformation, and, as was so often to be the case with him, it was a woman who was the efficacious instrument of the change. we have just seen how frau böhme seconded her husband's attempts to dissuade him from abandoning his legal studies, but her good offices did not end there. a woman of cultivated mind and considerable literary attainments, she evidently saw the promise of the raw frankfort youth, and, with a feminine tact, to which goethe bore grateful testimony, she set herself to correct his manners and his tastes. he had brought with him his frankfort habits of speech, and these under protest he was forced to give up for the modish forms of the smooth-speaking leipzigers.[ ] before frau böhme took him in hand, he assures us, he was not an ill-mannered lad, but she impressed on him the need of cultivating the external graces of social intercourse and even of acquiring a certain skill in the fashionable games of the day--an accomplishment, however, which he never succeeded in attaining. more important for his future development was frau böhme's influence on his literary tastes. as was his habit among his friends, he would declaim to her passages from his favourite poets, and she, "an enemy to all that was trivial, feeble, and commonplace," would unsparingly point out their essential inanity. when he ventured to recite his own poetical attempts, her criticism was equally unsparing. the discipline was sharp, but for the "coddled" boy, who had been regarded at home as a youthful prodigy, it was entirely wholesome. yet, if we may judge from a description of him some ten months after his arrival in leipzig, the chastening does not appear to have lessened his buoyant self-confidence. the description is from the hand of a comrade of his own in frankfort, horn by name, the son of a former chief magistrate of the city. horn, like goethe, had come to study in leipzig, and on his arrival there, , he thus (august, ) records his impressions of goethe to a common friend: "if you only saw him, you would be either furious with rage or burst with laughing. it is beyond me to understand how anyone can change so quickly. besides being arrogant, he is also a dandy, and his clothes, though fine, are in such ridiculous taste that they attract the attention of the whole university.[ ] but he does not mind that a bit, and it is useless to tell him of his follies.... he has acquired a gait which is simply intolerable. could you only see him!" such was horn's first impression of his former comrade, but it is right to say that a few months later he could tell the same correspondent that they had not lost a friend in goethe, who had still the same good heart and was as much a philosopher and a moralist as ever. [footnote : es bildet ein talent sich in der stille, sich ein character in dem strom der welt.] [footnote : in point of fact goethe retained to the end the intonation and the idioms of his native speech.] [footnote : in his autobiography goethe states as the reason for his casting off the home-made suit he had brought with him from frankfort, that a person entering the leipzig theatre in similar costume excited the ridicule of the audience.] in his second letter horn gives a singular reason for the preposterous airs which goethe had lately put on. goethe, wrote horn, had fallen in love with a girl "beneath him in rank," and his antics were assumed to disguise the fact from his friends who might report it to his father. goethe's relations to this girl were to be his liveliest experience in leipzig, and an experience frequently to be repeated at different periods of his life. like his other adventures of the same nature, it was to supply him with a fund of emotions and reflections which at a future day were to serve him as literary capital. the tale of his passion, if passion it was, is, therefore, an essential part of his biography, both as a man and a literary artist. the girl in question was käthchen (or, as goethe calls her in his autobiography, Ännchen) schönkopf, the daughter of a wineseller and lodging-house keeper in leipzig, whose wife, we are informed, belonged to a "patrician" family in frankfort. as described by horn, she was "well-grown though not tall, with a round, pleasant face, though not particularly pretty, and with an open, gentle, and engaging air"; and in a letter to his sister goethe gives the further information that she had a "good heart, not bewildered with too much reading," and that her spelling was dubious. and it may be noted in passing that goethe apparently had a preference for women who were not sophisticated with letters, as was notably shown in the case of the woman whom he eventually made his wife. it was on april th, , that he first made the declaration of his passion, so that, when horn wrote, we are to suppose that its course was in full tide.[ ] but now, as always, goethe had room for two objects in his affections. on october st, , he wrote letters to two friends, in the second of which he expressed his passion for käthchen, and in the first an equally ardent emotion for another maiden who had crossed his path in frankfort.[ ] goethe's confidant throughout his relations with käthchen was one of those peculiar persons whom we meet with in following his career. he was one behrisch, now residing in leipzig in the capacity of tutor to a young german count. in his autobiography goethe has given a large place to behrisch, who, as there depicted, comes before us as an accomplished man of the world, something of a _roué_, and a humorist in the old english sense of the word. he never appeared without his periwig, invariably wore a suit of grey, and was never seen in public without his sword, hat under arm. of a caustic wit, of considerable literary attainments, and approaching his thirtieth year, he had evidently an influence on goethe which was not wholly for good. he took a genuine interest in goethe's literary efforts, gave him good advice on points of style, and dissuaded him from hasty publication. on the other hand, it was under his influence that goethe began to assume the tone and airs of a don juan, which are an unpleasant characteristic of his recently published correspondence with behrisch. it is in this correspondence that we have the record of goethe's dallyings with käthchen, and, take it as we may, the record is as vivid a presentment as we could wish of a nature as complex in its emotions as it was steadfast in its central bent. [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. .] [footnote : _ib._ pp. - .] the letters to behrisch begin in october, , and present goethe in the light of a happy lover. there is an assiduous rival, but his addresses are coldly received.[ ] in an ecstasy of delight, after a four hours' _tête-a-tête_ with käthchen, he treats behrisch to some lines of english verse which may be produced here as exhibiting the state of his feelings and the extent of his acquaintance with the english language:-- what pleasure, god! of like a flame to born, a virteous fire, that ne'er to vice kan turn. what volupty! when trembling in my arms, the bosom of my maid my bosom warmeth! perpetual kisses of her lips o'erflow, in holy embrace mighty virtue show. [footnote : _ib._ pp. - .] in letters written to his sister cornelia about the same date, however, we see another side of his life in leipzig. he has been excluded from the society in which he was formerly received, and he assigns as reasons that he is following the counsels of his father in refusing to engage in play, and that he cannot avoid showing a sense of his superiority in taste which gives offence. but, as we learn that behrisch was also excluded from the same society, and that he was dismissed from the charge of his pupils on the ground of his loose life, we may infer that goethe does not state all the reasons for his own social ostracism.[ ] [footnote : _ib._ pp. - .] so things stood with him in october, , and it is not till the following may that we hear of him again through his correspondence. in a letter to cornelia written in that month he excuses himself for his long neglect of her. he has been busy, he has been ill, and the spring has come late. in this letter he writes of käthchen as follows: "among my acquaintances who are alive (he has just mentioned the death of frau böhme) the little schönkopf does not deserve to be forgotten. she is a very good girl, with an uprightness of heart joined to agreeable _naïveté_, though her education has been more severe than good. she looks after my linen and other things when it is necessary, for she knows all about these matters, and is pleased to give me the benefit of her knowledge; and i like her well for that. am i not a bit of a scamp, seeing i am in love with all these girls? who could resist them when they are good; for as for beauty, that does not touch me; and, indeed, all my acquaintances are more good than beautiful."[ ] this is not the tone of an ardent lover speaking of his mistress, and it is evident that cornelia was not the confidant of his real relations to käthchen, which, indeed, would have been as distasteful to her as to their father. in another letter, addressed to her in the following august, he is not more frank. there he tells her that annette is now his muse, and that, as herodotus names the books of his history after the nine muses, so he has given the name of annette to a collection of twelve poetical pieces, magnificently copied in manuscript.[ ] but, he significantly adds, annette had no more to do with his poetry than the muses had to do with the history of herodotus.[ ] to what extent this statement expressed the truth we shall presently see. [footnote : _ib._ p. . the passage is in french.] [footnote : this was the work of behrisch, who was a virtuoso in calligraphy.] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, i. - .] in october, , goethe resumed his correspondence with behrisch, and it is in this part of it that we have the fullest revelation of his state of mind during the last year of his residence in leipzig. with the exception of occasional digressions these letters are solely concerned with his relations to käthchen, and their outpourings afterwards received their faithful echo in the incoherences of werther. here is the beginning of a letter to behrisch (october th), in which he described his feelings as evoked by the appearance of two rivals for the favours of käthchen. "another night like this, behrisch, and, in spite of all my sins, i shan't have to go to hell. you may have slept peacefully, but a jealous lover, who has drunk as much champagne as is necessary to put his blood in a pleasant heat and to inflame his imagination to the highest point! at first i could not sleep, i tossed about in my bed, sprang up, raved; then i grew weary and fell asleep." and he proceeds to relate a wild dream in which käthchen was the distracting image; and he concludes: "there you have annette. she is a cursed lass!"[ ] yet on the same day or the day following he could thus describe his mode of life in a letter to his sister: "it is very philosophical," he writes; "i have given up concerts, comedies, riding and driving, and have abandoned all societies of young folks who might lead me into more company. this will be of great advantage to my purse."[ ] very different is the picture of his mode of life in his subsequent letters to behrisch at the same period. if we are to take him literally, it was the life of a veritable don juan who had learned all the lessons of his instructor. "do you recognise me in this tone, behrisch?" he writes; "it is the tone of a conquering young lord.... it is comic. aber ohne zu schwören ich unterstehe mich schon ein mädgen zu verf--wie teufel soll ich's nennen. enough, monsieur, all this is but what you might have expected from the aptest and most diligent of your scholars."[ ] that all this was not mere bravado is distinctly suggested even in _dichtung und wahrheit_, where the wild doings of leipzig are so decorously draped. [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] goethe knew from the first that he could never make käthchen his wife, and that sooner or later his lovemaking must come to an end. the end came in the spring of after two years' philandering which had not been all happiness. in a letter to behrisch he thus relates the _dénouement_: "oh, behrisch," he writes, "i have begun to live! could i but tell you the whole story! i cannot; it would cost me too much. enough--we have separated, we are happy.... behrisch, we are living in the pleasantest, friendliest intercourse.... we began with love and we end with friendship."[ ] goethe makes one of his characters say that estranged lovers, if they only manage things well, may still remain friends, and the remark was prompted by more than one experience of his own. [footnote : _ib._ pp. - .] when he was past his seventieth year, goethe made a remark to his friend, chancellor von müller, which is applicable to every period of his life: "in the hundred things which interest me," he said, "there is always one which, as chief planet, holds the central place, and meanwhile the remaining quodlibet of my life circles round it in many-changing phases, till each and all succeed in reaching the centre." even in these distracted leipzig years the mental process thus described is clearly visible. neither goethe's loves nor his other dissipations ever permanently dulled the intellectual side of his nature. while he was writing morbid letters to behrisch, he was directing the studies of his sister with all the seriousness of a youthful pedagogue. though he neglected the lectures of his professors, he was assimilating knowledge on every subject that appealed to his natural instincts. in truth, all the manifold activities of his later years were foreshadowed during his sojourn in leipzig, as, indeed, they had already been foreshadowed during his boyhood in frankfort. as in frankfort, he took in knowledge equally from men, books, and things.[ ] in the house of a leipzig citizen, a physician and botanist, he met a society of medical men, and he records how his attention was directed to an entirely new field through listening to their conversation. now, apparently for the first time, he heard the names of haller, buffon, and linnæus, the last of whom he, in later years, named with spinoza and shakespeare as one of the chief moulding forces of his life. through the influence and example of other men he intermittently practised etching, drawing, and engraving--all arts in which he retained a lifelong interest. but among all the persons in leipzig who influenced him goethe gave the first place to friedrich oeser, director of the academy of drawing in the city. oeser was about fifty years of age, jovial in disposition, and an experienced man of the world. though as an artist he is now held in little regard, his reputation was great in his own day,[ ] and he had a reflected glory in being the friend of winckelmann, who was reputed to have profited by his teaching in art. under the inspiration of oeser goethe's interest in the plastic arts in general, which had received its first impulse at home, became a permanent preoccupation for the remainder of his life. he took regular lessons in drawing from oeser, made acquaintance with all the collections, public and private, to be found in leipzig, and even made a secret visit to the galleries in dresden, where, he tells us, he gave his exclusive attention to the works of the great dutch masters. as was always his habit, goethe generously acknowledged his obligations to oeser. "who among all my teachers, except yourself," he afterwards wrote on his return to frankfort, "ever thought me worthy of encouragement? they either heaped all blame or all praise upon me, and nothing can be so destructive of talent.... you know what i was when i came to you, and what when i left you: the difference is your work ... you have taught me to be modest without self-depreciation, and to be proud without presumption."[ ] and elsewhere he declares that the great lesson he had learned from oeser was that the ideal of beauty is to be found in "simplicity and repose." but the main interest of goethe's intercourse with oeser in connection with his general development is that it strengthened an illusion from which he did not succeed in freeing himself till near his fortieth year--the illusion that nature had given him equally the gifts of the painter and the poet. many hours of the best years of his life were to be spent in laboriously practising an art in which he was doomed to mediocrity; and it must remain a riddle that one, who like goethe was so curiously studious of his own self-development, should so long and so blindly have misunderstood his own gifts.[ ] [footnote : "das bedürfnis meiner natur zwingt mich zu einer vermannigfaltigten thätigkeit," he wrote of himself in his thirty-second year.] [footnote : when, in his thirty-sixth year, goethe renewed his acquaintance with oeser, he wrote of him to frau von stein: "c'est comme si cet homme ne devroit pas mourir, tant ses talents paroissent toujours aller en s'augmentant."] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. .] [footnote : in later years he consoled himself with the reflection that the time he had spent on the technicalities of art was not wholly lost, as he had thus acquired powers of observation which were valuable to him both as a poet and as a man of science.] it may partly explain his addiction to art that the poetical productions which he had brought from frankfort, and which had been applauded by the circle of his friends there, did not meet with the approval of the critics in leipzig. we have seen how sharply frau böhme commented on their shortcomings, but he was specially disheartened by the severe criticism passed on one of his poems by clodius, the professor of literature. "i am cured of the folly of thinking myself a poet,"[ ] he wrote to his sister about a year after his arrival in leipzig. some six months later he writes to her in a more hopeful spirit: "since i am wholly without pride, i may trust my inner conviction, which tells me that i possess some of the qualities required in a poet, and that by diligence i may even become one."[ ] in his autobiography and elsewhere goethe has spoken at length of the disadvantages under which youthful geniuses laboured at the period when he began his literary career.[ ] as germany then existed, there was no national feeling to inspire great themes, no standard of taste, and no worthy models for imitation. there was, indeed, no lack of literature on all subjects; kant speaks sarcastically of "the deluge of books with which our part of the world is inundated every year." but the fatal defects of the poetry then produced was triviality and the "wateriness" of its style. yet it was during the years that goethe spent in leipzig that there appeared a succession of works which mark a new departure in german literature. in herder, who was subsequently to exercise such a profound influence over goethe, published his _fragments on modern german literature_; in the same year appeared lessing's _laokoon_, which, in goethe's own words, transported himself and his contemporaries "out of the region of pitifully contracted views into the domain of emancipated thought"; and in lessing's _minna von barnhelm_, germany's "first national drama." greatly as goethe was impressed by both of these works of lessing, however, he was not mature enough to profit by them[ ]; and, in point of fact, all the work, poems and plays, which he produced during his leipzig period, is solely inspired by the french models which had so long dominated german literature. [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : notably in his paper, entitled _literarischer sansculottismus_. see above, p. . regarding lessing he made this remark to eckermann (february th, ): "bedauert doch den ausserordentlichen menschen, dass er in einer so erbärmlichen zeit leben musste, die ihm keine bessern stoffe gab, als in seinen stücken verarbeitet sind!"] [footnote : "lessing war der höchste verstand, und nur ein ebenso grosser konnte von ihm wahrhaft lernen. dem halbvermögen war er gefährlich." (to eckermann, january th, .)] considering his other manifold preoccupations, the amount of goethe's literary output during his three years in leipzig is sufficient evidence that his poetic instincts remained the dominant impulses of his nature. he sprinkled his letters to his friends with poems in german, french, and english, and he composed twenty lyrics which were subsequently published in the autumn of under the title of _neue lieder_[ ]; and two plays, entitled _die laune des verliebten_ and _die mitschuldigen_. the biographic interest of all these productions is the light which they throw on the transformation which goethe had undergone during his residence in leipzig. in the poems he had written in frankfort religion had been the predominant theme; in his leipzig effusions it was love, and love in a sufficiently anacreontic sense. regarding the poetic merit of the _neue lieder_ german critics are for the most part at one. with hardly an exception the love lyrics are mere imitations of french models; their style is as artificial as their feeling; and they give little promise of the work that was to come from the same hand a few years later. as the expression of one of his lover's moods, one of them, reckoned the best in the collection, may here be given. it is entitled _die schöne nacht_. [footnote : nine of these _lieder_ goethe thought worthy of a permanent place in his collected works.] die schÖne nacht. nun verlass' ich diese hütte, meiner liebsten aufenthalt; wandle mit verhülltem schritte durch den öden, finstern wald. luna bricht durch busch und eichen, zephyr meldet ihren lauf; und die birken streun mit neigen ihr den süssten weihrauch auf. wie ergötz' ich mich im kühlen dieser schönen sommernacht! o wie still ist hier zu fühlen was die seele glücklich macht! lässt sich kaum die wonne fassen, und doch wollt' ich, himmel! dir tausend solcher nächte lassen, gäb' mein mädchen eine mir. the beautiful night. now i leave the cot behind me where my love hath her abode; and i wander with veiled footsteps through the drear and darksome wood. luna's rays pierce oak and thicket zephyr heraldeth her way; and for her its sweetest incense sheddeth every birchen spray. how i revel in the coolness of this beauteous summer night! ah! how peaceful here the feeling of what makes the soul's delight, bliss wellnigh past comprehending! yet, o heaven, i would to thee thousand nights like this surrender, gave my maiden one to me. but it is in the two plays produced during this period that goethe most fully reveals both his literary ideals and the essential traits of his own character. the first of the two, _die laune des verliebten_ ("the lover's caprices"), is based on his own relations to käthchen schönkopf, and is cast in the form of a pastoral drama, written in alexandrines after the fashion of the time.[ ] the theme is a satire on his own wayward conduct towards käthchen, as he has depicted it in his autobiography. the plot is of the simplest kind. two pairs of lovers, egle and lamon, and amine and eridon, the first pair happy in their loves, the second unhappy, make up the characters of the piece. the leading part is taken by egle, who is distressed at the misery of her friend amine, occasioned by the jealous humours of her lover eridon. complications there are none, and the sole interest of the play consists in the vivacity of the dialogues and in the arch mischief with which egle eventually shames eridon out of his foolish jealousy of his maiden, who is only too fondly devoted to him. what strikes us in the whole performance is that goethe, if he was so madly in love with käthchen as his letters to behrisch represent him, should have been capable of writing it. from its playful humour and entirely objective treatment it might have been written by a good-natured onlooker amused at the spectacle of two young people trifling with feelings which neither could take seriously. [footnote : this play was based on an earlier attempt made in frankfort.] equally objective is goethe's handling of the very different theme of the other play, _die mitschuldigen_ ("the accomplices"),[ ] and in this case the objectivity is still more remarkable in a youth who had not yet attained his twentieth year. this second piece belongs to the class of low comedy, and is as simple in construction as its companion. the scene is laid in an inn, and the characters are four in number: the host, whose leading trait is insatiable curiosity; his daughter sophia, represented as of easy virtue; söller, her husband, a graceless scamp; and alcestes, a former lover of sophia, and for the time a guest in the inn. in the central scene of the play there come in succession to alcestes' room in the course of one night söller, who steals alcestes' gold; the host, to possess himself of a letter with the contents of which he has a burning curiosity to become acquainted; and sophia by appointment with alcestes. as father and daughter have caught sight of each other on their respective errands, each suspects the other of being the thief, and in a sorry scene the father, on the condition of being permitted to read the letter, which turns out to be a trivial note, informs alcestes that sophia is the delinquent. finally, söller, under the threat of a prick from alcestes' sword, confesses to the theft, and the piece ends with a mutual agreement to condone each other's delinquencies.[ ] the play is not without humour, and the different characters are vivaciously presented, but the blindest admirers of the master may well regret, as they mostly have regretted, that such a work should have come from his hands. the most charitable construction we can put on the graceless production is that goethe, out of his abnormal impressionability, for the time being deliberately assumed the tone of cynical indifference with which he had become familiar in his intercourse with his friend behrisch. [footnote : the exact time and place of its composition is uncertain, but goethe's own testimony seems to indicate that it was mainly written in leipzig, in . it was first published in , with some modifications, which affect only the form.] [footnote : with a fatuity into which he occasionally fell, goethe in _dichtung und wahrheit_ remarks that his two plays are an illustration of that most christian text, "let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone."] in direct connection with the shorter poems which goethe wrote in leipzig, there is a passage in his autobiography which has perhaps been more frequently quoted than any other, and which, according as we interpret it, must materially influence our judgment at once on his character and his genius. the passage is as follows: "and thus began that tendency of which, all my life through, i was never able to break myself; the tendency to transmute into a picture or a poem whatever gave me either pleasure or pain, or otherwise preoccupied me, and thus to arrive at a judgment regarding it, with the object at once of rectifying my ideas of things external to me and of calming my own feelings. this gift was in truth perhaps necessary to no one more than to me, whose temperament was continually tossing him from one extreme to another. all my productions proceeding from this tendency that have become known to the world are only fragments of a great confession which it is the bold attempt of this book to complete." from the context of this passage it is to be inferred that the habit which goethe describes applied only to the occasional short poems which he threw off at the different periods of his life. but are we to infer that the account here given of goethe's occasional poems applies to the passionate lyrics which a few years later he was to pour forth in such abundance? to a very different purport is another passage in the autobiography, which is at the same time a striking commentary on wordsworth's remark that goethe's poetry was "not inevitable enough." "i had come," he there says, "to look upon my indwelling poetic talent altogether as a force of nature; the more so as i had always been compelled to regard outward nature as its proper object. the exercise of this poetic faculty might indeed be excited and determined by circumstances; but its most joyful and richest action was spontaneous--even involuntary. in my nightly vigils the same thing happened; so that i often wished, like one of my predecessors, to have a leathern jerkin made, and to get accustomed to writing in the dark, so as to be able to fix on paper all such unpremeditated effusions. it had so often happened to me that, after composing some snatch of poetry in my head, i could not recall it, that i would now hurry to my desk and, without once breaking off, write off the poem from beginning to end, not even taking time to straighten the paper, if it lay crosswise, so that the verses often slanted across the page. in such a mood i preferred to get hold of a lead pencil, because i could write most readily with it; whereas the scratching and spluttering of a pen would sometimes wake me from a poetic dream, confuse me, and so stifle some trifling production in its birth."[ ] [footnote : the translation of this passage is by miss minna steele smith.--_poetry and truth from my own life_ (london, .)] poetry produced as here described may certainly be regarded as part of the poet's "confession," but in the circumstances of its origin it is a world apart from the poetry composed in the fashion described in the passage preceding. the poet here does not coolly say to himself: "go to, i will make a poem to relieve my feelings"; he sings, to quote goethe's own expression, "as the bird sings," out of the sheer fulness of his heart, which insists on immediate expression.[ ] true it is that goethe, like all other poets, frequently wrote under no immediate pressure of inspiration, but to affirm this of the highest efforts of his genius is at once to contradict his own testimony and to misinterpret the conditions under which genius produces its results. [footnote : in a letter to w. von rumohr (september th, ), goethe calls "unaufhaltsame natur, unüberwindliche neigung, drängende leidenschaft" the "haupterfordernisse der wahren poesie." in two of his _zahme xenien_ goethe has expressed his opinion on the necessity of inspiration in poetic production:-- ja das ist das rechte gleis, dass man nicht weiss, was man denkt, wenn man denkt: alles ist als wie geschenkt. all unser redlichstes bemühn glückt nur im unbewussten momente. wie möchte denn die rose blühn, wenn sie der sonne herrlichkeit erkennte!] chapter iii at home in frankfort september, --april, on august th, , goethe left leipzig after a residence of nearly three years. he had gone to leipzig in the spirit of a prisoner released from his gaol; he left it in the spirit of one returning to durance. in his autobiography he has described the depressing conditions under which he re-entered his father's house. in body and mind he had found that in "accursed leipzig one burns out as quickly as a bad torch." in body he was a broken man. one night in the beginning of august he had been seized with a violent hemorrhage, and for some weeks his life hung by a thread. in his autobiography he assigns various reasons for his illness. as the result of an accident on his journey from frankfort to leipzig he had strained the ligaments of his chest, and the mischief was aggravated by a subsequent fall from his horse; he had suffered from the fumes of the acids he had inhaled in the process of etching; he had ruined his digestion by drinking coffee and heavy beer; and, in accordance with the precepts of rousseau, he had adopted a _régime_ which proved too severe for his enfeebled constitution. so he wrote in his old age, but his contemporary letters leave us in little doubt regarding the cause of his breakdown. he had, in fact, during the latter part of his sojourn in leipzig lived the life of the average german student of his day. he had fought a duel, and had been wounded in the arm; he had drunk more than was good for him, and we have seen that he had followed other courses not conducive to his bodily health. his mental condition was equally unsatisfactory. there was not a friend, he tells us, whom at one time or another he had not annoyed by his caprice, or offended by his "morbid spirit of contradiction" and sullen avoidance of intercourse. all through his life goethe seems to have tried his friends by his variable humours,[ ] but it was seldom that he completely alienated them, and he gratefully records how in his present stricken condition they rallied to his side, and put him to shame by their assiduous attentions. one of these friends, langer by name, who had succeeded behrisch as tutor to the young count, he specially mentions as helping to give a new turn to his thoughts. langer was religiously disposed, and found in goethe, now in a mood to receive them, a sympathetic listener to his theological views. under langer's influence he resumed his youthful study of the bible--not in the old testament, however, but in the new, which he read, he tells us, with "emotion and enthusiasm." it was the beginning of a new phase in his life which was to last for about a year and a half, a phase in which religion, if we are to accept the testimony of his autobiography, held the uppermost place in his thoughts. [footnote : when approaching his eightieth year, goethe remarked to chancellor von müller (march th, ): "wer mit mir umgehen will, muss zuweilen auch meine grobianslaune zugeben, ertragen, wie eines andern schwachheit oder steckenpferd."] it was with the feelings of "a shipwrecked seaman," he tells us, that he found himself again under his father's roof, though he characteristically adds that "he had nothing specially to reproach himself with." the atmosphere he found at home was not such as to put him in better spirits. father, mother and daughter had been living in mutual misunderstanding during the whole period of the son's absence in leipzig. cornelia had been made the sole victim of her father's pedagogic discipline which had been partially alleviated when it was shared with her brother, and she had come to regard her over-anxious parent with a hardness which goethe describes as having something dreadful (_fürchterliches_) in it. the arrival of goethe could not improve the existing relations in the household. as in the time before his going to leipzig, cornelia drew to him as the only member of the family who sympathetically understood her, and she remained as obdurate as ever in her sullen attitude towards her father. between goethe himself and his father their former estrangement continued, and we are given to understand that during the year and a half he now spent under the paternal roof there was no cordial understanding regarding the son's pursuits and his future career.[ ] dissatisfied with his son, as from his point of view he had every reason to be, herr goethe nevertheless cherished a secret pride in his genius. with a paternal pride, which is even touching in the circumstances, he carefully framed the drawings executed by his son, and collected and stitched together his letters from leipzig. [footnote : referring to the time he now spent in frankfort, goethe says in _dichtung und wahrheit_: "mit dem vater selbst konnte sich kein angenehmes verhältniss knüpfen."] as in the case of his leipzig period, goethe's reminiscent account of his present sojourn in frankfort gives a somewhat different impression of his main interests from that conveyed by his contemporary letters. if we accept the testimony of his autobiography, his attention was mainly turned to religion and to chemical and cabbalistical studies; from his correspondence, on the other hand, it would appear that his thoughts at least occasionally ran on subjects that had little to do with his spiritual welfare. at the same time, the apparent discrepancy need not imply self-contradiction. the correspondents to whom his letters were addressed were not persons specially interested in religion or chemistry or the cabbala, and, of all men, goethe was least likely to be obsessed by any set of ideas to the exclusion of all others. there can be little doubt, indeed, that during his year and a half in frankfort religion was a more predominant interest in his life than at any other period; and the fact is sufficiently explained by the circumstances in which he then found himself. from the condition both of his mind and body he was disposed to self-searching. regret for the past was foreign to his nature; in his mature judgment, indeed, such a feeling was resolutely to be checked in the interest of healthy self-development. yet in the retrospect of his leipzig days it seems to have crossed his mind that he might have spent them more wisely. "o that i could recall the last two years and a half,"[ ] he wrote to käthchen schönkopf, and he warns a male correspondent in leipzig to "beware of dissoluteness."[ ] and the state of his health during the greater part of this time in frankfort was such as to strengthen this mood. immediately after his return from leipzig he was threatened with pulmonary disease, and the state of his digestion became such as to alarm himself and his friends. on december th he was attacked by a violent internal pain, and for some days there were the gravest fears for his life. after two months' confinement to his room there was a partial recovery, but it was not till the spring of that his health was completely restored. [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] but the truth is that goethe's temporary preoccupation with religion is only another illustration of his "chameleon" temperament. in gay leipzig he had promptly taken on the ways of a man about town; now in frankfort he found himself in a very different society, and he as promptly entered into the spirit of it. the circle of which he now became a member was a company of religious persons, mostly women, friends or acquaintances of his mother. its most prominent member was that fräulein von klettenberg, already mentioned, a woman of high rank, culture, and refinement. to moral beauty of character in man or woman, goethe, at all periods of his life, was peculiarly sensitive,[ ] and in the fräulein he saw a woman who combined at once the most winning graces of her sex and the virtues of a saint. for women of all ages and all types goethe had always a singular attraction, and, though the fräulein must have discerned that he could never be a son or brother in the spirit, she was profoundly interested in the wayward youth in whom she saw a brand that deserved to be plucked from the burning. [footnote : _cf._ his beautiful characterisation of louis bonaparte, king of holland, in whom he found the embodiment at once of the christian graces and of _reine menschlichkeit_.] with a kind of half consent goethe entered into the spirit of the pious circle; he even attended communion in spite of his unhappy memories of that sacrament, and was present at a synod of the herrnhut community to which fräulein von klettenberg belonged. bound up with the fräulein's religion was a curious interest in the occult powers of nature from the point of view of their relation to the human body. it is with evident irony that goethe relates how in his own case the efficacy of these occult powers was tried. among the members of the religious community was a mysterious physician who was credited with possessing certain medicines of peculiar virtue. he was believed to have in store one drug--a powerful salt--which he reserved only for the most dangerous cases, and regarding which, though they had never seen the result of its operation, the community spoke with bated breath. at the vehement request of his mother the mysterious medicine was administered to goethe at the crisis of his malady, at the hour of midnight, and with all due solemnity. from that moment his illness took a favourable turn, and he steadily progressed towards recovery. "i need not say," is his comment, "how greatly this result strengthened and heightened our faith in our physician and our efforts to share such a treasure." partly, therefore, out of his own insatiable curiosity and partly out of sympathy with his new friends, goethe now betook himself to occult studies, and, in imitation of the fräulein von klettenberg, had a room fitted up with the necessary chemical apparatus. it was the first practical commencement of those scientific studies which were subsequently to occupy such a large part of his life. along with his chemical experiments went the study of such visionaries in science as paracelsus, van helmont, and others, but also of the great boerhaave, whose _institutes of medicine and aphorisms_, containing all that was then known of medical theory, he "gladly stamped on his mind and memory." to what extent are we to infer that goethe really shared the religious views of the circle of pious persons with whom he was now living in daily contact? his own account we can only regard as half jesting, half serious. he would never have spiritual peace, fräulein von klettenberg told him till he had a "reconciled god." goethe's rejoinder was that it should be put the other way. considering his recent sufferings and his own good intentions, it was god who was in arrears to him and who had something to be forgiven. the fräulein charitably condoned the blasphemy, but she and her fellow-believers were assuredly in the right when they denied the blasphemer the name of _christian_. yet, as has been said, goethe in his own way was seriously in search of a faith that would satisfy both his intellect and his heart, and he even attempted to construct one. a book that fell into his hands, gottfried arnold's _impartial history of the church and of heretics_,[ ] prompted the attempt. from this book, he tells us, he received a favourable impression of heretics, and the impression was comforting to one who, like himself, was looked on as a heretic by all his friends. moreover, he had often heard it said that in the long run every man must have his own religion; why, therefore, should he not essay to think out a creed that would at least satisfy himself? in brief outline he has described the system which he evolved from his miscellaneous historical and scientific studies. it is, as he himself says, a strange composite of neo-platonism, and of hermetical, mystical, and cabbalistical speculations, all leading by a necessary logic to the dogmas of redemption and the incarnation--a conclusion which at least points to the fact that for goethe at this time christianity was a religion specifically predestined for man's salvation. "we all become mystics in old age," is a remark of his own at that period of life; and the conclusion of the second part of faust, as well as other indications, proves that the remark was at least true of himself. but, as has often been pointed out, not only in old age, but at every period of his life, there was a mystic strain in him which was only kept in check by what was the strongest instinct of his nature--the instinct that demanded the direct vision of the concrete fact as the only condition on which he could build "the pyramid of his life." [footnote : probably goethe had this book in his mind when he wrote the sarcastic epigram:-- "es ist die ganze kirchengeschichte mischmasch von irrthum und von gewalt."] goethe's experience derived from his intercourse with fräulein von klettenberg and her friends undoubtedly enriched his own nature and enlarged his conceptions of the content of human life, of its possible motives and ideals. it was not a circle into which his own affinities would have led him, but being in it, he, as was his invariable habit, drew from it to the full all that it could give for his own building-up. and in enriching his own nature and widening his outlook, the experience enlarged the scope of his creative productiveness. but for his intercourse with these pious enthusiasts the confessions of a beautiful soul would not have found a place in _wilhelm meister_, and from the general picture of human life and its activities which it is the object of that book to present, there would have been lacking one conception of life and its responsibilities, not the least interesting in the history of the human spirit. most specific and important of all his gains from his association with the frankfort community, however, was that from it directly emerged what is universally regarded as his greatest creative effort--the first part of faust. the conception of that work was closely associated with the chemical experiments and cabbalistic studies suggested by his intercourse with fräulein von klettenberg and her circle, and not only suggested but carried out on the foundation that had thus been laid.[ ] [footnote : yet at a later date he would seem to have regarded his mystical studies as among the errors of his youth. in his _tagebuch_, under date august th, , he writes as follows, and the passage may be taken as a commentary on the whole period of his life with which we are dealing: "stiller rückblick auf's leben auf die verworrenheit betriebsamkeit, wissbegierde der jugend, wie sie überall herumschweift, um etwas befriedigendes zu finden. wie ich besonders in [transcriber's note: corrected error "im"] geheimnissen, dunklen imaginativen verhältissen eine wollust gefunden habe."] as has been said, goethe's contemporary letters addressed from frankfort to his friends bring a different side of his life before us from that presented in the autobiography. from these letters we gather that he was by no means wholly engrossed in religious or mystical studies. "during this winter," he wrote to his friend oeser, about two months after his arrival in frankfort, "the company of the muses and correspondence with friends will bring pleasure into a sickly, solitary life, which for a youth of twenty years would otherwise be something of a martyrdom."[ ] in spite of the affectionate solicitude of fräulein von klettenberg and other friends, he found frankfort a depressing place after gay leipzig. "i could go mad when i think of leipzig," wrote his sprightly friend horn, who had also tasted the pleasures of that place; and goethe shared his opinion. both also agreed that the girls of frankfort were vastly inferior creatures to those of leipzig. "i came here," goethe wrote in a poetical epistle to the daughter of oeser, "and found the girls a little--one does not quite like to speak it out--as they always were; enough, none has as yet touched my heart."[ ] it would appear, nevertheless, that he did find certain frankfort girls to his taste. "i get along tolerably here," he wrote to another correspondent. "i am contented and quiet; i have half-a-dozen angels of girls whom i often see, though i have lost my heart to none of them. they are pleasant creatures, and make my life uncommonly agreeable. he who has seen no leipzig might be very well off here."[ ] his life in frankfort was, in short, what he himself called it, an exile (_verbannung_). [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. , november th, .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] among his correspondents was käthchen schönkopf with whom, as we have seen, he had come to what he thought a satisfactory arrangement before leaving leipzig. in this correspondence it is the leipzig student, not the associate of the fräulein von klettenberg, who is before us. there is the same waywardness, there are the same irresponsible sallies which made him such a difficult lover. if we are to take him seriously, he still suffered from the pangs of rejected love and regretted that his former relations to käthchen had not continued. "a lover to whom his love will not listen," he writes, "is by many degrees not so unfortunate as one who has been cast off; the former still retains hope and has at least no fear of being hated; the other, yes, the other, who has once experienced what it is to be cast out of a heart which once was his, gladly avoids thinking, not to say speaking, of it."[ ] when this passage was written (june, ) he had received the news that käthchen was betrothed to another. in a final letter addressed to her (january rd, ) occur these characteristic words: "you are still the same loveable girl, and you will also be a loveable wife. and i, i shall remain goethe. you know what that means. when i mention my name, i mention all; and you know that, as long as i have known you, i have lived only as part of you."[ ] so closed a relation of which it is difficult to say how much there was in it of genuine passion, how much of artificial sentiment. serious intention in it there was none; from the first goethe perfectly realised the fact that he could never make käthchen his wife.[ ] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : goethe saw käthchen as a married woman in leipzig in , when he wrote to the lady who then held his affections (frau von stein): "mais ce n'est plus julie."] as at leipzig, his other distractions did not divert him from his interests in art and literature. when the state of his health permitted, he assiduously practised drawing and etching. "now as formerly," he wrote to oeser, "art is almost my chief occupation." but he also found time for wide excursions into the fields of general literature. before leaving leipzig he had exchanged with langer "whole baskets-full" of german poets and critics for greek authors, and these (though his knowledge of greek remained to the end elementary) he must have read in a fashion. latin authors he read were cicero, quintilian, seneca, and pliny. among the moderns shakespeare and molière already held the place in his estimation which they always retained. shakespeare he as yet knew only from the selections in dodd's _beauties_ and wieland's translation, but he already felt his greatness, and, as we have seen, names him with wieland and oeser as one of his masters. "voltaire," he wrote to oeser, "has been able to do no harm to shakespeare; no lesser spirit will prevail over a greater one."[ ] the german writers who now stood highest in his esteem were lessing and wieland. lessing's æsthetic teaching he accepted with some reserves, but this did not abate the admiration which he retained for him at every period of his life. "lessing! lessing!" he wrote in the same letter to oeser; "if he were not lessing, i might say something. write against him i may not; he is a conqueror.... he is a mental phenomenon, and, truly, such apparitions are rare in germany."[ ] that goethe, at this period, should have had such an unbounded admiration for wieland is an interesting commentary on his pietistic leanings; for wieland was now in his full pagan phase, so distasteful to moral germany, as goethe himself indicates. "i have already been annoyed on wieland's account," he writes--"i think with justice. wieland has often the misfortune to be misunderstood; frequently, perhaps, the fault is his own, but as frequently it is not." at a later day goethe clearly saw and marked in wieland that lack of "high seriousness" on which he himself came to lay such stress as all-important in literature and life, but in the meantime he freely acknowledged what wieland had been to him.[ ] "after him (oeser) and shakespeare," he wrote in the letter just quoted, "wieland is still the only one whom i can hold as my true master; others had shown me where i had gone astray; they showed me how to do better." [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : goethe has this entry in his _tagebuch_ (april nd, ): "wieland sieht ganz unglaublich alles, was man machen will, macht, und was hangt und langt in einer schrift."] what is noteworthy in the serious passages of goethe's frankfort letters is the advance in maturity and self-knowledge which they reveal when compared with those written from leipzig. penetrative remarks on men and things, such as give its value to his later correspondence, now begin to fall from his pen by the way. he consciously takes the measure of his own powers, and forms clear judgments on the literary and artistic tastes of the time. the poems which he had written in leipzig now seemed to him "trifling, cold, dry, and superficial," and, as in leipzig he had made a holocaust of his boyish poems, so he made a second holocaust of those produced in leipzig. in a long letter addressed (february th, ) to friederike oeser he thus expounds the artistic ideals at which he had then arrived: "a great scholar is seldom a great philosopher, and he who has laboriously thumbed the pages of many books regards with contempt the simple, easy book of nature; and yet nothing is true except what is simple--certainly a sorry recommendation for true wisdom. let him who goes the way of simplicity go it in quiet. modesty and circumspection are the essential characteristics of him who would tread this path, and every step will bring its reward. i have to thank your dear father for these conceptions; he it was who prepared my mind to receive them; time will give its blessing to my diligence which may complete the work he began."[ ] in point of fact, partly owing to the depressing conditions in which he found himself, and partly, it may be, out of his own deliberate purpose, goethe produced no work of importance during the year and a half he spent in frankfort. it was a period of incubation, and the stimulus to production was to come to him in another environment. [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. .] in the spring of goethe recovered his normal health and spirits, and, in accordance with his father's wish, he proceeded to strassburg to complete his legal studies. he left home with as intense a feeling of relief as he had left it on the previous occasion. between him and his father there had been growing estrangement, and the estrangement had ended in an open quarrel when he ventured to criticise the architecture of the paternal house, which had been constructed under his father's own directions. thwarted though the father had been in his hopes of his son, however, he was not turned from his purpose of affording him every opportunity of laying a broad foundation of general culture. it was his express wish that wolfgang, after completing his studies in strassburg, should travel in france and spend some time in paris. chapter iv goethe in strassburg april, --august, goethe was in his twenty-first year when he entered strassburg in the beginning of april, . from his maturer age and the chastening experience of the preceding eighteen months, therefore, it was to be expected that his management of his life in his new home would be more in accordance with his father's wishes than his wild ways in leipzig. in sending his son to strassburg it was the father's intention that he should complete those legal studies of which he had made a jest in leipzig, and qualify himself for the profession by which he was to make his future living. during his residence of some sixteen months in strassburg goethe did actually fulfil his father's wish, and returned to frankfort as a full-fledged licenciate of laws, but as little as at leipzig did the interests which engrossed him suggest future eminence in his profession. what again strikes us is the rapidity with which he caught the tone of his new surroundings. in strassburg he found a society whose ways of living and thinking were equally different from those of frankfort and of leipzig. strassburg had not the bounded intellectual horizon which made him feel himself an alien in his native town, nor, on the other hand, did it offer the opportunities for frivolous distraction which he found in the "little paris." strassburg had been a french town for a hundred years, but there was no town in germany more intensely german in its sympathies and aspirations. the officials and the upper classes in the town spoke french and were french in their tastes and habits, but the great majority of its citizens clung to their national traditions with the tenacity of the conquered. it is goethe's own testimony that his residence in strassburg precisely at this period of his life was a decisive circumstance for his future development. at the moment of his arrival, he had not yet completely broken with french models, and he would even appear to have had vague dreams that he would eventually choose the french language as his literary medium.[ ] ever responsive to the intellectual and spiritual atmosphere in which he found himself, however, the intensely german sympathies of his strassburg circle definitely turned him from a career which would have cut off his genius from its profoundest sources. [footnote : so we are led to infer from what he says in part iii., book ii. of _dichtung und wahrheit_.] his decisive rejection of french for german ideals was the governing fact of his sojourn in strassburg, but he had other experiences there which show that he was the same variable being of the leipzig days. his first letters from his new home would seem to show that he had brought with him something of the pious sentiments he had acquired from his association with fräulein von klettenberg, though his expression of them has a singular savour. about a fortnight after his arrival in strassburg he writes as follows to one limprecht, a theological student whose acquaintance he had made in leipzig: "i am now again _studiosus_, and, thank god, have now as much health as i need, and spirits in superabundance. as i was, so am i still; only that i stand better with our lord god and with his dear son jesus christ. it follows that i am a somewhat wiser man; and have learned by experience the meaning of the saying, 'the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom.' to be sure, we first sing hosanna to him who cometh yonder; well and good! even that is joy and happiness; the king must first enter before he ascends his throne." a week later he writes again to the same correspondent in a similar strain[ ]: "i am a different man, very different: for that i thank my saviour; and i am thankful also that i am not what i pass for."[ ] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] two months later (july th) he appears to be in the same pious frame of mind. "i still live somewhat at random," he writes to another correspondent, "and i thank god for it; and often, when i dare, i thank his son also that i am in circumstances which seem to enjoin this random mode of life.... reflections are very light wares, but prayer is a profitable business; a single welling-up of the heart to him whom we call _a_ god till we can name him _our_ god, and we are overwhelmed by the multitude of our mercies."[ ] [footnote : _ib._ pp. , .] this mood, we cannot help feeling, sits ill on goethe; pious as are his expressions, they have not the ring of the genuine believer. yet it would be unjust to charge him with deliberate hypocrisy. the truth is that at this time, and indeed throughout all his sojourn in strassburg, he was in a state of nervous irritability of which both himself and his friends were aware.[ ] other expressions in letters of the same date reveal a variability of moods, the only explanation of which is that he had not fully recovered from the depressed mental condition consequent on his long illness in frankfort. but his unnatural mood of piety did not long withstand the new influences to which he was now subjected, and it is in a letter to fräulein von klettenberg herself, written towards the end of august, that he intimates his growing distaste for the religious set to whom she had introduced him in strassburg. after telling her that he had been to holy communion "to remind him of the sufferings and death of our lord," he proceeds: "my intercourse with the religious people here is not quite hearty, though at first i did turn very heartily to them; but it seems as if it were not to be. they are so deadly dull when they begin that my natural vivacity cannot endure it." he goes on to say that he has made the acquaintance of one who is of a different way of thinking from these people--one "who from the coolness of blood with which he has always regarded the world thinks he has discovered that we are put in this world for the special purpose of being useful in it; that we are capable of making ourselves so; that religion is of some help in this; and that the most useful man is the best."[ ] [footnote : lerse, one of goethe's friends in strassburg, said: "da geriet goethe oft in hohe verzückung, sprach worte der prophezeiung und machte lerse besorgnisse, er werde überschnappen." (goethe's _gespräche_. gesamtausgabe von freiherrn v. biedermann, leipzig, , i. p. .)] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. pp. - .] the acquaintance to whom goethe thus refers was the most important person in the circle with which he was mainly associated during his residence in strassburg. it was a circle widely different in tastes and ways of thinking from that which he had left at frankfort. boarded in one house, the persons who composed it, about ten in number, daily met at a common table. of different ages, and mostly medical students, their talk, as goethe tells us, mainly turned on their professional studies. the talk of medical students is not favourable to the cultivation of a mystical piety, and it need not surprise us that a few weeks in this atmosphere were sufficient to give goethe a growing distaste for those religious sentiments which in his case were only a morbid distortion of his natural instincts. yet during these strassburg days there is no trace in him of that anti-christian attitude of mind which was to be one of his later phases. he decisively dissociated himself from the herrnhut society, and he ceased to speak in their language, but, as we have seen, he was still disposed to assign to religion a due place in the lives of reasonable men. in the president of the common table, dr. salzmann, the acquaintance to whom he referred, goethe found one who by his personal character and general views of life appealed to what was deepest in his own nature. salzmann's belief that "the most useful man is the best," may be said, indeed, to sum up goethe's own maturest conviction regarding the conduct of life. in his relations to salzmann, therefore, so far as goethe's ethical and religious ideals are concerned, we have the clearest light thrown on his strassburg period. as described by goethe himself, salzmann was a man of the world, characterised by a tact, good sense, and personal dignity which gave him an undisputed ascendancy over the miscellaneous company which met at the common table. from another member of the circle[ ] we have this additional tribute to salzmann's high character: "his place (at table) was the uppermost, and that would have been his natural place, even had he sat behind the door. his modesty does not permit me to pass a panegyric on him.... let my readers imagine a philosophy, based at once on feeling and a thorough grasp of principles, conjoined with the most genuine christianity, and he will have an idea of a salzmann." goethe and he, the same writer adds, were "the most cordial friends (_herzensfreunde_)." in leipzig the cynical _roué_ behrisch had been goethe's mentor; in strassburg his mentor was salzmann, and the fact emphasises all the difference between goethe's leipzig and strassburg days. that he chose salzmann as his chiefest friend and confidant at a period when self-control was still far from his reach, is the proof that _des lebens ernstes führen_--the strenuous conduct of life--was in reality, as he himself claimed, an imperative instinct of his nature. certainly he did not regulate his life in strassburg in accordance with the maxim of his self-chosen counsellor, yet we may conjecture that but for salzmann's restraining influence he would have gone further and faster than he actually did. in the extremity of what was to be his most passionate experience in strassburg, it was to salzmann that he poured forth all the tumult of his passion, and the very act of laying bare his heart to such a counsellor was a suggestion of the necessity of a certain measure of self-control. in connection with goethe's relations to salzmann we have also to note what is true of his relations to everyone at whose feet he chose for the time to sit. when a youth of eighteen he had written to behrisch, a man of thirty, on terms of perfect equality. he was now a little over twenty, and salzmann was approaching fifty and a man of the stamp we have seen, yet in goethe's letters to him there is no trace of the modest diffidence with which a youth usually addresses his seniors. a forward self-confidence, which some found objectionable, was in fact a characteristic of his youth and early manhood which is noticed by more than one observer. he entered a room, we are told, with a bold and confident air; and we have it from another witness that he was _d'une suffisance insupportable_.[ ] be it remarked, however, that there is equal testimony to the overpowering charm of his bearing and conversation--a charm due, as we learn, to a spontaneity of feeling and exuberance of youthful spirits which broke through all conventions and gave the tone to every company in which he found himself. [footnote : jung stilling.] [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._, i. pp. , . at an earlier period goethe was thus described: "er mag oder jahr alt sein, im übrigen hat er mehr ein gutes plappermaul als gründlichkeit." _ib._ p. .] goethe's relations to another member of the circle, who joined it somewhat later, show him in his most attractive light. this was johann heinrich jung, better known as jung stilling, now about thirty years of age. stilling was another of those originals who crossed goethe's path at different periods, and to whom he was at all times specially attracted. stilling had had a remarkable career; he had been successively charcoal-burner, tailor, schoolmaster, and private tutor, and he had come to strassburg to qualify himself for the practice of medicine. what attracted goethe to him was a type of mind and character at every point dissimilar from his own. with a simple mystical piety, which led him to believe that he was a special child of providence, stilling combined an intelligence and a zeal for knowledge which gave his words and his actions an individual stamp. it is from stilling that we have the most vivid description of goethe in these strassburg days. as he sat with a friend at the common table for the first time, they saw a youth enter who, by his "large bright eyes, magnificent forehead, handsome person, and confident air," arrested their attention.[ ] "that must be a fine fellow," remarked stilling's friend, but both agreed that they might look for trouble with him, as he seemed _ein wilder kamerad_. they were mistaken, and goethe was to prove one of stilling's warmest friends. stilling himself relates how, when one at the table directed a gibe at him, it was goethe who rebuked the railer. when stilling was in despair at the news of the illness of his betrothed, it was to goethe he flew for comfort, and he found him a friend in need. at a later date goethe published stilling's autobiography without his knowledge, and presented him with the copyright. it was with the lively recollection of these and other acts of friendship that stilling wrote the words which are the finest tribute ever paid to goethe: "goethe's heart, which few knew, was as great as his intellect, which all knew."[ ] [footnote : goethe's personal appearance made such a remarkable impression on all who met him that it deserves to be more minutely described. in stature he was slightly over the middle height, though the poise of his head, both in youth and age, gave the impression of greater tallness. till past his thirtieth year he was notably slender in figure, a defect in symmetry being the observable shortness of the legs, and he walked with swift, elastic step. the foot was elegantly shaped, but the hand was that of the descendant of ancestors who had been engaged in manual labour. the head was of oval form, the chin small and feminine, the height of the forehead remarkable. the face, which (in youth) gave the impression of smallness, was brown in complexion; the nose was delicately formed and slightly curved; the hair brown, abundant, and usually dishevelled. the feature which struck all who met him for the first time was the eyes, which were brown in colour, large, and widely-opened, with the white conspicuous, and piercingly bright.--an exhaustive study of the portraits and busts of goethe will be found in _goethes kopf und gestalt von karl bauer_, berlin, .] [footnote : stilling elsewhere says: "schade, dass so wenige diesen vortrefflichen menschen seinem herzen nach kennen!" others used similar expressions regarding goethe's mind and heart.] neither in frankfort, nor in leipzig, nor in strassburg had goethe as yet met the man in whom he could recognise his intellectual peer. in the beginning of september, , however, there came to strassburg one who, for the first time, impressed him with a sense of inferiority. this was johann gottfried herder, who, some five years goethe's senior, had a career behind him widely different from that of the fortunate son of the imperial councillor of frankfort. born of poor parents, he had had to fight his way at every step to the distinction which he had already attained. he had studied under kant at königsberg, had been successively assistant teacher, assistant pastor, and private tutor. in this last capacity he had travelled in france, and visited paris, where he had made the acquaintance, among others, of diderot and d'alembert. in hamburg he had for several weeks been in intercourse with lessing, whom goethe in a moment of caprice had neglected to visit in leipzig. already, moreover, he had produced work in literary criticism which by its suggestiveness and originality had attracted much attention, and notably among the youth of germany. in hard-won experience, in extent of knowledge and range of ideas, therefore, herder, as goethe himself speedily saw and acknowledged, was far ahead of him along those very paths where he himself was ambitious of distinction. the association of herder and goethe in these strassburg days is one of the interesting chapters in european literary history. goethe himself bears emphatic testimony to herder's determining influence at once on his mind and character. "the most significant event of that time, he tells us, "and one which was to have the weightiest consequences for me, was my acquaintance with herder and the closer bond that resulted from it." bond there was between them, but it was not the bond of genuine friendship. no two men, indeed, could be more essentially antipathetic by nature than herder and goethe. their antagonism was clearly apparent during their intercourse in strassburg, and in the end, after many years of uneasy relations, their alienation became complete. be it said that the traits in herder which estranged goethe from him were equally recognised and felt by others. naturally querulous, splenetic, and inconsiderate of others' feelings, the adverse circumstances of his early life had made him something of a timon among his fellows.[ ] his favourite author was swift, and from this preference and from the peculiarities of his own temper he was known among his acquaintances as the "dean." but there were sides to his nature which certainly did not exist in the "terrible" dean. herder was an enthusiast for his own ideas, and these ideas were of a quality and range that marked him as one of the pioneers of his time. religion as a primary instinct in man and the principal factor in his development was herder's lifelong and predominant interest. he identified himself with christianity, but it was a christianity understood by him in the most liberal sense, a christianity free from dogma, a spirit rather than a creed. as kindred to religion, poetry in his conception was inseparable from it in the essential being of man--poetry not as expressed in conventional forms but as the breath of the human spirit, and one of the most precious gifts for the purifying and elevation of humanity. these conceptions he owed, not to kant, to whom he had listened in königsberg, but to a less systematic teacher, j.g. hamann, whose eccentric character and visionary speculations had gained for him the designation of the "magus of the north." goethe came to be acquainted with the writings of hamann, and had a genuine admiration of him as a seer struggling with visions to which he was unable to give adequate utterance.[ ] it was in his conversations with herder, however, that he was introduced to those deeper conceptions of man and his possibilities which implied a complete emancipation from the mechanical philosophy which he had hitherto been endeavouring to find in a mystical religion. [footnote : r. haym, herder's biographer, says of him: "einen unbedingt erfreulichen, harmonischen eindruck kann dieser mann, der selbst von den 'gräulichen dissonanzen' redet, in die Äussererungen zuweilen ausklingen möchten, auch auf den günstigst gestimmten betrachter nimmermehr machen." (_herder nach seinem leben und seinen werken_, berlin, , i. p. .)] [footnote : goethe attached so much importance to many of hamann's utterances that, as late as , he had thoughts of bringing out an edition of hamann's works.] during the six months that herder resided in strassburg he was under treatment for a serious ailment of his eyes, and goethe was assiduous in his attendance on him, often remaining with him for whole days. their intercourse was not an unmixed pleasure for either. herder's mordant humour and spirit of contradiction were a daily trial to goethe's temper, and he describes his feelings of alternating attraction and repulsion as a wholly new experience in his life. herder, who had known diderot and d'alembert and lessing, appears, indeed, to have treated goethe as an undisciplined boy, spoilt by flattery, with no serious purpose in life, inconsequent and irresponsible.[ ] nor does he seem to have been specially impressed by any promise in the youth who was so completely to eclipse him in the eyes of the world. in his letters from strassburg he does not even mention goethe's name; and, when he subsequently referred to him, it was in terms he might have applied to any clever and confident youth. "goethe," he wrote, "is at bottom a good fellow, only somewhat superficial and sparrow-like,[ ] faults with which i constantly taxed him." if herder's moods frequently jarred on goethe, it is evident that the experience was mutual. the physical and mental restlessness, which is suggested by the epithet "sparrow-like," and which was noted by others as characteristic of goethe at this period, could not fail to irritate one like herder, naturally grave, sobered by hard experience, and then suffering from a painful and serious ailment. equally distasteful to herder were goethe's explosive outbursts in general conversation and his liking for practical jokes at the expense of his friends. to herder as to everyone else goethe aired his opinions with the "frank confidingness" which he notes as a trait of his own character, and which gave herder frequent opportunities for scathing criticism. herder gibed at his youthful tastes--at his collection of seals, at his elegantly-bound volumes which stood unread on his shelves, at his enthusiasms for italian art, for the writings of the cabbalists, for the poetry of ovid.[ ] [footnote : herder thought that goethe was lacking in enthusiasm.] [footnote : elsewhere herder calls goethe a _specht_, a wood-pecker.] [footnote : writing to a correspondent in , goethe says: "herder fährt fort, sich und andern das leben sauer zu machen."] at bottom, as herder said, goethe was a "good fellow," slow to take offence, and as little vindictive as is possible to human nature. this easy temper doubtless stood him in good stead under the fire of herder's sarcasms, but he himself specifies another reason for his docility which is equally characteristic: he endured all herder's satirical spleen because he had learned to attach a high value to everything that contributed to his own culture. according to his own account, he owed a double debt to herder--a determining influence on his character, and an equally determining influence on his intellectual development. till he met herder he had been treated as a youthful genius, as a "conquering lord," whose eccentricities were only a proof of his originality. very different was the measure he received from herder, who showed no mercy for "whatever of self-complacency, egotism, vanity, pride and presumption was latent or active" in him. herder, he says elsewhere, "exercised such a blighting influence on me that i began to doubt my own powers." whether or not goethe learned from herder the lesson of modesty regarding his own gifts, it is the truth that of all the sons of genius none has been freer than goethe was in his maturer years from every form of vanity and self-consciousness. it is on his intellectual debt to herder, however, that goethe dwells most emphatically in his account of their personal intercourse. daily and even hourly, he says, herder's conversation was a summons to new points of view. poetry was the subject in which both had a common interest, and from herder goethe learned to regard poetry "in another sense" from that in which he had hitherto regarded it. he had hitherto regarded poetry as an accomplishment; herder taught him that it was a gift of nature, of the essence of humanity, "the mother-speech of the human race." this expression was hamann's, who had been inspired to utter it out of his revulsion against french literature and his study of the literature of england. from england, indeed, came those conceptions of the nature and function of poetry which, as expounded and exemplified in the writings of hamann, herder, goethe, and others, were to effect a revolution in german literature. in a literary manifesto, written by an englishman, but apparently better known in germany than in england, german historians of their own literature have found the main impulse that gave occasion to this revolution. this manifesto was a pamphlet written by edward young, the author of _night thoughts_, entitled _conjectures on original composition, in a letter addressed to the author of sir charles grandison_. the dithyrambic style of the letter manifestly exercised a powerful influence on the prose of herder and goethe--prose charged with perfervid feeling, and hitherto unknown in german literature. young's main contention is that in literature genius must make rules for itself, and that imitation is suicidal. "genius," he says, "can set us right in composition, without the rules of the learned; as conscience sets us right in life, without the laws of the land." he lays it down as a maxim that "the less we copy the renowned ancients, we shall resemble them the more." the two golden rules in composition as in ethics are: know thyself and reverence thyself. such were the "conjectures on original composition," expounded to him by herder which led goethe to regard poetry in "another sense" from that in which he had hitherto understood it. and in confirmation of his views herder directed him to the exemplars where he would find their illustration--to the bible, to homer and pindar, to shakespeare and ossian, and, above all, to the primitive poetry of all peoples. as we shall see, goethe laid these counsels even too faithfully to heart; the first composition[ ] in which he attempted to realise them drew upon him herder's characteristic censure. and it is in this connection that we have to note the reserves which goethe makes in the acknowledgment of his debt to herder, "had herder been more methodical in his mental habit," he says, "he would have afforded the most valuable guidance for the permanent direction of my culture; but he was more disposed to probe and to stimulate than to give guidance and leading." so it was, as goethe adds elsewhere, that the result of herder's influence on him was a mental confusion and tumult, plainly visible in another of his early writings,[ ] where "quite simple thoughts and observations are veiled in a dust-cloud of unusual words and phrases." [footnote : _götz von berlichingen._] [footnote : von deutcher baukunst.] the homage which goethe pays to herder in the retrospect of his strassburg days is equally emphasised in his contemporary letters. "herder, herder," he writes in one place, "remain to me what you are. if i am destined to be your planet i will be it; be it willingly, faithfully."[ ] yet we may doubt whether herder's influence was, in truth, so determining a factor in his life as goethe himself represents it. herder, he tells us, first taught him a wise self-distrust, but we have seen that one of the lessons he professes to have learned from oeser was "to be modest without self-depreciation, and to be proud without presumption." before he saw herder, also, he had already divined the greatness of shakespeare and the futility of voltaire's criticisms of him. herder's ideas regarding the human spirit and its possibilities were in the air, and, had the two men never met, the probability is that goethe's development would not have been different from what it actually was. herder's general views were already incipient in him; and what herder did was to deepen and intensify them.[ ] nevertheless the collision for the first time with a mind that revealed to him his own immaturity was for goethe, as for every youth, a formative influence of the highest import and an epoch in his mental history. yet in his association with herder one fact has to be noted: goethe was not subjugated by him. he frankly recognised herder's superiority to himself in knowledge and experience, but he retained his mental independence. in his letters to herder, as in those to salzmann, he writes in terms of equality. in such words as the following, for example, we have not the attitude of the unquestioning disciple to his master. "pray let us try to see each other oftener. you feel how you would embrace one who could be to you what you are to me. don't let us be frightened like weaklings because we must often disagree: should our passions collide, can we not endure the collision?"[ ] might we not infer from this passage that not herder but goethe was the dominating spirit in their intercourse?[ ] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. p. . he adds that he would prefer to be mercury, the least of the seven planets that revolve round the sun, than first among the five that revolve round saturn.] [footnote : herder himself says of his influence on goethe: "ich glaube ihm, ohne lobrednerei, einige gute eindrücke gegeben zu haben, die einmal wirksam werden können."--haym, _op. cit._ i. .] [footnote : _ib._ band ii. p. .] [footnote : schiller, in a letter to c.g. körner, the father of the poet, writes (july, ): "he [herder] said that goethe had greatly influenced his intellectual development."] goethe found another source of inspiration in strassburg besides herder, and one which, as he describes it both in his autobiography and in a contemporary effusion, moved him even more powerfully. his first act on his arrival in strassburg, he tells us, was to visit its cathedral whose towers had caught his eye long before he reached the town. he had been taught by his old master oeser, who only represented the general opinion of the time in germany, that gothic architecture was the product of a barbarous age and could be regarded only with amazed disgust by every person of educated taste. but goethe's mystical studies and religious experiences in frankfort had not left him what he was in his leipzig days, and had given him an insight into movements of the human spirit which did not come within the cognizance of oeser. it was with predisposed sympathy, therefore, that he looked for the first time on a specimen of gothic architecture in its most august form. his first impression was of "a wholly peculiar kind"; and, without seeking to analyse the impression, "he surrendered himself to its silent working." thenceforward, during his stay in strassburg, the cathedral exercised a fascination upon him that evoked a new world of thought and feeling. it was his delight to ascend its tower at sunset and gaze on the rich landscape of alsace, whose beauty made him bless the fate that had placed him for a time amid such surroundings. he studied its structure with such minute care that he correctly divined the additions to the great tower which the original architect had contemplated, but which he had been unable to carry out. goethe has himself indicated how the impressions he received from the cathedral influenced his first literary productions which bore the stamp of his individuality. it formed a fitting background, he says, for such poetical creations as _götz von berlichingen_ and _faust_. to the cathedral and its suggestions, even more than to herder, perhaps, we should trace the inspiration that produced these works--the former of which met with herder's questioning approval. to the full force of that inspiration goethe gave direct expression in a composition which is the most characteristic product of his strassburg period--a short essay, entitled _of german architecture_. probably sketched in strassburg, it was not published till his return to frankfort. its rhapsodical style, as well as the conceptions of art and nature which it embodies, directly recall young's _conjectures on original composition_. like young he proclaims that genius is a law to itself, that all imitation and subservience to rule is disastrous to imaginative production. "principles," he declares, "are even more injurious to genius than examples." the burden of the essay is the glorification of the genius of the architect of strassburg cathedral, and of gothic architecture in general, which, goethe maintained, should be correctly designated "german" architecture, as having had its origin on german soil. with this youthful sally of goethe, time was to deal with its unkindest irony. later research has proved that gothic architecture is of french and not of german origin, and goethe himself did not remain faithful to his youthful enthusiasm. on his way home from strassburg, he relates, the sight of some specimens of ancient art in mannheim "shook his faith in northern architecture," and the impression he thus received was to become a permanent conviction. it was in the art of classical antiquity that he was to find the expression of his maturest ideal; when in later years his attention was temporarily turned to gothic architecture, it was with little of his youthful enthusiasm that he admitted its claim to our regard. "i cannot go on long without a passion," goethe wrote in his twenty-third year, and we have no difficulty in believing him. in strassburg he lived through a passion which was to be the occasion of his giving the first clear proof to the world that he was to be among its original poets. on the th of october, , more than five months after his arrival in strassburg, he wrote these words to a correspondent: "i have never so vividly experienced what it is to be content with one's heart disengaged as now here in strassburg."[ ] in the same letter in which these words occur he casually mentions that he has just spent a few days in the country with some pleasant people. these pleasant people were a pastor brion and his family living at sesenheim, an alsace village some twenty miles from strassburg. these few days spent with the brion family were to be the beginning of a history which, as goethe relates it in his autobiography, has the character of an idyll, but, when stripped of the poetic haze which he has thrown around it, is not far from tragedy. he himself is our sole authority for its incidents, and he chose so to tell them that the exact truth of the whole history can never be known.[ ] [footnote : _ib._ band i. p. .] [footnote : subsequent investigation has proved that goethe has committed several errors of fact in his narrative. for example, he relates that on his first visit to the sesenheim family he was vividly reminded of the family of the vicar of wakefield. in point of fact, he was introduced to goldsmith's work by herder, who came to strassburg subsequent to goethe's first visit to sesenheim.] the day following the writing of the letter just quoted, goethe wrote another letter which proves that his heart was no longer "disengaged." this letter is, in fact, a declaration of love to the youngest daughter of the sesenheim pastor, friederike--name of pleasantest suggestions in the long list of goethe's loves. the letter, it may be said, does not strike us as a happy introduction to the relations that were to follow; it would not have been written had friederike been the daughter of a house of the same social standing as his own. all through his relations to the sesenheim family, indeed, there is an unpleasant suggestion that it is the son of the imperial councillor who is indulging a passion which he is fully aware must one day end in a more or less bitter parting. "dear new friend," he begins, "such i do not hesitate to call you, for, if in other circumstances i have not much insight into the language of the eyes, at the first glance i saw in yours the hope of this friendship; and for our hearts i would swear. how should you, tender and good as i know you to be, not be a little partial to me in return?"[ ] in this strain the letter continues, and with a skill of approach that reminds us of his boast to his former confidant behrisch. [footnote : _ib._ p. .] goethe's relations with friederike lasted till the end of june, --a period of some ten months. of this period the first half would seem to have been passed by both in idyllic oblivion of consequences; during the second there came painful awakening to realities on the part of one of the lovers. as they lived in his memory, those first months that goethe spent in intercourse with the sesenheim circle were a long dream of happiness; and nowhere in his autobiography is he so obviously moved by his recollection of the past.[ ] the picture he has drawn of that time is, indeed, an idyll in every sense. we have the setting of a primitive home in a country arcadian in its bountifulness and beauty; in the centre of this home is the father, whose simple piety is in perfect keeping with his office and his surroundings; and the home is brightened by the presence of two daughters,[ ] the one of whom, friederike, appears as a vision of rustic grace and modest maidenhood. in the midst of this circle moves the richly-gifted youth, laying under a spell father, daughters, and all who come within the magnetism of his presence. in no other situation, indeed, are the attractive sides of goethe's character so strikingly manifest as in his intercourse with the sesenheim family and the friendly group attached to them. it is without a touch of egotism that he brings himself before us in all the buoyant spirits, the quickness of sympathy, the diversity of interests, the splendour of his gifts, which made wieland speak of him as "a veritable ruler of spirits." he humours the good father by drawing a plan for a new parsonage and painting his coach, he charms the daughters by his various accomplishments, and the neighbours who came about the parsonage are carried away by his frolicsome humour. "when goethe came among us girls when we were at work in the barn," related one who had seen him, "his jests and droll stories almost made work impossible."[ ] [footnote : it is recorded that his voice trembled as he dictated the passages referring to sesenheim and friederike.] [footnote : in reality, there were four daughters, but goethe omits mention of the other two in order to make more striking the resemblance between the family of the vicar of wakefield and that of sesenheim.] [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. pp. - .] the beginning of disillusion came on the occasion of a visit made by the two sisters to strassburg. in a world that was alien to her friederike lost something of the charm which was derived from her perfect fitness to her native surroundings, and it was brought home to goethe that there must be a rude awakening from the dream of the last few months. in may, , he paid a visit to sesenheim which lasted several weeks, and the picture we have of his state of mind during his visit shows that he felt that the time of reckoning had come. his mind was already clear that he and friederike must separate, but he was fully conscious that he was playing a sorry part. exaggerated language was such an inveterate habit with him at this period of his life that it is difficult to know with what exactness his words express his real feelings.[ ] that he was unhappy, however, we cannot doubt, make what reserves we may for rhetorical excesses of style. here are a few passages from letters addressed to his friend salzmann during his stay at sesenheim: "it rains without and within, and the hateful evening winds rustle among the vine leaves before my window, and my _animula vagula_ is like yonder weather-cock on the church tower." "for the honour of god i am not leaving this place just at present.... i am now certainly in tolerably good health; my cough, as the result of treatment and exercise, is pretty nearly gone, and i hope it will soon go altogether. things about me, however, are not very bright; the little one [friederike] continues sadly ill, and that makes everything look out of joint--not to speak of _conscia mens_, unfortunately not _recti_, which i carry about with me." "it is now about time that i should return [to strassburg]; i will and will, but what avails willing in the presence of the faces i see around me? the state of my heart is strange, and my health is as variable as usual in the world, which it is long since i have seen so beautiful. the most delightful country, people who love me, a round of pleasures! are not the dreams of thy childhood all fulfilled?--i often ask myself when my eye feeds on this circumambient bliss. are not these the fairy gardens after which thy heart yearned? they are! they are! i feel it, dear friend; and feel that we are not a whit the happier when our desires are realised. the make-weight! the make-weight! with which fate balances every bliss that we enjoy. dear friend, there needs much courage not to lose courage in this world of ours."[ ] [footnote : in the recently discovered manuscript of _wilhelm meisters theatralische sendung_ occurs this passage, evidently self-descriptive: "als knabe hatte er zu grossen prächtigen worten und sprüchen eine ausserordentliche liebe, er schmückte seine seele damit aus wie mit einem köstlichen kleide, und freute sich darüber, als wenn sie zu ihm selbst gehörten kindlisch über diesen äussern schmuck."] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band i. p. _ff._] the day of parting came at the end of june; on august th he passed the tests necessary for the licentiate of laws, and at the end of that month he left strassburg for home. he left friederike, he tells us, at a moment when their parting almost cost her her life[ ]; did he do her a greater wrong than his own narrative would imply? we cannot tell; but one thing is certain, from the first he never intended marriage. that he had pangs of self-reproach for the part he had played, his words above quoted may be taken as sufficient evidence, but alike from temperament and deliberate consideration of the facts of life he was incapable of the contrition that troubles human nature to its depths.[ ] yet in our judgment of him it is well to remember the ideas then current in germany regarding the relations between love and marriage. in his seventy-fourth year goethe himself said: "love is something ideal, marriage is something real; and never with impunity do we exchange the ideal for the real." the severest of moralists, kant, was of the same opinion. "the word _conjugium_ itself," he says, "implies that two married people are yoked together, and to be thus yoked cannot be called bliss." and to the same purport wilhelm von humboldt, one of the finest spirits of his time, declared that "marriage was no bond of souls." it was in a world where such opinions were entertained by men of the highest character and intelligence that goethe made his irresponsible addresses to the successive objects of his passion. [footnote : friederike died in . she was still alive when goethe was writing the story of their love.] [footnote : nichts taugt ungeduld, noch weniger reue; jene vermehrt die schuld, diese schafft neue.] the distractions of strassburg, no more than the distractions of leipzig, diverted goethe from what were his ruling instincts from the beginning--to know life and to be master of himself. as in leipzig, his professional studies in strassburg held little place in his thoughts; his law degree, he tells us, he regarded as a matter of "secondary importance." the subject he chose as his thesis--the obligation of magistrates to impose a state religion binding on all their subjects--was of a nature that had no living interest for him at any period of his life, and he wrote the thesis "only to satisfy his father." if his law studies were neglected, however, it was almost with feverish passion that he coursed through other fields of knowledge. in the _ephemerides_--a diary he kept in strassburg and in which he noted his random thoughts and the books that happened to be engaging him--we can see the range of his reading and the scope of his interests. occultism, metaphysics, science in many departments, literature ancient and modern, all in turn absorbed his attention and suggest a mental state impatient of the limits of the human faculties--the state of mind which he was afterwards so marvellously to reproduce in his _faust_.[ ] inspired by the conversation of the medical students who met at the common table, as well as by his own natural bent, he attended the university lectures on chemistry and anatomy, and thus laid a solid foundation for his subsequent original investigations in these sciences. extensive travels in the surrounding country were among the chief pleasures of his sojourn in strassburg, and these travels, as was the case with him always, were voyages of discovery. architecture, machinery, works of engineering, roman antiquities, the native ballads of the district--on all he turned an equally curious eye, and with such vivid impressions that they remained in his memory after the lapse of half a lifetime. [footnote : "i, too," goethe wrote in _dichtung und wahrheit_, "had trodden the path of knowledge, and had early been led to see the vanity of it."] in goethe the instinct for self-mastery was as remarkable as his instinct for knowledge. as the result of his illness in frankfort, his organs of sense were in a state of morbid susceptibility which "put him out of harmony with himself, with objects around him, and even with the elements." it throws a curious light on the nature of the man that amid all the preoccupations of his mind and heart in strassburg he could deliberately turn his thoughts to the cure of his jarred nerves. loud sounds disturbed him, and to deaden the sensitiveness of his ears he attended the evening tatoo; to cure himself of a tendency to giddiness he practised climbing the cathedral; partly to rid himself of a repugnance to repulsive sights he attended clinical lectures; and by a similar course of discipline he so completely delivered himself from "night fears" that he afterwards found it difficult to realise them even in imagination. in his old age goethe said of himself: "i have that in me which, if i allowed it to go unchecked, would ruin both myself and those about me." was it, as goethe would have us believe, by sheer purposive will that he kept this dangerous element in him under check and saved himself at critical moments from disaster? when we regard his life as a whole, the actual facts hardly justify such a conclusion. nature had given him two safeguards which, without any effort of will on his own part, assured him deliverance where the risk of wreckage was greatest--a consuming desire to _know_ which grew with every year of his life, and a versatility of temperament which necessitated ever-renewed sensations equally of the mind and heart. of the working of these two elements in him we have already had illustration; they will receive further illustration as we proceed. it would be within the truth to say that the period of goethe's sojourn in strassburg was the most memorable epoch of his life. during the eighteen months he spent there he received an intellectual stimulus from which we may date his dedication to the unique career before him, in which self-culture, the passion for knowledge, and the impulse to produce were all commensurate ends. moreover, as has already been said, it was in strassburg that his genius found its first adequate expression. and, what is worth noting in the case of one who was to range over so many fields, it was in lyric poetry that his genius first expressed itself. the problem with goethe is to discover which among his various gifts was nature's special dowry to him. what, at least, is true is that at different periods of his life he produced numbers of lyrics which the world has recognised as among the most perfect things of their kind. and among these perfect things are the few songs and other pieces inspired by friederike brion. doubtless his genius would have flowered had he never seen friederike, but it was among the many kind offices that fortune did him that he found the theme for his muse in one whose simple charm, while it excited his passion, at the same time chastened and purified it, and compelled a truthful simplicity of expression in keeping with her own nature. it was to friederike that goethe owed the pure inspiration which gives his verses to her a quality rare in lyric poetry, but to the writing of them there went all the forces that were then working in him. in these verses we have the conclusive proof that he now both understood and felt poetry "in another sense" from that in which he had hitherto understood and felt it. through them we feel the breath of another air than that which he had breathed when he strained his invention to make poetic compliments to käthchen schönkopf. in the intensity and directness of passion which they express we may trace all the new poetic influences which he had come under in strassburg--shakespeare, ossian, the popular ballad, the inspiration of herder. what is remarkable in these early lyrics, however, is that though they vibrate with the emotion of the poet, the emotion is under strict restraint and never passes into the watery effusiveness which is the inherent sin of so much german lyrical poetry. that "brevity and precision" which was the ideal he now put before him he had attained at one bound, and in none of his later work did he exemplify it in greater perfection. as his countrymen have frequently pointed out, these firstfruits of goethe's genius mark a new departure in lyrical poetry. in them we have the direct simplicity of the best lyrics of the past, but combined with this simplicity a depth of introspection and a fusion of nature with human feeling which is a new content in the imaginative presentation of human experience. in connection with goethe's leipzig period we gave a specimen of the best work he was then capable of producing; when we place beside it such a poem as the following, we are reminded of the saying of emerson that "the soul's advances are not made by gradation ... but rather by ascension of state." wilkommen und abschied. es schlug mein herz; geschwind zu pferde, und fort, wild, wie ein held zur schlacht! der abend wiegte schon die erde, und an den bergen hing die nacht; schon stund im nebelkleid die eiche, wie ein getürmter riese da, wo finsternis aus dem gesträuche mit hundert schwarzen augen sah. der mond von einem wolkenhügel sah kläglich aus dem duft hervor; die winde schwangen leise flügel, umsausten schauerlich mein ohr; die nacht schuf tausend ungeheuer; doch frisch und fröhlich war mein mut; in meinen adern welches feuer! in meinem herzen welche glut! dich sah ich, und die milde freude floss aus dem süssen blick auf mich, ganz war mein herz an deiner seite, und jeder athemzug für dich. ein rosenfarbnes frühlingswetter umgab das liebliche gesicht, und zärtlichkeit für mich, ihr götter! ich hofft' es, ich verdient' es nicht. doch ach, schon mit der morgensonne verengt der abschied mir das herz: in deinen küssen, welche wonne, in deinem auge, welcher schmerz! ich ging, du standst und sahst zur erden, und sahst mir nach mit nassem blick; und doch, welch glück geliebt zu werden! und lieben, götter, welch ein glück! welcome and parting. throbbed high my breast! to horse, to horse! raptured as hero for the fight; soft lay the earth in eve's embrace, and on the mountain brooded night. the oak, a dim-discovered shape, did, like a towering giant, rise-- there whence from forth the thicket glared black darkness with its myriad eyes. from out a pile of cloud the moon peered sadly through the misty veil; softly the breezes waved their wings; sighed in my ears with plaintive wail. night shaped a thousand monstrous forms; yet fresh and frolicsome my breast; and what a fire burned in my veins, and what a glow my heart possessed! i saw thee: in thine eye's soft gaze a tender, calm delight i knew; all motions of my heart were thine. and thine was every breath i drew. the freshest, richest hues of spring enhaloëd thy lovely face,-- and tenderest thoughts for me!--my hope! but, undeserved, ye powers of grace! but, ah! too soon, with morning's dawn, the hour of parting cramps my heart; then, in thy kisses, o what bliss! and in thine eye, what poignant smart! i went; thou stood'st and downward gazed, gazed after me with tearful eyes; yet, to be loved, what blessedness, and, oh! to love, ye gods, what bliss! chapter v frankfort--_gÖtz von berlichingen_ august, --december, goethe returned to frankfort at the end of august, , and, with the exception of two memorable intervals, he remained there till november, , when he left it, never again to make it his permanent home. this period of four years and two months is in creative productiveness unparalleled in his own career, and is probably without a parallel in literary history. during these years he produced _götz von berlichingen_ and _werther_, both of which works, whatever their merits or demerits, are at least landmarks, not only in the history of german, but of european literature. to the same period belong the original scenes of _faust_, in which he displayed a richness of imagination with a spontaneity of passion, of thought and of feeling, to which he never attained in the subsequent additions he made to the poem. in these scenes are already clearly defined the two figures, faust and mephistopheles, which have their place in the world's gallery of imaginative creations beside ulysses and don quixote, hamlet and falstaff; and there, too, in all her essential lineaments, we have gretchen, the most moving of all the births of a poet's mind and heart. and, besides these three works of universal interest, there belong to the same period a series of productions--plays, lyrics, essays--which, though at a lower level of inspiration, were sufficient to mark their author as an original genius with a compass of thought and imagination hitherto unexampled in the literature of his country. had goethe died at the age of twenty-six, he would have left behind him a legacy which would have assured him a place with the great creative minds of all time. this extraordinary productiveness of itself implies an intellectual and spiritual ferment which receives further illustration from the poet's letters written during the same period. in these letters we have the expression of a mind distracted by contending emotions and conflicting aims, now in sanguine hope, now paralysed with a sense of impotence to adjust itself to the inexorable conditions under which life had to be lived. moods of thinking and feeling follow each other with a rapidity of contrast which are bewildering to the reader and hardly permit him to draw any certain inference as to the real import of what is written. in one effusion we have lachrymose sentiment which suggests morbid self-relaxation; in another, a bitter cynicism equally suggestive of ill-regulated emotions. we have moods of piety and moods in which the mental attitude towards all human aspirations can only be described as mephistophelian. goethe himself was well aware of a congenital morbid strain in him which all through his life demanded careful control if he were to avert bodily and mental collapse. and at no period of his life did external conditions and inward experiences combine to put his self-control to a severer test than during these last years in frankfort. frankfort itself, as we shall see, had become more distasteful to him than ever, and his abiding feeling towards it, now as subsequently, was that he could not breathe freely in its atmosphere. on his return from strassburg his father received him with greater cordiality than on his return from leipzig, but the lack of real sympathy between them remained, and was undoubtedly one of the permanent sources of goethe's discontent with his native town. with no interest in his nominal profession, he had at the same time no clear conception of the function to which his genius called him. throughout these years in frankfort he continued uncertain whether nature meant him for a poet or an artist, and we receive the impression that his ambition was to be artist rather than poet. from the varied literary forms in which he expressed himself, also, we are led to infer that in the domain of literature he was still only feeling his way. if the diversity of his gifts thus distracted him, his emotional experiences, it will appear, were not more favourable to a settled aim and purpose. one paroxysm of passion succeeded another, with the result that he was eventually, in self-preservation, driven to make a complete breach with his past, and to seek deliverance in a new set of conditions under which he might attain the self-control after which he had hitherto vainly striven. this prolonged conflict with himself was doubtless primarily due to his own inherited temperament, but it was also in large measure owing to the character of the society and of the time in which the period of his youth was passed. had he been born half a century earlier--that is to say, in a time when the current speculation was bound up with a mechanical philosophy, and when the limits of emotion were conditioned by strict conventional standards--he might have been a youth of eccentric humours, but the morbid fancies and wandering affections that consumed him could not have come within his experience. but by the time when he began to think and feel, rousseau had written and opened the flood-gates of the emotions, and sterne had shown how accepted conventions might appear in the light of a capricious wit and fancy which probed the surface of things. in goethe's letters, which are the most direct revelation of his mental and moral condition during the period, the influence of rousseau and sterne is visible on every page, and the fact has to be remembered in drawing any conclusions as to the real state of his mind from his language to his various correspondents. the fashion of giving exaggerated expression to every emotion was, in fact, the convention of the day, and we find it in all the correspondence, both of the men and women of the time. that it was in large degree forced and artificial and must be interpreted with due reserves, will appear in the case of goethe himself. there are three critical epochs during these frankfort years, each marked by a central event which resulted in new developments of goethe's character and genius. in the period between his return to frankfort in august, , and may, , was written the first draft of _götz von berlichingen_, the eventual publication of which made him the most famous author in germany. during these months the memories of strassburg are fresh in his mind, and the recollection of friederike and the teaching of herder are his chief sources of inspiration. in may, , he went to wetzlar, where, during a residence of three months, he passed through another emotional experience which, two years later, found expression in _werther_, of still more resounding notoriety than _götz_. the opening of saw him entangled in a new affair of the heart of another nature than those which had preceded it, and resulting in a mental turmoil that drove him to seek deliverance in a new field of life and action. there were other incidents and other experiences that moved him less or more during this period of his career, but it is in connection with these three central events that his character and his genius are presented in their fullest light, and are best known to the world. we have it on goethe's own testimony that, on his return from strassburg to frankfort, he was healthier in body and more composed in mind than on his return from leipzig two years before. still, he adds, he was conscious of a sense of tension in his nature which implied that his mind had not completely recovered its normal balance. so he writes in his autobiography, and his contemporary letters fully bear out his memories of the period. he certainly returned from strassburg with a more satisfactory record than from leipzig. he had actually completed the necessary legal studies, and was now licentiate of laws. his _disputation_ had won the approval of his father, who was even prepared to go to the expense of publishing it. in his son's purely literary efforts during his strassburg sojourn, also, he showed an undisguised pleasure, and he would evidently have been quite content to have seen him combine eminence in his profession with distinction in literature. when goethe, therefore, immediately on his arrival in the paternal home, took the necessary steps to qualify himself for legal practice, it seemed that the father's ambition for his wayward son was at length about to be realised.[ ] but the apparent reconciliation of their respective aims was based on no cordial understanding, and the son, it is evident, made no special effort to adapt himself to his father's idiosyncrasies. an incident he himself relates curiously illustrates his careless disregard of the conventions of the family home. on his way from strassburg he picked up a boy-harper who had interested him, and seriously thought of making him a member of the household. the reconciling mother realised the absurdity of lodging in the mansion of an imperial rath a strolling musician, who would have to earn his living by daily visits to the taverns of the town, and she met her son's good-humoured whim by finding a home for the boy in more fitting quarters. these noble bohemian humours of his son, which, as we shall see, displayed themselves in other unconventional habits, were not likely to propitiate a father who, as we are told, "leading a contented life amid his ancient hobbies and pursuits, was comfortably at ease, like one who has carried out his plans in spite of all hindrances and delays." in point of fact, as during goethe's former sojourn at home, his estrangement from his father increased from year to year, and he came to speak of him with a bitterness which proves that, for a time at least, any kindly feeling that existed between them was effaced. [footnote : in point of fact, only two legal cases passed through goethe's hands during the first seven months after his return. during the later period of his stay in frankfort he was more busily engaged with law.] again, as after his return from leipzig, it was his sister cornelia who made home in any degree tolerable for the brother whom she alone of the family was sufficiently sympathetic and sufficiently instructed fully to understand. she had gathered round her a circle of attractive and educated women, of whom she was the dominating spirit, and in whose company her brother, always appreciative of feminine society, now found a congenial atmosphere. associated with the circle were certain men with kindred interests, among whom goethe specially names the two brothers schlosser as esteemed counsellors.[ ] both were accomplished men of the world, the one a jurist, the other engaged in the public service; and both were keenly interested in literature. it was a peculiarity of goethe, even into advanced life, that he seems always to have required a mentor, whose counsels, however, he might or might not choose to follow. at this time it was the elder of these two brothers who played this part, and goethe testifies that he received from him the sagest of advice, which, however, he was prevented from following by "a thousand varying distractions, moods, and passions." [footnote : the younger brother, georg, subsequently married cornelia.] what these distractions were is vividly revealed in his correspondence of the time. first, his whole being was in disaccord with the social, religious, and intellectual atmosphere of frankfort; he felt himself cribbed, cabined, and confined in all the aspirations of his nature; and the future seemed to offer no prospect of more favouring conditions. two months after his return he communicates to his friend salzmann in strassburg his sense of oppression in his present surroundings. arduous intellectual effort is necessary to him, he writes, "for it is dreary to live in a place where one's whole activity must simmer within itself.... for the rest, everything around me is dead.... frankfort remains the nest it was--_nidus_, if you will. good enough for hatching birds; to use another figure, _spelunca_, a wretched hole. god help us out of this misery. amen."[ ] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, band , pp. - .] in himself, also, there was a turmoil of thoughts and emotions which, apart from depressing surroundings, was sufficient to occasion alternating moods of exaltation and despair. the upbraiding memory of friederike pursued him, and we may take it that in his autobiography he faithfully records his continued self-reproach for his abrupt desertion of her. "friederike's reply to a written adieu lacerated my heart. it was the same hand, the same mind, the same feeling that had been educed in her to me and through me. for the first time i now realised the loss she suffered, and saw no way of redressing or even of alleviating it. her whole being was before me; i continually felt the want of her; and, which is worse, i could not forgive myself my own unhappiness." we may ascribe it either to delicacy of feeling or to the consideration that their further intercourse was undesirable, that he ceased to communicate directly with her. a drawing by his own hand, which he thought would give her pleasure, he sends to her through salzmann, who is requested to accompany it with or without a note, as he thinks best. through the same hands he sends to her a play (_götz von berlichingen_), in which a lover plays a sorry part, and adds the comment that "friederike will find herself to some extent consoled if the faithless one is poisoned." but the profoundest source of his unrest was neither the distastefulness of frankfort society nor his remorse for his conduct to friederike. it was his concern with his own life and what he was to make of it. it is this concern that gives interest to his letters of the period which otherwise possess little intrinsic value, either in substance or form. what we find in them, and what is hardly to be found elsewhere, is a mirror of one of the world's greatest spirits in the process of attaining self-knowledge and self-mastery in the direction of powers which are not yet fully revealed to him. at times, it appears to him as if the task were hopeless of establishing any harmony between his own nature and the nature of things. now he is filled with an exhilarating confidence in his own gifts and in his destiny to bring them to full fruition; now he seems to be paralysed with a sense of impotence in which we see all the perils attending his peculiar temperament. in his letters to his strassburg friend salzmann we have the frankest communications regarding his alternating moods of depression and hopefulness. "what i am doing," he writes immediately after his settlement in frankfort, "is of no account. so much the worse. as usual, more planned than done, and for that very reason nothing much will come of me."[ ] to a different purport are his words in a later note (november th) to the same correspondent: "in searching for your letter of october th, i came upon a multitude of others requiring answers. dear man, my friends must pardon me, my _nisus_ forwards is so strong that i can seldom force myself to take breath, and cast a look backwards."[ ] in the opening of the year, (february rd), he is in the same sanguine temper: "prospects daily widen out before me, and obstacles give way, so that i may confidently lay the blame on my own feet if i do not move on."[ ] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] the "_nisus_ forwards," of which he speaks, had no connection with the worldly ambition for success in his profession. what was consuming him was the double desire of mastering himself and at the same time of giving expression to the seething ideas and emotions which rendered that self-mastery so hard of attainment. from the moment of his return to frankfort we see all the seeds fructifying which had taken root in him during his residence in strassburg. he sends to herder the ballads he had collected in alsace, and sends him, also, translations from what he considered the original of the adored ossian. but the overmastering influence in him at this time was the genius of shakespeare, as it had been interpreted for him by herder. goethe's unbounded admiration for shakespeare had already found expression in the rhapsody composed in strassburg to which reference has been made, and to the circle of men and women who had gathered round his sister, he communicated his enthusiasm. their enthusiasm took a form perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the time. shakespeare's birthday occurred on october th,[ ] and it was resolved that, at once as a tribute to their divinity and a challenge to all his gainsayers, the auspicious day should be celebrated with due rites. at cornelia's instance, herder, as high-priest of the object of their worship, was invited to honour the occasion. if he could not be present in body, he was at least to be present in spirit, and he was to send his essay on shakespeare that it might form part of the day's liturgy. so under the roof of the precise imperial rath, to whom klopstock's use of unrhymed verse in his _messias_ was an unpardonable innovation in german literature, the memory of the "drunken barbarian," as with voltaire he must have regarded him, was celebrated--whether in his presence or not, his son does not record.[ ] [footnote : so it was then thought, but the exact date is uncertain.] [footnote : the toast of the evening--"the will of all wills"--was given by goethe, who thereupon delivered the panegyric on shakespeare which he had composed in strassburg. this toast was followed by one to the health of herder.] but goethe was about to pay more serious homage to the master, as he then understood him. on november th, he informed salzmann that he was engaged on a work which was absorbing him to the forgetfulness of homer, shakespeare, and everything else. he was dramatising the history of "one of the noblest of germans," rescuing from oblivion the memory of "an honest man." the "noblest of germans" was gottfried von berlichingen ( - ), one of those "knights of the cows," whose predatory propensities were the terror of germany throughout the middle ages, and who appears to have been neither better nor worse than the rest of his class. while still in strassburg, goethe had noted gottfried as an appropriate subject for dramatic treatment, but, as he records in his autobiography, it was immediately after his return to frankfort that he first put his hand to the work. stimulated to his task by his sister cornelia, in the course of six weeks he had completed the play which, on its publication two years later, was to make him the most famous author in germany. goethe's choice of götz as a theme on which to try his powers is a revelation of the motives that were now compelling him. of the nature of these motives he has himself given somewhat conflicting accounts. he tells his contemporary correspondents that the play was written to relieve his own bosom of its perilous stuff; to enable him "to forget the sun, moon, and dear stars," and, again, that its primary object was to do justice to the memory of a great man. writing in old age, he assigns still another motive as mainly prompting him to the production of the play: it was written, he says, with the express object of improving the german stage, of rescuing it from the pitiful condition into which it had fallen during the first half of the eighteenth century. what is entirely obvious, however, is that shakespeare is the beginning and end of the inspiration of the _geschichte gottfriedens von berlichingen mit der eisernen hand_, as the play in its original form was entitled. in its conception and in its details shakespeare is everywhere suggested, though it may be noted that the comic element with which shakespeare flavours his tragedies is absent from _götz_. but for shakespeare the play could not have taken the shape in which we have it. given the model, however, goethe had to infuse it with motives which would have a living interest for his own time. one of these motives was the admiration of great men which goethe shared with the generation to which he belonged. during this frankfort period he was successively attracted by such contrasted types of heroes as julius cæsar, socrates, and mahomet as appropriate central figures for dramatic representation. "it is a pleasure to behold a great man," one of the characters in _götz_ is made to say; and, if goethe had any determinate aim when he took his theme in hand, it was to present the spectacle of a hero for admiration and inspiration. as it was, deeper instincts of his nature asserted themselves as he proceeded with his work, and götz is overshadowed by other characters in the drama in whom the poet himself, by his own admission, came to find a more congenial interest. the play exists in three forms--the first draft being recast for publication in , which second version was adapted for the weimar theatre in collaboration with schiller in . it is generally admitted that in its first form we have the fullest manifestation of its author's genius, and equally the fullest expression of the original inspiration that led to its production. like shakespeare he had a book for his text--the memoirs of gottfried, written by himself; and like shakespeare he took large liberties with his original--no fewer than six characters in the play, two of whom are of the first importance, being of goethe's own invention. the plot may be briefly told. adelbert von weislingen, a knight of the empire, had been the early friend of gottfried, but under the influence of the bishop of bamberg and others he had taken a line which led him into direct conflict with gottfried. while the latter, identifying himself with the lesser german nobles, was for supporting the power of the emperor, weislingen had identified himself with the princes whose object was to cripple it. gottfried seizes weislingen while on his way to the bishop of bamberg, and bears him off to his castle at jaxthausen. the contrasted characters of the two chief personages in the play are now brought before us--gottfried the rough soldier, honest, resolute, and weislingen, more of a courtier than a soldier, weak and unstable. overborne by the stronger nature of gottfried, weislingen agrees to break his alliance with the bishop, and, as a pledge for his future conduct, betroths himself to gottfried's sister marie, who, weakly devout, is a counterpart to gottfried's wife elizabeth, who is depicted as a spartan mother.[ ] to square accounts with the bishop, weislingen finds it necessary to proceed to bamberg, and the second act tells the tale of his second apostacy. at bamberg he comes under the spell of an enchantress in the shape of a beautiful woman, adelheid von walldorf, a widow, whose physical charms are represented as irresistible. weislingen becomes her creature, forswears his bond with gottfried, and rejoins the ranks of his enemies--news which gottfried is reluctantly brought to credit. in the third act we find gottfried in a coil of troubles. he has robbed a band of merchants on their way from the frankfort fair, and, at the prompting of weislingen, the emperor puts him under the ban of the empire, and dispatches an armed force against him. beaten in the field and besieged in his own castle, he is at length forced to surrender. in the fourth act he is a prisoner in heilbronn, but is rescued by franz von sickingen, a knight of the same stamp and with the same political sympathies as himself. sickingen, who is on friendly terms with the emperor, does him the still further service of securing his relief from the ban, whereupon gottfried settles down to a peaceful life in his own castle, and to relieve its monotony betakes himself to the uncongenial task of writing his own memoirs. in the fifth act we sup with horrors. the peasants rise in rebellion and wreak frightful vengeance on their oppressors. in the hope of controlling them, gottfried, at their own request, puts himself at their head, but finds himself powerless to check their excesses, and on their defeat he is again taken prisoner. but the main interest of the last act is concentrated in adelheid, who now reveals all the depths of her sensual nature and her unscrupulous ambition. weislingen she has discovered to be a despicable creature, and she attaches herself to sickingen, in whom she finds a man after her own heart, able to satisfy all the cravings of her nature. she poisons weislingen, who dies as he has lived, the victim of weakness rather than of wickedness. her crimes are known to the judges of the vehmgericht, who in their mysterious tribunal adjudge her to death, which is effected in a curious scene by one of their agents. the drama closes with the death of gottfried in prison, baffled in his dearest schemes, blasted in reputation, and with gloomy forebodings for the future of his country. [footnote : in the characters of marie and elizabeth we have traits of friederike and of goethe's mother.] such is an outline of the production in which goethe made his first appeal to his countrymen at large,[ ] and which is in such singular contrast to the ideals of his maturity. that it was not the inevitable birth of his whole heart and mind is proved by the fact that he never repeated the experiment. neither the incidents nor the hero of the piece, indeed, were of a nature to elicit the full play of his genius. goethe had not, like scott, an inborn interest in the scenes of the camp and the field, and could not, like scott, take a special delight in describing them for their own sake. to the portrayal of a character like gottfried scott could give his whole heart, but goethe required characters of a subtler type to enlist his full sympathies and to give scope to his full powers. goethe himself has told us how, as he proceeded in the writing of the play, his interest in his hero gradually flagged. in depicting the charms of adelheid, he says, he fell in love with her himself, and his interest in her fate gradually overmastered him. in truth, it is in scenes where gottfried is not the principal actor that any originality in the play is to be found, for in these scenes goethe was drawing from his own experience and recording emotions that had distracted himself. in the unstable weislingen he represents a weakness of his own nature of which he was himself well aware. "you are a chameleon," adelheid tells weislingen; and, as we have seen, goethe so described himself. it is, therefore, in the relations of weislingen to marie and adelheid that we must look for the spontaneous expression of the poet's genius, working on material drawn from self-introspection. in weislingen's hasty wooing and equally hasty desertion of marie we have an exaggerated presentment of goethe's own conduct to friederike, to which objection may be taken on the score of delicacy, though he himself suggests that it is to be regarded as a public confession of his self-reproach. in depicting marie and weislingen he had friederike and himself before him to restrain his imagination within the limits of nature and truth. in the case of adelheid he had no model before him, and the result is that, with youthful exaggeration, he has made her a beautiful monster with no redeeming touch, and, therefore, of little human interest. such a character was essentially alien to goethe's own nature, and so are the melodramatic scenes which depict her desperate attempts to escape from her toils and the proceedings of the avenging tribunal that had marked her for judgment. [footnote : as we have seen, the leipzig book of verses did not attract general attention.] as in the case of all goethe's longer productions, critical opinion has been divided from the beginning regarding the intrinsic merits of _götz_. in the opinion of critics like edmond scherer it is a crude imitation of shakespeare with little promise of its author's future achievement, while other critics, like lewes, regard it as a "work of daring power, of vigour, of originality." on one point goethe himself and all his critics are agreed: the play as a whole is only a succession of scenes, loosely strung together, with no inner development leading up to a determinate end. in his later life goethe characterised shakespeare's plays as "highly interesting tales, only told by more persons than one." whatever truth there may be in this judgment in the case of shakespeare, it exactly describes _götz_. it is as a tale, a narrative, and not as a drama, that it is to be read if it is to be enjoyed without the sense of artistic failure. the anachronisms with which the piece abounds, and which hegel caustically noted, have been a further stumbling-block to the critics.[ ] in the second scene of the first act, luther is introduced for no other purpose than to expound ideas which come strangely from his mouth, but which were effervescing in the minds of goethe and his contemporaries--the ideas which they had learned from rousseau regarding the excellence of the natural man. similarly, in the scene following, educational problems are discussed which sound oddly in the castle of a mediæval baron, but which were awakening interest in goethe's own day. in the supreme moments of his career--on the occasion of the surrender of his castle and in his last hour--gottfried is made to utter the word _freedom_ as the watchword of his aspirations, but in so doing he is expressing goethe's own passionate protest against the conventions of his age in religion, in philosophy, and art, and not a sentiment in keeping with the class of which he is a type. [footnote : lessing strongly disapproved of _götz_ as flouting the doctrines laid down in his _dramaturgie_. when his brother announced to him that _götz_ had been played with great applause in berlin, his cold comment was that no doubt the chief credit was due to the decorator.] these blemishes in the play as a work of art are apparent, yet it may be said that it was mainly owing to these very blemishes that the "beautiful monster," as wieland called it, took contemporaries by storm and retains its freshness of interest after the lapse of a century and a half. the successive scenes are, indeed, without organic connection, but each scene by itself has the vivacity and directness of improvisation. nor do the anachronisms to which criticism may object really mar the interest of the work. rather they constitute its most characteristic elements, proceeding as they do from the poet's own deepest intellectual interests, and, therefore, from his most spontaneous inspiration. but the most conclusive testimony to the essential power of the play is the effect it produced not only in german but in european literature. its publication in its altered form in had the effect of a bomb on the literary public of germany. it sent a shudder of horror through the sticklers for the rules of the classical drama which it ignored with such contemptuous indifference; a shudder of delight through the band of effervescing youths who shared goethe's revolutionary ideals, and to whom _götz_ was a manifesto and a challenge to all traditional conventions in literature and life. it was the immediate parent of that truly german growth--the literature of _sturm und drang_, whose exponents, says kant, thought that they could not more effectively show that they were budding geniuses than by flinging all rules to the winds, and that one appears to better advantage on a spavined hack than on a trained steed. the literature of _sturm und drang_ was a passing phenomenon, but the influence of _götz_ did not end with its abortive life. but for _götz_ schiller's early productions would have been differently inspired; and to _götz_ also was due much of the inspiration of the subsequent german romantic school, though many of its developments were abhorrent to goethe's nature both in youth and maturity. it emancipated the drama from conventional shackles, but it did more: it extended the range of national thought, sentiment, and emotion, and for good and evil introduced new elements into german literature which have maintained their place there since its first portentous appearance. and german critics are unanimous in assigning another result to the publication of _götz_: in its style as in its form it set convention at naught, and thus marks an epoch in the development of german literary language. not since luther, "whose words were battles," had german been written so direct from the heart and with such elemental force as makes words living things. it has been a commonplace remark that , the year of the publication of _götz_, corresponds in european literature to in european political history. the remark may be exaggerated, but, if a work is to be named which marks the advent of what is covered by the vague name of romanticism, _götz_ may fairly claim the honour. it had precursors of more or less importance in other countries, but, by the nature of its subject, by its audacious disregard of reigning models, and by its resounding notoriety, it gave the signal for a fresh reconstruction of art and life. it gave the decisive impulse to the writer who is the european representative of the romantic movement, and whose genius specifically fitted him to work the vein which was opened in _götz_--a task to which goethe himself was not called. in scott published his translation of _götz_,[ ] and followed it up by his series of romantic poems in which the influence of goethe's work was the main inspiration. but it was in his prose romances, dealing with the middle ages, that he found the appropriate form for his inspiration--a form which ensured a popular appeal, impossible in the case of the severer form of the drama. in the enchanter's sway which scott exercised over europe during the greater part of the nineteenth century, the memories of _götz_ were not the least potent of his spells. [footnote : two of the scenes in _götz_ were imitated by scott in his own work--the vehmgericht scene in _anne of geierstein_ and the description of the siege of torquilstone by rebecca to the wounded ivanhoe. scott also borrowed from _egmont_.] chapter vi influence of merck and the darmstadt circle specially associated with _götz von berlichingen_, but associated also with goethe's general development at this time, was another of those mentors whose counsel and stimulus were necessary to him at all periods of his life. this was johann heinrich merck, the son of an apothecary in darmstadt and now paymaster of the forces there. of merck goethe says that "he had the greatest influence on my life," and he makes him the subject of one of his elaborate character sketches in his autobiography. to men of original nature, however discordant with his own, goethe was always attracted. we have seen him in more or less close relations with behrisch, jung stilling, and herder, from all of whom he was divided by dissonances which made a perfect mutual understanding impossible. so it was in the case of merck, as goethe's references to him in his autobiography and elsewhere clearly imply. in merck there was apparently a mixture of conflicting elements which made him a mystery to his friends, and his suicide at the age of fifty points to something morbid in his nature. of his real goodness of heart and of his genuine admiration for what he considered worthy of it, his own reported sayings and the testimony of others leave us in no doubt. recording his impression of goethe after a few interviews, he wrote: "i begin to have a real affection for goethe. he is a man after my own heart, as i have found few." on the other hand, there were traits in him which goethe did not scruple to call mephistophelian--an opinion shared even by goethe's mother, whose nature it was to see the best side of men and things. his variable humour and caustic tongue made him at once a terror and an attraction in whatever society he moved, and it is evident from the tone of goethe's reminiscences of him that his intercourse with merck was a mixed pleasure. but, as we have seen, it was an abiding principle of goethe to be repelled by no one who had something to give him, and merck possessed qualities and accomplishments which were of the first importance to him in the phase through which he was now passing. merck was keenly interested in literature, especially in english literature, and had all goethe's enthusiasm for shakespeare. though his own original productions were of mediocre quality, he had an insight into the character and genius of others which goethe fully recognised and to which he acknowledges his special obligation. his general attitude in criticism was "negative and destructive," but this attitude was entirely wholesome for goethe at a period when instinct and passion tended to overbear his judgment. with admirable penetration he saw how goethe during these frankfort years occasionally wasted his powers in attempts which were unworthy of his gifts and alien to his real nature. it was in reference to these futile tendencies that merck gave him counsel in words which subsequent critics have recognised as the most adequate definition of the essential characteristic of goethe's genius as a poet. "your endeavour, your unswerving aim," he wrote, "is to give poetic form to the real. others seek to realise the so-called poetic, the imaginative; and the result is nothing but stupid nonsense." like subsequent critics, also, merck saw the superiority of the first draft of _götz_ to the second, but when the latter was completed, he played a friend's part. "it is rubbish and of no account," was his characteristic remark; "however, let the thing be printed";[ ] and published it was, merck bearing the cost of printing and goethe supplying the paper. [footnote : eckermann, _gespräche mit goethe_, november th, .] it was towards the close of that goethe had made merck's acquaintance[ ] on the occasion of a visit merck had paid to frankfort; and in march of the following year, in company with the younger schlosser, they renewed their intercourse in darmstadt, where merck was settled. the visit lasted a few days, and was of some importance, as it introduced goethe to a society of which he was to see much during the remainder of his stay in frankfort, and which, according to his own testimony, "invigorated and widened his powers." it was a society in which we are surprised to find the mephistophelian merck the leading and most admired member. it consisted of a group of men and women associated with the court at darmstadt, whose bond of union was the cult of sensibility as the rising generation of germany had learned it from rousseau, richardson, and sterne. they went by the name of the _gemeinschaft der heiligen_, and the fervours of the community were at least those of genuine votaries. so far as goethe is concerned, it was in three of the priestesses, one of them caroline flachsland, the betrothed of herder, that he found the attraction of the society. for the youth who two years later was to give classic expression to the cult of sensibility in his _werther_, his intercourse with these ladies of darmstadt was an appropriate schooling. for their sensibilities were boundless, and they did not shrink from giving them expression. caroline relates to her future husband how one night in the woods she fell on her knees at sight of the moon and arranged some glow-worms in her hair so that their loves might not be disturbed. on one occasion when merck and goethe met two of the coterie, one of them embraced merck with kisses and the other fell upon his breast. goethe was not a youth to be indifferent to such favours, and the attentions of caroline were such as to disquiet herder and to occasion an estrangement between the two friends which lasted for nearly two years. [footnote : it was schlosser who had made goethe and merck acquainted. herder, to whom merck was known, had been a previous intermediary.] from the effusive caroline herself we learn the impression goethe made on the precious circle. "a few days ago" (in the beginning of march, ), she writes to herder, "i made the acquaintance of your friend goethe and herr schlosser.... goethe is such a good-hearted, lively creature, without any parade of learning, and has made such a to-do with merck's children that my heart has quite gone out to him.... the second afternoon we spent in a pleasant stroll and over a bowl of punch in our house. we were not sentimental, but very merry, and goethe and i danced a minuette to the piano. thereafter he recited an excellent ballad of yours [the scottish ballad _edward_, translated by herder]." on the occasion of a later visit (april) of goethe to darmstadt, she again writes to herder: "our goethe has come on foot from frankfort[ ] on a visit to merck. we have been together every day, and once, when we had gone together into the wood, we were soaked to the skin. we took refuge under a tree, and goethe sang a little song, 'under the greenwood tree,' which you translated from shakespeare. our common plight made us very confidential. he read aloud to us some of the best scenes from his _gottfried von berlichingen_.... goethe is choke-full of songs. one about a hut built out of the ruins of a temple is excellent.[ ] ... the poor fellow told my sister and myself a day ago that he had already been once in love, but that the girl had played with him for a whole year and then deserted him.[ ] he believed, however, that she really loved him, but another had appeared on the scene, and he was made a goose of." [footnote : a six hours' walk.] [footnote : the poem, entitled _der wanderer_, noted below.] [footnote : the girl meant was no doubt käthchen schönkopf.] under the inspiration of these caressing attentions goethe's muse could not be silent, and in the course of the spring and autumn he threw off a succession of pieces which are the classical expression of the sentimentalism of the period. to the three ladies-in-chief, under the pseudonyms of urania, lila, and psyche (caroline flachsland), he successively addressed odes in which he gave them back their own emotions with interest. their inspiration is sufficiently suggested by these lines which conclude the lines entitled _elysium, an uranien_:-- seligkeit! seligkeit! eines kusses gefühl. in all the three poems we have another illustration of goethe's susceptibility to immediate influences. under the inspiration of friederike's simplicity he had written lyrics which were as pure in form as direct in feeling. now we have him indulging in a vein of artificial sentiment, which, it might have been supposed, he had for ever left behind as the result of his schooling in strassburg. in two pieces belonging to the same period, however, is revealed in fullest measure the true self of the poet, with all the emotional and intellectual preoccupations which he had brought with him from strassburg. of the one, _wanderers sturmlied_, he has given in his autobiography an account which is fully borne out by the character of the poem itself. it was composed, he tells us, in a terrific storm on one of his restless journeys between frankfort and darmstadt, and at a time when the memory of friederike was still haunting him. of friederike, however, there is no direct suggestion in the poem; from first to last it is a pæan of the _sturm und drang_, composed in a form directly imitated from pindar, whom he had been ardently studying since his return to frankfort. the theme is the glorification of genius--genius in its upwelling and original force as manifest in pindar, not as in poets like anacreon and theocritus. he who is in possession of this genius is armed against all the powers of nature and fate, and his end can only be crowned with victory. goethe himself calls the poem a _halbunsinn_, and one of his most sympathetic critics--viktor hehn--admits that to follow its drift requires some labour and some creative phantasy on the part of the reader.[ ] but it is not its poetical merit that gives the poem its chief interest; it is to be taken, as it was meant, as a profession of the poet's literary faith at the period when it was written, and as such it is a historic document of the _sturm und drang_--at once an illustration and an exposition of its motives and ideals. "all this," is goethe's mature comment on this and other productions of the same period, "was deeply and genuinely felt, but often expressed in a one-sided and unbalanced way." [footnote : _Über goethe's gedichte_ ( ), p. .] of far higher poetic value is the second poem, _der wanderer_,[ ] in which matthew arnold found "the power of greek radiance" which goethe could give to his handling of nature. the scene of the poem is in southern italy, near cumæ. the wanderer, wearied by his travel under the noonday sun, comes upon a woman by the wayside whom he asks where he may quench his thirst. she conducts him through the neighbouring thicket, when an architrave, half-buried in the moss, and bearing an effaced inscription, catches his eye. they reach the woman's hut, which he finds to have been constructed from the stones of a ruined temple. asleep in the hut is the woman's infant son, whom she leaves in the arms of the wanderer, while she goes to fetch water from the spring. she presses on him a piece of bread, the only food she has to offer, and invites him to remain till the return of her husband to the evening meal. he refuses her hospitality, and resumes his journey to cumæ, his destination. such is the outline of the poem, which is in the form of a dialogue, in the irregular measure common to the odes above mentioned. but in the _wanderer_ there is nothing dithyrambic; rather its characteristic is a reflective repose, which is in strange contrast to the tumultuous outpouring of the _wanderers sturmlied_, and which might induce us to assign its production to a later day in goethe's life, to the period of his sojourn in italy, when years had somewhat chastened him, and when he was under the spell of the artistic remains of classical antiquity. of the finest inspiration is the contrast between the remarks of the peasant woman wholly engrossed in the immediate needs of the day, and the speculations of the wanderer as he comes upon the ruins that time has wrought upon the choicest works of man's hand. here we are far from all vapid and artificial sentiment; we have philosophical meditation proceeding from the profoundest source of the pathos of human life, the transitoriness of man and his works. completely in accord with the philosophy of his ripest years, however, the poet finds no ground for melancholy regrets in the spectacle of nature triumphing over man's handiwork. even in her work of corrosion she provides for the welfare of her children; in a home reared out of a ruined temple happy human lives are spent. and it is in the spirit of the broadest humanity--a spirit that marks him off from the sentimentalists of the darmstadt circle--that he regards the "ruins of time." [footnote : on account of his constant travels between frankfort and darmstadt, goethe was known among his friends as the _wanderer_. the poem was written in the autumn, during goethe's residence in wetzlar.] natur! du ewig keimende, schaffst jeden zum genuss des lebens, hast deine kinder alle mütterlich mit erbteil ausgestattet, einer hütte. nature! eternal engenderer, thou bring'st forth thy children for the joy of living, with care all maternal thou providest each with his portion, with his cottage. in reading this poem we feel the force of the words of the younger schlosser in which he records his impression of goethe at the moment when both first made the acquaintance of the darmstadt society. "i shall be accompanied (to darmstadt)," he wrote, "by a young friend of the highest promise who, through his strenuous endeavours to purify his soul, without unnerving it, is to me worthy of special honour."[ ] the purification had indeed begun, but goethe had to pass through many fires before the purification was complete. one such fire was immediately awaiting him. [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. - .] chapter vii wetzlar and charlotte buff may--september, during the summer and autumn of goethe found himself in a society and surroundings which were in curious contrast to those of darmstadt; and the next four months were to supply him with an experience which, wrought into one book of transcendent literary effect, was to make his name known, literally, to the ends of the earth,[ ] and which may be regarded as the most remarkable episode in his long life. it was as "the author of _werther_" that he was known to the reading world, until after his death the publication of the completed _faust_ gradually effaced the conception of goethe as the master-sentimentalist of european literature. [footnote : werther, as goethe reminds us in one of his venetian epigrams, was known in china:-- doch was fördert es mich, dass auch sogar der chinese malet mit ängstlicher hand werthern und lotten auf glas?] it was mainly as a temporary escape from the tedium of frankfort that, towards the end of may, , goethe proceeded to wetzlar, a little town on the lahn, a confluent of the rhine. his settlement in wetzlar had the semblance of a serious professional purpose, since wetzlar was the historic legal capital of the holy roman empire, and the seat of the imperial court of justice. if he had any such serious purpose, his experience of the place speedily dispelled it. the place itself he found distasteful; a "little, ill-built town," he calls it, though the modern visitor finds it not unattractive, with its climbing, tortuous streets, reminiscent of the middle age, and with its impressive cathedral, one of the most interesting specimens of mediæval architecture to be found in germany, and still unfinished in goethe's day. instead of the spectacle of an august tribunal administering prompt and even justice, what he saw was a multitude of corrupt officials, deluded litigants, and endless delays of law. wetzlar, in fact, he gives us to understand, destroyed any respect he may ever have had alike for judges and the law they professed to administer. he duly enrolled himself as a "praktikant,"[ ] but, as was the case with the majority of that class who haunted the town, his legal activity was confined to this step. "solitary, depressed, aimless," so he described himself to his friends during his first weeks in wetzlar.[ ] disgusted with law, he found refuge in the study of literature. in a long and rhapsodical letter to herder he depicts the intellectual and spiritual experiences through which he was now passing. the greeks were his one preoccupation. homer, xenophon, plato, theocritus, and anacreon he had read in turn, but it was in pindar he was now revelling, and from pindar he was learning the lesson that only in laying firm hold of one's subject is the essence of all mastery. a sentence of herder to the effect that "thought and feeling create the expression" had rejoiced his heart as expressing his own deepest experience. herder had said of _götz_ that its author had been spoilt by shakespeare, and he modestly accepted the censure. _götz_, he admits, had been _thought_, not _felt_, and he would be depressed by his failure, were he not occasionally conscious that some day he would do better things.[ ] [footnote : the _praktikanten_ were voluntary attendants on the imperial court, had little or no dependence on the authorities, and lived on their own resources.] [footnote : caroline flachsland to herder, may th, .] [footnote : goethe to herder, _werke, briefe_, band ii. .] as in strassburg, it was at a _table d'hôte_[ ] that goethe made the acquaintance of the youths who, like himself, were idling away their time in wetzlar. to relieve the tedium of the place[ ] they had formed a fantastic society on a feudal model, with a grand-master, chancellor, and all the other subordinate officials--the point of the jest being that each associate bore the name and played the part of his office and title. for frolic of all kinds goethe was ever ready; his taste for practical joking, indeed, as we shall see, occasionally led him to play questionable pranks. under the name of götz von berlichingen he became a member of the brotherhood, and, according to his own account, he contributed to the gaiety of the proceedings. among the company, however, there were a few serious persons with tastes kindred to his own, and he specially names f.w. gotter, secretary of the gotha legation at wetzlar, as one who, like salzmann and schlosser, impressed him by his character and talent. in english literature they had a common interest, and, as a poem which both admired, they each made a translation of goldsmith's _deserted village_--gotter, according to goethe, being the more successful in the attempt. gotter was thus still another of those grave counsellors whom goethe had the good fortune to discover and attach to himself amid the distracting frivolities of every society he frequented.[ ] [footnote : in the _kronprinz_, the principal hotel in the town.] [footnote : goethe's own lodging (still shown) was in the _gewandsgasse_, a narrow, dirty street, whence sun or moon could be seen at no season of the year.] [footnote : in his contemporary letters, goethe does not always speak of gotter so favourably as he does in his autobiography.] "what happened to me in wetzlar," goethe writes in his autobiography, "is of no great significance." but posterity has thought differently, and, if we are to judge by the consequences of what, happened to him in wetzlar, both for himself and for the world, posterity is right.[ ] be it said also, that contemporary testimony at first hand leaves us in no doubt that, but for his wetzlar experience, one of the most remarkable phases in goethe's development would not have found expression, and one resounding note in european literature would have been unheard. [footnote : an exhaustive account of goethe's sojourn in wetzlar will be found in w. herbst's _goethe in wetzlar_, . _vier monate aus des dichters jugendleben_, gotha, .] in leipzig and strassburg goethe had found objects to engage his affections, and he was not to be without a similar experience in wetzlar. during his first weeks there he had seen no maiden to interest him, and the fact may explain his dissatisfaction during that period. after leaving in succession the circles of sesenheim, frankfort, and darmstadt, he tells us, he felt a void in his heart which he could not fill. an accident at length came to fill the void. on june th (the date is carefully recorded) he met a girl at a ball in a neighbouring village (garbenheim), who "made a complete conquest of him."[ ] her name was charlotte buff, the second daughter of an official of the teutonic order--a widower with twelve children. charlotte, or lotte, as he calls her, was of a different type from any of his previous loves, so that she possessed all the freshness of novelty. though only nineteen, she had taken upon her the care of the numerous household, and discharged her duties with a motherly tact and good sense which excited general admiration. over lotte's personal appearance goethe is not rapturous as in the case of friederike; he simply says that she had a light and graceful figure, and in the same cool tone remarks that she was one of those women who do not inspire ardent passion, but who give general pleasure. so he chose to say in the retrospect, but neither his contemporary words nor actions permit us to believe that his feeling to lotte was merely a calm regard. in the case of lotte his situation was materially different from what it had been in the case of friederike. he had no rival in his relations to friederike; in his relations to lotte he had one. shortly after their first meeting he learned that lotte was already betrothed, though the fact was not known to the world. the successful wooer was johann christian kestner, a native of hanover, and a secretary of legation settled in wetzlar. kestner was at every point the antithesis of his intruding rival. he was calm, deliberate, unimaginative, yet conspicuously a man of insight and character, with a fund of good sense and good temper, on which the situation made a large draft. "kestner must be a very good man," was the frequent remark of merck's wife in view of the relations of the three parties to each other, and kestner's own words prove it. it is in his letters and diary that we have the closest glimpse of all three, and all that he says of himself, of lotte, and of goethe, shows a tact and good feeling that inspire esteem. [footnote : this is the expression of kestner, lotte's betrothed.] after their first meeting at the ball, according to goethe's own testimony, he became lotte's constant attendant. "soon he could not endure her absence." in her home he made himself the idol of the children; in the beautiful surrounding country they were inseparable companions--kestner, when his avocations permitted, occasionally joining them. "so through the splendid summer," he records, "they lived a true german idyll." but the testimony of kestner shows that the idyll was not without its discords. goethe, he says, "with all his philosophy and his natural pride, had not such self-control as wholly to restrain his inclination.... his peace of mind suffered," and "there were various notable scenes," though lotte showed herself a model of discretion. the situation was, in fact, an impossible one, and goethe came to see it. several times he made the effort to break his bonds and flee, but it was not till the beginning of september that he took the decisive step. equally from his own and kestner's account of the circumstances of his flight we receive the impression that his relation to lotte was such as to make their further intercourse undesirable. the night before he went, according to kestner, all three were together in lotte's home, and their conversation, suggested by lotte, turned upon the dead and the possibility of holding intercourse with them. whichever of the three should die first, it was agreed, should, if possible, communicate with the survivors. all through the evening goethe was in deep dejection, knowing, as he did, that it would be the last they would spend together. the following morning he left wetzlar without intimating his intention to any of his friends--a proceeding which his grand-aunt, resident in the town, characterised as "very ill-bred," declaring that she would let the frau goethe know how her son had behaved.[ ] in three brief parting notes he addressed to kestner and lotte we have the expression of the mental tumult which his passion for lotte had produced in him. on his return home, after the last evening he spent with them, he wrote as follows to kestner: "he is gone, kestner; by the time you receive this note, he is gone. give lotte the enclosed note. i was quite calm, but your conversation has torn me to distraction. at this moment i can say nothing more than farewell. had i remained a moment longer with you, i could not have restrained myself. now i am alone, and to-morrow i go. oh, my poor head!" in the lines enclosed for lotte he has this outburst with reference to the evening's conversation: "when i ventured to say all i felt, it was of the present world i was thinking, of your hand which i kissed for the last time." [footnote : such abrupt departures were characteristic of goethe. we shall find him taking similar unceremonious leave of another of his loves. goethe, wrote frau von stein to her son (may, ), "kann das abschied nehmen nicht leiden, er ging ohne abschied neulich von mir."] from this record of the wetzlar episode, directly reproducing the relations of all the persons concerned, it is clear that lotte was for goethe more than the pleasant companion he represents her in his autobiography. if his own words and those of kestner have any meaning, his feeling towards her amounted to a passion which only the singular self-control of her and kestner prevented from breaking bounds. strange as it may appear, neither lotte nor kestner regarded one whose presence was a menace to their own peace with other feelings than esteem, and apparently even affection. he parted from lotte, he says, "with a clearer conscience" than from friederike, and the statement is at least borne out by what we know of the sequel to the "splendid idyll." as we shall see, he continued to remain on the most cordial terms with the two lovers, and, though with mingled feelings, he gave them his best blessing on the day which saw them united as husband and wife. in what has been said of goethe's relations to lotte buff it is the emotional side of his nature that has been before us, but from the hand of the judicious kestner we have a portrait of the whole man which leaves nothing to be desired in its completeness and insight. kestner's description of his first meeting with his formidable rival reminds us of the "conquering lord" whose self-assurance evoked herder's stinging criticism. stretched on his back on the grass under a tree, goethe was carrying on a conversation with two acquaintances who stood by. kestner's first decided impression was that the stranger was "no ordinary man," and that he had "genius and a lively imagination." his final and complete impression, after goethe had left wetzlar, he thus records:-- "he has very many gifts, is a real genius, and a man of character; he has an extraordinarily lively imagination, and so, for the most part, expresses himself in pictures and similes. he is himself in the habit of saying that he always expresses himself in general terms, can never express himself with precision; when he is older, however, he hopes to think and express the thought as it is. he is violent in all his emotions; yet often exercises great self-command. his manner of thinking is noble; as free as possible from all prejudices, he acts on the prompting of the moment without troubling whether it may please other people, is in the fashion, or whether convention permits it. all constraint is hateful to him. he is fond of children and can occupy himself much with them. he is _bizarre_; in his conduct and manner there are various peculiarities which might make him disagreeable. but with children, with women, and many others he is nevertheless a favourite. for the female sex he has great respect. _in principiis_ he is not yet fixed, and is still only endeavouring after a sure system. to say something on this point; he thinks highly of rousseau, but is not a blind worshipper of him. he is not what we call orthodox; yet this is not from pride or caprice or from a desire to play a part. on certain important matters, also, he expresses himself only to few, and does not willingly disturb others in their ideas. he certainly hates scepticism, and strives after truth and settled conviction on certain subjects of the first importance; believes even that he has already attained conviction on the most important; but, so far as i have observed, this is not the case. he does not go to church; not even to communion, and he prays seldom. for, says he, i am not hypocrite enough for that. at times he seems at rest with regard to certain subjects; at other times, however, very far from being so. he reverences the christian religion, but not as our theologians present it. he believes in a future life and a better state of existence. he strives after truth, and yet attaches more importance to feeling than to demonstration as the test of it. he has already accomplished much; has many acquirements and much reading, but has thought and reasoned still more. he has mainly devoted himself to _belles lettres_ and the fine arts, or rather to all branches of knowledge, only not to the so-called bread-winning ones. i wished to describe him, but to do so i should run to too great length, for he is one of whom there is a great deal to be said. _in one word, he is a very remarkable man._"[ ] [footnote : kestner's characterisation of goethe will be found in biedermann, _op. cit._ i. pp. - .] chapter viii after wetzlar -- in _götz von berlichingen_ goethe had given expression to the ideals and emotions he had brought with him from strassburg; shakespeare and the memory of friederike had been the main impulses to its production. as the result of his experience at wetzlar, he was filled with a new inspiration, which, though it did not immediately find utterance, left him no repose till it was embodied in a work in which the man and the artist in him equally found deliverance. that the conception came to him shortly after his leaving wetzlar we have conclusive evidence. in the beginning of november, , after his return to frankfort from wetzlar, he received the news that a youth named jerusalem, a casual acquaintance of his own,[ ] had committed suicide as the result of an unhappy love adventure. instantly, goethe tells us in his autobiography, the plan of _werther_ shaped itself in his mind; and his contemporary letters bear out the statement. immediately on receiving the news of jerusalem's death, he wrote to kestner for a detailed account of all the circumstances, and he made a careful copy of the information with which kestner supplied him. in point of fact, it was not till after more than a year that _werther_ came to fruition, but that he was in labour with the portentous birth all its lineaments were to show. [footnote : goethe had made jerusalem's acquaintance in leipzig. jerusalem called goethe a _geck_, a coxcomb, a description which, as we have seen, was not inapplicable to him in his leipzig days. jerusalem was a friend of lessing, who highly esteemed him, and after his death published his mss.] but before _werther_ came to birth, goethe went through another experience which was to form an essential part of its tissue. merck, to whom goethe attributes the chief influence over him during this frankfort period, was again the intermediary. before goethe left wetzlar, merck had arranged that they should meet at ehrenbreitstein, where he would introduce goethe to a family resident there.[ ] the family was that of herr von la roche, a privy councillor in the service of the elector of trier, and it consisted of himself, his wife and two daughters. the head of the house, a matter-of-fact man of the world, plays no part in goethe's relations to the family. it was frau von la roche to whom, as a desirable acquaintance, merck specially wished to introduce his friend, and the sequel proved that he had rightly divined their mutual affinities. the cousin of wieland, with whom she had had a _liaison_ before her marriage, she was now past forty, but, according to goethe's description of her, she possessed all the charm of youth with the dignity and repose of maturity. what is evident is, that goethe saw in her the type of a high-bred woman such as had not yet crossed his path. in his reminiscence of her, his words have a warmth which is in notable contrast to the coldness of his portrait of lotte buff. "she was a most wonderful woman," he writes; "i knew no other to compare with her. slight and delicately formed, rather tall than short, she had contrived even in advanced years to retain a certain elegance both of form and bearing which pleasingly combined the manner of a court lady with that of a dignified burgess's wife."[ ] in addition to these graces, frau von la roche had precisely the temperament and the mental qualities that appealed to goethe in the emotional phase through which he was now passing. she lived in the same world of sentiment as the ladies of the darmstadt circle, and she had the gift of effusive utterance, as she had shown in a novel in the manner of richardson which had brought her some celebrity. [footnote : in point of fact, goethe announced himself. merck arrived after him.] [footnote : in a letter to schiller (july th, ) goethe gives a much less favourable estimate of frau von la roche, whom he had just met: "sie gehört zu den nivellierenden naturen, sie hebt das gemeine herauf und zieht das vorzügliche herunter...."] with frau von la roche goethe established a platonic relation which he assiduously cultivated during the remainder of his residence in frankfort, but there was another member of the household to whom he was attracted by a livelier feeling. this was the elder of the two daughters, maximiliane by name, a girl of seventeen, whose charms were subsequently to be given to the lady of werther's infatuation. from what we have seen of goethe's inflammability, we are prepared for the naïve remark in which he records his new sensation. "it is a very pleasant sensation," he says, "when a new passion begins to stir in us before the old one is quite extinct. so, as the sun sets, we gladly behold the moon rise on the opposite horizon, and rejoice in the double splendour of the two heavenly lights." be it said that the atmosphere of the household was provocative of relaxed feelings. goethe was not the only guest. besides merck there was a youth named leuchsenring whose special line of activity had endeared him to a wide circle. leuchsenring made it his business to enter into correspondence with susceptible souls whose effusions he carried about with him in dispatch-boxes and was in the habit of reading aloud to sympathetic listeners. the reading of these precious documents was part of the entertainment of the circle in which goethe now found himself, and he assures us that he enjoyed it. we see, therefore, the world in which he was now moving--a world in which those who belonged to it made it their first concern to titillate their sensibilities, and squandered their emotions with a profusion and abandonment in which self-respecting reserve was forgotten. it was a world wide as the poles apart from that of sesenheim, where human relations were founded on natural feeling and only the language of the heart was spoken. once again goethe had taken on the hue of his surroundings. in leipzig he had been what we have seen him; now under the influence of darmstadt he appears in still another phase--to be by no means the last. from goethe's connection with the family of von la roche was to come the occasion which immediately prompted the production of _werther_, but more than a year was to elapse before the occasion came, and in the interval his own mental experiences were to supply him with further materials which were to find expression in that work. in his correspondence of the period we have the fullest revelation of these experiences, and they leave us with the impression that he spoke only the literal truth when he tells us in his autobiography that, on being delivered of _werther_, he felt as if he had made a general confession. the same period, moreover, is signalised by a succession of minor productions which, though they did not attain to the celebrity of _götz_ and _werther_, exhibit a range of intellectual interests and a play of varied moods which materially enhance our conceptions of his genius. the circumstances in which goethe had left friederike had precluded subsequent communications with her and her family; in the case of the wetzlar circle there was no such impediment to future epistolary intercourse. he had left lotte buff, as he tells us, with a clearer conscience than he had left friederike, and on the part of lotte and kestner there was apparently no feeling that prompted a breach of their relations with him. for more than a year he kept up assiduous communications with wetzlar; then his letters became less frequent and finally ceased when changes in the circumstances of both parties effaced their mutual interests. while the correspondence was in full flood, however, goethe's letters leave us in no doubt as to the real nature of his passion for lotte; if words mean anything, his memories of her were a cause of mental unrest to which other distractions of the time gave a morbid direction, and which threatened to end in moral collapse. a few extracts from his letters to wetzlar will reveal his state of mind during the months that immediately followed his return to frankfort. within a week after his return we have these hurried lines addressed to kestner: "god bless you, dear kestner, and tell lotte that i sometimes imagine i could forget her; but then comes the recitative, and i am worse than ever." in the same month (september) he again addresses kestner: "i would not desire to have spent my days better than i did at wetzlar, but god send me no more such days!... this i have just said to lotte's silhouette." in the beginning of november he paid a flying visit to wetzlar, and apparently had reason to regret it. "certainly, kestner," he wrote the day after he left, "it was time that i should go; yesterday evening, as i sat on the sofa, i had thoughts for which i deserve hanging." on christmas day he writes still at the same high pitch: "it is still night, dear kestner, and i have risen to write again by the morning light, which recalls pleasant memories of past days.... immediately on my arrival here i had pinned up lotte's silhouette; while i was in darmstadt, they placed my bed here, and there to my great joy hangs lotte's picture at its head." in april, , kestner and lotte were married, and goethe insisted, against kestner's wish, on sending the bride her marriage-ring, which was accompanied by the following note: "may the remembrance of me as of this ring be ever with you in your happiness. dear lotte, after a long interval we shall see each other again, you with the ring on your finger, and me always _yours_. i affix no name nor surname. you know well who writes." a few days later we have the following words in a letter to kestner: "to part from lotte, i do not yet understand how it was possible.... it cost me little, and yet i don't understand how it was possible. there is the rub." in the course of the summer kestner removed to hanover, where he had received an official appointment, and took his wife with him. the correspondence then became less frequent, though on both sides it was maintained in the same friendly spirit. only for a time, on the publication of _werther_, as we shall see, was there the shadow of possible estrangement. "alienated lovers," is goethe's remark, already quoted, "become the best friends, if only they can be properly managed"; and goethe showed himself an adept in this art of management. while goethe was pouring forth his confessions to kestner and lotte, his circumstances at home were not such as to conduce to calm of mind. frankfort remained as distasteful to him as ever. "the frankforters," he wrote to kestner, "are an accursed folk; they are so pig-headed that nothing can be made of them." with his father his relations had not become more cordial after his return from wetzlar. "lieber gott," he wrote on receiving a letter from his father, "shall i then also become like this when i am old? shall my soul no longer attach itself to what is good and amiable? strange the belief that the older a man becomes, the freer he becomes from what is worldly and petty. he becomes increasingly more worldly and petty."[ ] his father's insistence on his attention to legal business was a permanent cause of mutual misunderstanding. "i let my father do as he pleases; he daily seeks to enmesh me more and more in the affairs of the town, and i submit."[ ] [footnote : goethe to kestner, november th, . _werke, briefe_, band ii. .] [footnote : to the same, september th, . _ib._ p. .] in his sister cornelia, as formerly, he had a sympathetic confidant equally in his affairs of the heart and in his literary and artistic ambitions, but in the course of the year he was deprived of her soothing and stimulating influence. in october she was betrothed to j.g. schlosser, who has already been noted as one of goethe's sager counsellors, and the marriage took place on november st. "i rejoice in their joy," he wrote to sophie von la roche, "though, at the same time, it is mostly to my own loss." other friends, also, in the course of the same year, he complains, were departing and leaving him in dreary solitude. "my poor existence," he writes to kestner, "is becoming petrified. this summer everyone is going--merck with the court to berlin, his wife to switzerland, my sister, and fräulein flachsland, you, everybody. and i am alone. if i do not take a wife or hang myself, say that life is right dear to me, or something, if you like, which does me more honour."[ ] so in may he describes himself as alone and daily becoming more so; in october as "entirely alone," and as indescribably rejoiced at the return of merck towards the close of the year. [footnote : _ib._ pp. - .] chapter ix satirical dramas and fragments if, during the year that followed his return from wetzlar, goethe was distracted by his wandering affections, he was no less divided in mind by his intellectual ambitions. the doubt which had possessed him since boyhood as to whether nature meant him for an artist or a poet remained still unsettled for him. in one of the best-known passages of his autobiography he has related how he sought to resolve his difficulty. as he wandered down the banks of the lahn, after he had torn himself away from wetzlar, the beauty of the scenery awoke in him the artist's desire to transfer it worthily to canvas. the whim then occurred to him to let fate decide whether this was the work for which he was appointed. he would throw his knife into the river, and, if he saw it reach the surface, he would take it as a sign that art was his vocation. unfortunately the oracle proved dubious. owing to the intervening bushes he did not see the knife enter the river, but only the splash occasioned by its fall. as the result of the uncertainty of the oracle, he adds, he gave himself less assiduously than hitherto to the study of art. if this were indeed the case, it was only for a time, since the contemporary testimony, both of himself and his friends, shows that during the period that immediately followed his leaving wetzlar, art received more of his attention than literature. goethe, wrote caroline flachsland to herder, "still thinks of becoming a painter, and we strongly advise him to pursue that end."[ ] "i am now quite a draughtsman," he himself wrote to herder in december of the same year; and he tells another correspondent in the autumn of that "the plastic arts occupy him almost entirely." [footnote : november th, .] yet, since his return from strassburg to frankfort in august, , his literary activity was never wholly intermitted. during the remainder of that year he wrote the first draft of _götz von berlichingen_, and in , mainly under the inspiration of the darmstadt circle, he produced the poems to which attention has already been drawn. in that year, also, he shared in an undertaking the main object of which was to proclaim those revolutionary ideas in literature, religion, and life that inspired the movement of the _sturm und drang_. in cooperation with herder, merck, and schlosser, his future brother-in-law, and others, he conducted a journal which, under the title of the _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_, expounded these views to all who chose to read it. merck, and afterwards schlosser, acted as editors during the year that it existed, but goethe was its principal contributor. in the preliminary announcement to the first issue (january st, ) it is stated that the reviews of books will range over science, philosophy, history, _belles-lettres_, and the fine arts, and particularly that no english book worthy of notice will escape attention. of the successive reviews that appeared, only three are certainly known to be by goethe, though he must have written or assisted in writing several others. with his usual causticity herder characterised the manner of the two chief contributors. "you," he tells merck, "are always socrates-addison; and goethe is for the most part a young, arrogant lord, with horribly scraping cock's heels, and, if i come among you some day, i shall be the irish dean with his whip." goethe himself, reviewing these early efforts in the light of his maturity, is sufficiently modest regarding their intrinsic merit. he had then, he says, neither the knowledge nor the discipline requisite for adequate criticism. on the other hand, he claims to have given evidence in his notices of books of a gift, which no reader of them can fail to perceive--the gift of instinctive insight into the essentials of the subject in hand. in the business of reviewing, however, he seems to have taken little pleasure. "the day has begun festively," he wrote to kestner on christmas, , "but, unfortunately, i must spoil the beautiful hours with reviewing; but i do so with good heart, as it is for the last issue."[ ] [footnote : goethe wrote the epilogue to the last number of the review, of which he says to kestner, "hat ich das publikum und den verleger turlipinirt."] to the same year, , belong two short productions of goethe which deserve a passing notice as exhibiting his strange blending of interests at this period. the one is entitled _brief des pastors zu ... an den neuen pastor zu ..._, and professes to have been translated from the french. the letter is another illustration of his interest in religion and in the interpretation of the bible which had begun with his early reading of the old testament, and which his intercourse with the fräulein von klettenberg and herder had intermittently kept alive. the theological teaching of the letter is, in point of fact, a compound of the teaching of these two. its main object is to emphasise the necessity of toleration in the interest of religion itself, and nowhere was the monition more needed than in frankfort, where the antipathy between those of the reformed and the lutheran communions was such as even to debar intermarriage. rationalism and dogmatism are equally reprobated, and the sum of all true religion is found to consist in the love of god and of our neighbour. the strain of mystical piety which runs through the whole production doubtless proceeds from imaginative sympathy and not from personal experience, and is to be regarded only as another illustration of goethe's facility in identifying himself with emotions essentially alien to his own nature. the other piece, entitled _zwo wichtige bisher unerörterte biblische fragen, zum erstenmal gründlich beantwortet_, professing to be written by a swabian pastor, is still more singular. in the first of the two questions he inquires whether it was the ten commandments or the prescriptions of ritual that were inscribed on the tables of stone, and concludes that it was the latter; and in the second he discusses the nature of the speaking with tongues that followed st. paul's laying of hands on the newly-baptised christians, and resolves the question in a purely mystical sense. the year marks an epoch in goethe's career, and an epoch also in the literary history of germany. in that year he made his first appeal as a writer to the great german public which was to follow his successive productions with varying degrees of admiration during the next half-century. dissatisfied with the first draft of _götz von berlichingen_ as lacking in dramatic unity, in the beginning (february--march) of he recast the whole play, which in its new form was published in june.[ ] as has already been said, the second form of _götz_ is generally recognised as inferior to the first, but, such as it was, it made the sensation we have seen. with as much truth as byron, goethe might have said that "he woke one morning and found himself famous." in he could be spoken of by an intelligent person in leipzig as "one named getté," and even in the circles he frequented he had hitherto been known simply as a youth of extraordinary promise from whom great things were to be expected. henceforth his name was on the tongue of all who were interested in german literature, and whatever he was likely to produce in the future was certain to command universal interest. [footnote : in its new form _götz_ was no better adapted for the stage. "eine angeborne unart ist schwierig zu meistern," is goethe's own remark on his attempt to make it a good acting play.] according to merck, goethe's head was turned for a time by the success of _götz_. during the months that followed its publication, at all events, he was possessed with a wanton humour which spared neither friends nor foes, nor the society of which he had apparently caught the contagion as completely as any of its members. at a later date, goethe speaks of his "considerate levity" and his "warm coolness";[ ] and in a succession of pieces which he threw off at this time we have an interesting commentary on this characterisation of himself. in these pieces we have an old vein reopened. we have seen how in leipzig he had burlesqued the professor of literature, clodius, but in the years that followed his departure from leipzig--the depressing period in frankfort and the period of rapid development in strassburg--there was neither the occasion nor the prompting to personal or general satire. now, however, in the tumult of his own feelings and in the follies of the society around him he found themes for satirical comment which afforded scope for a side of his genius rarely manifested in his later years. the short satirical dramas produced at this time on the mere impulse of the moment have in themselves only a local and temporary interest, but they derive importance from the fact that they proceed from the same mental attitude which was to find its definitive expression in the character of mephistopheles--essentially the creation of this period of goethe's development. in these trivial exercises he was practising the craft which is so consummately displayed in the original fragments of _faust_. [footnote : ich bin wie immer der nachdenkliche leichtsinn und die warme kälte.--goethe to sophie von la roche, september st, .] the first of these sallies--_das jahrmarktsfest zu plundersweilern, ein schönbartspiel_--was written in march, , and was sent as a birthday gift to merck--an appropriate recipient. written in doggerel verse, which goethe took over from the shoemaker poet hans sachs, the piece brings before us the motley crowd of persons who frequented the fairs of the time, each vociferating the cheapness and excellence of his own wares. the humour of the spectacle, however, is that the _dramatis personæ_ were individuals recognisable by contemporaries in traits which now escape us. goethe himself appears in the guise of a doctor, herder as a captain of the gipsies, and his bride, caroline flachsland, as a milkmaid. the satire is directed equally against the idiosyncrasies of individuals and against the follies of the time, the sentimentalism which goethe himself had not escaped, but of which he saw the inanity, the petty jealousies of authors which had also come within his personal experience. a mock tragedy on the subject of esther, which forms part of the burlesque, is a malicious parody of the french models which he had begun by imitating, but which were now the sport of the youths who led the _sturm und drang_. the _jahrmarktsfest_ is a genial explosion of madcap humour. not so another succession of scenes produced about the same time. the subject of them is that leuchsenring whose acquaintance, we have seen, goethe had made under the roof of sophie von la roche. since then, apparently, leuchsenring's proceedings had provoked a repugnance in goethe which displays itself in a strain of bitterness hardly to be found in any other of his works. it was leuchsenring's habit to ingratiate himself with households where his pseudo-sentiment made him acceptable, and by questionable methods to make mischief between their members, and especially between the two sexes.[ ] goethe had seen the results of these intrigues in circles with which he was acquainted, and it was to punish the sinner that he wrote _ein fastnachtspiel, auch wohl zu tragieren nach ostern, vom pater brey dem falschen propheten_. pater brey, the false prophet, is leuchsenring, and his sugared speech and shifty ways are the main object of the satire, but other persons are introduced into the piece and exhibited in lights which are a singular commentary on the taste of the time. the victim on whom pater brey plies his arts is caroline flachsland, who appears under the name of leonora, and the injured lover is herder (captain velandrino).[ ] the captain, who has been informed of pater brey's philanderings with his betrothed, appears on the scene, is assured of her faithfulness, and in concert with another character in the piece (merck) plays a coarse trick on the pater which makes him the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood. [footnote : a quarrel had arisen between merck and leuchsenring, and goethe had warmly taken merck's side.] [footnote : as we have seen, herder was jealous of goethe's own attentions to caroline.] herder had good reason to resent the licence with which his private affairs had been obtruded on the public in _pater brey_,[ ] but in the same year goethe made him the main subject of another production which raises equally our astonishment at the manners of the time and at the wanton audacity of its author. in _pater brey_ the prevailing sentimentalism, as veiling dubious motives, had been the theme of ridicule; in _satyros, oder der vergötterte waldteufel_, it was the extravagancies of the followers of rousseau in their idealisation of the natural man. according to kestner, as we have seen, goethe himself greatly admired rousseau, but was not one of his blind worshippers, and _satyros_ is a sufficiently cogent proof of the fact. what is astounding is the means he chose to give point to his ridicule. herder is satyros, the waldteufel,[ ] who is represented as being humanely received by a hermit (merck) while suffering from a wounded leg. satyros requites his host with coarse abuse of himself and his religion, flings his crucifix into the neighbouring stream, and steals a valuable piece of linen cloth. next by an enchanting melody he cajoles two maidens, arsinoë and psyche (caroline flachsland), into the belief that he is a superhuman being, and psyche is so overcome that she submits to his embraces. the people of the neighbourhood flock to him, see in him a new god, and on his persuasion take to eating chestnuts, as the natural food of man--the priest of the community, hermes, joining in their worship. the hermit appears on the scene, and on his abusing satyros for the theft of his crucifix, the people decide to offer him as a sacrifice to their insulted divinity. by a stratagem of the wife of hermes, the hermit is rescued and the bestiality of satyros exposed. in no way disconcerted, satyros leaves the throng with flouts at their asinine attachment to their conventional morality as opposed to the free life inculcated by nature. goethe's later comment on this remarkable production is that it was "a document of the godlike insolence of our youth," and certainly no document could bring more vividly before us the world in which goethe's genius came to fruition.[ ] [footnote : it was published in the autumn of the following year, .] [footnote : w. scherer was the first to identify herder with satyros.] [footnote : _satyros_ was not published till , after herder's death, but he was aware of its existence.] still another piece of the "godlike insolence of youth," though less offensive in its implications, is the farce, _götter, helden, und wieland_, written in the autumn of the same year, . at an earlier period wieland had been one of the gods of goethe's idolatry, but wieland was now the most distinguished champion of those french models against which goethe and the youths associated with him had declared irreconcilable war. moreover, in a journal recently started by wieland, there had appeared an unfriendly review of _götz von berlichingen_. by the publication of a play, _alceste_, in which he foolishly challenged comparison with euripides' drama of the same name, wieland gave the enemy his opportunity. on a sunday afternoon, with a bottle of burgundy beside him, as he tells us, goethe tossed off his skit at one sitting. as a piece of improvisation, it certainly contains excellent fooling. we are introduced to the lower world, where the four characters in euripides' play, admetus, alcestis, hercules, and mercury, as well as its author, are represented as in a state of high indignation at the liberties which wieland has taken with them in his _alcestes_. summoned before them, wieland appears in his nightcap, and has to run the gauntlet of their several reproaches--the purport of them all being that he has foolishly misunderstood the greek world which he had undertaken to portray. against goethe's wish the satire was published in the following year, and rapidly ran through four editions, but wieland had a genteel revenge. with that _lebensweisheit_ which goethe long afterwards marked as his characteristic, he published in his review a notice of the burlesque, in which it is recommended as "a masterpiece of persiflage and of sophistical wit." "wieland has turned the tables on me," was goethe's own admission; "ich bin eben prostituiert."[ ] [footnote : max morris, _op. cit._ iv. .] these successive _jeux d'esprit_ were merely the crackling fireworks of exuberant youth, and were regarded as such by their author himself. at the very time he was writing them, he was planning and sketching works, the scope of which reveals the true bent of his genius, and of the ideals that were preoccupying him. "my ideals," he wrote to kestner (september th, ), "grow daily in beauty and grandeur"; and when he penned these words he was engaged on a production which, though it remained a mere fragment, has justly been regarded as one of the most striking manifestations of his powers. the subject, the myth of prometheus, he tells us, attracted him as one in which he could embody his own deepest experience and the conclusions regarding the individual life of man to which that experience had led him. in the crises of his past life, he tells us, he had found that no aid had been forthcoming either from man or any supernal power. "we must tread the wine-press alone." only in one source had he discovered a stay and stimulus, which brought him the sense of individual self-subsistence--in the exercise of such creative talent as nature had bestowed upon him. of this consciousness, no external power could deprive him, and it is this consciousness that is the governing idea of the fragment, and not the titanism of the prometheus of Æschylus. it was, moreover, an idea which permanently accompanied goethe throughout life, and to which he frequently gave expression in his later correspondence.[ ] [footnote : the following passage from an article in the _hibbert journal_, by m. bergson (october, , pp. - ), is an interesting commentary on goethe's conception: "if, then, in every province the triumph of life is expressed by creation, might we not think that the ultimate reason of human life is a creation which, in distinction from that of the artist or man of science, can be pursued at every moment and by all men alike; i mean the creation of self by self, the continual enrichment of personality, by elements which it does not draw from outside, but causes to spring forth from itself?"] as, apart from its intrinsic power, _prometheus_ has an incidental interest in the history of philosophic thought, it may be worth while to sketch briefly the development it attained. when prometheus is introduced to us, he is a rebel against zeus and the other gods. he had rendered them allegiance so long as he believed that "they saw the past and the future in the present and were animated by self-originated and disinterested wisdom," but, on the discovery of his error, he had renounced their authority, and, as an independent agent, he had fashioned images of human beings, to which, however, he was powerless to give the breath of life. in the first scene of the first act, mercury appears as the messenger of the gods and reasons with prometheus on the folly of his contending with their omnipotence. prometheus denies their omnipotence either over nature or over himself. "can they separate me from myself?" he asks, and mercury admits that the gods are subject to a power stronger than their own--the power of fate. "go, then," is the reply, "i do not serve vassals." after a brief soliloquy, in which prometheus expresses the passionate wish that he might impart feeling to his lifeless images, epimetheus appears as a second representative of the gods. their offer, he tells prometheus, is reasonable; let him but recognise their supremacy, and he will be free of the heights of olympus, from which he would rule the earth. "yes," is the reply, "to be their burggrave, and defend their heaven! my offer is more reasonable; their wish is to be a partner with me, and my thought is to have nothing to participate with them; they cannot rob me of what i have, and what they have, let them guard. here is mine, and here is thine, and so are we apart." "but what is thine?" inquires epimetheus; and the reply is, "the circle which my activity fulfils--_der kreis, den meine wirklichkeit erfüllt_." and here follows one of the passages in the dialogue which, as expressing the pantheistic conception of the universe, gave occasion to the quarrel of the philosophers, to be presently noted. "thou standest alone," is the comment of epimetheus on the claim to independent self-subsistence asserted by prometheus; "thou standest alone; thy self-will fails to appreciate the bliss of the gods--thou, thine, the world and heaven, all feel themselves one intimate whole." repelled like mercury, epimetheus departs, and minerva, in whom prometheus acknowledges his sole inspirer and instructress, appears. minerva, who declares that she honours her father zeus and loves prometheus, repeats the offer of zeus to animate the clay images if prometheus will acknowledge his sovereignty; but when prometheus passionately refuses to accept the offer, she bursts forth: "and they shall live! to fate and not to the gods it pertains to bestow life and to take it. come, i conduct thee to the source of all life, which jupiter may not close against us. they shall live, and through thee!" of the second act only two scenes were written. in the first, mercury, proclaiming in olympus that minerva has given life to the clay images of prometheus, calls on zeus to destroy the new creatures with his thunder. zeus calmly replies that they will only increase the number of his servants, and mercury, changing his tone, prays that he may be sent to "the poor earthborn folk," to announce the goodness and wisdom of the father of all. "not yet," is the reply. "in the newborn rapture of youth they dream that they are like unto the gods. not till they need thee will they listen to thy words. leave them to their own life!" in the second scene, we see prometheus in a valley at the base of olympus, surrounded by the new race of animated beings engaged in business or pleasure. there follow three brief scenes which are meant to depict the dawnings of human consciousness and the conditions under which life is to be lived. to one he shows how a hut to shelter him may be constructed with the branches he has lopped with the aid of an implement of stone. in a dispute between two men, one of whom wounds the other and steals his goat, prometheus pronounces the judgment that the hand of the offender will be against every man, and every man's hand against him. in the third and last scene we have the most remarkable passage in the poem. pandora, prometheus' favourite creation, in dismay and bewilderment, describes the strange experience she has witnessed in the case of a friend, another maiden, and prometheus tells her that what she had seen was death. what death meant prometheus explains in the following passage, charged with the sensuous mysticism which was one of the elements of goethe's own experiences when he wrote it:-- wenn aus dem innerst tiefsten grunde du ganz erschüttert alles fühlst, was freud' und schmerzen jemals dir ergossen, [transcriber's note: corrected error "and" for "und"] im sturm dein herz erschwillt, in tränen sich erleichtern will und seine glut vermehrt, und alles klingt an dir und bebt und zittert, und all die sinne dir vergehn, und du dir zu vergehen scheinst und sinkst, und alles um dich her versinkt in nacht, und du, in inner eigenstem gefühl, umfassest eine welt; dann stirbt der mensch. when from thy inmost being's depths shattered to nought thou feelest all of joy and woe that e'er to thee hath flowed, in storm thy heart hath swelled, in tears doth find itself relief, and doth its flow increase; when all within thee thrills, and quakes, and quivers, and all thy senses from thee part, and from thyself thou seem'st to part, and sink'st, and all around thee sinketh deep in night, and thou within thy inner very self encompassest a world; then dies the man. to these two acts goethe subsequently added, as the opening of a third act, a soliloquy of prometheus, written in the following year. in this soliloquy prometheus appears as the sheer titan, the burden of his defiance being that zeus merits no worship from men to whose miseries he is deaf, and that such worship as he receives proceeds only from human folly and ignorance.[ ] by its protest against the conception of the mechanical god who "pushes the universe from without," and by the spinozistic pantheism which it implicitly proclaims, the ode dismayed the more timid spirits of the time. to the horror of fritz jacobi, lessing, to whom he read it in manuscript in , declared that its conception of the [greek: hen kai pan] was his own;[ ] and when, in , jacobi published the poem without goethe's knowledge, a controversy arose in which lessing was charged with atheism and pantheism, and which, as goethe records, cost the life of one of the combatants, moses mendelssohn.[ ] be it said that in his old age goethe himself came to regard the sentiments of the soliloquy as _sansculottisch_, and in the time of reaction of the holy alliance forbade the publication of the fragment as likely to be received as an evangel by the revolutionary youth of germany.[ ] [footnote : viktor hehn pointed out that the drama and the ode are inspired by different motives, and that it was in forgetfulness that goethe associated them.--_Über goethe's gedichte_, p. . bielschowsky (_goethe, sein leben und seine werke_, i. ) suggests that the ode may have been intended as the opening of act ii.] [footnote : sir frederick pollock dates "modern spinozism" from this incident.--_spinoza: his life and opinions_ (london, ), p. .] [footnote : while writing a defence of his friend lessing against the charge of atheism, mendelssohn's mental agitation was such that it was believed to have occasioned his death.] [footnote : turgenieff relates that on translating passages from _satyros_ and _prometheus_ to flaubert, edmond de goncourt, and daudet, all three were profoundly impressed by the range and power displayed in them.] to the same period as _prometheus_ belongs another fragment, inspired by an equally grandiose conception, which, like so many others with goethe, was never to be realised. the theme of the projected drama was to be the career of mahomet, and in his autobiography goethe has indicated the leading ideas it was to embody. contrary to the prevailing opinion, which had received brilliant expression in voltaire's play on the same subject, mahomet was to be represented not as an impostor but as a prophet sincerely convinced of the truth of his message, and inflamed with a disinterested desire to give his countrymen a purer religion--a view of mahomet, it may be said in passing, which goethe's disciple, carlyle, was among the first to proclaim in this country.[ ] the successive actions of the prophet were to illustrate the influence which character and genius combined have exercised on the destiny of men; but they were also to illustrate how the idealist in his contact with actualities is forced, in spite of himself, to compromise the purity of his original message, and, in consequence, to deteriorate in his own personal character.[ ] of the projected drama we have only two scenes, and a lyric in glorification of mahomet which was to be sung by two of the characters. in contrast to _prometheus_, not pantheism but monotheism, and not rebellion but submission, were to be the animating creed and motive of the protagonist. in the first of the two scenes he addresses in succession the great heavenly lights, but in their mutability he finds no stay or solace for mind and heart, and he turns to the creator of them all. "uplift thee, loving heart, to the creating one! be thou my lord, my god! thou, all-loving one, thou who didst create earth, heaven, and me." in the second scene we have a dialogue between mahomet and his foster-mother, fatima, in which he communicates the religious experiences which it was to be his mission to proclaim to his people; and the manner in which fatima receives them indicates the difficulties he would have to encounter in his _rôle_ as prophet. "he is changed; his nature is transformed; his understanding has suffered. better it is that i should restore him to his kinsfolk, than that i should draw the responsibility of evil consequences upon myself." but, as in the case of _prometheus_, it is in the lyric that was to form part of the drama that we have the most arresting expression of the poet's genius--another proof of the fact that at this period it was in the lyric that goethe found the most adequate utterance for what was deepest in his nature. in a rush of unrhymed, irregular measures it describes the course of a river (the rhine was in the poet's mind) from its source on the mountain summit, its impetuous progress among the obstacles that bar its passage, its gradually broadening current as it sweeps through the plains, undelayed by shady valley or by the flowers that adorn its banks; and finally losing itself in the ocean with all its tributary streams. [footnote : it is one of the ironies of goethe's literary career that, in his later years, in the period of his reaction against the formlessness that had invaded german literature, he, with the approval of schiller, translated voltaire's _mahomet_, and staged it in weimar.] [footnote : it is this conception, as he himself tells us, that renan applied to the life and teaching of jesus.] as sung by ali and fatima on the death of mahomet, the ode was an allegory of his life from its beginning to its triumphant close when he passed from the present with the consciousness that he had won to his faith the nation from which he had sprung. but it also undoubtedly expressed the aspiration of the poet himself. the ambition to impress himself on the world, and the consciousness of powers to give effect to his ambition, were indeed the ruling impulses behind all his distracted activities. but he was thwarted in his ambition alike by external circumstances and by his own temperament, and there came occasions when he was disposed to accept failure as his wisest choice. in two poems of this period he gives expression to this mood, and the necessity for overcoming it. in the one, _adler und taube_, a young eagle is wounded by a fowler, but after three days recovers, though with disabled wings. two doves alight near the spot, and one of them addresses soothing words to the crippled king of the birds. "thou art in sorrow," he coos; "be of good courage, friend! hast thou not here all that peaceful bliss requires?... o friend, true happiness is content, and everywhere content has enough." "o wise one," spoke the eagle, and, moved to deep earnest, sinks more deeply into himself; "o wisdom! thou speakest like a dove." in the other poem, _künstlers erdewallen_ ("the artist's earthly pilgrimage"), composed in the form of a dialogue, we have equally a draft from goethe's own experience. to provide for his family needs, the artist is forced to prostitute his genius by painting pictures for the vulgar _connoisseur_, and he desponds at the prospect of a life spent under such conditions, but the muse whispers consolation: "thou hast time enough to take delight in thyself, and in every creation which thy brush lovingly depicts." it was a consolation which at this time and at other periods of his life goethe had to take home to himself. chapter x _werther_, _clavigo_ in his fortieth year goethe wrote to wieland: "without compulsion, there is in my case no hope."[ ] so it was with him at every period of his life; without some immediate impulse out of his own experience or from the urgency of friends he was incapable of the sustained inspiration requisite to the execution of a prolonged artistic whole. we have seen how he dallied with the subject of _götz von berlichingen_, and how it was only at the instance of his sister cornelia that he concentrated his energies in throwing it into dramatic form. in the case of _werther_ we have an illustration of the same characteristic. shortly after leaving wetzlar, on hearing the news of jerusalem's death, there arose in him a pressing desire to embody his late experience in some imaginative shape; and in the course of the following year he actually addressed himself to the task. but his inspiration flagged, and it was not till the beginning of that a new experience supplied a fresh impulse constraining him to complete the "prodigious little work" which was to take his contemporaries by storm. [footnote : in his sixty-second year goethe also said of himself: "denn gewöhnlich, was ich ausspreche, das tue ich nicht, und was ich verspreche, das halte ich nicht."] we have it from goethe's own hand that it was a new and "painful situation" that gave him the necessary stimulus to resume his work on _werther_ and to carry it to a conclusion. we have seen how on leaving wetzlar in the autumn of he had made the acquaintance of the family von la roche, and how he had been captivated by the elder daughter, maximiliane. since then he had kept up a sentimental correspondence with the mother in which we have occasional references to his continued interest in the daughter. "your maxe," he wrote in august, , "i cannot do without so long as i live, and i shall always venture to love her." this was, of course, in the current style of the time, but a situation arose which made such amorous trifling dangerous. on january th, , the fräulein von la roche was married to peter brentano, a dealer in herrings, oil, and cheese, a widower with five children, with whom she settled in frankfort. goethe immediately became an assiduous frequenter of the brentano household, where he was not unwelcome to the young wife, whose new surroundings were in unpleasant contrast to those of the home she had left. but brentano was not so magnanimous as kestner, and a fortnight had not passed before there were "painful scenes" between him and goethe. on the st goethe wrote as follows to the mother of madame brentano: "if you knew what passed within me before i avoided the house, you would not think, dear mama, of luring me back to it again. i have in these frightful moments suffered for all the future; i am now at peace, and in peace let me remain."[ ] he had now gone the round of all the experiences embodied in _werther_; on february st he resumed the discontinued work, and, writing "almost in a state of somnambulism," finished it in a few weeks. [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] but besides his own immediate personal experience, there went other influences to the production of _werther_ which affected alike its form and its contents. in his autobiography goethe has minutely analysed these influences, and the most potent of them he traces to the impression made by english literature on himself and his contemporaries. what impressed them as the prevailing note of that literature was a melancholy disillusion which regarded life as a sorry business at the best, and goethe specifies young, gray, and ossian as representative interpreters of this mood. in verses like these, he says, we have the precise expression of the moral disease which he has depicted in _werther_:-- to griefs congenial prone, more wounds than nature gave he knew; while misery's form his fancy drew in dark ideal hues and horrors not its own![ ] [footnote : these lines are by the earl of rochester. on reading the first english translation of _werther_ ( ), goethe wrote: "it gave me much pleasure to read my thoughts in the language of my instructors."] if english literature contributed to the tone of feeling in _werther_, it also, though goethe does not mention the fact, suggested the literary form in which it is cast. in the case of his former loves, his emotions had found vent in a succession of lyrics thrown off as occasion prompted, but his later experiences had been of a more complex nature, and demanded a larger canvas for their development. it would appear that goethe's original intention was to adopt the dramatic form which had been so successful in the case of _götz_, and we are led to believe that, in accordance with this intention, he actually made a beginning of his work. in the interval between his discontinuing and resuming it, however, he changed his mind; and in the form in which we have it _werther_ is mainly composed of letters addressed by its central character to an absent friend. there can be little doubt that the epistolary form was suggested by a book with which goethe was familiar, and which had been received with enthusiasm in germany as in other continental countries--richardson's _clarissa harlowe_ ( - ). richardson's example, moreover, had been followed in another work which had achieved as sensational as success as _clarissa_--rousseau's _nouvelle héloïse_. in form and substance _werther_ was as much inspired by richardson and rousseau as _götz_ had been by shakespeare, yet in _werther_, as in _götz_, the world recognised an original creation which bore a new message to every heart capable of receiving it. the portentous work was published in the autumn of , but the form in which we now have it belongs to a later date. in the first complete edition of goethe's works ( ), _werther_ appeared with certain modifications, which did not, however, as in the case of _götz_, organically affect its original form.[ ] expressions which to goethe's maturer taste appeared objectionable were altered--not always, german critics are disposed to think, in the direction of improvement; the story of the unfortunate peasant in whose fate werther saw an image of his own, was introduced; and, in deference to the feelings of kestner and lotte, the characters of the two persons in the book with whom readers identified them were presented in a somewhat more favourable light.[ ] [footnote : in making these modifications goethe was advised by herder and wieland.] [footnote : though to the satisfaction of neither kestner nor lotte.] with what degree of similitude goethe has portrayed himself in the character of werther must necessarily be matter of opinion, but that his work was essentially drawn from his own experience the merest outline of it conclusively shows. equally in the case of the two parts of which the book is composed we have the presentment of successive phases of emotion through which we know that he had himself passed when he sat down to write it. the first part, the substance of which was probably drafted in the year , is all but an exact transcript of goethe's own experience from the day he settled in wetzlar till the day he left it. like goethe himself, werther settles in the spring of the year in a country town, unattractive like wetzlar, but also, like wetzlar, situated in a charming neighbourhood. his first few weeks there are spent as goethe spent them--in daydreaming and vague longings; finding distraction alternately in sketching, in reading homer, in intercourse with children and simple people, in contemplations on nature and the life of man, inspired by spinoza and rousseau. then befalls the incident which also befell goethe: he meets a girl at a ball, and he is overmastered by a passion which changes the current of his life and paralyses every other motive at its source. at the first meeting werther learns that charlotte is betrothed,[ ] but her betrothed is absent, and, oblivious of the future, he for a few weeks lives in a state of intoxicating bliss. albert, who, like charlotte, has in the first part all the characteristics of his original, at length appears on the scene, and all three are gradually convinced that the situation is intolerable. there are "painful scenes," such as, according to kestner, actually happened in goethe's own case; and after an agonising struggle with himself werther succeeds in breaking away from the enchanted spot, the last conversation between the three turning on the prospect of a future life--a memory, as we have seen, of an actual talk between lotte, kestner, and goethe. so ends the first part, which, with unimportant variations, is a close record of the circumstances of goethe's own sojourn in wetzlar. [footnote : it was shortly after his meeting with lotte buff that goethe learned that she was engaged to kestner.] a tragic end to _werther_ goethe had before him from its first conception, as is proved by his eagerness to ascertain the details of jerusalem's suicide. but to justify dramatically such an end to his hero, certain modifications in the relations of all the three characters were rendered necessary, and again his own experience suggested the mode of treatment. in the uncomfortable relations that had arisen between himself and the brentanos, husband and wife, he found a situation which would naturally involve a catastrophe in the case of a character constituted like werther. when in february, , therefore, he sat down to complete the tale of werther's woes, it was under a new inspiration that the characters of albert and charlotte fashioned themselves in his mind. not kestner and lotte buff, but the brentanos, suggested their leading traits as well as the relations of all parties, which involved the closing tragedy. albert becomes a jealous and somewhat morose husband, and charlotte is depicted with the characteristics of maxe brentano rather than of lotte buff--with a more susceptible temperament and less self-control.[ ] [footnote : goethe gave the blue eyes of maxe to charlotte. lotte buff's eyes were brown.] in the opening of the second part the character of werther is further revealed in a new set of circumstances. against his own inclinations he accepts an official appointment under an ambassador at a petty german court, and his helpless unfitness in this situation for the ordinary business of life may be regarded as a commentary on goethe's own invincible distaste for the practice of his profession. werther finds the ambassador intolerable; and a public insult to which, as a commoner, he is subjected at a social gathering of petty nobility, drives him to resign his post. after a few months' residence with a prince, whose company in the end he finds uncongenial, he is irresistibly drawn to the scenes of his former happiness and misery. but in the interval an event happens which makes the renewal of old relations impossible. charlotte and albert have married, and the sight of albert enjoying the privileges of a husband is a constant reminder of the hopelessness of his passion. blank despair gradually takes possession of werther's soul; in the hopeless wail of ossian he finds the only adequate expression of his fate.[ ] in the commentary which goethe introduces to prepare readers for werther's suicide, he suggests another motive for the act besides werther's infatuation for charlotte, which napoleon as well as other critics have regarded as a mistake in art. in his state of mental and moral paralysis, we are told, werther recalled all the misfortunes of his past life, and specially the mortification he had received during his brief official experience. but on the mind of the reader this incidental suggestion of other motives makes little impression; he feels that werther's helpless abandonment to his passion for charlotte is the central interest of the author himself, as it is a wholly adequate cause of the final catastrophe. [footnote : "werther," goethe remarked to henry crabb robinson, "praised homer while he retained his senses, and ossian when he was going mad."] by the fulness of its revelation of himself and by the impression it made on the public mind _werther_ holds a unique place among the longer productions of goethe. his own testimony, both at the time when it was written and in his later years, is conclusive proof of the degree to which it was a "general confession," as he himself calls it. "i have lent my emotions to his (werther's) history," he wrote shortly after the completion of his work; "and so it makes a wonderful whole."[ ] in one of the best-known passages of his autobiography he tells how he morbidly dallied with the idea of suicide, and banished the obsession only by convincing himself that he had not the courage to plunge a dagger into his breast. in a remarkable passage, written in his sixty-third year to his berlin friend, zelter, whose son had committed suicide, he recalls with all seriousness the hypochondriacal promptings which in his own case might have driven him to the fate of werther. "when the _tædium vitæ_ takes possession of a man," he wrote, "he is to be pitied and not to be blamed. that all the symptoms of this wonderful, equally natural and unnatural, disease at one time also convulsed my inmost being, _werther_, indeed, leaves no one in doubt. i know right well what resolves and what efforts it cost me at that time to escape the waves of death, as from many a later shipwreck i painfully rescued myself and with painful struggles recovered my health of mind." at a still later date ( ) goethe expressed himself with equal emphasis to the same purport. "that is a creation (_werther_)," he told eckermann, "which i, like the pelican, fed with the blood of my own heart. there is in it so much that was deepest in my own experience, so much of my own thoughts and sensations, that, in truth, a romance extending to ten such volumes might be made out of it. since its appearance, i have read it only once, and have refrained from doing so again. it is nothing but a succession of rockets. i am uneasy when i look at it, and dread the return of the psychological condition out of which it sprang." [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] these repeated statements of goethe, made at wide intervals of his life, sufficiently prove what a large part of himself went to the making of _werther_. yet werther was not goethe. from the fate of werther he was saved by two characteristics of which we have seen frequent evidence in his previous history. it was not in his nature to be dominated for any lengthened period by a single passion to the exclusion of every other interest. no sooner had he left wetzlar than his heart was open to the charms of maxe brentano, and, during the months that followed, her image and that of lotte buff alternately distracted his susceptibilities. byron declared that he was capable of only one passion at a time, but goethe was always capable of at least two. the other characteristic equally distinguishes goethe from werther. "i turn in upon myself," werther writes, "and find a world--but a world of presentiments and of dim desires, not a world of definite outlines and of living force." of a "living force" in himself goethe was never wholly unconscious; the record of his creative efforts during the months that followed his leaving wetzlar are sufficient evidence of the fact. the intellectual side of his nature--the impulse to know or to create--kept in check the emotional, and proved his safeguard in more crises than the wertherian period during which, by his own testimony, he so narrowly escaped shipwreck. the imprint of goethe's character and genius which _werther_ made on the mind of his contemporaries was never effaced during his lifetime, and was even a source of embarrassment to him in his future development. for years after its appearance he found it necessary to travel _incognito_ to avoid being pointed at as "the author of _werther_"; and in the case of each of his subsequent productions the reading public had a feeling of disappointment that they were not receiving what they expected from the writer who had once so profoundly moved them. in truth, probably no book ever given to the world has made such an instantaneous, profound, and general sensation as _werther_. the effect of _götz von berlichingen_ had as yet been confined to germany; on the publication of _werther_ its author became a european figure in the world of letters. in germany _werther_ was hawked about as a chap-book; within three years three translations appeared in france, and five years after its publication it was translated into english. the dress worn by werther (borrowed from england), consisting of a blue coat, yellow vest, yellow hose, and top-boots, became the fashion of the day and was sported even in paris. opinion in germany had been divided on _götz von berlichingen_, but the conflicting judgments on that work had turned only on questions of dramatic propriety. the questions raised by _werther_, on the other hand, appeared to many to concern the very foundations of morality and of human responsibility. suicide, it was indignantly clamoured, was sophistically justified in the person of werther, and was clothed in such specious hues as to present it in the light of a natural means of escape from the troubles of life. on the ground of these supposed sinister implications the sale of _werther_ was prohibited in leipzig under a penalty of ten thalers, a translation of it was forbidden in denmark, and the archbishop of milan ordered it to be publicly burned in that town. there was, of course, no thought in goethe's mind of recommending suicide by the example of werther, but he felt the reproach keenly, and indignantly repudiated it. yet, when a few years later, a young woman was found drowned in the ilm at weimar with a copy of _werther_ in her pocket, he was painfully reminded that the book might be of dangerous consequence to a certain class of minds.[ ] [footnote : the judgment of lessing, who had no sympathy with the effeminate sentimentality of the time, was severe. "we cannot," he said, "imagine a greek or a roman _werther_; it was the christian ideal that had made such a character possible." goethe, he thought, should have added a cynical chapter (the more cynical the better) to put _werther's_ character in its true light. as the friend of jerusalem, lessing naturally resented the liberty which goethe had taken with him.] _werther_ has been described as "the act of a conqueror and a high-priest of art,"[ ] and of the truth of this description we have interesting proof from goethe's own hand. in _werther_ he had not only given to the world a likeness of himself; in albert and charlotte he had exhibited two figures who were at once identified as kestner and lotte, now kestner's wife. it was not only that domestic privacy was thus invaded, but the characters assigned to albert and charlotte were such as could not fail to give just offence to their originals. yet in the triumph of the artist it seems never to have occurred to goethe that kestner and lotte would resent the licence he had taken with them. on the eve of the publication of _werther_ he sent a copy of it to lotte, informing her at the same time that he had kissed it a thousand times before sending it, and praying her not to make it public till it was given to the world at the approaching leipzig fair. it came as a surprise to him, therefore, when he received a letter of reproach from kestner, protesting against the injurious presentment of himself and his wife in the book. in a first reply, goethe frankly admitted his indiscretion, but in a second letter he took a bolder tone. "oh! ye unbelieving ones, i would proclaim ye of little faith," he wrote. "could you but realise the thousandth part of what _werther_ is to a thousand hearts, you would not reckon the cost it has been to you."[ ] lotte and kestner, from all we know of them, were both persons of sound nature, not unduly sensitive, and, in their hearts, they may not have been displeased at their association with the brilliant youth of genius on whom the eyes of the world were now turned. at all events, neither appears to have borne him a permanent grudge for presenting them to the public in such a dubious light. though, as has already been said, correspondence between goethe and them gradually became more and more intermittent, mutual respect and cordiality remained, and in later years we find goethe in the capacity of sage adviser to the prudent kestner.[ ] [footnote : by sainte-beuve.] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] [footnote : the family of kestner eventually published the correspondence of goethe with their parents.--a. kestner, _goethe und werther, briefe goethes, meistens aus seiner jugendheit, mit erläuternden documenten_ (stuttgart und tübingen, ).] the subsequent influence of _werther_ was at once more powerful and more enduring than the influence of _götz von berlichingen_, and goethe himself has suggested the reason. the so-called _werther_ "period," he says, belongs to no special age of the world's culture, but to the life of every free spirit that chafes under obsolete traditions, obstructed happiness, cramped activity, and unfulfilled desires. "a sorry business it would be," he adds, "if once in his life every one did not pass through an epoch when _werther_ appeared to have been specially written for him."[ ] the long series of imitations of werther--_rené_, _obermann_, _childe harold_, _adolphe_ (to mention only the best-known)--bears out goethe's remark that wertherism belongs to no particular age of the world, though it may assume various forms and be expressed in different tones.[ ] but in goethe's little book the name and the thing wertherism has received its "immortal _cachet_." to the intrinsic power of _werther_ it is the supreme tribute that napoleon, the first european man in the world of action, as goethe was the first in the world of thought, read it seven times in the course of his life, that he carried it with him as his companion in his egyptian campaign, and that in his interview with goethe he made it the principal theme of their conversation. to the literary youth of germany, we are told, _werther_ no longer appeals; but such statements can be based only on conjecture, and we may be certain that in all countries there are still to be found readers to whom the record of werther's woes seems to have been written for themselves.[ ] [footnote : eckermann, _op. cit._, january nd, .] [footnote : the _accidie_ of the middle ages was a form of wertherism. _cf._ chaucer's _parson's tale_.] [footnote : it may be recalled that _werther_ was throughout his life one of r.l. stevenson's favourite books. see his letter to mrs. sitwell, september th, , [transcriber's note: corrected error " "] and ch. xix. of _the wrecker_.] by a curious coincidence goethe had hardly made a "general confession" in the writing of _werther_ when he was led to make another "confession" in a work of less resounding notoriety, but equally interesting as a revelation of himself. in his autobiography he has related the origin of the piece. in the spring of there fell into his hands the recently published _mémoires_[ ] of the french playwright beaumarchais, which told a story that reawakened painful memories of his own past. beaumarchais had two sisters in madrid, one married to an architect; the other, named marie, betrothed to clavigo, a publicist of rising fame. on clavigo's promotion to the post of royal archivist he throws his betrothed over, and the news of his faithlessness brings beaumarchais to madrid. in an interview with clavigo he compels him, under the threat of a duel, to write and subscribe a confession of his unjustifiable treachery. to avert exposure, however, clavigo offers to renew his engagement to marie, and beaumarchais accepts the condition. clavigo again plays false, and obtains from the authorities an order expelling beaumarchais from madrid. through the good offices of a retired minister, however, beaumarchais succeeds in communicating the whole story to the king, with the result that clavigo is dismissed from his post. [footnote : _fragment de mon voyage d'espagne.--mémoires de monsieur pierre-augustin caron de beaumarchais_, tome ii.] we see the points in the narrative of beaumarchais which must have touched goethe to the quick. he also had played the false lover to friederike brion, who, however, had no brother like marie to call him to account. it was characteristic of him that, on reading the _mémoire_, it at once struck him as affording an appropriate theme for dramatic treatment, and it was further characteristic that he needed an immediate stimulus to incite him to the task. he has told us how the stimulus came. as a diversion to relieve the monotony of frankfort society, the youths and maidens of goethe's circle had arranged for a time to play at married couples, and, as it happened, the same maiden fell thrice to goethe's lot.[ ] at one of the meetings of the couples he read aloud the narrative of beaumarchais, and his partner suggested that he should turn it into a play. the suggestion, he relates, supplied the needed stimulus, and a week later the completed play was read to the reassembled circle. [footnote : of all the women who came in her son's way, frau goethe thought that this lady, anna sibylla münch by name, would have made him the most suitable partner in life.] the first four acts of the play, which goethe entitled _clavigo_, are simply the narrative of beaumarchais cut into scenes, and they contain long passages directly translated from the original--a proceeding which goethe justifies by the example of "our progenitor shakespeare." in the first scene of the first act we are introduced to clavigo and carlos discussing the prospects of the former. clavigo, who is represented as a publicist of genius, with a great career before him, is distracted by the conflict between his ambition and the sense of honour and gratitude which should bind him to his betrothed marie, a sickly girl, by position and character unsuited to be the helpmate of an ambitious man of the world. unstable and irresolute, he is as clay in the hands of carlos, who plays the part of the shrewd and cynical adviser to his friend, in whose genius and brilliant future he has unbounded confidence. as the result of their talk, clavigo decides with some compunction to abandon marie, and, as his fortunes rise, to find a more suitable mate. in the second scene the other characters of the play are brought before us--marie beaumarchais, her sister sophie, married to guilbert, an architect, and don buenco, a disappointed lover of marie. the theme of their conversation is the ingratitude and faithlessness of clavigo, to whom, however, marie, dying of consumption, still clings with fond idolatry. at the close of the scene beaumarchais appears, breathing vengeance on clavigo if he finds him without justification for his conduct. in the second act, which consists of only one scene, beaumarchais carries out his purpose and compels clavigo under threat of a duel to write with his own hand an abject acknowledgment of his baseness. in consistency with his fickle nature, however, clavigo prays beaumarchais to report to marie his unfeigned remorse and his desire to renew their former relations. beaumarchais agrees to convey the message, and departs under the impression that he has saved the honour of his sister. in the third act clavigo and marie are reconciled, their marriage is arranged, and beaumarchais destroys the incriminating document. the fourth act consists of two scenes. in the first, carlos convinces clavigo of his folly in compromising his career by a foolish union, and persuades him to break his pledge, undertaking at the same time to get beaumarchais out of the way. the second scene represents the dismay of the guilbert household on the discovery of clavigo's renewed treachery, beaumarchais vowing vengeance on the double-dyed traitor, and marie in a dying state attended by a hastily-summoned physician. in the fifth act the play breaks with the narrative of beaumarchais, which does not supply material for the necessary tragic conclusion, and is based on an old german ballad, with an evident recollection of the scene of hamlet and laertes at the grave of ophelia. while stealing from his house under cover of night, as had been arranged with carlos, clavigo passes the guilberts' door, where he sees three mourners standing with torches in their hands. on inquiry he learns that marie beaumarchais is dead; and presently the body is brought forth attended by guilbert, don buenco, and beaumarchais. then ensues a passionate scene in which beaumarchais slays clavigo, and the act closes with expressions of tenderness and compunction on the part of all the chief persons concerned. in a letter to a friend[ ] goethe explained that in writing _clavigo_ he had blended the character and action of beaumarchais with characters and actions drawn from his own experience; and this description strictly corresponds with the play as we have it. though in the first four acts, as we have seen, the incidents are directly taken from beaumarchais and many passages in them are simply translations, the characters of the leading personages--clavigo, carlos, marie, and beaumarchais--are entirely of goethe's own creation. moreover, in what is original in the dialogues there are touches everywhere introduced which are not to be found in the original, and which are precisely those that are of special interest for the student of goethe. of the play as a work of art he was himself complacently proud. it was written, as he tells us, with the express intention of proving to the world that he could produce a piece in strict accordance with the dramatic canons which he had flouted in _götz von berlichingen_.[ ] "i challenge the most critical knife," he proudly wrote to the same correspondent, "to separate the directly translated passages from the whole without mangling it, without inflicting deadly wounds, not to say only on the narrative, but on the structure, the living organism of the piece." in _clavigo_, at least, he has achieved what he failed to achieve in any other in the long series of his dramatic productions; it proved a successful acting play, and is still produced with acceptance to the present time. yet from the beginning those who have admired goethe's genius most have shaken their heads over _clavigo_. it was to be expected that the youthful geniuses of the _sturm und drang_ would be wrathful at the apostacy of their protagonist, who in _götz von berlichingen_ had set at naught all the traditional rules of the drama. but more discerning critics, then and since, have expressed their dissatisfaction on other grounds. there are in _clavigo_ no elements of greatness such as appear even through the immaturities of _götz_ and _werther_. clavigo himself is so poor a creature as to leave the reader with no other feeling for him than contempt; marie is characterless; and the other persons in the play have not sufficient scope to become well-defined figures. and the last act, the only original addition to beaumarchais' narrative, is in a style of cheap melodrama which, coming from the hand of goethe, can be regarded only as a weak concession to the sentimentalism of the darmstadt circle. "you must give us no more such stuff; others can do that," was merck's mordant comment on _clavigo_. merck's opinion may have been influenced by the fact that in the cynical carlos there are unpleasing traits of himself, but succeeding admirers of the master have for the most part been in agreement with him.[ ] [footnote : to fritz jacobi, august st, .] [footnote : in language, as well as in form, _clavigo_ followed traditional models. wieland was naturally gratified by goethe's return to those models which he had set at defiance in _götz_.] [footnote : in his autobiography goethe expresses the opinion that merck's advice was not sound, and that he might have done wisely in producing a succession of plays like _clavigo_, some of which, like it, might have retained their place on the stage.] but if _clavigo_ is not to be ranked among the greater works of goethe, as a biographical document it is even more important than _werther_. in the weislingen of _götz_ he had drawn a portrait of himself, and in _clavigo_ he has drawn a similar portrait at fuller length. "i have been working at a tragedy, _clavigo_," he wrote to a correspondent, "a modern anecdote dramatised with all possible simplicity and sincerity; my hero, an irresolute, half-great, half-little man, the pendant to weislingen in _götz_ or rather weislingen himself, developed into a leading character. in it," he adds, "there are scenes which i could only indicate in _götz_ for fear of weakening the main interest." in _clavigo_ we have at once a fuller revelation of himself and of his own personal experience. he is here, in a manner, holding a dialogue with himself regarding his own character and his own past life. in the first scene of the first act we must recognise a vivid presentment of the state of goethe's own feelings at the crisis when he abandoned friederike. in such a passage as the following carlos only expresses what must then have passed through goethe's own mind: "and to marry! to marry just when life ought to come into its first full swing; to settle down to humdrum domestic life; to limit one's being, when one has not yet done with half of one's roving; has not completed half of one's conquests!" out of goethe's own heart, also, must have come these words of clavigo: "she [marie] has vanished, clean vanished from my heart!... that man is so fickle a being!" what was said of werther as the counterpart of goethe applies, of course, equally in the case of clavigo. goethe was not at any moment the feeble creature we have in clavigo, yet in clavigo's inconstancy and ambition, in his womanish susceptibility and the need of his nature for external stimulus and counsel, we have a portrayal of goethe of which every trait holds true at all periods of his life. in the maries of _götz_ and _clavigo_, both betrayed by false lovers, goethe tells us that we may find a penitent confession of his own conduct towards friederike. but assuredly it was not with the primary intention of making this confession that either play was written. both plays, in truth, are evidence of what is borne out in the long series of his imaginative productions from _götz_ to the second part of faust: their conception, their informing spirit, their essential tissue come immediately from goethe's own intellectual and emotional experience. objective dramatic treatment of persons or events was incompatible with that passionate interest in the problems of nature and human life by which he was possessed at every stage of his development. chapter xi goethe and spinoza--_der ewige jude_ - if we are to accept goethe's own statement, during the years - --the distracted period, that is to say, which followed his experiences at wetzlar, and of which _werther_ and _clavigo_ are the characteristic products--he came under the influence of a thinker who transformed his conceptions, equally of the conduct of life and of man's relations to the universe--the jewish thinker, benedict spinoza. the passage in which he expresses his debt to spinoza is one of the best known in all his writings, and is, moreover, a _locus classicus_ in the histories of speculative philosophy. "after looking around me in vain for a means of disciplining my peculiar nature, i at last chanced upon the _ethica_ of this man. to say exactly how much i gained from that work was due to spinoza or to my own reading of him would be impossible; enough that i found in him a sedative for my passions and that he appeared to me to open up a large and free outlook on the material and moral world. but what specially attached me to him was the boundless disinterestedness which shone forth from every sentence. that marvellous saying, 'whoso truly loves god must not desire god to love him in return,' with all the premises on which it rests and the consequences that flow from it, permeated my whole thinking. to be disinterested in everything, and most of all in love and friendship, was my highest desire, my maxim, my constant practice; so that that bold saying of mine at a later date, 'if i love thee, what is that to thee?' came directly from my heart."[ ] [footnote : saying of philine in _wilhelm meisters lehrjahre_, bk. iv. ch. ix.] what is surprising is that of this spiritual and intellectual transformation which goethe avouches that he underwent there should be so little evidence either in his contemporary correspondence or in the conduct of his own life. in his letters of the period to which he refers he frequently names the authors with whom he happened to be engaged, but spinoza he mentions only once, and certainly not in terms which confirm his later testimony. in a letter to a correspondent who had lent him a work of spinoza we have these casual words: "may i keep it a little longer? i will only see how far i may follow the fellow (_menschen_) in his subterranean borings." whether he actually carried out his intention, or what impression the reading of the book made upon him, we are nowhere told, though, if the impression had been as profound as his autobiography suggests, we should naturally have expected some hint of it. in his _prometheus_, indeed, as we have seen, there are suggestions of spinozistic pantheism, but these may easily have been derived from other sources, and, moreover, in the passage quoted, the pantheistic conceptions of spinoza are not specifically emphasised. we know, also, that in preparing his thesis for the doctorate of laws he had consulted spinoza's _tractatus theologico-politicus_, and the scathing criticism on the perversions of the teaching of christ in that treatise may have suggested certain passages in a poem presently to be noted.[ ] yet, so far as his own contemporary testimony goes, we are led to conclude that in his retrospect he has assigned to an earlier period experiences which were of gradual growth, and which only at a later date were realised with the vividness he ascribes to them. if we turn to his actual life during the same period, it is equally hard to trace in it the results of the tranquillising influence which he ascribes to spinoza. as we have seen him, he was in mind distracted by uncertainty regarding the special function for which nature intended him; and in his affections the victim of emotions which by their very nature could not receive their full gratification. nor can we say that his relations to his father, to kestner, or brentano were characterised by that "disinterestedness" which he claims to have attained from his study of spinoza. as we shall presently see, goethe was so far accurate in his retrospect that at the period before us he was already attracted by the figure of spinoza, but it was not till many years later that a close acquaintance with spinoza's writings resulted in that indebtedness to which he gave expression when he said that, with linnæus and shakespeare, the jewish thinker was one of the great formative influences in his development. [footnote : an entry in his _ephemerides_, the diary which he kept in his st year (see above, p. ), shows that spinoza's philosophy, as he conceived it, was then repugnant to him. the passage is as follows: "testimonio enim mihi est virorum tantorum sententia, rectae rationi quam convenientissimum fuisse systema emanativum (he is thinking specially of giordano bruno); licet nulli subscribere velim sectae, valdeque doleam spinozismum, teterrimis erroribus ex eodem fonte manantibus, doctrinae huic purissimae, iniquissimum fratrem natum esse."--max morris, _op. cit._ ii. .] to the same period to which goethe assigns his transformation by spinoza he also assigns the original conception of a work in which spinoza was, at least, to find a place. as has been said, there are passages in the fragments of this poem that were actually written which may have been suggested by the _tractatus theologico-politicus_ of spinoza, but the general tone and tendency of the fragments are equally remote from the temper and the contemplations of the spinoza whom the world knows. the dominant note of _der ewige jude_, as the fragments are designated, is, indeed, suggestive, not of spinoza, but of him who may already have been in embryo in goethe's mind--mephistopheles. mephistophelian is the ironical presentment in _der ewige jude_ of the follies, the delusions of man in his highest aspirations. near the close of his life it was said of goethe that the world would come to believe that there had been not one but many goethes,[ ] and the contrast between the author of _werther_ and the author of _der ewige jude_ is an interesting commentary on the remark. yet the subject of the abortive poem, as we have it--the perversions of christianity in its historical development--was not a new interest for him. during his illness after his return from leipzig he had, as we saw, assiduously read arnold's _history of heretics_,[ ] with the result that he excogitated a religious system for himself. his two contributions to the short-lived review also show that religion, doctrinal and historical, was still a living interest for him. moreover, as was usually the case with all his creative efforts, there were external promptings to his choice of the subject which is the main theme of the fragments in question. the religious world of germany at this period was distracted by the controversies of warring theologians. there were the rationalists, who would bring all religion, natural and revealed, to the bar of human reason; there were the dogmatists, who thought religion could never rest on a secure foundation except it were embodied in an array of definite formulas; and, lastly, there were the pietists, or mystics, for whom religion was a matter of pious feeling independent of all dogma. in the spectacle of these christians reprobating each others' creeds goethe saw a theme for a moral satire which, fragment as it is, takes its place with the most powerful efforts of his genius. [footnote : by felix mendelssohn.] [footnote : see above, p. .] yet, as originally conceived, _der ewige jude_ was apparently to have been worked out along other lines. what this original conception was, goethe tells in some detail in his autobiography; and, as it is there expounded, we see the scope of a poem which, if the power apparent in the existing fragments had gone to the making of it, would have taken its place with _faust_ among the great imaginative works of human genius. the theme of the poem was to be the wandering jew, with whose legend goethe was familiar from chap-books he had read in childhood. the poem was to open with an account of the circumstances in which the curse of cain was incurred by ahasuerus, the name assigned in the legend to the wandering jew. ahasuerus was to be represented as a shoemaker of the type of hans sachs--a kind of jewish socrates who freely plied his wit in putting searching questions to the casual passers-by. recognised as an original, persons of all ranks and opinions, even the sadducees and pharisees, would stop by the way and engage in talk with him. he was to be specially interested in jesus, with whom he was to hold frequent conversations, but whose idealism his matter-of-fact nature was incapable of understanding. when, in the teeth of his protestations, jesus pursued his mission and was finally condemned to death, ahasuerus would only have hard words for his folly. judas was then to be represented as entering the workshop and explaining that his act of treachery had been intended to force jesus to become the national deliverer and declare himself king, but judas receives no comfort from ahasuerus, and straightway takes his own life. then was to follow the scene retailed in the legend--jesus fainting at ahasuerus's door on his way to death; simon the cyrenian relieving him of the burden of the cross; the reproaches of ahasuerus addressed to the saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured features on the handkerchief of st. veronica; and the words of the lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth till his second coming. as the subsequent narrative was to be developed, it was to illustrate the outstanding events in the history of christianity--one incident in the experience of the wanderer marked for treatment being an interview with spinoza. in concluding the sketch of the poem as he originally conceived it, goethe remarks that he found he had neither the knowledge nor the concentration of purpose necessary for its adequate treatment; and in point of fact, in the fragment as it exists there is little suggestion of the original conception. the title which goethe himself gave it at a later date, _gedicht der ankunft des herrn_, more fitly describes it than the title _der ewige jude_. of the two main sections into which the poem is divided, the first, extending to over seventy lines, corresponds most closely to the original conception. in twenty introductory lines the poet describes how the inspiration to sing the wondrous experiences of the much-travelled man had come to him. the note struck in these lines is maintained throughout the remainder of the fragment. it is a note of ironic persiflage which is plainly indicated to the reader. in lack of a better pegasus, a broomstick will serve the poet's purpose, and the reader is invited to take or leave the gibberish as he pleases. then follows a description of the shoemaker, who is represented as half essene, half methodist or moravian, but still more of a separatist--certainly not the type originally conceived by goethe as that of the wandering jew. the shoemaker is, in fact, a sectary of goethe's own time, discontented with the religious world around him, and convinced that salvation is only to be found in his own petty sect. equally as a picture of historical christianity in all ages is meant the satirical presentment of the religious condition of judæa--of indolent and luxurious church dignitaries, fanatics looking for signs and wonders, denouncing the sins of their generation, and giving themselves up to the antics of the spirit. but it is in the last and longest segment of the poem that its real power and interest are to be found. its theme is the second coming of christ and his experiences in lands professing his religion. in a scene, compared with which the prologue in heaven of faust is decorous, god the father ironically suggests that the son would find scope for his friendly feeling to the human kind if he were to pay a visit to the earth. alighting on the mountain where satan had tempted him, the son, filled with tender yearning for the race for whom he had died, has already anxious forebodings of woe on earth. in a soliloquy, which we may take as the expression of goethe's own deepest feelings, as it is the expression of his finest poetic gift, he gives utterance to his boundless love for man, and his compassion for a world where truth and error, happiness and misery, are inextricably linked. continuing his descent, he first visits the catholic countries where he finds that in the multitude of crosses christ and the cross are forgotten. passing into a land where protestantism is the professed religion, he sees a similar state of things. he meets by the way a country parson who has a fat wife and many children, and "does not disturb himself about god in heaven." next he requests to be conducted to the oberpfarrer of the neighbourhood, in whom he might expect to find "a man of god," and the fragment ends with an account of his interview with the oberpfarrer's cook, hogarthian in its broad humour, but disquieting even to the reader who may hold with jean paul that the test of one's faith is the capacity to laugh at its object. goethe forbade the publication of _der ewige jude_, and we can understand his reason for the prohibition.[ ] to many persons for whose religious feelings he had a genuine respect--to his mother among others--the poem would have been a cause of offence of which goethe was not the man to be guilty. moreover, a continuous work in such a vein was alien to goethe's own genius. as we have them, the fragments are but another specimen of that "godlike insolence" which, in his later years, he found in his satires on herder, wieland, and others. [footnote : it was first published in , four years after his death.] chapter xii goethe in society the publication of _götz von berlichingen_ in the spring of , we have seen, had made goethe known to the literary world of germany, and a figure of prime interest to its leading representatives. hitherto, nevertheless, with the exception of herder, he had come into personal contact with no men of outstanding note who might hold intercourse with him on anything like equal terms. in the summer of , however, when _clavigo_ and _werther_ were on the eve of publication, he was brought into contact with three men, all of whom had already achieved reputation in their respective spheres; and all of whom had visions as distinct from each other as they were distinct from goethe's own. as it happens, we have records of their intercourse from the hands of three of the four, and, taken together, they present a picture of the youthful goethe which leaves little to be desired in its fidelity, in its definiteness, in its vividness of colour. during the greater part of two months (from the last week in june till the middle of august) he comes before us in all the splendour of his youthful genius, with all his wild humours, his audacities, his overflowing vitality. the first of these three notabilities who came in goethe's way was one of whom he himself said, "that the world had never seen his like, and will not see his like again." he was johann kaspar lavater, born in zurich in , and thus eight years older than goethe. lavater had early drawn the attention of the world to himself. in his sixteenth year he had published a volume of poems (_schweizerlieder_) which attained a wide circulation, and a later work (_aussichten in die ewigkeit_) found such acceptance from its vein of mystical piety that he was hailed as a religious teacher who had given a new savour to the christian life. at the time when he crossed goethe's path he was engaged on the work on physiognomy with which his name is chiefly associated, and it was partly with the object of collecting the materials for that work that he was now visiting germany. but the personality of lavater was more remarkable than his writings. by his combination of the saint and the man of the world he made a unique impression on all who met him, on goethe notably among others. that his religious feelings were sincere his lifelong preoccupation with the character of christ as the great exemplar of humanity may be taken as sufficient proof. to impress the world with the conception he had formed of the person of christ was the mission of his life, and it was in the carrying out of this mission that his remarkable characteristics came into play. with a face and expression which suggested the apostle john, he exhibited in society a tact and address which, at this period at least, did not compromise his religious professions. next to his interest in the founder of christianity was his interest in human character, and his divination of the working of men's minds was such that, according to goethe, it produced an uneasy feeling to be in his presence. be it added that lavater was in full sympathy with the leaders of the _sturm und drang_ as emancipators from dead formalism, and the champions of natural feeling as opposed to cold intelligence. such was the remarkable person with whom goethe was thrown into contact during a few notable weeks, and who has recorded his impressions of him with the insight of a discerner of spirits. as time was to show, they were divided in their essential modes of thought and feeling by as wide a gulf as can separate man from man, and in later years lavater's compromises with the world in the prosecution of his mission drew from goethe more stinging comments than he has used in the case of almost any other person.[ ] in the passages of his autobiography, where he records his first intercourse with lavater, though his tone is distinctly critical, of bitterness there is no trace, and there is the frankest testimony to lavater's personal fascination and the stimulating interest of his mind and character. [footnote : in one of his _xenien_ goethe speaks thus of lavater:-- "schade, dass die natur nur einen menschen aus dir schuf, denn zum würdigen mann war und zum schelmen der stoff."] relations between the two had begun a year before their actual meeting. lavater had read goethe's _letter of the pastor_, and his interest in its general line of thought led him to open a correspondence with its author. the reading of _götz_, a copy of which goethe sent to him, convinced him that a portent had appeared in the literary world. "i rejoice with trembling," he wrote to herder; "among all writers i know no greater genius." before they met, indeed, lavater was already dominated by a force that brought home to him a sense of his own weakness to which he gave artless expression. in some lines he addressed to goethe he takes the tone of a humble disciple, and prays that out of his fulness he would communicate ardour to his feelings and light to his intelligence. yet in lavater's eyes goethe was a brand to be plucked from the burning, and, born proselytiser as he was, he even made the attempt to convert goethe to his own views of ultimate salvation. in response to his appeal goethe wrote a letter which should have convinced lavater that he was dealing with a son of adam with the ineradicable instincts of the natural man.[ ] "thank you, dear brother," he wrote, "for your ardour regarding your brother's eternal happiness. believe me, the time will come when we shall understand each other. you hold converse with me as with an unbeliever--one who insists on understanding, on having proofs, who has not been schooled by experience. and the contrary of all this is my real feeling. am i not more resigned in the matter of understanding and proving than yourself? perhaps i am foolish in not giving you the pleasure of expressing myself in your language, and in not showing to you by laying bare my deepest experiences that i am a man and therefore cannot feel otherwise than other men, and that all the apparent contradiction between us is only strife of words which arises from the fact that i realise things under other combinations than you, and that in expressing their relativity i must call them by other names; and this has from the beginning been the source of all controversies, and will be to the end. and you will be for ever plaguing me with evidences! and to what end? do i require evidence that i exist? evidence that i feel? i treasure, cherish, and revere only such evidences as prove to me that thousands, or even one, have felt that which strengthens and consoles me. and, therefore, the word of man is for me the word of god, whether by parsons or prostitutes it has been brought together, enrolled in the canon, or flung as fragments to the winds. and with my innermost soul i fall as a brother on the neck of moses! prophet! evangelist! apostle! spinoza or machiavelli! but to each i am permitted to say: 'dear friend, it is with you as it is with me; in the particular you feel yourself grand and mighty, but the whole goes as little into your head as into mine.'" [footnote : the letter is addressed to heinrich pfenninger, an engraver in zurich, who engraved some of the plates in lavater's book on physiognomy.--_werke, briefe_, band ii. pp. - .] on june rd lavater arrived in frankfort, where during four days he was entertained as a guest in the goethe household. the news of his coming had created a lively interest in all sections of the community, and during his stay he was besieged by admiring crowds, especially of women, who insisted even on seeing the bedchamber where the prophet slept. "the pious souls," was merck's sardonic comment, "wished to see where they had laid the lord"; but even merck came under the prophet's spell. the meeting of lavater and goethe was characteristic of the time. "_bist's?_" was lavater's first exclamation. "_ich bin's_," was the reply; and they fell upon each other's necks. on lavater's indicating "by some singular exclamations" that goethe was not exactly what he expected, goethe replied in the tone of banter which he maintained throughout their personal intercourse, that he was as god and nature had made him, and they must be content with their work. "all spirit (_geist_) and truth,"[ ] is lavater's comment on goethe's conversation at the close of their first day's meeting. [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. .] the following days were taken up with excursions and social gatherings in which lavater was the central figure, entrancing his hearers by his social graces and his apostolic unction. in the fräulein von klettenberg he found a kindred soul, and goethe listened, as he tells us, with profit as they discoursed on the high themes in which they had a common interest. if he derived profit, it was not of a nature that lavater and the fräulein would have desired. with the religious opinions of neither was he in sympathy, and when they rejected his own, he says, he would badger them with paradoxes and exaggerations, and, if they became impatient, would leave them with a jest. what is noteworthy in lavater's record, indeed, is goethe's communicativeness and spontaneity in all that concerned himself. "so soon as we enter society," is one of his remarks recorded by lavater, "we take the key out of our hearts and put it in our pockets. those who allow it to remain there are blockheads."[ ] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] during his stay in frankfort lavater was so constantly surrounded by his admirers that goethe saw comparatively little of him. on june th lavater left for ems, and it is a testimony to their mutual attraction that goethe accompanied him. the day's journey seems to have left an abiding impression on goethe's memory, as he makes special reference to it in his record of lavater's visit; and, as it happens, lavater noted in his diary the principal topics of their conversation. travelling in a private carriage during the long summer day, they had an opportunity for abundant talk such as did not occur again. one theme on which goethe spoke with enthusiasm, it is interesting to note, was spinoza and his writings, but, as his talk is reported by lavater, there was no hint in it of the profound change which the study of spinoza had effected in him. it was to the man and not the thinker that he paid his reverential tribute--to the purity, simplicity, and high wisdom of his life. but goethe's own literary preoccupations appear to have been the chief subject of their talk. he spoke of a play on julius cæsar on which he was engaged, and which remained one of his many abortive ambitions; he read passages from _der ewige jude_, "a singular thing in doggerel verse," lavater calls it; recited a romance translated from the scots dialect; and narrated for lavater's benefit the whole story of the iliad, reading passages of the poem from a latin translation. the memorable day was not to be repeated. at ems, as at frankfort, lavater was taken possession of by a throng of worshippers, and the state of his own affairs at home afforded goethe an excuse for leaving him. by a curious coincidence, shortly after goethe's return, there arrived another prophet in frankfort--also, like lavater, out on a mission of his own. this was johann bernhard basedow, whose character and career had made him one of the remarkable figures of his time in germany. born in hamburg in , the son of a peruke-maker there, in conduct and opinions he had been at odds with society from the beginning. in middle age he had come under the influence of rousseau, and thenceforth he made it his mission by word and deed to realise rousseau's ideals in education. he had expounded his theories in voluminous publications which had attracted wide attention, and the object of his present travels was to collect funds to establish a school at dessau in which his educational views should be carried into effect.[ ] goethe, as he himself tells us, had as little sympathy with the gospel of basedow as with that of lavater, but, always attracted to originals, basedow's personality amused and interested him. what gave point to his curiosity was the piquancy of the contrast between the two prophets. lavater was all grace, purity, and refinement; "in his presence one shrank like a maiden from hurting his feelings." in appearance, voice, manner, on the other hand, basedow was the incarnation of a hectoring bully, as regardless of others' feelings as he was impermeable in his own. his personal habits, also, were a further trial, as he drank more than was good for him and lived in an atmosphere of vile tobacco smoke. such was the singular mortal whose society goethe deliberately sought and cultivated during the next few weeks as opportunity offered. [footnote : the school was actually founded in , but subsequently, owing to quarrels with his colleagues, basedow had to leave it. it was closed in .] after spending some days in frankfort, basedow, on july th, set out to join lavater at ems, whether at goethe's suggestion or of his own accord we are not told. goethe had seen enough of basedow to make him wish to see more of him, and, moreover, it would be a piquant experience to see the two incongruous apostles together. "such a splendid opportunity, if not of enlightenment, at least of mental discipline," he says, "i could not, in short, let slip." accordingly, leaving some pressing business in the hands of his father and friends, he followed basedow to ems on july th. ems, then as now, was a gay watering-place crowded with guests of all conditions, and therefore an excellent field for the two proselytisers. goethe did not spend his days in the company of the two lights; while they were plying their mission, he threw himself into the distractions of the town, as usual making himself a conspicuous figure by his overflowing spirits and his practical jokes. only at night, when he did not happen to have a dancing partner, did he snatch a moment to pay a visit to basedow, whom he found in a close, unventilated room, enveloped in tobacco smoke, and dictating endlessly to his secretary from his couch; for it was one of basedow's peculiarities that he never went to bed. on one occasion goethe had an excellent opportunity of observing the contrasted characters of the two prophets. the three had gone to nassau to visit the frau von stein, mother of the statesman, and a numerous company had been brought together to meet them. all three had the opportunity of displaying their special gifts; lavater his skill in physiognomy, goethe the gift he had inherited from his mother of story-telling to children; but in the end basedow asserted himself in his most characteristic style. with a power of reasoning and a passionate eloquence, to which both goethe and lavater bear witness, he proclaimed the conditions of the regeneration of society--the improved education of youth and the necessity for the rich to open their purses for its accomplishment. then, his wanton spirit as usual getting the better of him, he turned the torrent of his eloquence in another direction. a thorough-going rationalist, his pet aversion was the dogma of the trinity, and on that dogma he now directed his batteries, with the effect of horrifying his audience, most of whom had come to be edified by the pious exhortations of lavater. lavater mildly expostulated; goethe endeavoured by jesting interruptions to change the subject, and the ladies to break up the company. all their efforts were in vain, and the apostle of rousseau had the satisfaction of completely unbosoming himself and at the same time forfeiting some contributions to his educational scheme. as they drove back to ems, goethe took a humorous revenge. the heat of a july day and his recent vocal exertions had made the prophet thirsty, and as they passed a tavern he ordered the driver to pull up. goethe imperiously countermanded the order, to the wrath of basedow, which goethe turned aside, however, with one of his ever-ready quips. the strangely-assorted trio were not yet tired of each other's company, for, when on july th lavater left ems, both goethe and basedow accompanied him. their way lay down the lahn and the rhine, and on the voyage basedow and goethe conducted themselves like german students on holiday--the former discoursing on grammar and smoking everlastingly, the latter improvising doggerel verses and the beautiful lines beginning: _hoch auf dem alten turme steht_. on landing at coblenz the behaviour of the pair was so outrageous that all three were apparently taken by the crowd for lunatics. at coblenz they dined, and the dinner has its place in literature, for both in his autobiography and in some sarcastic lines (_diné zu coblenz_) goethe has commemorated it. he sat between lavater and basedow, and during the meal the former expounded the revelation of st. john to a country pastor, and the latter exerted himself to prove to a stolid dancing-master that baptism was an anachronism. on the th they continued their voyage down the rhine as far as bonn--goethe still in the same madcap humour. lavater gives us a picture of him at one moment on the voyage--with gray hat, adorned with a bunch of flowers, with a brown silk necktie and gray collar, gnawing a _butterbrot_ like a wolf. from bonn they drove to cologne, goethe on the way inscribing in an album the concluding lines of the _diné zu coblenz_:-- und, wie nach emmaus, weiter ging's [transcriber's note: corrected error "emaus"] mit geist und feuerschritten, prophete rechts, prophete links, das weltkind in der mitten. at cologne they parted for the day, lavater proceeding to mülheim[ ] and goethe to düsseldorf. on the st goethe was at elberfeld, where his former friend jung stilling was settled as a physician. stilling has related how goethe made him aware of his presence. a message came to him that a stranger, who had been taken ill at an inn, wished to see him. he found the stranger in bed with head covered, and when at his request he leant over to feel his pulse, the patient flung his arms round his neck. on the evening of the same day there was a social gathering at the house of a pious merchant in the town in honour of lavater, who had come to elberfeld and was the merchant's guest. as described by stilling, the guests, chiefly consisting of persons of the pietist persuasion, were as remarkable for their appearance as for their opinions, and the artist who accompanied lavater in his travels busily sketched their heads throughout the evening. goethe was in his wildest mood, dancing round the table in a manner familiar to those who knew him, but which led the strangers present to doubt his sanity. it was apparently during the same evening that there occurred an incident which, as recorded by lavater, shows us another side of goethe. among the guests was one hasenkamp, a pietistic illuminist, who suddenly, when the company was in the full flow of amicable conversation, turned to goethe and asked him if he were the herr goethe, the author of _werther_. "yes," was the answer. "then i feel bound in my conscience to express to you my abhorrence of that infamous book. be it god's will to amend your perverted heart!" the company did not know what to expect next, when goethe quietly replied: "i quite understand that from your point of view you could not judge otherwise, and i honour you for your candour in thus taking me to task. pray for me!"[ ] [footnote : basedow remained for a time at mülheim. as we shall see, he and goethe met again later in the month.] [footnote : as _werther_ was not published till the autumn of , there must be some confusion in lavater's narrative.] among the guests who were present at the same motley gathering was the third distinguished personage whose acquaintance goethe made during these memorable weeks. this was fritz jacobi, one of the interesting figures in the history of german thought, alike by his personal character and the nature of his speculations. goethe and he had common friends before they met, but their relations had been such as to make their meeting a matter of some delicacy. goethe had satirised the poetry of jacobi's brother georg, and in his correspondence even vehemently expressed his dislike to the characters of both brothers as he had been led to conceive them. three women--sophie von la roche, johanna fahlmer, the aunt of the jacobis, and betty jacobi, their sister, all of whom goethe counted among his friends--had endeavoured to effect a reconciliation between goethe and the two brothers, but eventually it was goethe's own impulsive good nature that led to their meeting. the jacobis lived in düsseldorf, and the morning after his arrival in the town he called at their house, but found that fritz had gone to pempelfort, a place in the neighbourhood where he had an estate. goethe at once set out for pempelfort, and in a letter to the wife of fritz he characteristically describes the circumstances of the meeting. "it was glorious that you did not happen to be in düsseldorf and that i did what my simple heart prompted me. without introduction, without being marshalled in, without excuses, just dropping straight from heaven before fritz jacobi! and he and i, and i and he! and, before a sisterly look had done the preliminaries, we were already what we were bound to be and could be."[ ] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] fritz jacobi possessed a combination of qualities that were expressly fitted to impress goethe at the period when they met. handsome in person, and with the polished manners of a man of the world, he conjoined a practical talent for business with a passionate interest in all questions touching human destiny. about six years goethe's senior, he was, on goethe's own testimony, far ahead of him in the domain of philosophical thought. after herder, jacobi was indeed the most stimulating personality goethe had met. while his intercourse with lavater and basedow had been only a source of entertainment, from jacobi he received a stimulus which opened up new depths of thought and feeling. both goethe and jacobi have left records of their intercourse, and both are equally enthusiastic regarding the profit they derived from it. from the first moment of their meeting there was a spontaneous interchange of their deepest thoughts and feelings, unique in the experience of both. in jacobi's company goethe became another man from what he had been in the company of lavater and basedow. "i was weary," he says, "of my previous follies and wantonness, which, in truth, only concealed my dissatisfaction that this journey had brought so little profit to my mind and heart. now, therefore, my deepest feelings broke forth with irrepressible force." after a few days spent at pempelfort, during which georg jacobi joined them, the two brothers accompanied goethe to cologne on his homeward journey. it was during the hours they were together at cologne that the conversation of fritz and goethe became most intimate, and these hours remained a moving memory with both even when in after years divided aims and interests had estranged them. a visit to the cathedral of cologne recalled goethe's enthusiasm for the cathedral of strassburg, but its unfinished condition depressed him with the sense of a great idea unrealised, for in his own words "an unfinished work is like one destroyed." the emotions evoked by another spectacle in düsseldorf, according to goethe's own testimony, had the instantaneous effect of his gaining for life the confidence of both jacobis. the sight which equally moved all three was the unchanged interior of the mansion of a citizen of cologne named jabach, who a century before had been distinguished as an amateur of the fine arts. but what specially impressed them was a picture by le brun representing jabach and his family in all the freshness of life, and the consequent reflection that this picture was the sole memorial that they had ever lived. "this reflection," georg jacobi comments, "made a profound impression on our stranger,"[ ] and the impression must have been abiding, since in no passage of his autobiography does he recall more vividly the emotions of a vanished time. [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. .] the evening of the day they spent in cologne is noted both by goethe and fritz jacobi as marking a point in their intellectual development. the inn in which they were quartered overlooked the rhine, the murmur of whose moonlit waters was attuned to the sentiments that had been evoked in the course of the day. in the prospect of their near parting all three were disposed to confidential self-revelations, and the conversation ran on themes regarding which they had all thought and felt much--on poetry, religion, and philosophy. as usual with him when he was in congenial company, goethe freely declaimed such pieces of verse as happened at the time to be interesting him--the verses on this occasion being scottish ballads and two poems of his own, _der könig von thule_, and _der untreue knabe_. in philosophy the talk turned mainly on spinoza, of whom goethe spoke "unforgettably."[ ] "what hours! what days," wrote fritz immediately after their parting, "thou soughtest me about midnight in the darkness; it was as if a new soul were born within me. from that moment i could not let thee go."[ ] neither, in the ecstasy of these moments, dreamt that at a later day spinoza, who was now their strongest bond of union, was to be the main cause of their estrangement. for jacobi spinoza became the "atheist," to be reprobated as one of the world's false prophets; while for goethe he remained to the end the man to whom god had been nearest and to whom he had been most fully revealed. [footnote : as goethe at this time knew little of spinoza's philosophy, it was probably on spinoza's personal character that he enlarged. on this theme, we have seen, he had discoursed with lavater.] [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. .] shortly after parting with goethe, fritz jacobi communicated his impression of him to wieland in the following words: "the more i think of it, the more intensely i realise the impossibility of conveying to one who has not seen or heard goethe any intelligible notion of this extraordinary creation of god. as heinse[ ] expressed it, 'goethe is a genius from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot,' one possessed, i may add, for whom it is impossible to act from mere caprice. one has only to be with him for an hour to feel the utter absurdity of desiring him to think and act otherwise than he thinks and acts. by this i don't mean to suggest that he cannot grow in beauty and goodness, but that in his case such growth must be that of the unfolding flower, of the ripening seed, of the tree soaring aloft and crowning itself with foliage."[ ] [footnote : johann j.w. heinse, a minor poet of the time, and one of goethe's most fervent admirers.] [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. - .] on leaving the jacobis goethe proceeded to ems, where he again met lavater and basedow. on the day following lavater went home, and goethe and basedow remained till the second week of august. on the th goethe was in his father's house, and in a state of exaltation after his late experiences, to which he gives lively expression in a letter to fritz jacobi. "i dream of the moment, dear fritz, i have your letter and hover around you. you have felt what a rapture it is to me to be the object of your love. oh! the joy of believing that one receives more from others than one gives. oh, love, love! the poverty of riches--what force works in me when i embrace in him all that is wanting in myself, and yet give to him what i have.... believe me, we might henceforth be dumb to each other, and, meeting again after many a day, we should feel as if we had all along been walking hand in hand."[ ] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] in the first weeks of october goethe made personal acquaintance with a more distinguished personage than either lavater or basedow or jacobi--"the patriarch of german poetry," klopstock, the author of the _messias_.[ ] since his childhood, the name of klopstock had been familiar to goethe. to his conservative father, the _messias_, as written in unrhymed verse, was a monstrosity in german literature, and he refused to give it a place in his library. surreptitiously introduced into the house, however, goethe had read it with enthusiasm and committed its most striking passages to memory. and he had retained his admiration throughout all the successive changes in his own literary ideals. like all the youth of his generation, he saw in klopstock a great original genius to whom german poetry owed emancipation from conventional forms and new elements of thought, feeling, and imagination. klopstock, on his part, had been interested in the rising genius whose _götz von berlichingen_ had taken the world by storm, and had signified through a common friend that he would be gratified to see other works from his hand. goethe had responded in the spirit of a youthful adorer, conscious of the honour which the request implied. "and why should i not write to klopstock," he wrote, "and send him anything of mine, anything in which he can take an interest? may i not address the living, to whose grave i would make a pilgrimage?"[ ] [footnote : klopstock came from göttingen, where he was the idol of a band of youthful poets.] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] these communications took place in may, and in the beginning of october goethe received an invitation from klopstock to meet him at friedberg. owing to some delay on his journey, however, klopstock did not appear at the time appointed, but, gratified by goethe's eagerness to meet him, he shortly afterwards came to frankfort and was for a few days a guest in the goethe household. from goethe's account of their intercourse we gather that their intercourse was not wholly satisfactory to either. klopstock was in his fiftieth year, and his somewhat self-conscious and pedantic manner did not encourage effusion.[ ] like certain other poets he affected the tone of a man of the world and deliberately avoided topics relative to his own art. the two themes on which he expanded were riding and skating--of which latter pastime he had indeed made himself the laureate. goethe himself was passionately fond of both exercises, but from "the patriarch of german poetry" he might have expected discourse on higher themes. apparently, however, their relations remained sufficiently cordial, as, when klopstock took his departure, goethe accompanied him to mannheim. on his way home in the post-carriage goethe gave utterance to his feelings in some rhapsodical lines--_an schwager kronos_--(to time the postillion)--which may be regarded as a commentary on his impressions of the great man. written in the unrhymed, irregular measure which klopstock had been the first to employ, and containing phrases directly borrowed from klopstock, they give passionate expression to his desire for a life, brief it might be, but a life alive to the end with the zest of living. it was the sentiment of the youth of the _sturm und drang_, which the chilling impression he had received from klopstock doubtless evoked with rebounding force during his solitary drive home in the post-carriage.[ ] [footnote : merck found in klopstock "viel weltkunde und weltkälte."] [footnote : writing to sophie von la roche on november th, goethe calls klopstock "a noble, great man, on whom the peace of god rests," _werke, briefe_ ii. .] in the same month of october goethe had other visitors less distinguished, youths of his own age, who came to pay homage to him as their acknowledged leader in the literary revolution of which _götz_ had been the manifesto. we have seen the impressions goethe made upon his seniors like lavater and fritz jacobi; how he struck his more youthful acquaintances is recorded by two of them--both poets of some promise who had attracted attention by their contempt of conventionalities. it will be seen that their language shows that goethe's own exuberant style in his correspondence of the period was not peculiar to himself. the first to come was h.c. boie, an ardent worshipper of klopstock, and one of the heroes of the _sturm und drang_. "i have had a superlative, delightful day," boie records, "a whole day spent alone and uninterrupted with goethe--goethe whose heart is as great and noble as his mind! the day passes my description." the other visitor, f.a. werthes, who comprehensively worshipped both klopstock and wieland, leaves boie behind in the exuberance of his impressions. "this goethe," he wrote to fritz jacobi, "of whom from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof and from the going down thereof to its rising i should like to speak and stammer and rhapsodise with you ... this goethe has, as it were, transcended all the ideals i had ever conceived of the direct feeling and observation of a great genius. never could i have so well explained and sympathised with the feelings of the disciples on the way to emmaus when they said: 'did not our heart burn within us while he talked with us by the way?' let us make of him our lord christ for evermore, and let me be the least of his disciples. he has spoken so much and so excellently with me; words of eternal life which, so long as i live, shall be my articles of faith."[ ] apart from its relation to goethe, it will be seen that werthes' letter is a document of the time, bringing before us, as it does, the strained and distorted sentiment, sufficiently apparent in goethe himself, but which he, almost alone of the youths of his generation, was strong enough to hold in check. [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. .] in the following month (december) goethe received still another visit--a visit which was directly to lead to the most decisive event in his life. as he was sitting one evening in his own room, a stranger was ushered in, whom in the dusk he mistook for fritz jacobi. the stranger was major von knebel, who had served in the prussian army, but was now on a tour with the young princes of weimar, carl august and constantin, to the latter of whom he was acting as tutor. knebel was keenly interested in literature, was a poet himself, and an ardent admirer of goethe. there followed congenial talk which was to be the beginning of a friendship that, unlike most of goethe's youthful friendships, was to endure into the old age of both. but knebel had come on a special errand; the young princes had expressed the desire to become acquainted with the man who had made merry with their instructor wieland, and whose name was in all men's mouths as the author of the recently published _werther_. nothing loth, goethe accompanied knebel to the princes, and in the interviews that followed he displayed all the tact that characterised his subsequent intercourse with the great. studiously avoiding all reference to his own productions, he turned the conversation on subjects of public interest, on which he spoke with a fulness of knowledge that convinced his hearers that the author of _werther_ was not an effeminate sentimentalist. so favourable was the impression he made on the princes that they expressed a wish that he would follow them to mainz and spend a few days with them there. the proposal was highly acceptable to goethe, but there was a difficulty in the way. the herr rath was a sturdy republican, and had an ingrained aversion to the nobility as a class. in his opinion, for a commoner to seek intercourse with that class was to compromise his self-respect and to invite humiliation, and he roundly maintained that in seeking his son's acquaintance the princes were only laying a train to pay him back for his treatment of wieland. when the goethe household was divided on important questions, it was their custom to refer to the fräulein von klettenberg as arbiter. that sainted lady was now on a sick-bed, but through the frau rath she conveyed her opinion that the invitation of the princes should be accepted. to mainz, therefore, goethe went in company with knebel, who had remained behind to see more of him, and his second meeting with the two boys completed his conquest of them. any resentment they may have entertained for his attack on wieland was removed by his explanation of its origin, and it was with mutual attraction that both parties separated after a few days' cordial intercourse. thus were established the relations which within a year were to result in goethe's departure from "accursed frankfort," and his permanent settlement at the court of weimar. as it happens, we have a record of knebel's impression of goethe during their few days' intercourse, which as a characterisation comes next in interest to that of kestner already quoted. "from wieland," he writes, "you will have been able to learn that i have made the acquaintance of goethe, and that i think somewhat enthusiastically of him. i cannot help myself, but i swear to you that all of you, all who have heads and hearts, would think of him as i do if you came to know him. he will always remain to me one of the most extraordinary apparitions of my life. perhaps the novelty of the impression has struck me overmuch, but how can i help it if natural causes produce natural workings in me?... goethe lives in a state of constant inward war and tumult, since on every subject he feels with the extreme of vehemence. it is a need of his spirit to make enemies with whom he can contend; moreover, it is not the most contemptible adversaries he will single out. he has spoken to me of all those whom he has attacked with special and genuinely felt esteem. but the fellow delights in battle; he has the spirit of an athlete. as he is probably the most singular being who ever existed, he began as follows one evening in mainz in quite melancholy tones: 'i am now good friends again with everybody--with the jacobis, with wieland; and this is not as it should be with me. it is the condition of my being that, as i must have something which for the time being is for me the ideal of the excellent, so also i must have an ideal against which i can direct my wrath.'"[ ] [footnote : max morris, _op. cit._ iv. - . about the same date as knebel's letter, goethe wrote to sophie von la roche: "das ist was verfluchtes dass ich anfange mich mit niemand mehr misszuverstehen." in his th year goethe said of himself: "opposition ist mir immer nötig."] on goethe's return to frankfort sad news awaited him; during his absence the fräulein von klettenberg, whom he had left on her sick-bed, had died. it was the severest personal loss he had yet sustained by death. after his sister she had been the chief confidant of all his troubles, his hopes, and ambitions, and he never left her presence without feeling that for the time he had been lifted out of himself. the relations between goethe and her, indeed, show him in his most attractive light. he had never disguised from her the fact that he could not share the faith by which she lived; he was, as we have seen, even in the habit of jesting at her most cherished beliefs; but there was never a shade of alienation between them. "bid him adieu," was her last message to him through his mother; "i have held him very dear."[ ] take it as we may, it is the singular fact that by none was goethe regarded with more affectionate esteem than by the two pious mystics, jung stilling and fräulein von klettenberg. [footnote : _ib._ p. .] chapter xiii lili schÖnemann to the year belongs the third critical period of goethe's last years in frankfort. the autumn of following his return from strassburg had been the first of these periods, and was signalised by _götz von berlichingen_, the product of his contrition for friederike and of the inspiration of shakespeare. in the summer and autumn of came the wetzlar episode, which found expression in _werther_; and in the opening weeks of begins the third period of crisis, the issue of which was to be his final leave-taking of frankfort. on an evening near the close of or at the beginning of , a friend introduced goethe to a house in frankfort which during the next nine months was to be the centre of his thoughts and emotions. there was a crowd of guests, but goethe's attention became fixed on a girl seated at a piano, and playing, as he informs us, with grace and facility. the house was that of frau schönemann, the widow of a rich banker, and the girl who had excited goethe's interest was her only daughter, anna elisabeth, known by the pet name of lili--the name by which she is designated in goethe's own references to her. the musician having risen, goethe exchanged a few polite compliments with her, and when he took his leave for the evening, the mother expressed the wish that he would soon repeat his visit, the daughter at the same time indicating that his presence would not be disagreeable to her. the houses of the goethes and the schönemanns were only some hundred paces apart, but there had hitherto been no intercourse between the two families, and the reason for this isolation is a significant fact in the relations between goethe and lili that were to follow. the schönemanns moved in a social circle which was rigidly closed to the burgher element in the city, and, when frau schönemann gave goethe the _entrée_ to her house, it was because he was an exceptional member of the class to which he belonged. in making the acquaintance of the schönemanns, therefore, he had already to a certain degree compromised himself.[ ] in his own account of his relations to lili he does not disguise the fact that her mother and the friends of the family hardly concealed their feeling that the goethes were not of their order. in seeking further intercourse with the schönemanns he was thus putting himself in a delicate position, and the fact that he deliberately chose to do so is proof that his first sight of lili must have touched his inflammable heart. [footnote : in a letter written to johanna fahlmer from weimar (april th, ) goethe vehemently expresses his dislike of the schönemann kin. "i have long hated them," he says; "from the bottom of my heart.... i pity the poor creature [lili] that she was born into such a race."] during the month of january goethe became a frequent visitor at the schönemanns, and there began those relations with lili which, according to his own later testimony, were to give a new direction to his life, as being the immediate cause of his leaving frankfort and settling in weimar. if we are to accept his own averment two years before his death, lili was the first whom he had really loved, all his other affairs of the heart being "inclinations of no importance."[ ] so he spoke in the retrospect under the influence of an immediate emotion, but his own contemporary testimony proves that his love for lili was at least not unmingled bliss. make what reserves we may for the artificial working up of sentiment which was the fashion of the time, that testimony presents us with the picture of a lover who has not only to contend with obstacles which circumstances put in his way, but with the haunting conviction that his passion was leading him astray and that its gratification involved the surrender of his deepest self. as in the case of others of his love passages, his relations with lili evoked a series of literary productions of which they are the inspiration and the commentary, and which exhibit new developments of his genius. we have lyrics addressed to her which, though differently inspired from those addressed to friederike, take their place with the choicest he has written; we have plays more or less directly bearing on the situation in which he found himself; and, finally, we have his letters to various correspondents in which every phase of his passion is recorded at the moment. [footnote : eckermann, march th, . what has been said of chateaubriand, who made use of a similar expression, may probably be said with greater truth of goethe, "il ment à ses propres souvenirs et à son coeur." in a letter to frau von stein (may th, ) goethe describes his relation to friederike brion as "das reinste, schönste, wahrste, das ich ausser meiner schwester je zu einem weibe gehabt."] in lili schönemann goethe had a different object from any of his previous loves. käthchen schönkopf, friederike, lotte buff had all been socially his inferiors, and he could play "the conquering lord" with them. lili, on the other hand, was his superior socially--a fact of which her relatives and friends seem to have made him fully conscious. moreover, though he was in his twenty-sixth year, and she only in her sixteenth, her personal character and her upbringing had given her a maturity beyond that of any of his previous loves. she was clever and accomplished, and already, as a desirable _partie_, she had a considerable experience of masculine arts. as she is represented in her portraits, the firm poise of her head and her clear-cut features suggest the dignity, decision, and self-control of which her subsequent life was to give proof.[ ] [footnote : she is described as a pretty blonde, with blue eyes and fair hair. in a letter (march th, ) addressed to lili, then a widow, goethe writes: "sie haben in den vergangenen jahren viel ausgestanden und dabei, wie ich weiss, einen entschlossenen mut bewiesen, der ihnen ehre macht."] the first two lyrics he addressed to lili reveal all the difference between his relations to her and to friederike. those addressed to friederike breathe the confidence of returned affection unalloyed by any disturbing reserves; in the case of his effusions to lili there is always a cloud in his heaven which seems to menace a possible storm. in the first of these two lyrics, _neue liebe, neues leben_ ("new love, new life"), there is even a suggestion of regret to find that he is entangled in a new passion. what is noteworthy in connection with all his poems inspired by lili, however, is that they are completely free from the sentimentality of those he had written under the influence of the ladies of darmstadt. though differing in tone from the lyrics addressed to friederike, they have all their directness, simplicity, and economy of expression. in his autobiography he tells us that there could be no doubt that lili ruled him, and in _neue liebe, neues leben_, he acknowledges the spell she has laid upon him with a highly-wrought art without previous example in german literature. herz, mein herz, was soll das geben? was bedränget dich so sehr? welch ein fremdes neues leben! ich erkenne dich nicht mehr. weg ist alles, was du liebtest, weg, warum du dich betrübtest, weg dein fleiss und deine ruh'-- ach, wie kamst du nur dazu! fesselt dich die jugendblüte, diese liebliche gestalt, dieser blick voll treu' und güte mit unendlicher gewalt? will ich rasch mich ihr entziehen, mich ermannen, ihr entfliehen, führet mich im augenblick ach, mein weg zu ihr zurück. und an diesem zauberfädchen, das sich nicht zerreissen lässt, hält das liebe, lose mädchen mich so wider willen fest; muss in ihrem zauberkreise leben nun auf ihre weise. die veränd'rung, ach, wie gross! liebe! liebe, lass mich los! say, heart of me, what this importeth; what distresseth thee so sore? new and strange all life and living; thee i recognise no more. gone is everything thou loved'st; all for which thyself thou troubled'st; gone thy toil, and gone thy peace; ah! how cam'st thou in such case? fetters thee that youthful freshness? fetters thee that lovely mien? that glance so full of truth and goodness, with an adamantine chain? vain the hardy wish to tear me from those meshes that ensnare me; for the moment i would flee, straight my path leads back to thee. by these slender threads enchanted, which to rend no power avails, that dear wanton maiden holds me thus relentless in her spells. thus within her charméd round must i live as one spellbound; heart! what mighty change in thee; love, o love, ah, set me free! in the second lyric, _an belinden_, he pictures in the same tone of half regret the case in which he finds himself, and the picture has an eloquent commentary in his letters of the time. he who had lately spent his peaceful evenings in the solitude of his own chamber dreaming of her image had through her been irresistibly drawn into an alien and uncongenial world. is he the same being who now sits at the card-table amid the glaring lights of a fashionable drawing-room in the presence of hateful faces? for her, however, he will gladly endure what he loathes with his whole soul. reizender ist mir des frühlings blüte nun nicht auf der flur; wo du, engel, bist, ist lieb' and güte, wo du bist, natur. now the blooms of springtide on the meadow touch no more my heart; where thou, angel, art, is truth and goodness; nature, where thou art. so he sang in tones befitting the true lover, but, as it happens, we have a prose commentary from his own hand which gives perhaps a truer picture of his real state of mind. towards the end of january, when he was already deep in his passion for lili, he received a letter which opened a new channel for his emotions. the letter came from an anonymous lady who, as she explained, had been so profoundly moved by the tale of werther that she could not resist the impulse to express her gratitude to its author. the fair unknown, as he was subsequently to discover, was no less distinguished a person than an imperial countess--the countess stolberg, sister of two equally fervid youths, of whom we shall presently hear in connection with goethe. it was quite in keeping with the spirit of the time that two persons of different sexes, who had never seen each other, should proceed mutually to unbosom themselves with a freedom of self-revelation which an age, habituated to greater reticence, finds it difficult to understand; and there began a correspondence between goethe and his adorer in which we have the astonishing spectacle of her becoming the confidant of all his emotions with regard to another woman, while he is using the language of passion towards herself.[ ] here is the opening sentence of his first letter to her, and it strikes the note of all that was to follow: "my dear, i will give you no name, for what are the names--friend, sister, beloved, bride, wife, or any word that is a complex of all these, compared with the direct feeling--with the---- i cannot write further. your letter has taken possession of me at a wonderful time."[ ] [footnote : it may be regarded as significant that goethe makes no reference to the countess in his autobiography.] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] in his second letter to her, while she was still unknown to him, written about three weeks later (february th), he depicts the condition in which we are to imagine him at the time it was penned. it will be seen that it is a prose rendering of the lines _an belinden_, to which reference has just been made. "if, my dear one, you can picture to yourself a goethe who, in a laced coat, and otherwise clad from head to foot with finery in tolerable keeping, in the idle glare of sconces and lustres, amid a motley throng of people, is held a prisoner at a card-table by a pair of beautiful eyes; who in alternating distraction is driven from company to concert and from concert to ball, and with all the interest of frivolity pays his court to a pretty blonde, you have the present carnival-goethe.... but there is another goethe--one in grey beaver coat with brown silk necktie and boots--who already divines the approach of spring in the caressing february breezes, to whom his dear wide world will again be shortly opened up, who, ever living his own life, striving and working, according to the measure of his powers, seeks to express now the innocent feelings of youth in little poems, and the strong spice of life in various dramas; now the images of his friends, of his neighbourhood and his beloved household goods, with chalk upon grey paper; never asking the question how much of what he has done will endure, because in toiling he is always ascending a step higher, because he will spring after no ideal, but, in play or strenuous effort, will let his feelings spontaneously develop into capacities."[ ] [footnote : _ib._ pp. - .] the plays to which goethe refers in this letter form part of his intellectual and emotional history during the period of his relations to lili. in themselves these plays have little merit, and, had they come from the hand of some minor poet, they would deservedly have passed into oblivion, but as part of his biography they call for some notice. the first of them, _erwin und elmire_, is a sufficiently trivial vaudeville, and appears to have been begun in the autumn of .[ ] he must have retouched it in january--february ( ), however, as it contains distinct suggestions of his experiences with the schönemann family. as he himself tells us in his autobiography, the piece was suggested by goldsmith's ballad, _edwin and angelina_, and both the choice and handling of the subject illustrate his remark in the foregoing letter regarding the fugitive nature of the various things which he threw off at this time.[ ] there are four characters,--olimpia and her daughter elmire, bernardo, a friend of the family, and erwin, elmire's lover. elmire plays the part of capricious coquette with such effect that she drives her despairing lover to hide himself from the world and to retreat to a hermitage which he constructs for himself in the neighbouring wilds. elmire now realises her hard-heartedness, and exhibits such symptoms of distress as to waken the concern of her mother and bernardo. bernardo, however, is in erwin's secret, and contrives to bring the two lovers together and to effect a happy reconciliation, to the satisfaction of all parties--the mother included. the play was dedicated to lili in the following lines:-- den kleinen strauss, den ich dir binde, pflückt' ich aus diesem herzen hier; nimm ihn gefällig auf, belinde! der kleine strauss, er ist von mir. this posy that i bind for thee i cull'd it from my very heart; this little posy, 'tis from me; take it, belinda, in good part. [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : he says of the piece that it cost him "little expenditure of mind and feeling." _ib._] there was a sufficient reason for goethe's praying lili to take the piece "in good part." in the cruel coquette elmire lili could not but see a portrait of herself, and there are expressions in the play which she could not but regard as home-thrusts. "to be entertained, to be amused," says erwin to bernardo, "that is all they (the maidens) desire. they value a man who spends an odious evening with them at cards as highly as the man who gives his body and soul for them." in another remark of erwin's there is a reference to goethe's own relations to lili and her family which she could not misunderstand. "i loved her with an enduring love. to that love i gave my whole heart. but because i am poor, i was scorned. and yet i hoped through my diligence to make as suitable a provision for her as any of the beplastered wind-bags." trivial as the play is, it was acted in frankfort during goethe's absence,[ ] and at a later date he considered it worth his while to recast it in another form. [footnote : goethe was not known to be the author. in a letter to johanna fahlmer, he expresses his curiosity to know if lili was present at its performance. _erwin und elmire_, it should be said, contains two of goethe's most beautiful songs, the one beginning "ein veilchen auf der wiese stand," and the other "ihr verblühet, süsse rosen."] _erwin und elmire_ was followed by another play, more remarkable from its contents, but by general agreement of as little importance from a literary point of view. this was _stella_, significantly designated in its original form as _a play for lovers_. unlike _erwin und elmire_, it was wholly the production of this period--the end of february and the beginning of march being the probable date of its composition. though written at the height of his passion for lili, however, it contains fewer direct references to his experiences of the moment than _erwin und elmire_. any interest that attaches to _stella_ lies in the fact of its being a lively presentment of a phase of goethe's own experience and of the world of factitious sentiment which made that experience possible. no other of goethe's youthful productions, indeed, better illustrates the literary emotionalism of the time when it was written, and some notion of its character and scope is desirable in view of all his relations to lili. the drama opens in a posting-house, where two travellers, madame sommer (cäcilie) and her daughter lucie, have alighted. the object of their journey is to place lucie as a companion with a lady living on an estate in the neighbourhood. from the conversation of the mother and daughter we learn that cäcilie had been deserted by her husband, and was now in such reduced circumstances as to necessitate her daughter's finding some employment. on inquiring of the postmistress they gain some information regarding the lady they are in search of. she also had been deserted by one who was her reputed husband, and since then had spent her days in mournful solitude and good works. fatigued by her journey, cäcilie retires to rest, and lucie, carefully instructed not to reveal the position of herself and her mother, sets out to interview the strange lady. during her absence there arrives at the posting-house a gentleman in military dress, who presently falls into a tearful soliloquy, from which we learn that he is no other than fernando, the husband of cäcilie, and that the strange lady is stella, whom he had also deserted and with whom he now proposes to renew his former relations. lucie returns delighted with her visit to stella, and there ensues a bantering conversation between the father and daughter, both, of course, equally ignorant of their relation to each other. so ends the first act; with the second begin the embarrassments of the difficult situation. cäcilie and lucie repair to stella, and, after an effusive exchange of memories between the two deserted ones, stella invites both mother and daughter to make their home with her. unfortunately stella brings forth the portrait of her former lover, in whom to her horror cäcilie recognises her husband, and lucie to her surprise recognises the officer at the posting-house--a fact which she makes known to stella. in an ecstasy of excited expectation stella dispatches a servant with the order to fetch the long-lost one, and cäcilie, retiring to the garden, communicates to lucie the discovery of her father. in the rapidly succeeding scenes that follow the three chief persons experience alternations of agony and bliss which find facile expression in many sighs, tears, and embraces. fernando and stella, lost in the present and oblivious of the past, melt in their new-found bliss, but are interrupted in their raptures by the announcement that cäcilie and lucie are preparing to take their departure. at stella's request fernando finds cäcilie, whom he at first does not recognise. mutual recognition follows, however, when fernando vows that he will never again leave her, and proposes that he and she and lucie should make off at once. meanwhile, stella is pouring forth her bliss over the grave which, like one of the darmstadt ladies, she has had dug for herself in her garden. here she is joined by fernando, whose altered mood fills her with a vague dread which is converted into horror when, on the entrance of cäcilie and lucie, fernando acknowledges them as his wife and daughter. after paroxysms of emotion all the parties separate, and stella prepares to take her flight after a vain attempt to cut fernando's portrait out of its frame. she is interrupted in her intention of flight by the appearance of fernando, and there follows a dialogue in which we are to look for the drift of the play. cäcilie insists on departing and leaving the two lovers to their happiness. "i feel," she says, "that my love for thee is not selfish, is not the passion of a lover, which would give up all to possess its longed-for object ... it is the feeling of a wife, who out of love itself can give up love." fernando, however, passionately declares that he will never abandon her, and cäcilie makes a happy suggestion that will solve all difficulties. was it not recorded of a german count that he brought home a maiden from the holy land and that she and his wife happily shared his affections between them? and such is the solution which commends itself to all parties. fernando impartially embraces both ladies, and cäcilie's concluding remark is: "we are thine!"[ ] [footnote : in deference to the general opinion that this ending was immoral, goethe, in a later form of the play, makes fernando shoot himself.] such is the play which, in a bad english translation that did not mitigate its absurdities, provoked the wit of the _anti-jacobin_.[ ] in fernando, the central figure of the play, we are, of course, to recognise goethe himself,[ ] and in no other of his dramas has he presented a less attractive character. weislingen, clavigo, and werther have all their redeeming qualities, but fernando is an emotional egotist incapable of any worthy motive, and it is the most serious blemish in the play, even in view of the factitious world in which it moves, that he is made the adored idol of two such different women as cäcilie and stella. the situation, as goethe himself tells us, was suggested by the relations of swift to stella and vanessa, but he did not need to go so far afield for a motive. in the world around him he was familiar both with the creed and the practice which the conclusion of the play approves. as we have seen, it was openly held by enlightened and moral persons that marriage, as being a mere contract, was incompatible with a true union of souls, and that such a union was only to be found in irresponsible relations. in the case of his friend fritz jacobi, whose character and talents had all his admiration, he had a practical illustration of the creed; for jacobi had a wife and also a friend (his step-aunt johanna fahlmer) in whom he found a more responsive recipient of his emotions. but it is rather in goethe's own character and experience that we are to look for the origin of _stella_; it is in truth an analytic presentment of what he had himself known and felt. as we have seen, one object was incapable of engrossing all his affections; while he was paying court to lili, his wandering desires went out to the fair correspondent who had evinced such interest in his troubles and aspirations. it would seem that he required two types of woman such as he has depicted in _stella_ to satisfy at once his mind and heart: a cäcilie who inspired him with respect as well as affection, and a stella whose self-abandonment left his passions their free course. [footnote : _stella_ and other german plays are wittily parodied in _the rovers; or, the double arrangement_.] [footnote : goethe gives fernando his own brown eyes and black hair.] nauseous as _stella_ must appear to the modern reader, it found wide acceptance at the period it was written, though its moral was generally condemned. herder was enthusiastic in its praise, and on its publication at the end of january, , it passed through four editions in a single week. in , with its altered _dénouement_, in which the hero shoots himself, it was performed with applause in berlin, and was afterwards frequently produced. goethe himself continued to retain a singular affection for the most sickly sentimental of all his literary offspring, and he subsequently sent a copy of his work to lili, accompanied by some lines which were worthy of a better gift.[ ] [footnote : after he had broken with her, and was settled in weimar.] im holden thal, auf schneebedeckten höhen war stets dein bild mir nah! ich sah's um mich in lichten wolken wehen; im herzen war mir's da. empfinde hier, wie mit allmächt'gem triebe ein herz das andre zieht, und dass vergebens liebe vor liebe flieht. in the dear vale, on heights the snow had covered, still was thine image near; i saw it round me in the bright clouds hover; my heart beheld it there. here learn to feel with what resistless power one heart the other ties; that vain it is when lover from lover flies. still another piece belongs to the first months of goethe's relations to lili--_claudine von villa bella_, which appears to have been written intermittently in april and may. like _erwin und elmire_ it is in operatic form--the prose dialogue being diversified with outbursts of song. entirely trivial as a work of art, it calls for passing notice only on account of certain characteristics which distinguish it as a product of the period when it was written. the intention of the play, goethe wrote at a later time, was to exhibit "noble sentiments in association with adventurous actions," and the conduct of his hero and heroine is certainly unconventional, if their feelings are exalted. claudine is the only daughter of a fond and widowed father, and her dreamy emotionalism would have made her a welcome member of the darmstadt circle of ladies. she is in love with pedro, but pedro is not the hero of the piece. that place is assigned to his eldest brother crugantino, a scapegrace, with a noble heart, who, finding the ordinary bonds of society too confined for him, has taken to highway robbery. "your burgher life," he says--and we know that he is here uttering goethe's own sentiments--"your burgher life is to me intolerable. there, whether i give myself to work or enjoyment, slavery is my lot. is it not a better choice for one of decent merit to plunge into the world? pardon me! i don't give a ready ear to the opinion of other people, but pardon me if i let you know mine. i will grant you that if once one takes to a roving life, no goal and no restraints exist for him; for our heart--ah! it is infinite in its desires so long as its strength remains to it." crugantino, who with his band is housed at a wretched inn in the neighbourhood, catches sight of claudine, is bewitched by her beauty, and resolves to gain possession of her. on a beautiful moonlight night, attended by only one companion, he makes his adventurous attempt. of the charivari that follows it is only necessary to say that pedro is wounded in a hand-to-hand encounter by his unknown brother crugantino, and is conveyed to the inn where the band have their quarters. and now comes the turn of claudine to show her disregard of conventionalities. in agonies for her wounded lover, she dons male attire, and in the middle of the night sets out for the inn where he is lying. she encounters crugantino at the door, and their dialogue is overheard by the wounded pedro who rushes forth to rescue her. a duel ensues between pedro and crugantino; the watch appears, and all parties are conveyed to the village prison. here they are found by the distracted father and his friend sebastian, and a general explanation follows--pedro being made secure of claudine, and crugantino showing himself a repentant sinner. with this fantastic production, which, beginning in an atmosphere of pure sentiment, ends in broad farce, goethe was even in middle life so satisfied that he recast it in verse, and made other alterations which in the opinion of most critics did not improve the original.[ ] [footnote : during his residence in rome in . he recast _erwin und elmire_ at the same time.] the triviality of these successive performances, so void of the mind and heart displayed in the fragmentary _prometheus_ and _der ewige jude_, have their commentary in his continued relations to lili schönemann. they even raise the question whether his passion for her were really so consuming as in his old age he declared it to have been. they at least speak a very different language from that of the simple lyrics in which he expressed his love for friederike brion. yet when we turn to his correspondence, written on the inspiration of the moment, we find all the indications of a genuinely distracted lover. during the month of march we are to believe that he underwent all the pangs of a passionate wooer. surrounded by numerous admirers, lili was difficult of access, and apparently took some pleasure in reminding him that he was only one among others.[ ] "oh! if i did not compose dramas," he wrote on the th to his confidant the countess, "i should be shipwrecked." a few days of unalloyed bliss he did enjoy, and the length at which he records them in his autobiography shows that they remained a vivid memory with him. in the course of the month lili spent some time with an uncle at offenbach on the main, and, joining her there, goethe found her all that his heart could wish. "take the girl to your heart; it will be good for you both," he wrote out of his bliss to his other female confidant, johanna fahlmer.[ ] [footnote : to this period probably belongs _lilis park_, the most playfully humorous of goethe's poems, in which he banters lili on her capricious treatment of himself (represented as a bear) as one of her menagerie--the motley crowd of her suitors.] [footnote : certain pranks played by goethe during his stay in offenbach show that he was not wholly given up to "lover's melancholy." on a moonlight night, robed in a white sheet, and mounted on stilts (a form of exercise to which he was addicted), he went through the town and created a panic among the inhabitants by looking into their windows. on another occasion, at a baptism, he secretly deposited the baby in a dish, and covering it with a towel, placed the dish on a table where the company were assembled. it was only after some time that the contents of the dish were revealed.] on their return to frankfort, however, his former griefs were renewed, and a new distraction was added to them. "i am delighted that you are so enamoured of my _stella_," he writes to fritz jacobi on march st, immediately after his return; "my heart and mind are now turned in such entirely different directions that my own flesh and blood is almost indifferent to me. i can tell you nothing, for what is there that can be said? i will not even think either of to-morrow or of the day after to-morrow."[ ] the truth is that, as he tells us in his autobiography, he was now in an embarrassing position. his relations to lili had become such that a decisive step was necessary in the interests of both. during the last fortnight of march his mood was certainly not that of a happy lover. to break with lili was a step which circumstances as well as his own attachment to her made a dire alternative. on the other hand, from the bond of marriage, as we know, he shrank with every instinct of his nature. only a few weeks before, doubtless with his own possible fate in front of him, he had put these words in the mouth of fernando in his _stella_: "i would be a fool to allow myself to be shackled. that state [marriage] smothers all my powers; that state robs me of all my spirits, cramps my whole being. i must forth into the free world."[ ] goethe did eventually take the decision of fernando, but not just yet. on march th he wrote to herder: "it seems as if the twisted threads on which my fate hangs, and which i have so long shaken to and fro in oscillating rotation, would at last unite."[ ] on the th, klopstock, who had come on a few days' visit to frankfort, found him in "strange agitation." as so often happened in goethe's life, it was an accident that determined his wavering purpose. in the beginning of april there came to frankfort a mademoiselle delf, an old friend of the schönemann family, whom goethe made acquainted with his father and mother. a person of strenuous character, she took it upon her to bring matters to a point between the two households. with the consent of lili's mother, she brought lili one evening to the goethe house. "take each other by the hand," she said in commanding tones; and the two lovers obeyed and embraced. "it was a remarkable decree of the powers that rule us," is the characteristic reflection of the aged goethe, "that in the course of my singular career i should also experience the feelings of one betrothed." [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] goethe's feelings as a betrothed were from the first of a mingled nature. no sooner had he given his pledge than all the complications which must result from his union with lili stared him in the face. even after the betrothal the relations between the two families did not become more cordial. not only were they divided by difference of social standing; a deeper ground of mutual antagonism lay in their religion. the schönemanns belonged to the reformed persuasion, the protestantism of the higher classes, while the goethes were lutheran, as were the majority of the class to which they belonged; and between the two denominations there was bitter and permanent estrangement.[ ] and there was still another stumbling-block in the way of a probable happy union. goethe was not earning an independent income, and, in the event of his marriage, he and his bride would have to take up their quarters under his parental roof. but, accustomed to the gay pleasures of a fashionable circle, how would lili accommodate herself to the homely ways and surroundings of the goethe household? moreover, we have it from goethe himself that lili was distasteful equally to his father and mother--the former sarcastically speaking of her as "die stadtdame." such, he realised, was the future before him as the husband of lili; and he had no sooner bound himself to her than he was reduced to distraction by conflicting desires. in some words he wrote to herder within a fortnight after his betrothal we have a glimpse of his state of mind. "a short time ago," he wrote, "i was under the delusion that i was approaching the haven of domestic bliss and a sure footing in the realities of earthly joy and sorrow, but i am again in unhappy wise cast forth on the wide sea."[ ] he was already, in fact, contemplating the desirability of bursting his bond; and an opportunity came to assist him in his resolve. [footnote : frau schönemann is recorded to have said that the different religion of the two families was the cause of the match being broken off.] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. - .] in the second week of may there came to frankfort three youths whose rank and personal character created a flutter in the goethe household. two of them were the brothers of the countess stolberg,[ ] with whom goethe had been carrying on his platonic correspondence during the previous months, and were on their way to a tour in switzerland. all were enthusiastic adherents of the _sturm und drang_ movement, and goethe had long been the object of their distant adoration. they were not disappointed in their idol, and the first meeting, according to both stolbergs, sufficed to establish a general union of hearts. "goethe," wrote the elder, "is a delightful fellow. the fulness of fervid sensibility streams out of his every word and feature."[ ] during the few days they spent in frankfort the three scions of nobility were frequent guests in the goethe house, and their talk must have been enlivening if we may judge from the specimen of it recorded by goethe himself. the conversation had turned on the ill-deeds of tyrants, a favourite theme with the youth of the time, and, heated with wine, the three youths expressed a vehement desire for the blood of all such. the herr rath smiled and shook his head, but his helpmate hastily ran to the wine-cellar and produced a bottle of her best, exclaiming, "here is the true tyrant's blood. feast on it, but let no murderous thoughts go forth from my house." [footnote : the third was count haugnitz, of more subdued temper than his companions.] [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. .] in the company of these choice spirits goethe decided to leave frankfort for a time, and with the set resolve, if possible, to efface all thoughts of lili. characteristically he did not take a formal leave of her, a proceeding which was naturally resented both by herself and her relatives. the quartette started on may th, and from the first they made it appear that they meant to travel as four geniuses who set at naught all accepted conventions.[ ] before departing they all procured werther costume--blue coat, yellow waistcoat and hose and round grey hat; and in this array they disported themselves throughout their travels. darmstadt was their first halting-place, and at the court there they conducted themselves with some regard to decorum. outside its precincts, however, they gave full rein to their eccentricities, and so scandalised the darmstadters by publicly bathing in a pond in the neighbourhood that they found it advisable to beat a hasty retreat from the town. in darmstadt goethe had met his old mentor, merck, who with his usual caustic frankness told him that he was making a fool of himself in keeping company with such madcaps.[ ] at mannheim, their next stage, the whole party signalised themselves by smashing the wine-glasses from which they had drunk to the ladylove of the younger stolberg. the presence of distinguished personages at carlsruhe, their next stage, kept their vivacity within bounds so long as they remained there. just at this moment the young duke of weimar had come to carlsruhe to betroth himself to the princess luise of hesse-darmstadt, and from both goethe received a cordial invitation to visit them at weimar. another distinguished person then in the town was klopstock, who received goethe with such undisguised kindness that he was induced to read aloud to him the latest scenes of a work of which we shall hear presently.[ ] at carlsruhe goethe parted company from his fellow-travellers with the intention of visiting his sister at emmendingen. on may nd he was at strassburg, where he spent several days, renewing old acquaintances, especially with his former monitor, salzmann, but, for reasons we can appreciate, did not present himself at sesenheim. [footnote : according to goethe, count haugnitz was the only one of the four who showed any sense of propriety.] [footnote : it was at this time that merck gave his famous definition of goethe's genius. see above, p. .] [footnote : the _urfaust_.] from strassburg he proceeded to emmendingen, where he spent the first week of june with his sister, whom he had not seen since her marriage with schlosser. for various reasons he had looked forward to their meeting with painful feelings. he knew that she had been unhappy in her marriage, and must expect to find her naturally depressed temper soured by her conjugal experience. their main theme of conversation was his betrothal to lili, and it was with a vehemence born of her own bitter experience that cornelia urged him to break off a connection which the relations of all immediately concerned too surely foreboded must end in disaster. the warning of cornelia, we might have expected, should have been welcome as confirming his own struggling attempts to break loose from his bonds, but, if his later memories did not betray him, it only laid a heavier load on his heart. his real state of mind at the time we have in a letter to johanna fahlmer, written while he was still with his sister. "i feel," he wrote, "that the chief aim of my journey has failed, and when i return it will be worse for the bear[ ] than before. i know well that i am a fool, but for that very reason i am i."[ ] the parting of the brother and sister--and the parting was to be for ever[ ]--must have been with heavy misgivings for both. to her brother alone had cornelia been bound by any tender tie; he alone of her family had understood and sympathised with her singular temperament, and her greatest happiness had been derived from following his career of brilliant promise and achievement. it must, therefore, have been with dark forebodings that she saw before him the possibility of a union which in her eyes must be fatal alike to his peace of mind and the development of his genius. on his side, also, goethe must have parted from his sister with the sad conviction that the gloom that lay upon her life could never be lifted. she had been the one never-failing confidant equally of the troubles of his heart and of his intellectual ambitions, and it was from her that in his present distraction he had naturally sought sympathy and counsel. it is with the tenderest touch that in his reminiscent record of this their last meeting he depicts her "problematical" nature, and pays his tribute to all that she had been to him.[ ] [footnote : goethe was known as the "bear" or the "huron" among his friends.] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] [footnote : cornelia died in june, , when goethe was settled in weimar.] [footnote : on cornelia's death he wrote to his mother: "mit meiner schwester ist mir so eine starcke wurzel die mich an der erde hielt abgehauen worden, dass die aeste von oben, die davon nahrung haben, auch absterben müssen."] it had been goethe's original intention to end his travels with the visit to his sister, but, as their main object was as far off as ever, he decided to rejoin his late companions and to accompany them to switzerland. by way of schaffhausen they proceeded to zurich, where goethe's first act was to seek lavater. their talk during his stay in zurich mainly turned on lavater's great work on physiognomy, to which goethe had continuously contributed by help and counsel, though from the first he was sceptical of its scientific value. their intercourse was as cordial as it had been in the previous year, and lavater was subjugated more than ever by the personality of goethe. "who can think more differently than goethe and i," he wrote to wieland, who was still suspicious of his youthful adversary, "and yet we are devoted to each other.... you will be astonished at the man who unites the fury of the lion with the gentleness of the lamb. i have seen no one at once firmer in purpose and more easily led.... goethe is the most lovable, most affable, most charming of fellows."[ ] [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. . goethe made lavater the victim of one of the practical jokes which he was in the habit of playing on his friends. seeing an unfinished sermon of lavater on his desk, he completed it during the absence of lavater, who, in ignorance of the addition, preached the whole sermon as his own.--_ib._ p. .] in zurich happened what merck had foreseen. goethe had grown tired of his over-exuberant fellow-travellers, whose ways, moreover, did not commend them to the sensitive lavater. goethe himself indeed was capable of wild enough pranks, but behind his wild humours lay ever the "serious striving" which was the regulative force of his nature, and which lavater had recognised from the beginning of their intercourse. a lucky accident gave goethe the opportunity of escaping from his late comrades without an open breach. in zurich he found a friend whom he had looked forward to meeting there. this was a native of frankfort, passavant by name, who was settled in switzerland as a reformed pastor. passavant was a man of intelligence and attractive character, and when he proposed that they should make a tour together through the smaller swiss cantons, goethe jumped at the suggestion. from goethe's own narrative of his tour with passavant we are to infer that the distracting image of lili was never absent from his mind, and that all the glories of the scenery through which they passed were only its background seen through the haze of his wandering imaginations. and the testimony of the prose narrative in his autobiography is confirmed by the successive lyrics, prompted by the intrusive image of lili, which fell from him by the way. in the following lines, composed on the lake of zurich on the first morning of their journey, he clothes in poetical form the confession he had made to johanna fahlmer from emmendingen:-- und frische nahrung, neues blut saug' ich aus freier welt; wie ist natur so hold und gut, die mich am busen hält! die welle wieget unsern kahn im rudertakt hinauf, und berge, wolkig himmelan, begegnen unserm lauf. aug', mein aug', was sinkst du nieder? goldne träume, kommt ihr wieder? weg, du traum! so gold du bist; hier auch lieb' und leben ist. auf der welle blinken tausend schwebende sterne; weiche nebel trinken rings die türmende ferne; morgenwind umflügelt die beschattete bucht, und im see bespiegelt sich die reifende frucht. fresh cheer and quickened blood i suck from this wide world and free; how dear is nature and how good! a mother unto me! rocked by the wavelets speeds our skiff to the oar's measured beat; cloudclapt, the heaven-aspiring hills appear our course to meet. why sink my eyelids as i gaze? ye golden dreams of other days, come ye again? though ne'er so dear, begone! are life and love not here? the o'erhanging stars are twinkling in myriads on the mere; in floating mists enfolded the far heights disappear. the morning breeze is coursing round the deep-shadowed cove; and in its depths are imaged the ripening fruits above. looking down on the same lake from its southern ridge, he writes these lines, the concentrated expression of distracted emotions:-- wenn ich, liebe lili, dich nicht liebte, welche wonne gäb' mir dieser blick! und doch, wenn ich, lili, dich nicht liebte, fänd' ich hier und fänd' ich dort mein glück? if i, loved lili, loved thee not, in this prospect, ah! what bliss; yet, lili, if i loved thee not, where should i find my happiness? in the cloister of the church at einsiedeln he saw a beautiful gold crown, and his first thought was how it would become the brows of lili. on the night of june st the two travellers reached the hospice in the pass of st. gothard--the term of their journey. next morning they saw the path that led down to italy, and, according to goethe's account, passavant vehemently urged that they should make the descent together. for a few moments he was undecided, but the memories of lili conquered. drawing forth a golden heart, her gift, which he wore round his neck, he kissed it, and his resolution was taken. hastily turning from the tempting path, he began his homeward descent, his companion reluctantly following him.[ ] [footnote : according to a tradition in the passavant family, it was goethe, not passavant, who was so eager to descend into italy.--biedermann, _op. cit._ i. .] on july nd, after a leisurely journey homewards, he was again in frankfort, and in a state of mind as undecided as ever regarding his future course. fortunately or unfortunately for himself and the world, circumstances independent of his own will were to decide between the alternatives that lay before him. chapter xiv last months in frankfort--the _urfaust_ as he represents it in his autobiography, this was the situation in which goethe found himself on his return to frankfort. all his personal friends warmly welcomed him back, though his father did not conceal his disappointment that he had not continued his travels into italy. as for lili, she had taken it for granted that the departure of her betrothed without a word of leave-taking could only imply his intention to break with her. yet it was reported to him that in the face of all obstacles to their union she had declared herself ready to leave her past behind her and share his fortunes in america. their intercourse was resumed, but they avoided seeing each other alone, as if conscious of some ground of mutual estrangement. "it was an accursed state, in some ways resembling hades, the meeting-place of the sadly-happy dead." in view of these relations between lili and himself, he further adds, all their common friends were decidedly opposed to their union. such is the account which, in his retrospect, goethe gives of his situation after his return to frankfort, but his correspondence at the time shows that it cannot be accepted as strictly accurate. during the three remaining months he spent in frankfort he on four different occasions visited offenbach, where he must often have seen her alone. what his letters indeed prove is that he was characteristically content to let each day bring its own happiness or misery, and to leave events to decide the final issue. on august st, a few days after his return, he writes to knebel: "i am here again ... and find myself a good deal better, quite content with the past and full of hope for the future."[ ] two days later he was in offenbach, and from lili's own room he writes as follows to the countess: "oh! that i could tell you all. here in the room of the girl who is the cause of my misery--without her fault, with the soul of an angel, over whose cheerful days i cast a gloom, i.... in vain that for three months i have wandered under the open sky and drunk in a thousand new objects at every pore."[ ] to lavater on the following day he writes that he has been riding with lili, and adds these words with an n.b.: "for some time i have been pious again; my desire is for the lord, and i sing psalms to him, a vibration of which shall soon reach you. adieu. i am in a sore state of strain; i might say over-strain. yet i wish you were with me, for then it goes well in my surroundings."[ ] a letter addressed to merck later in the same month would seem to show that he had at least no intention of seeking an immediate union with lili. by the end of the year at the latest, he says, he must be off to italy, and he prays merck to prevail with his father to grant his consent. [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. .] [footnote : _ib._ p. .] [footnote : _ib._ pp. - .] a crisis in the relations between the lovers came on the occasion of the frankfort fair in the second week of september. the fair brought a crowd of males, young, middle-aged, and old, all on more or less intimate terms with the schönemann family, and their familiarities with lili were gall and wormwood to goethe, though he testifies that, as occasion offered, she did not fail to show who lay nearest her heart. even in his old age the experience of these days recalled unpleasant memories. "but let us turn," he exclaims, "from this torture, almost intolerable even in the recollection, to the poems which brought some relief to my mind and heart."[ ] a remarkable contemporary document from his hand proves that his memory did not exaggerate his state of mind at the time.[ ] in the form of a diary, expressly meant for his countess, he notes day by day the alternating feelings which were distracting him. the countess had urged him once for all to break his bonds, and in these words we have his reply: "i saw lili after dinner, saw her at the play. i had not a word to say to her, and said nothing! would i were free! o gustchen! and yet i tremble for the moment when she could become indifferent to me, and i become hopeless. but i abide true to myself, and let things go as they will."[ ] [footnote : the two poems, _lilis park_ and the song beginning "ihr verblühet, süsse rosen," which goethe refers to this period, were really written at an earlier date. the latter, we have seen, appears in _erwin und elmire_.] [footnote : it was at this time that he translated the song of solomon, which he calls "the most glorious collection of love-songs god ever made."] [footnote : _werke, briefe_, ii. . in a letter to the countess's brothers about the same date, goethe writes: "gustchen [the countess] is an angel. the devil that she is an imperial countess."--_ib._ p. .] in all this tumultuous effusion we see the side of goethe's nature which he has depicted in werther, in clavigo, and fernando. yet all the while he was completely master of his own genius. throughout all his alternating raptures and despairs he was assiduously practising the arts to which his genius called him. he diligently contributed both text and drawings to lavater's _physiognomy_; he worked at art on his own account, making a special study of rembrandt; and, as we shall see, even at the time when his relations to lili were at the breaking-point he was producing poetical work which he never surpassed at any period of his life. from two distinguished contemporaries, both men of mature age, who visited him during this time of his intensest preoccupation with lili, we have interesting characterisations of him which complement the impressions we receive from his own self-portraiture. the one is from j.g. sulzer, an author of repute on matters of art. "this young scholar," sulzer writes, "is a real original genius, untrammelled in his manner of thinking, equally in the sphere of politics and learning.... in intercourse i found him pleasant and amiable.... i am greatly mistaken if this young man in his ripe years will not turn out a man of integrity. at present he has not as yet regarded man and human life from many sides. but his insight is keen."[ ] the other writer is j.g. zimmermann, one of the remarkable men of his time, whose book on _solitude_, published in , had brought him a european reputation. "i have been staying in frankfort with monsieur göthe," he writes, "one of the most extraordinary and most powerful geniuses who has ever appeared in this world.... ah! my friend, if you had seen him in his paternal home, if you had seen how this great man in the presence of his father and mother is the best conducted and most amiable of sons, you would have found it difficult not to regard him through the medium of love."[ ] [footnote : biedermann, _op. cit._ i. p. .] [footnote : max morris, _op. cit._ v. .] on october th, , happened an event which was to be the decisive turning-point in goethe's life. on that day the young duke of weimar and his bride arrived in frankfort on their way home from carlsruhe, where they had just celebrated their marriage, and again both warmly urged him to visit them at weimar.[ ] we have it on goethe's own word that he had decided on a second flight from frankfort as the only escape from his unendurable situation, but the invitation of the ducal pair brought his decision to a point. he accepted the invitation, announced his resolve to all his friends, and made the necessary preparations for his journey. the arrangement was that a gentleman of the duke's suite, then at carlsruhe, was to call for him on an appointed day and convey him to weimar. the appointed day came, but no representative of the duke appeared. to avoid the embarrassment of meeting friends of whom he had formally taken leave, he kept within doors, working off his impatience in the composition of a play which the world was afterwards to know as _egmont_. more than another week passed, and, weary of his imprisonment, he stole out in the darkness enveloped in a long cloak to avoid recognition by chance friends. in his memory there lived one of these night-wanderings when he stood beneath lili's window, heard her sing the song, beginning _warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich_, in which, in the first freshness of his love, he had described the witchery with which she had bound him, and, the song ended, saw from her moving shadow that she paced up and down the room, evidently deep in thoughts which he leaves us to divine. only his fixed resolve to renounce her, he adds in his narrative of the incident, prevented him from making his presence known to her. [footnote : the duke had previously passed through frankfort on his way to carlsruhe. on that occasion, also, goethe had been in intercourse with him.] there was one member of the goethe household who was not displeased at the non-appearance of the ducal representative. the father had from the first been strenuously opposed to his son's going to weimar, and in his opinion the apparent breach of the appointment was only an illustration of what a commoner was to expect in his intercourse with the great. his own desire was that his son should proceed to italy with the double object of breaking his connection with lili, and of enlarging his experience by an acquaintance with that country and its treasures. the embarrassing predicament of his son offered the opportunity of realising his desire, and he now proposed to him that he should at once start for italy and leave his cares behind him. in the circumstances there appeared to be no other alternative, and on october th goethe left frankfort with italy as his intended goal. heidelberg was to be his first stage, and on the way thither he began the journal in which he meant to record the narrative of his travels. the two pages he wrote are the intense expression of the mental strain in which he set forth on a journey which was to have such a different issue from what he dreamt. the parting from lili was uppermost in his thoughts. "adieu, lili," he wrote, "adieu for the second time! the first time we parted i was full of hope that our lots should one day be united.[ ] fate has decided that we must play our _rôles_ apart." [footnote : this, as we have seen, is not consistent with certain of his former statements.--in june of lili was betrothed to another, but, owing to his bankruptcy, marriage did not follow. in , however, she was married to a strassburg banker. like all goethe's loves, she retained a kindly memory of him. she is reported to have said that she regarded herself as owing her best self to him.--max morris, _op. cit._ v. .] at heidelberg he spent a few days in the house of a lady of whom we have already heard--that mademoiselle delf who had so effectually brought matters to a point between goethe and lili. she was now convinced that the betrothal had been a mistake, but, undismayed, she now suggested to him that there was a lady in heidelberg who would be a satisfactory substitute for the lost one. one night he had retired to rest after listening to a protracted exposition of the fräulein's projects for his future, when he was roused by the sound of a postilion's horn. the postilion brought a letter which cleared up the mystery of the delayed messenger. hastily dressing, goethe ordered a post-chaise, and, amid the vehement expostulations of his hostess, began the first stage of the journey which was to lead him not to italy but to the court of weimar. it was the most momentous hour of his life, and, as he took his place in the carriage, he called aloud, in mock heroics, to the excited fräulein words which he may have recently written in _egmont_, and which had even more significance as bearing on his own future than he could have dreamed at the moment: "child! child! forbear! as if goaded by invisible spirits, the sun-steeds of time bear onward the light car of our destiny; and nothing remains for us but, with calm self-possession, firmly to grasp the reins, and now right, now left, to steer the wheels here from the precipice and there from the rock. whither he is hasting, who knows? does anyone consider whence he came?"[ ] [footnote : miss swanwick's translation. goethe concludes his autobiography with these words.] with him to weimar goethe bore two manuscripts to which, during his last years in frankfort, he had, at one time and another, committed his deepest feelings as a man, his profoundest thoughts as a thinker, and his finest imaginations as a poet. the one contained the first draft of the drama which, as we have seen, was written in those days of torturing suspense preceding his final departure from his paternal home, and which, subsequently recast, was to take its place among the best known of his works--the tragedy of _egmont_. of far higher moment for the world, however, was the matter contained in the other of these manuscripts. therein were set down the original portions of a poem which was eventually to fructify into one of the great imaginative products of all time--the drama of _faust_. beyond all other of goethe's productions previous to his settling in weimar, these original scenes of _faust_ bring before us his deepest and truest self. in all the other longer works of that period, in _götz_, in _werther_, in _clavigo_, and the rest, one side--the emotional side--of his nature had been predominantly represented; but in what he wrote of _faust_ we have all his mind and heart as he had them from nature, and as they had been schooled by time. it is one of the fortunate incidents in literary history that we now possess these fragments in which the genius of goethe expressed itself with an intensity of imaginative force which he never again exemplified in the same degree. the original text was unknown till , when erich schmidt found it in the possession of a grandnephew of a lady of the court of weimar,[ ] who had copied it from the manuscript received by her from goethe. it is uncertain whether the manuscript thus discovered exactly corresponds to the manuscript which goethe took with him to weimar, but the probability is that their contents are virtually identical. [footnote : fräulein luise von göchhausen.] as in the case of _der ewige jude_, _prometheus_, and other fragments of the frankfort period, the successive scenes of the _urfaust_ were thrown off at different times on the inspiration of the moment, and the exact date of their production can only be a matter of conjecture. what we do know is that the figure of the legendary faust had early attracted his attention. as a boy he had read at least one of the chap-books which recorded the wondrous history of the scholar who had sold himself to the devil, and, as a common spectacle in germany, he must have seen the puppet-show in which the story of faust was dramatised for the people. according to his own statement, it was in that the conception of a poem, based on the faust legend, first suggested itself to him, but it was during the years and that most of the scenes of the _urfaust_ were written. both by himself and others there are references during these years to his work on _faust_, and as late as the middle of september, , he tells the countess stolberg that, while at offenbach with lili, he had composed another scene. what attracted goethe to the legend of faust was that it presented a framework into which he could dramatically work his own life's experience, equally in the world of thought and feeling. the story that depicted a passionate searcher for truth, rebelling against the limits imposed by the place assigned to man in the nature of things, who at all costs dared to burst these limits in order to enjoy life in all its fulness--this story had a suggestiveness that appealed to goethe's profoundest consciousness. "i also," he says in his autobiography, "had wandered at large through all the fields of knowledge, and its futility had early enough been shown to me. in life also i had experimented in all manner of ways, and always returned more dissatisfied and distracted than ever." of this correspondence which goethe recognised between the legendary faust and his own being, the final proof is that on the basis of the legend he eventually constructed the work in which he embodied all that life had taught him of the conditions under which it has to be lived. when goethe first put his hand to the _urfaust_, he had no definite conception of an artistic whole in which the suggestions of the legend should be focussed in view of a determinate end. as we have it, the _urfaust_ consists of twenty-two scenes--those that relate the gretchen tragedy alone having any necessary connection with each other. all the successive parts, including the gretchen tragedy, suggest improvisation under a compelling immediate impulse with no reference to what had gone before or what might come after. apart from its poetic value, therefore, the _urfaust_ is the concentrated expression of what had most intensely engaged goethe's mind and heart previous to the period when it was produced. in the _urfaust_ we have neither the prologue in the theatre nor the prologue in heaven, but, with the exception of some verbal changes, the opening scene which introduces us to faust is identical with that of the poem in its final form. seated at his desk in a dusty gothic chamber, furnished with all the apparatus for scientific experiment, faust reviews his past life, and finds that he has been mocked from the beginning. in every department of boasted knowledge he has made himself a master, but it has brought satisfaction neither to his intellect nor his heart, and he has turned to magic in the hope that it would reveal to him the secrets that would make life worth living. as in the completed _faust_, he opens the book of nostradamus and finds the signs of the macrocosmus and of the earth-spirit, by both of which he is baffled in his attempt to enter the _arcana_ of being. in the _urfaust_, also, we have, with a few verbal alterations, the scene in which faust communicates to his famulus wagner his cynical view of the value of human knowledge. in the _urfaust_, however, are lacking the scenes that follow in the completed poem--faust's soliloquy and meditated suicide, the easter walk, the appearance of mephistopheles in the shape of a poodle, and the compact that follows. in place of these scenes we have but one, in which mephistopheles, without previous introduction, is represented as a professor giving advice to a raw student who has come to consult him as to his future course of conduct and study. of all the scenes in the _urfaust_ this is the feeblest, and its immaturity, as well as its evident references to goethe's own experiences at leipzig, suggest that it was the earliest written. this scene is followed by another reminiscent of leipzig--the scene in auerbach's cellar, which mainly differs from the later form in being written in prose and not in verse--faust and not mephistopheles playing the conjuror in drawing wine from a table. in the completed poem we are next introduced to the witches' kitchen, where faust is rejuvenated, and where he sees margaret's image in a mirror--the reader being thus prepared for the tragedy that is to follow. in the _urfaust_ we pass with no connecting link from the scene in auerbach's cellar to faust's meeting with margaret and the successive scenes which depict her self-abandonment to faust and her consequent misery and ruin. the content of these scenes is virtually the same in both forms--the most important difference being that, while the concluding prison scene is in prose in the _urfaust_, it is in verse in the later form. of the three songs which margaret sings, only the first, "there was a king in thule," was retouched. in the _urfaust_ the duel between valentin and mephistopheles does not occur, and we have only valentin's soliloquy on the ruin of his sister; and the scenes, _wald und höhle_, the _walpurgis nacht_, the _walpurgisnachtstraum_, generally condemned by critics as inartistic irrelevancies, are likewise lacking.[ ] [footnote : the words "[sie] ist gerettet" are not in the _urfaust_.] the _urfaust_ is the crowning poetic achievement of the youthful goethe, and by general consent, as has already been said, he never again achieved a similar intense fusion of thought, feeling, and imagination. apart from the opening scenes, which have no dramatic connection with it, the gretchen tragedy constitutes an artistic whole which by its perfection of detail and overwhelming tragic effect must ever remain one of the marvels of creative genius. not less astonishing as a manifestation of goethe's youthful power is the creation in all their essential lineaments of the three figures, faust, mephistopheles, and margaret--figures stamped ineffaceably on the imagination of educated humanity. be it said also that from the _urfaust_ mainly come those single lines and passages which are among the memorable words recorded in universal literature. such, to specify only a few, are the song of the earth-spirit; the lines commenting on man's vain endeavour to comprehend the past, and on the dreariness of all theory,[ ] contrasted with the freshness and colour of life; faust's confession of his religious faith, and margaret's songs. to have added in this measure to the intellectual inheritance of the race assures the testator his rank among the great spirits of all time. [footnote : grau, theurer freund, ist alle theorie, und grün des lebens goldner baum.] with the _urfaust_, marking as it does the highest development which goethe attained in the years of his youth, this record of these years may fitly close. his characteristics as they present themselves during that period are certainly in strange contrast to the conception of the matured goethe which holds general possession of the public mind, at least in this country. in that conception the world was for the later goethe "a palace of art," in which he moved-- "as god holding no form of creed but contemplating all."[ ] [footnote : tennyson disclaimed having goethe in his mind when he wrote _the palace of art_.] but such transformations of human character are not in the order of nature, and, due allowance made for the numbing hand of time, the youthful goethe remained essentially the same goethe to the end. behind the mask of impassivity which chilled the casually curious who sought him in his last years there was ever that _etwas weibliches_ which schiller noted in him in his middle age. in the critical moments of life he was in his maturity as in his youth subject to emotions which for the time seemed to be beyond his control. on the death of his wife his behaviour was that of one distracted. he described himself at the age of fifteen as "something of a chameleon," and, as already remarked, felix mendelssohn, who saw him a year before his death, declared that the world would one day come to believe that there had not been one but many goethes. we have seen that throughout the period of his youth some external impulse to production was a necessity of his nature, and so it was to the close. what behrisch and merck and his sister cornelia did for him in these early years, had to be done for him in later life by similar friends and counsellors. if, like plato and dante, he was "a great lover" in his youth, "a great lover" he remained even into time-stricken age; when past his seventieth year he was moved by a passion from which, as in youth, he found deliverance by giving vent to it in passionate verse. it is in the youthful goethe, before time and circumstance had dulled the spontaneous play of feeling, that we see the man as he came from nature's hand, with all his manifold gifts, and with all his sensuous impulses, tossing him from one object of desire to another, yet ever held in check by the passion that was deepest in him--the passion to know and to create. * * * * * garden city press limited, letchworth, herts. index _adler und taube_, poem by goethe, , . Æschylus, . _an belinden_, lyric addressed by goethe to lili schönemann, . _an schwager kronos_, poem by goethe, . arnold, gottfried, his _history of the church and of heretics_, goethe's study of it, , . arnold, matthew, ; quoted, . basedow, johann bernhard, his character, , ; his intercourse with goethe, - . beaumarchais, his _mémoires_ suggest goethe's _clavigo_, , . behrisch, friend of goethe in leipzig, his character and influence on goethe, - , , . bergson, quoted, note. berlichingen, gottfried von, hero of goethe's play _götz von berlichingen_, ; his _memoirs_, _ib._ boerhaave, goethe's study of him, . böhme, professor of history in leipzig, goethe attends his lectures, . böhme, frau, her influence on goethe, , . boie, h.c., his description of goethe, . bonn, . brentano, peter, married to maxe von la roche, ; goethe's relations to him, _ib._; his traits assigned to albert in _werther_, . brion, friederike, goethe's relations to her, - ; his poems inspired by her, - ; goethe's remorse for parting from her, , ; nature of goethe's love for her, note. brion, pastor, father of friederike brion, . byron, lord, resemblance of his career to goethe's, , , ; referred to, . buff, charlotte (lotte), loved by goethe, ; his relations to her, - ; her displeasure with _werther_, . carl august, duke of weimar, his intercourse with goethe, ; meets goethe at carlsruhe, ; visits frankfort and invites goethe to weimar, - . carlsruhe, . carlyle, thomas, . chateaubriand, note. _claudine von villa bella_, play by goethe, - . _clavigo_, play by goethe: its origin, , ; argument of it, - ; its classical form, . clavigo, character of, compared with that of goethe, - . clodius, professor in leipzig; goethe attends his lectures, . coblenz, . cologne, , . cologne cathedral, . constantin, brother of carl august, . darmstadt, . darmstadt, court of, the coterie associated with it, , ; its influence on goethe, _ib._ _das jahrmarktsfest zu plundersweilern_, satirical play by goethe, , . daudet, alphonse, note. delf, mademoiselle, effects the betrothal of goethe and lili schönemann, ; suggests to goethe a substitute for lili, . _der ewige jude_, poetic fragment by goethe: its origin, - ; account of it, - . _der könig von thule_, poem by goethe, . _der untreue knabe_, poem by goethe, . _der wanderer_, poem by goethe, - . _deserted village_, translated by goethe, . _die laune des verliebten_, play by goethe: its argument, , . _die mitschuldigen_, play by goethe: its argument, , . _diné zu coblenz_, poem by goethe, , . _disputation_ of goethe for the licentiate of laws, . dresden, goethe's secret visit to, . düsseldorf, , , . _edwin and angelina_, goldsmith's ballad, suggested goethe's _erwin und elmire_, . _egmont_, play by goethe, ; quoted by goethe on his proceeding to weimar, ; manuscript of, taken to weimar by goethe, . ehrenbreitstein, . einsiedeln, . elberfeld, . _elysium, an uranien_, ode by goethe, . emerson, quoted, , . emmendingen, . ems, . english literature, its influence on _werther_, , . _ephemerides_, diary kept by goethe, ; quoted, note; referred to, . _erwin und elmire_, vaudeville by goethe, - . euripides, . fahlmer, johanna, letter of goethe to, note. flachsland, caroline, member of the _gemeinschaft der heiligen_, ; her letters describing goethe, , ; his ode addressed to her as psyche, ; on goethe's ambition to be a painter, ; character in _das jahrmarktsfest_, ; in _pater brey_, ; in _satyros_, . flaubert, note. frankfort-on-the-main, goethe's birthplace, description of: its influence on goethe, , ; goethe's return to, ; goethe's distaste for, . frankforters, goethe's description of, . _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_, journal expounding the aims of the _sturm und drang_ movement, , . frederick the great, goethe's admiration for, , . french literature, its domination in germany; imitated by goethe, , . french troops in frankfort, - . friedberg, . _gedicht der ankunft des herrn_, another title for _der ewige jude_, . gellert, professor, german poet resident in leipzig, ; goethe attends his lectures, . _gemeinschaft der heiligen_ at the court of darmstadt, . göchhausen, fräulein luise von, and the manuscript of the _urfaust_, and note. goethe, cornelia, goethe's sister: her character, her influence on goethe, goethe's affection for her, , ; his letters to her from leipzig, , ; her father's hardness to, ; her home influence, ; stimulates goethe to write _götz von berlichingen_, ; married to j.g. schlosser, ; goethe's last meeting with her, - . goethe, elizabeth, goethe's mother: her character, her relations to her son, - ; her religion, . goethe, johann kaspar, goethe's father: his character, not in sympathy with his son, his method of education, - ; determines, against his son's will, to send him to university of leipzig, , ; his severity towards his daughter, cornelia, ; estrangement from his son, ; his pride in his genius, _ib._; his son's characterisation of him, ; his republican opinions, ; objects to his son's intercourse with carl august, duke of weimar, ; his opposition to his son's going to weimar, ; wishes him to go to italy, _ib._ goethe, johann wolfgang, his birth in frankfort-on-the-main, ; influence of his birthplace, , ; influence of the period on his development, - ; his debt to his father, - ; to his mother, - ; relations to his sister, - ; his education, ; religious influences, - ; influence of the french theatre in frankfort on him, , ; in love with gretchen, , ; father resolves to send him to the university of leipzig, ; his characteristics as a boy, - ; his early devotion to poetry, ; his stormy career throughout his youth, ; goes to the university of leipzig, ; his studies there, - ; influence of leipzig society on him, - ; influence of frau böhme on his character and literary tastes, ; falls in love with käthchen schönkopf, ; friendship with behrisch, , ; a jealous lover, , ; artistic studies, ; influence of friedrich oeser on his artistic ideals, , ; _neue lieder_, , ; _die laune des verliebten_ and _die mitschuldigen_, - ; his ideas of poetry, - ; returns to frankfort, ; his unsatisfactory condition of mind and body, , ; estrangement from his father, ; his interest in religion, - ; influence of fräulein von klettenberg, - ; his dangerous illness, , ; works out a creed of his own, , ; mystical and chemical studies, ; interests in art and literature, - ; departs for the university of strassburg, ; influence of strassburg society, , ; finds a mentor in dr. salzmann, , ; acquaintance with jung stilling, - ; influence of herder, - ; inspired by strassburg cathedral, - ; his love experiences with friederike brion, - ; his manifold interests in strassburg, - ; development of his poetic gift, ; lyrics to friederike, - ; returns to frankfort, ; state of mind on his return, - ; continued estrangement from his father, , ; his sister cornelia, ; makes acquaintance with the brothers schlosser, _ib._; his distraction in frankfort, - ; admiration of shakespeare, ; writes _götz von berlichingen_, ; makes acquaintance with merck, ; comes under the influence of the darmstadt circle, ; his poems inspired by that circle, ; his visit to wetzlar, ; his mode of life there, ; marks the acquaintance of charlotte buff, ; and of kestner, ; his subsequent relations to them, ; characterised by kestner, ; returns to frankfort, ; conceives _werther_, ; makes acquaintance with the family von la roche, ; his relations to frau von la roche and her daughter, ; his unrest after his experiences at wetzlar, ; his dislike of frankfort, ; his solitude, ; uncertain whether he should devote himself to literature or art, ; co-editor of the _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_, ; his _letter of a pastor_, ; paper on _two biblical questions_, ; publishes the second draft of _götz von berlichingen_, ; writes a succession of satirical plays, ; his fragmentary drama, _prometheus_, ; his fragment of a drama on mahomet, ; produces _werther_, ; his own character compared with that of werther, ; his _clavigo_, ; goethe and spinoza, ; his fragment, _der ewige jude_, ; his intercourse with lavater, ; with basedow, ; with fritz jacobi, ; with klopstock, ; characterised by boie and werthes, - ; makes acquaintance with the princes of weimar, ; characterised by von knebel, - ; falls in love with lili schönemann, ; his songs addressed to her, ; relations with the countess stolberg, ; his infatuation for lili, ; his succession of plays relative to her, - ; shrinking from marriage, ; betrothed to lili, ; persuaded of his mistake, ; sets out for switzerland with the counts stolberg, ; his travels, ; visit to his sister, ; meets lavater at zurich, ; parts company with the stolbergs, and accompanies passavant to the pass of st. gothard, ; returns to frankfort, ; his relations to lili on his return, ; invited by the duke of weimar to visit weimar, ; opposition of his father, ; decides to go to italy as the duke's messenger does not appear, ; goes to heidelberg on the way to italy, ; appearance of the duke's messenger decides him to visit weimar, ; the _urfaust_, - ; characteristics, . goncourt, edmond de, note. _götter, holden, und wieland_, satirical play on wieland by goethe, , . gotter, f.w., friend of goethe in wetzlar, . gottsched, german poet resident in leipzig, . _götz von berlichingen_, drama by goethe, , ; its origin, ; its plot, - ; its characteristics, - ; second draft of, , . gray, thomas, . gretchen, goethe's first love, , . hamann, j.g., the "magus of the north," teacher of herder, ; goethe's interest in him, _ib._ hanover, . hasenkamp, rebukes goethe for _werther_, . haugnitz, count, travels with goethe to switzerland, - . heidelberg, , . hehn, viktor, quoted, , note. heine, heinrich, . heinse, j.j.h., his opinion of goethe, . herder, his _fragments on modern german literature_, ; johann gottfried, - ; his career, character and speculations, - ; his admiration of shakespeare, ; his opinion of _götz von berlichingen_, ; one of the editors of the _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_, , ; as captain of the gipsies in _das jahrmarktsfest zu plundersweilern_, ; satirised in _pater brey_, ; and in _satyros_, ; letters of goethe to, , . herrnhut community, goethe attends a synod of, ; dissociates himself from the community, . _hoch auf dem alten turme steht_, lines by goethe, . holy alliance, . homer, goethe's study of him, . horn, a friend of goethe: his description of goethe in leipzig, ; quoted, ; quoted, . humboldt, wilhelm von, his opinion of marriage, , . jabach, family of, . jacobi, fritz, his horror at lessing's approval of spinoza, , ; his character and attainments, ; his intercourse with goethe, - ; letter of goethe to, . jacobi, georg, , . jean paul, . jerusalem: his suicide prompts goethe to _werther_, , ; lessing's esteem for him, note. jung, johann heinrich. (_see_ stilling, jung.) kant, immanuel, quoted, ; quoted, ; his opinion of marriage, ; his judgment on the _sturm und drang_ movement, . kestner, johann christian, betrothed to lotte buff, ; his character, _ib._; his relations to goethe, - ; his characterisation of goethe, - ; letters of goethe to, , , ; his displeasure with _werther_, . klettenberg, fräulein von, the _schöne seele_ of _wilhelm meister_, ; goethe's intimacy with, ; her influence on his religious opinions, , , , ; letter of goethe to, , ; her intercourse with lavater, ; adviser of the goethe family, ; her death, - ; her affection for goethe, . klopstock, his _messias_, ; admired by goethe, ; his visit to goethe's home, , ; goethe accompanies him to mannheim, ; goethe's opinion of him, note; visits frankfort, ; goethe meets him at carlsruhe, . knebel, major von, his visit to goethe, ; his characterisation of him, ; letter of goethe to, . _künstlers erdewallen_, poem by goethe, . la roche, family, its influence on _werther_, . la roche, frau von, goethe's relations to her , ; letters of goethe to, , , , note. la roche, herr von, . la roche, maximiliane von, goethe's relations to her, ; married to peter brentano, ; her relation to _werther_, , . langer, his influence on goethe's religious opinions, , . lavater, johann kaspar, his character, ; his intercourse with goethe, - ; goethe's intercourse with him at zurich, and note, ; his _physiognomy_, goethe's contributions to it, . leipzig, description of, , ; goethe a student there, - ; called "little paris," . lessing, his _laokoon_ and _minna von barnhelm_, ; goethe's opinion of, ; his approval of spinoza's philosophy, ; his opinion of _werther_, note. _letter of the pastor_ written by goethe, . leuchsenring, his sentimentalism, ; his meeting with goethe, _ib._; satirised in _pater brey_, . _lilis park_, poem by goethe addressed to lili schönemann, note, note. limprecht, goethe's letter to, . lisbon, earthquake of, its influence on goethe, . luise, princess of hesse-darmstadt, betrothed to carl august, duke of weimar, . _mahomet_, fragment of a drama by goethe, - . mainz, , . mannheim, , . maria theresa, . mendelssohn, moses, his relation to spinoza, . mephistopheles, . merck, johann heinrich, friend of goethe, ; his character and influence on goethe, - ; introduces goethe to the family von la roche, ; his visit to berlin and return, ; one of the editors of the _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_, , ; in _pater brey_, ; in _satyros_, ; his mordant comment on _clavigo_, ; comes under the spell of lavater, ; meeting with goethe in mannheim, . milan, archbishop of, orders _werther_ to be burned, . mülheim, . müller, chancellor von, quoted, ; quoted, note. münch, anna sibylla, suggests _clavigo_, , . napoleon, and _werther_, , , . neo-platonism, . _neue lieder_, collection of goethe's poems written in leipzig, . _neue liebe, neues leben_, poem of goethe addressed to lili schönemann, . new testament, goethe's study, . oeser, friedrich, director of the academy of drawing in leipzig: his influence on goethe, , ; letters of goethe to him, , . offenbach on the main, , and note. old testament, goethe's study of, , . _ossian_, , , and note. _palace of art_, tennyson's, . paracelsus, goethe's study of him, . passavant, reformed pastor, travels with goethe in switzerland, ; tradition in his family regarding goethe, note. _pater brey_, satirical piece by goethe, , . pfenninger, heinrich, letter of goethe to, , . pindar, goethe's study of, , . plato, goethe's study of him, . _poetische gedanken über die höllenfahrt jesu christi_, early poem of goethe, . pollock, sir frederick, on "modern spinozism," note. _prometheus_, fragment of a play by goethe, - . rembrandt, goethe's study of, . renan, ernest, note. richardson, samuel, ; his _clarissa harlowe_, . riemer, goethe's secretary, quoted, . robinson, henry crabb, quoted, note. rousseau, , , ; goethe's opinion of him, ; his _nouvelle héloïse_, . rumohr, w. von, letter of goethe to him quoted, note. sachs, hans, goethe's imitation of, , . st. gothard, pass of, . salzmann, dr., goethe's mentor in strassburg: his character, - ; letters of goethe to, , , , . _satyros_, satirical play by goethe, - . schaffhausen, . scherer, edmond, ; his estimate of _götz von berlichingen_, . schlosser, j.g., friend of goethe, ; his impressions of goethe, ; married to goethe's sister, ; one of the editors of the _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_, , . schmidt, erich, his discovery of the _urfaust_, . schönemann, anna elisabeth (lili): goethe's first meeting with her, ; beginning of goethe's attachment to her, ; goethe's lyrics addressed to her, - ; goethe's tribute to her in later life, note; goethe sends his _stella_ to her, ; goethe's strained relations with her, - ; poems of goethe addressed to, - ; goethe's relations to her after his return from switzerland, - ; her subsequent marriage, note. schönemann family, ; their social position superior to that of the goethes, ; intercourse of goethe with them, . schönemann, lili. (_see_ schönemann, anna elisabeth.) schönkopf, käthchen, goethe's love in leipzig: her appearance and character, ; goethe's philandering with her, - ; goethe's poems addressed to her, ; goethe's letters to, , , , note. scott, sir walter, his translation of _götz von berlichingen_, ; his writings influenced by it, . sesenheim, residence of the brion family: goethe's visits there, - . _seven years' war_, its influence on the goethe household, . shakespeare, goethe's debt to, , . _song of solomon_, translated by goethe, note. spinoza, goethe's debt to, ; his influence on goethe, - ; goethe and lavater discuss his writings, ; discussed by goethe and fritz jacobi, . stein, frau von, quoted, note. _stella_, play by goethe, - ; ridiculed in the _anti-jacobin_, and note; admired by herder, ; its popularity, _ib._ sterne, . stevenson, r.l., his admiration of _werther_, note. stilling, jung, friend of goethe in strassburg: his career and character, , ; goethe's kindness to, - ; prank played on him by goethe, ; his affection for goethe, . stolberg, count christian, comes to frankfort and travels with goethe to switzerland, - . stolberg, count frederick leopold, younger brother of christian, - . stolberg, countess, beginning of goethe's acquaintance with her, ; his letters to, , , , , and note. strassburg, goethe's residence in, - ; description of its society, , . strassburg cathedral, goethe's interest in, and its influence on his development, - ; goethe's essay on, . _sturm und drang_ movement in german literature, inspired by _götz von berlichingen_, , , ; its aims expounded in the _frankfurter gelehrten anzeigen_, , . sulzer, j.g., his characterisation of goethe, . swift, his relations to stella and vanessa suggest goethe's _stella_, . tennyson, and note. textor, j.w., goethe's maternal grandfather, . theatre set up by the french in frankfort, goethe's interest in it, , . theocritus, goethe's study of him, . thoranc, count, commander of french forces in frankfort, quartered in goethe's home: his interest in goethe, - . turgenieff, note. _two biblical questions_, piece written by goethe, . _urfaust_, the, ; account of it, - . ur-religion, goethe's conception of, . van helmont, goethe's study of him, . _vicar of wakefield_, note. voltaire, his criticism of shakespeare, , and note. _wanderers sturmlied_, poem by goethe, , . _werther_, ; analysis of, - ; its influence, , ; public opinion regarding it, , ; prohibited in leipzig and denmark, ; burned at milan, _ib._ werther, how far he resembled goethe, - . wertherism, . werthes, f.a., his description of goethe, . wetzlar, goethe's residence there, - ; description of, ; its society, ; goethe's flying visit to, . wieland, his translation of shakespeare, ; one of goethe's masters, , ; his description of goethe, ; his opinion of _götz von berlichingen_, ; satirised by goethe, , ; his _alceste_, _ib._; letter of goethe to, ; his approval of _clavigo_, note. _wilhelm meister_, . winckelmann, influenced by oeser, . _wilkommen und abschied_, lyric of goethe addressed to friederike brion, , . wordsworth, his remark on goethe's poetry, . xenophon, goethe's study of him, . young, edward, his _conjectures on original composition_: its influence on german literature, , . zelter, friend of goethe, letter of goethe to him, - . zimmermann, j.g., his characterisation of goethe, . zurich, ; lake of, . proofreaders [illustration: on the way toward the grail. by hans thoma] the german classics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries masterpieces of german literature translated into english editor-in-chief kuno francke, ph.d., ll.d., litt.d. in twenty volumes illustrated albany, n.y. j.b. lyon company publishers contents of volume i editor's preface publishers foreword general introduction. by richard m. meyer the life of goethe. by calvin thomas poems greeting and departure. translated by charles wharton stork the heathrose. adapted from the translation by e.a. bowring mahomet's song. translated by e.a. bowring prometheus. translated by e.a. bowring the wanderer's night-song. adapted from the translation by e.a. bowring the sea-voyage. translated by e.a. bowring to the moon. translated by e.a. bowring the fisherman. translated by e.a. bowring the wanderer's night-song. translated by e.a. bowring the erl-king. translated by e.a. bowring the godlike. translated by e.a. bowring mignon. translated by e.a. bowring proximity of the beloved one. translated by e.a. bowring the shepherd's lament. translated by w.e. aytoun and theodore martin. nature and art translated by a.i. du p. coleman. comfort in tears. translated by w.e. aytoun and theodore martin epilog to schiller's "song of the bell." translated by w.e. aytoun and theodore martin ergo bibamus. translated by e.a. bowring the walking bell. translated by e.a. bowring found. translated by e.a. bowring hatem. translated by a.i. du p. coleman reunion. translated by a.i. du p. coleman procemion. translated by e.a. bowring the one and the all. translated by a.i. du p. coleman lines on seeing schiller's skull. translated by e.a. bowring a legacy. translated by a.i. du p. coleman * * * * * introduction to hermann and dorothea. by arthur h. palmer harmann and dorothea. translated by ellen frothingham dramas introduction to iphigenia in tauris. by arthur h. palmer iphigenia in tauris. translated by anna swanwick * * * * * the faust legend from marlowe to goethe. by kuno francke introduction to faust. calvin thomas faust (part i). translated by anna swanwick faust (part ii). translated by anna swanwick illustrations-volume i on the way toward the grail. by hans thoma _frontispiece_ goethe. by j. jäger goethe. by j. stieler goethe's houses in weimar goethe in the campagua. by j.h.w. tischbein monument to goethe in berlin. by fritz schaper monument to goethe in rome. by eberlein the death of goethe. by fritz fleischer the heathrose. by k. kogler prometheus. by titian the fisherman and the mermaid. by georg papperitz hermann's parents in the doorway of the tavern. by ludwig richter hermann hands to dorothea the linen for the emigrants. by ludwig richter the mother defending hermann. by ludwig richter mother and son. by ludwig richter the emigrants in the village. by ludwig richter the parson and the apothecary watch dorothea. by ludwig richter hermann and dorothea meet at the fountain. by ludwig richter hermann and dorothea under the pear tree. by ludwig richter the betrothal. by ludwig richter iphigenia. by ansehn feuerbach the meeting of orestes, iphigenia, and pylades. by angelica, kauffmann iphigenia. by max nonnenbruch faust and mephistopheles. by liezen-mayer margaret. by wilhelm von kaulbach faust and margaret. by carl becker faust and margaret in the garden. by liezen-mayer the death of valentine. by franz simm margaret's downfall. by wilhelm von kaulbach editor's preface it is surprising how little the english-speaking world knows of german literature of the nineteenth century. goethe and schiller found their herald in carlyle; fichte's idealistic philosophy helped to mold emerson's view of life; amadeus hoffmann influenced poe; uhland and heine reverberate in longfellow; sudermann and hauptmann appear in the repertory of london and new york theatres--these brief statements include nearly all the names which to the cultivated englishman and american of to-day stand for german literature. the german classics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been planned to correct this narrow and inadequate view. here for the first time english readers will find a panorama of the whole of german literature from goethe to the present day; here for the first time they will find the most representative writers of each period brought together and exhibited by their most representative works; here for the first time an opportunity will be offered to form a just conception of the truly remarkable literary achievements of germany during the last hundred years. for it is a grave mistake to assume, as has been assumed only too often, that, after the great epoch of classicism and romanticism in the early decades of the nineteenth century, germany produced but little of universal significance, or that, after goethe and heine, there were but few germans worthy to be mentioned side by side with the great writers of other european countries. true, there is no german tolstoy, no german ibsen, no german zola--but then, is there a russian nietzsche, or a norwegian wagner, or a french bismarck? men like these, men of revolutionary genius, men who start new movements and mark new epochs, are necessarily rare and stand isolated in any people and at all times. the three names mentioned indicate that germany, during the last fifty years, has contributed a goodly share even of such men. quite apart, however, from such men of overshadowing genius and all-controlling power, can it be truly said that germany, since goethe's time, has been lacking in writers of high aim and notable attainment? it can be stated without reservation that, taken as a whole, the german drama of the nineteenth century has maintained a level of excellence superior to that reached by the drama of almost any other nation during the same period. schiller's _wallenstein_ and _tell_, goethe's _iphigenie_ and _faust_, kleist's _prinz friedrich von homburg_, grillparzer's _medea_, hebbel's _maria magdalene_ and _die nibelungen_, otto ludwig's _der erbförster_, freytag's _die journalisten_, anzengruber's _der meineidbauer_, wilbrandt's _der meister von palmyra_, wildenbruch's _konig heinrich_, sudermann's _heimat_, hauptmann's _die weber_ and _der arme heinrich_, hofmannsthal's _elektra_, and, in addition to all these, the great musical dramas of richard wagner--this is a century's record of dramatic achievement of which any nation might be proud. i doubt whether either the french or the russian or the scandinavian stage of the nineteenth century, as a whole, comes up to this standard. certainly, the english stage has nothing which could in any way be compared with it. that german lyric verse of the last hundred years should have been distinguished by beauty of structure, depth of feeling, and wealth of melody, is not to be wondered at if we remember that this was the century of the revival of folk-song, and that it produced such song-composers as schubert and schumann and robert franz and hugo wolf and richard strauss. but it seems strange that, apart from heine, even the greatest of german lyric poets, such as platen, lenau, mörike, annette von droste, geibel, liliencron, dehmel, münchhausen, rilke, should be so little known beyond the borders of the fatherland. the german novel of the past century was, for a long time, unquestionably inferior to both the english and the french novel of the same epoch. but in the midst of much that is tiresome and involved and artificial, there stand out, even in the middle of the century, such masterpieces of characterization as otto ludwig's _zwischen himmel und erde_ or wilhelm raabe's _der hungerpastor_, such delightful revelations of genuine humor as fritz reuter's _ut mine stromtid_, such penetrating studies of social conditions as gustav freytag's _soll und haben_. and during the last third of the century there has clearly developed a new, forcible, original style of german novel writing. seldom has the short story been handled more skilfully and felicitously than by such men as paul heyse, gottfried keller, c. f. meyer, theodor storm. seldom has the novel of tragic import and passion been treated with greater refinement and delicacy than in such works as fontane's _effi briest_, ricarda huch's _ludolf ursleu_, wilhelm von polenz's _der büttnerbauer_, or ludwig thoma's _andreas vöst_. and it may be doubted whether, at the present moment, there is any country where the novel is represented by so many gifted writers or exhibits such exuberant vitality, such sturdy truthfulness, such seriousness of purpose, or such a wide range of imagination as in contemporary germany. all these dramatists, lyric poets, and novelists, and with them not a few essayists, philosophers, orators, and publicists,[ ] of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will speak in the following volumes to america and other countries of the english language. they have been arranged, in the main, chronologically. the first three volumes have been given to the mature work of goethe and schiller--time-tested and securely niched. volumes iv and v contain the principal romanticists, including fichte and schelling; volume vi brings heine, grillparzer, and beethoven to view; volume vii, hegel and young germany; volume viii, auerbach, gotthelf, and fritz reuter; volume ix, hebbel and ludwig; volume x, bismarck, moltke, lassalle. of the second half of the collection there might be singled out: volume xiv (gottfried keller and c.f. meyer); volume xv (schopenhauer, wagner, nietzsche, emperor william ii.); volume xviii (gerhart hauptmann, detlev von liliencron, richard dehmel). the last two volumes will be devoted to the most recent of contemporary authors. the editors have been fortunate in associating with themselves a notable number of distinguished contributors from many universities and colleges in this country and abroad. a general introduction to the whole series has been written by professor richard m. meyer of the university of berlin. the last two volumes will be in charge of professor julius petersen of the university of basel. the introductions to goethe and schiller have been prepared by professor calvin thomas, of columbia university; that to the romantic philosophers by professor frank thilly, of cornell university; that to richard wagner by professor w. r. spalding, of harvard university. and, similarly, every important author in this collection will be introduced by some authoritative and well known specialist. the crux of the whole undertaking lies in the correctness and adequacy of the translations. how difficult, if not impossible, a really satisfactory translation is, especially in lyric poetry, no one realizes more clearly than the editors. their only comfort is that they have succeeded in obtaining the assistance of many well trained and thoroughly equipped scholars, among them such names of poets as hermann hagedorn, percy mackaye, george sylvester viereck, and martin schütze. kuno francke. publishers' foreword the german classics is the first work issued by the german publication society in pursuance of a comprehensive plan to open to the english-speaking people of the world the treasures of german thought and achievement in literature, art and science. in the production of this monumental work the thanks and appreciation of the publishers are especially due to hugo reisinger, esq., whose loyal support and constant encouragement have made possible its publication. general introduction by richard m. meyer, ph.d. professor of german literature, university of berlin. men formerly pictured the origin and development of a literature as an order less play of incalculable forces; out of a seething chaos forms more or less definite arose, and then, one day, behold! the literary earth was there, with sun and moon, water and mountains, animals and men. this conception was intimately connected with that of the origin of individual literary compositions. these likewise--since the new "theory of genius," spreading from england, had gained recognition throughout the whole of europe, especially in those countries speaking the germanic languages--were imagined to be a mere succession of inspirations and even of improvisations. this view of the subject can no longer be held either wholly or in part, though in the origin and growth of literature, as in every other origin and development, much manifestly remains that is still incomprehensible and incalculable. but even as regards the individual literary work, writers themselves--as latterly richard dehmel--have laid almost too strong an emphasis on the element of conscious deliberation. and concerning the whole literary product of an individual, which seems to offer the most instructive analogies to the literary achievement of a people, we received a short time ago a remarkable opinion from carl spitteler. he asserts that he is guided in his choice of definite styles and definite forms by an absolutely clear purpose; that he has, for example, essayed every kind of metre which could possibly be suited to his "cosmic" epic, or that he has written a novelette solely in order to have once written a novelette. although in these confessions, as well as in edgar allen poe's celebrated _poet's art_, self-delusion and pleasure in the paradoxical may very likely be mingled, it still remains true that such dicta as these point to certain peculiarities in the development of literatures. experiments with all kinds of forms, imitation of certain literary _genres_ without intrinsic necessity, and deliberate selection of new species, play a larger part in the history of modern german literature than people for a long time wished to admit. it is true, however, that all this experimenting, imitating, and speculating, in the end serves a higher necessity, as well in the poet of genius as in a great literature. three kinds of forces virtually determine the general trend of all artistic development as, indeed, of all other forms of evolution--forces which constitute the sum total of those that we comprehend under the joint name of _tradition_, a sum total of progressive tendencies which we will designate as _esthetic ideals_, and, mediating between the two, the _typical development of the individuals themselves_--above all, naturally, individuals of genius who really create literature. these powers are present everywhere, but in very different proportion. characteristic of romance literatures and also of the english, is the great predominance of the conservative elements. thus not only is the literature of the constitutional mother-country democratic, but also the literature of france, otherwise so decidedly aristocratic: a majority dictates its laws to the distinguished individual and is inclined to ostracize him, if too headstrong, and exile him from the "republic of letters." this, for instance, is what happened to lord byron among the british. on the other hand, german literature, like germanic literatures in general, is disposed to concede, at least at times, a dictatorial leadership to the individual, even at the cost of tradition--as, for example, to a klopstock, a goethe, or a richard wagner. but, in exchange, the leader is often forced to uphold his power, no matter how much it may have been due to his achievements, by coercive measures--as, again for example, by means of a prætorian guard of partisans, such as klopstock first created for himself in the göttinger "hain," but which was most effectively organized by wagner, and such as victor hugo, imitating the german model, possessed in the young guard which applauded _hernani_. another method of enforcing his mastery is the organization of a systematic reign of terror, consisting of bitter satires, such as schiller and goethe (after the model of pope) founded in the _xenien_, and the romanticists established in many different forms--satires much more personal and much better aimed than was the general sort of mockery which the romance or romanized imitators of horace flung at bavius and mævius. in saying all this, however, we have at the same time made it clear that the power and influence of the individual of genius receives much more positive expression in german literature than in those which produced men like corneille, calderon, yes, even dante and shakespeare. german literary history is, more than any other, occupied with the _individual_. if we now try rapidly to comprehend to what extent each one of the already enumerated literary forces has participated in the development of modern german literature, we must, first of all, emphasize the fact that here the question is, intrinsically, one of construction--of a really new creation. german literature since is not simply the continuation of former literature with the addition of radical innovations, as is the case with the literature of the same period in england, but was systematically constructed on new theories--if it may be said that nature and history systematically "construct." a destruction, a suspension of tradition, had taken place, such as no other civilized nation has ever experienced in a like degree--in which connection the lately much-disputed question as to whether the complete decay dates from the time of the thirty years' war or the latter merely marks the climax of a long period of decadence may be left to take care of itself. in any event, about the year the literature of germany stood lower than that of any other nation, once in possession of a great civilization and literature, has ever stood in recent times. everything, literally everything, had to be created _de novo_; and it is natural that a nation which had to struggle for its very existence, for which life itself had become a daily questioning of fate, could at first think of renovation only through its conservative forces. any violent commotion in the religious or political, in the economic or social, sphere, as well as in the esthetic, might prove fatal, or at least appear to be so. the strongest conservative factor of a literature is the language. upon its relative immutability depends, in general, the possibility of literary compositions becoming the common possession of many generations--depends absolutely all transmission. especially is poetic language wont to bear the stamp of constancy; convenient formulas, obvious rhymes, established epithets, favorite metaphors, do not, in periods of exhaustion, afford much choice in the matter of phraseology. on the other hand, however, a new tenor of thought, often enough a new tenor of feeling, is continually pressing forward to demand a medium of expression. this battle between the established linguistic form and the new content gives rise to charming, but at the same time alarming, conflicts. in the seventeenth century it was felt strongly how much the store of linguistic expression had diminished, partly on account of a violent and careless "working of the mine," which made prodigal use of the existing medium, as was the case in the prose of luther and, above all, of johann fischart and his contemporaries; partly on account of a narrow confinement to a small number of ideas and words, as in the church hymns. this impoverishment of the language the century of the great war tried to remedy in two opposite ways. for the majority the easiest solution was to borrow from their richer neighbors, and thus originated that affectation of all things foreign, which, in speaking, led to the most variegated use and misuse of foreign words. patriotically-minded men, on the contrary, endeavored to cultivate the purity of their mother tongue the while they enriched it; this, above all, was the ambition of the various "linguistic societies." their activity, though soon deprived of a wide usefulness by pedantry and a clannish spirit, prepared the way for great feats of linguistic reorganization. through christian wolff a philosophic terminology was systematically created; from pietism were received new mediums of expression for intimate conditions of the soul; neither must we quite overlook the fact that to some extent a new system of german titles and official designations was associated with the new institutions of the modern state. more important, however, than these details--which might have been accomplished by men like johann gottfried herder, immanuel kant and goethe; like the statesman, heinrich freiherr von stein; and the warrior, general von scharnhorst--was this fact that, in general, an esthetic interest had been again awakened in the language, which too long had served as a mere tool. also the slowly developing study of language was of some help; even the falsest etymology taught people to look upon words as organisms; even the most superficial grammar, to observe broad relationships and parallel formations. so, then, the eighteenth century could, in the treatment of the mother tongue, enter upon a goodly heritage, of which for a long time johann christoph gottsched might not unjustly be counted the guardian. it was a thoroughly conservative linguistic stewardship, which received gigantic expression in adelung's dictionary--with all its deficiencies, the most important german dictionary that had been compiled up to that time. clearness, intelligibleness, exactitude were insisted upon. it was demanded that there should be a distinct difference between the language of the writer and that in everyday use, and again a difference between poetic language and prose; on the other hand, great care had to be taken that the difference should never become too great, so that common intelligibility should not suffer. thus the new poetic language of klopstock, precisely on account of its power and richness, was obliged to submit to the bitterest mockery and the most injudicious abuse from the partisans of gottsched. as the common ideal of the pedagogues of language, who were by no means merely narrow-minded pedants, one may specify that which had long ago been accomplished for france--namely, a uniform choice of a stock of words best suited to the needs of a clear and luminous literature for the cultivated class, and the stylistic application of the same. two things, above all, were neglected: they failed to realize (as did france also) the continual development of a healthy language, though the ancients had glimpses of this; and they failed (this in contrast to france) to comprehend the radical differences between the various forms of literary composition. therefore the pre-classical period still left enough to be done by the classical. it was klopstock who accomplished the most; he created a new, a lofty poetic language, which was to be recognized, not by the use of conventional metaphors and swelling hyperboles, but by the direct expression of a highly exalted mood. however, the danger of a forced overstraining of the language was combatted by christoph martin wieland, who formed a new and elegant narrative prose on greek, french, and english models, and also introduced the same style into poetic narrative, herein abetted by friedrich von hagedorn as his predecessor and co-worker. right on the threshold, then, of the great new german literature another mixture of styles sprang up, and we see, for example, klopstock strangely transplanting his pathos into the field of theoretical researches on grammar and metrics, and wieland not always keeping his irony aloof from the most solemn subjects. but beside them stood gotthold ephraim lessing who proved himself to be the most thoughtful of the reformers of poetry, in that he emphasized the divisions--especially necessary for the stylistic development of german poetry--of literary categories and the arts. the most far-reaching influence, however, was exercised by herder, when he preached that the actual foundation of all poetic treatment of language was the individual style, and exemplified the real nature of original style, i. e., inwardly-appropriate modes of expression, by referring, on the one hand, to the poetry of the people and, on the other, to shakespeare or the bible, the latter considered as a higher type of popular poetry. so the weapons lay ready to the hand of the dramatist lessing, the lyric poet goethe, and the preacher herder, who had helped to forge them for their own use; for drama, lyrics, and oratory separate themselves quite naturally from ordinary language, and yet in their subject matter, in the anticipation of an expectant audience, in the unavoidable connection with popular forms of speech, in singing, and the very nature of public assemblies, they have a basis that prevents them from becoming conventional. but not quite so favorable was the condition of the different varieties of narrative composition. here a peculiarly specific style, such as the french novel especially possesses, never reached complete perfection. the style of wieland would necessarily appear too light as soon as the subject matter of the novel became more intimate and personal; that of the imitators of homer necessarily too heavy. perhaps here also lessing's sense of style might have furnished a model of permanent worth, in the same way that he furnished one for the comedy and the didactic drama, for the polemic treatise and the work of scientific research. for is not the tale of the three rings, which forms the kernel of _nathan the wise_, numbered among the great standard pieces of german elocution, in spite of all the contradictions and obscurities which have of late been pointed out in it, but which only the eye of the microscopist can perceive? in general it is the "popular philosophers" who have, more than any one else, produced a fixed prose style; as a reader of good but not exclusively classical education once acknowledged to me that the german of j.j. engel was more comprehensible to him and seemed more "modern" than that of goethe. as a matter of fact, the narrator goethe, in the enchanting youthful composition of _werther_, did venture very close to the lyrical, but in his later novels his style at times dangerously approached a dry statement of facts, or a rhetorically inflated declamation; and even in _the elective affinities_, which stands stylistically higher than any of his other novels, he has not always avoided a certain stiltedness that forms a painful contrast to the warmth of his sympathy for the characters. on the other hand, in scientific compositions he succeeded in accomplishing what had hitherto been unattainable--just because, in this case, the new language had first to be created by him. seldom are even the great writers of the following period quite free from the danger of a lack-lustre style in their treatment of the language, above all in narrative composition. it is only in the present day that thomas mann, jacob wassermann, and ricarda huch are trying along different lines, but with equal zeal, to form a fixed individual style for the german prose-epic. the great exceptions of the middle period, the writers of prose-epics jeremias gotthelf and gottfried keller, the novelists paul heyse and marie von ebner-eschenbach, the narrator of anecdotes ludwig anzengruber, with his greater predecessor johann peter hebel, and his lesser contemporary peter rosegger, the portrayer of still-life adalbert stifter and a few others, have, more by a happy instinct than anything else, hit upon the style proper to their form of composition, lack of which prevents us from enjoying an endless number of prose works of the nineteenth century, which, as far as their subject matter goes, are not unimportant. in this connection i will only mention karl gutzkow's novels describing his own period, or, from an earlier time, clemens brentano's fairy tales, friedrich hebbel's humoresques, or even the rhetorically emotional historical compositions of heinrich von treitschke, found in certain parts of his work. but this lack of a fixed specific style spread likewise to other forms of composition; schiller's drama became too rhetorical; friedrich rückert's lyric poetry too prosaically didactic; that of annette von droste-hülshoff often too obscure and sketchy. if, therefore, the struggle with the language was fought out successfully by modern german literature only on the battleground of the lyric (and even there, as we have seen, not without exceptions), on the other hand a second conservative force was placed at the service of the literary development with more uniform success, namely _metrics_. to be sure, here again this applies only to verse, for the corresponding art of prose rhythm has been as good as lost to the germans, in contrast to the french, and almost more so to the english. in prose also a conscious and systematic attempt to make an artistic division into paragraphs, chapters, and books, has only been made in recent times, above all in and since the writings of nietzsche. for as far as the treatment of language in itself is concerned, german literature has hardly yet fully developed an artistic form; writers still continue to treat it far too much as a mere tool. but verse is felt to be an object for artistic molding, although here too the naturalistic dogmas of the storm and stress writers, of the romanticists, young germans and ultra-moderns, have often shaken the theories upon which the artistic perfection of our poetry is based. in this regard, likewise, there was, in the seventeenth century, a great difficulty to be overcome. changes in language, the effect of french and italian style, the influence of music, had weakened the foundations of the german art of verse, which were already partly broken down by mechanical wear and tear. the comparatively simple regulation contrived by an ordinary, though clever, poet, martin opitz, proved capable of enduring for centuries; a connection was established between the accent of verse and natural accent, which at the same time, by means of more stringent rules, created barriers against variable accent. it was merely a question of arranging the words in such fashion that, without forming too great a contradiction to the common-place order of words, the way in which the accents were placed upon them should result in a regularly alternating rise and fall. on the whole, this principle was found to be sufficient until the enthusiasm of the new poetic generation demanded a closer connection between the poetic form and the variable conditions of the soul; they found a way out of the difficulty by carrying a rhythmical mood through a variety of metrical divisions, and thus came upon the "free rhythms." from whatever source these were derived, either from the misunderstood poems of pindar, from the language of the bible or of the enthusiastic mystics, or from the poetic half-prose of the pastoral poet salomon gessner, they were, in any case, something new and peculiar, and their nature has not been grasped in the least degree by the french in their "vers libres," or at any rate only since the half-germanic fleming verhaeren. they received an interesting development through goethe and heinrich heine, while most of the other poets who made use of them, even the greatest one, novalis, often deteriorated either into a regular, if rhymeless, versification, or into a pathetic, formless prose. another method of procuring new metrical mediums of expression for the new wealth of emotions was to borrow. klopstock naturalized antique metres, or rather made them familiar to the school and to cultivated poets, while on the other hand heine's derision of august von platen's set form of verse was welcomed in many circles, and even the elevated poems of friedrich hölderlin, which approached the antique form, remained foreign to the people, like the experiments of leconte de lisle in france; in italy it fared otherwise with carducci's _odi barbare_. only one antique metre became german, in the same sense that shakespeare had become a german poet; this was the hexameter, alone or in connection with the pentameter; for the ratio of its parts to one another, on which everything depends in higher metrics, corresponded, to some extent, to that of the german couplets. for the same reason the sonnet--not, however, without a long and really bitter fight--was able to win a secure place in german reflective lyric poetry; indeed it had already been once temporarily in our possession during the seventeenth century. thus two important metres had been added to german poetry's treasure house of forms: first, the hexameter for a continuous narrative of a somewhat epic character, even though without high solemnity--which goethe alone once aspired to in his _achilleis_--and also for shorter epigrammatic or didactic observations in the finished manner of the distich; second, the sonnet for short mood-pictures and meditations. the era of the german hexameter seems, however, to be over at present, while, on the contrary, the sonnet, brought to still higher perfection by platen, moritz von strachwitz and paul heyse, still exercises its old power of attraction, especially over poets with a tendency toward romance art. however, both hexameter or distich and sonnet have become, in germany, pure literary forms of composition. while in italy the sonnet is still sung, we are filled with astonishment that brahms should have set to music a distich--_anacreon_. numerous other forms, taken up principally by the romantic school and the closely related "exotic school," have remained mere literary playthings. for a certain length of time the ghasel seemed likely to be adopted as a shell to contain scattered thoughts, wittily arranged, or (almost exclusively by platen) also for mood-pictures; but without doubt the undeservedly great success of friedrich von bodenstedt's _mirza schaffy_ has cast permanent discredit on this form. the favorite stanza of schiller is only one of the numerous strophe forms of our narrative or reflective lyric; it has never attained an "ethos" peculiar to itself. incidentally, the french alexandrines were the fashion for a short time after victor hugo's revival of them was revivified by ferdinand freiligrath, and were recently used with variations by carl spitteler (which, however, he denies) as a foundation for his epic poems. so, too, the "old german rhymed verse" after the manner of hans sachs, enjoyed a short popularity; and one saw virtuosos playing with the canzone or the makame. on the whole, however, german lyric poetry is rather made up of simple formations in the style of the folk-song, especially since the important rhythmic transformation of this material by heine created new possibilities for accommodating the inner form to new subject matter without conspicuously changing the outer form. for two great simplifying factors have, since goethe, been predominant in protecting our lyric poetry from unfruitful artificiality; the influence of the folk-song and the connection with music have kept it more full of vital energy than the too literary lyric poetry of the french, and richer in variety than the too cultivated lyric of the english. whoever shut the door on the influences spoken of, as did franz grillparzer or hebbel, and, in a different way, annette von droste-hülshoff or heinrich leuthold, at the same time nullified a good part of his efficiency. the drama almost exclusively assumed a foreign, though kindred, form as a garb for the more elevated styles of composition: namely, the blank verse of the english stage, which lessing's _nathan the wise_ had popularized and a.w. schlegel's shakespeare had rendered omnipotent, and which schiller forced upon his successors. the romanticists, by playing unsuccessfully with different forms, as in ludwig tieck's _octavianus_, or immerman's _alexis_, or by adopting pure antique or spanish metres, attempted in vain to free themselves from the restraint of form, the great danger of which consisted in its similarity to common-place sentence construction, so that the verse ran the risk either of becoming prosaic, or else, in trying forcibly to avoid this, of growing bombastic. an escape was provided by inserting, in moments of emotion, a metre of a more lyrical quality into the uniform structure of the usual vehicle of dramatic dialogue, particularly when partaking of the nature of a monologue; as goethe did, for example, in the "song of the fates" in _iphigenia_, that most metrically perfect of all german dramatic poems, and as schiller continued to do with increased boldness in the songs introduced into _mary stuart_. perhaps the greatest perfection in such use of the principle of the "free rhythm" as applied to the drama, was reached by franz grillparzer in the _golden fleece_, on the model of certain fragments by goethe, such as the _prometheus_. on the other hand, the interesting experiments in the _bride of messina_ are of more importance for the development of the opera into a work of art complete in itself, than for that of the drama. in general, however, it is to be remarked as a peculiarity of modern german drama, that it seeks to escape from monotony, which the french classical theatre hardly ever succeeded in avoiding, by calling in the aid of the other arts. plastic art is often employed for scenic arrangement, and music to produce effects on and behind the stage. both were made use of by schiller; and it was under his influence that they were tried by goethe in his later period--though we find a remarkable sporadic appearance of them even as early as _götz_ and _klavigo_. the mastery which grillparzer also attained in this respect has been striven after by his fellow countrymen with some degree of success: as, for example, by ferdinand raimund, by ludwig anzengruber, and also by friedrich halm and hugo von hofmannsthal. besides blank verse, the only other garb in vogue for the serious drama was prose: this was not only used for realistic pictures of conditions of a decidedly cheerful type (since lessing had introduced the _bourgeois_ dramas of diderot into germany), but also for pathetic tragedies, the vital power of which the lack of stylistic disguising of language was supposed to increase. this was the form employed in the storm and stress drama, and therefore in the prison scene of _faust_, as also in schiller's youthful dramas, and again we find it adopted by hebbel and the young germans, and by the naturalistic school under the leadership of ibsen. the old german rhymed verse found only a temporary place between these two forms. it was glorified and made almost sacrosanct by having been used for the greatest of our dramas, goethe's _faust_; wildenbruch in particular tried to gain new effects with it. other attempts also went hand in hand with deeper-reaching efforts to reconstruct the inner form of the drama; thus the tendency to a veiled polyphony of language in the folk-scenes of christian dietrich grabbe and in all the plays of heinrich von kleist; this in hofmannsthal's _oedipus_ led to regular choruses, of quite a different type, however, from those of the _bride of messina_. gerhart hauptmann's _weavers_ and _florian geyer_ may be considered the culminating points of this movement, in spite of their apparently entirely prosaic form. modern german drama, which in its peculiar style is still largely unappreciated because it has always been measured by its real or supposed models, is, together with the free-rhythm lyric, the greatest gift bestowed upon the treasure of forms of the world-literature by the literature of germany which has so often played the part of recipient. on the other hand, when speaking of the development of narrative prose, we should remember what we have already accomplished in that line. the "novelle" alone has attained a fixed form, as a not too voluminous account of a remarkable occurrence. it is formally regulated in advance by the absolute domination of a decisive incident--as, for example, the outbreak of a concealed love in heyse, or the moment of farewell in theodor storm. all previous incidents are required to assist in working up to this climax; all later ones are introduced merely to allow its echo to die away. in this austerity of concentration the german "novelle," the one rigidly artistic form of german prose, is related to the "short story" which has been so eagerly heralded in recent times, especially by america. the "novelle" differs, however, from this form of literary composition, which maupassant cultivated with the most masterly and unrivaled success, by its subordination to a climax; whereas the short story, in reality, is usually a condensed novel, that is to say, the history of a development concentrated in a few incidents. our literature also possesses such short "sketches," but the love of psychological detail in the development of the plot nearly always results in the greater diffuseness of the novel. the real "novelle" is, however, at least as typical of the germans as the short story is of the americans, and in no other form of literary composition has germany produced so many masters as in this--and in the lyric. for the latter is closely related to the german "novelle" because it loves to invest the way to and from the culminating point with the charm produced by a certain mood, as the half-german bret harte loves to do in similar artistic studies, but the russian tschechow never indulges himself in, and the frenchman maupassant but seldom. on this account our best writers of "novellen" have also been, almost without exception, eminent lyric poets; such were goethe, tieck, eichendorff, mörike, keller, heyse, theodor storm and c.f. meyer; whereas, in the case of marie von ebner-eschenbach, who otherwise would form an exception, even what appears to be a "novelle" is in reality a "small novel." the novel, on the contrary, still enjoys in germany the dangerous privilege of formlessness. in its language it varies from the vague lyric of romantic composition to the bureaucratic sobriety of mechanically-compiled studies of real life. in its outline, in the rhythm of its construction, in the division of its parts and the way in which they are brought into relief, it has, in spite of masterly individual performances, never attained a specific literary form, such as has long been possessed by the english and the french novels. likewise the inclination, sanctioned by goethe and the romantic school, to interpolate specimens of the least formed half-literary _genres_--namely, letters and diaries--worked against the adoption of a fixed form, notwithstanding that this expedient augmented the great--often indeed too great--inner richness of the german novel. thus the german novel, as well as the so justly favorite form of letters and diaries, is of infinitely more importance as a human or contemporary "document" than as a direct work of art. we have, however, already drawn attention to the fact that the never-failing efforts to clothe the novel in a more esthetically pure form have, in our own day, happily increased. the traditional _material_ of literary compositions is, however, also a conservative power, just as are language and form. the stock of dominating motives naturally undergoes just as many transformations as language or metrics; but, in both cases, what already exists has a determining influence on everything new, often going so far as to suppress the latter entirely. customary themes preferably claim the interest of the reader; as, for example, in the age of religious pictures it would have been exceedingly hard to procure an order for a purely worldly painting. the artists themselves unconsciously glide into the usual path, and what was intended to be a world-poem flows off into the convenient worn channel of the love-story. but the vivifying and deepening power of the germanic spirit has here, more than in any other domain, destroyed the opposing force of inertia. the oldest poetry is confined to such subjects as are of universal interest--one could also say of universal importance. war and the harvest, the festivals of the gods and the destinies of the tribe, are the subjects of song. these things retain their traditional interest even where a healthy communal life no longer exists. epochs which are absolutely wanting in political understanding still cultivate the glory of brutus in an epic or dramatic form; or those ages which can scarcely lay claim to a living religious interest still join in choruses in honor of apollo or in honor of the christian religion. every literature carries with it a large and respectable ballast of sensations that are no longer felt, of objects that are no longer seen, culminating in the spring-songs of poets confined to their room, and the wine-songs of the water-drinkers. a stagnating literature, as that of the seventeenth century was essentially, always has an especially large amount of such rubbish. poems composed for certain occasions, in the worst sense--that is to say, poems of congratulation and condolence written for money, trivial reflections and mechanical devotion, occupy an alarmingly large space in the lyric of this period. drama is entirely confined, and the novel for the greater part, to the dressing up in adopted forms of didactic subject matter of the most general type. men of individuality are, however, not altogether lacking: such were lyric poets like andreas gryphius and paul fleming, gnomologists like johann scheffler, and narrators like j.j. christoffel von grimmelshausen; but even with them the personal note does not dare to sound openly. the first to give free expression again to intimate sensations is christian günther, and he arouses thereby contradiction, together with admiration. the court poets about the year work more in a negative way, i. e., by that which they did not express in their verses. the great merit of the pre-classical writers is to have created space, on the one hand, for personal sensations, and, on the other, for the great new thoughts of the age. hagedorn, with the elegant frivolity of the man of the world, continued the necessary sifting of antiquated material; albrecht von haller, with the deep seriousness of the great student of nature, once more squarely faced the eternal problems. but the entire wealth of inner experience, in its most exclusively individual sense, was first revealed, not only to the literature of germany but to modern literature in general, by klopstock. along this path goethe pressed forward gloriously, his whole poetic work presenting, according to his own testimony, a single great confession. from haller, on the contrary, proceeds the effort to develop a poetical style that would enable individuals to share in the great thoughts of the age. lessing strides onward from _minna von barnhelm_--the first drama of contemporary history since the _persians_ of Æschylus--to _nathan the wise_, herein following the lead of the "literature with a distinct purpose" (_tendenz-dichtung_) of france, and especially of voltaire, otherwise antipathetic to lessing. lessing's great dramatic heir is schiller, whose tradition is in turn carried on by kleist, the latter allowing his personality to penetrate the subject matter far more even than either of his predecessors. but the utmost was done by goethe, when in _werther_ and _götz_, in _prometheus_ or _satyros_, but above all eventually in _faust_, he lived through in advance--or, as he himself said, he "anticipated" (_vorfühlte_)--the peculiar experience of the age with such intensity that, in the work which resulted, the individual experience became the direct experience of the whole generation. out of the "reverence for nature" (_naturfrömmigkeit_) with which he contemplated all created things--from "the cedar of lebanon to the hyssop which grows on the wall," from the mighty movement of the stream in _mahomet_ to the bit of cheese that is weighed by the old woman in _die geschwister_--out of all comes a widening of the poetic horizon, the like of which had never before been seen in any age. the romanticists in reality only made a watchword out of this practice of goethe's when they demanded "progressive universal poetry," by which they meant that the poet should live through the whole experience of creation in his own person. in demanding this, they--as the aging goethe had himself done--formed too narrow a conception of the personal, and rejected too absolutely the problems of politics and of science, so that once more a narrowing process ensued. but even in their own ranks this tendency was offset by the exigency of the times; after the wars of liberation, political and in general, poetry written with a purpose was actually in the ascendency. the poetry of the mood, like that of a mörike, remained for a long time almost unknown on account of its strictly intimate character. in the success of ernst von wildenbruch we see provisionally the last victory of this sort of literature--which directly proclaims what is worth striving for--at least in its loftier form. for the contemporary novel constantly takes for its subject the emancipation of woman, or the fight for culture, the protection of the ostmark, or the fight against alcohol. on the other hand the romantic school has also broadened the realm of poetic material in a very important manner, by adding to it the provinces of the phantastic, the visionary, the fairy-like, and by giving to the symbolical an undreamed-of expansion. on the whole, modern german literature has probably a richer field from which to choose her material than any other literature can boast of. in fact it is perhaps too variegated, and thus, because of the richness and originality of its subject matter, allows too much latitude to genius. one field only in poetry, considered from the viewpoint of real art, is almost uncultivated. all the efforts and all the attempts on the part of both catholics and protestants have not succeeded in producing religious poems of any degree of importance since annette von droste-hülshoff ceased to sing; whereas, on the other hand, poetry that is hostile to the church has brought to maturity some great productions, not only in anzengruber or karl schoenherr, in friedrich theodor vischer, in storm, and keller, but, above all, in nietzsche. a turn in the tide that seems just now to be taking place is exemplified in the important epic poems of enrica von handel-mazzetti. finally, as the last and, in a certain sense, the strongest, pillar of permanency we will name the public. it is just as much a product as a contributing factor of literature; in both respects, however, preëminently important as a conservative force. the predominant and enduring tendencies, forms, and subjects are naturally chiefly conducive to the formation of a circle of "fixed subscribers" among the crowd of possible patrons. these subscribers, on their part, of course insist upon the preservation of those tendencies, forms, and subjects by which they are attracted. in the same way that, in general, a large "reading world," or a regular public for a theatre, or a solid community of devotees for each of the different species of song (as for example, the religious song, the folk-song, the student's song) is organized, so do important personalities call into being a special following of admirers, such as the partisans of hebbel, the wagnerians, and the adherents of stefan george. but these narrow circles are often much more intolerant of every effort on the part of the master to depart from the program he has sworn to, than are outsiders. the history of the german public, unlike that of the english or french, is less a church-history than a sect-history. schiller alone succeeded in becoming the national poet of his people--and he had his merits as well as his weaknesses to thank for it. lessing is the one who comes next to him, whereas goethe really reached the masses in only a few of his compositions. on the other hand, he made a stronger impression upon, and gave more happiness to, the intellectual classes than any of our poets since klopstock. after him, only poets of a decidedly esoteric character, such as stefan george or friedrich nietzsche, have had such a profound effect or one so capable of stirring the remoter depths of the soul. even with jean paul the impression produced was more superficial. latterly, however, periodicals, lecture-courses and clubs have replaced the "_caucus_"--which was formerly held by the most influential readers and hearers of the literary fraternities. this change has gone so far that the intimacy of the relations between a poet and his admirers, which was still possible in the early days of hauptmann, hofmannsthal, george, and dehmel, now actually exists only for those poets who have not attained any special renown, such as alfred mombert, or, perhaps, we might also include spitteler. an amalgamation of the different groups, which in germany are wont to prove their love for their patron by combatting his supposed or real opponents rather than by actively fostering his artistic tendencies, might have produced a strong and effective reading public. but sooner can a stenographer of the stolze school agree with one of the gabelsberger system than can a votary of dehmel dare to recognize the greatness in george, an admirer of schnitzler see the importance of herbert eulenberg, or a friend of gustav frenssen acknowledge the power of ricarda huch. our public, by its separatist taste and the unduly emphasized obstinacy of its antipathies, will continue for a long time still to hinder that unity, which, rising above even a just recognition of differences, is the only element which makes a great literature possible. of course the critics are to be reckoned among the public, whether we consider criticism by professional reviewers or the more discriminating criticism of theatre directors, composers, etc. in all the foregoing discussion of the prevailingly conservative forces in the development of literature we have seen that none of these forces has a completely restraining effect. language always undergoes a certain change, even in the most benumbed periods, since it is obliged to suit itself to the new demands of trade, of society, even of literature itself. we also saw that form and material were not an inert mass, but were in continual, though often slow, movement. finally, though the public itself always demands essentially the same thing, it has, nevertheless, new variations which are forced upon it by its avidity for new subjects; it also demands, when it has enjoyed a higher artistic education (as in the days of the classical and romantic writers), perfection of technique and increase in specifically artistic values. between the abiding and the progressive, between the conservative and revolutionary tendencies, _the typical development of the individual himself_ takes its place as a natural intermediary factor. no literary "generation" is composed of men actually of the same age. beside the quite young who are merely panting to express themselves, stand the mature who exercise an esthetic discernment, even as regards their own peculiar experience; finally, there are also the older men who have already said their say. in the same way every public is made up of people of all ages. these make different demands of their poets; youth wishes to conquer, manhood to fortify, old age merely not to lose. it is self-evident that points of conformity are to be found between the most widely differing fields: as, for example, conservative tendencies are present in the camp of the destroyers, revolutionary tendencies in that of the conservatives. in other words, in every community of men, no matter of what description, who are united by any kind of higher interest, new ideals grow up out of this very community of interest. men who happen to be thrown together mutually cause one another's demands to increase; those who work in common try to outdo one another. out of their midst personalities arise, who, brought up with the loftiest ideals, or often spurred on by the supineness of the public, with passionate earnestness make what merely filled up the leisure hours of others the sole purpose of their lives. thus, in germany above all, the new ideal has been born again and again, constituting the strongest motive power which exists, besides the personality of genius itself. of the greatest importance, to begin with, is the _ideal of a national literature itself_. gottsched was the first in germany, if not to apprehend it, at least to ponder it and to advocate it with persistent zeal. the literature of antiquity and the literature of france offered types of fixed national units. the affinity between the two as national units had been pointed out in france and england by means of the celebrated "combat of the ancients and moderns," which also first gave living writers sufficient courage to think of comparing modern art with ancient. gottsched presented a program which he systematically strove to carry out, and in which one of the most important places is given to the building up of an artistic theatre, after the model of the great civilized nations. he surely had as much right to show some intolerance toward the harlequin and the popular stage as lessing (who supplanted him while continuing his work) had to indulge in a like prejudice against the classical theatre of the french. lessing, however, as we have already seen, goes at the same time more deeply into the matter by proposing not only a systematic but also an organic construction of the separate _genres_, and herder took the last step when he demanded an autochthonous growth--that is to say, a development of art out of the inner necessity of personalities on the one hand, and of nationalities on the other. to be sure, the great poets who now appeared were not included in the program, and gottsched did not appreciate haller, nor did lessing form a correct estimate of goethe, or herder of schiller. there is, however, a mysterious connection between the aspirations of the nation and the appearance of genius. klopstock probably felt most directly what was wanting in the literature of his people, as he was also the most burning patriot of all our classical writers; and at the same time, as is proved by the _republic of letters_, his strange treatise on the art of poetry, he was the one among them who bore the most resemblance to the literary pedant of the old days. he is, therefore, continually occupied with the comparison between german and foreign art, language, and literature, which endeavor was continued later on and with other methods by a.w. schlegel. but herder also, in his comparison of the native art of germany with the art of antiquity, of the orient and of england, produced effective results; no less did lessing, although the latter seeks to learn from the faults of his neighbors rather than from their excellencies. goethe's criticism is dominated to such a degree by his absorption in the antique, and also in french and english general literature, that he has no understanding of national peculiarities when they do not conform to typical literary phenomena, as uhland's lyric and kleist's drama--two literary phenomena which we, nowadays, consider eminently national. the romantic school was the first to try to place the conception of national literature as a whole on an autochthonous basis, and the scientific speculation to which romanticism gave rise, has, since the brothers grimm, also resulted in serviceable rules gained from the increasingly thorough knowledge of language, of national development, and of social conditions. this new point of view reaches its climax in the attempts of karl müllenhoff and wilhelm scherer to trace the native literary development directly back to the nature and destiny of the german nation. but even as that proved scientifically unsuccessful, so likewise it was not feasible practically to establish a poetry confined to native materials, forms, and opinions. in vain did tieck try to play off the youthful goethe, as the only national one, against the goethe of the weimar period, which attempt many after him have repeated; or again, it was proposed to strike heine out of the history of our literature as un-german--the last two literary events of european significance in germany, according to nietzsche. on the contrary, a comparison of german literature with those of foreign nations was not only necessary but also fruitful, as a certain exhaustion had set in, which lent an aftermath character to the leaders of the german "intellectual poetry" (_bildungs-poesie_) of that time. it was necessary once again to compare our technique, our relationship between the poet and the people, our participation in all the various literary _genres_ and problems, with the corresponding phenomena in the countries of zola, björnson, tolstoy, ibsen, and strindberg. this, now, leads up to another question, to that concerning _poetic ideals_, and not only poetry in itself; the poet also becomes the object of interest and expectation. every age embodies a different ideal, by which in all instances the already existing type and the loftier hopes of youth are welded into one--if we maybe allowed so to express it. antiquity asked that the poet should fill the heart with gladness; the middle ages desired edification with a spiritual or a worldly coloring; the first centuries of modern times applied to him for instruction. this last ideal was still in vogue at the beginning of modern german literature. but gradually the conception of "instruction" altered. the poet of the germanic nations had now to be one who could interpret the heart. he should no longer be the medium for conveying those matters which the didactic novel and the edifying lyric had treated--things valuable where knowledge of the world and human nature, intercourse and felicity are concerned--but he must become a seer again, an announcer of mysterious wisdom. "whatever, unknown or unminded by others, wanders by night through the labyrinth of the heart"--that he must transmit to the hearer; he must allow the listener to share with him the gift of "being able to give expression to his suffering." thus the chief task of the modern poet became "the reproduction of the objective world through the subjective," consequently "experience." real events, objects, manifestations must pass through a human soul in order to gain poetic significance, and upon the significance of the receiving soul, not upon the "poetic" or "unpoetic" nature of the subject itself, depends the poetic significance. with this new conception, however, new dangers are connected. near at hand lies the fear of a too open declaration of the most intimate feelings. in many old-style poets of modern times, in hölderlin, in kleist, grillparzer, and annette von droste-hülshoff this fear assumes the character of ethical aversion to baring their feelings in public. but near, too, lies the hunt after interesting experiences--the need to "experience something" at any price--which marred the life of a romantic poet of brentano's talents, and also affected the conduct of the realist grabbe. a new responsibility was placed upon the shoulders of the german poet, which rested heavily on men like otto ludwig, and on account of which writers like hebbel or richard wagner thought themselves justified in claiming the royal privileges of the favorites of the gods. an entirely new method of poetic study began, which perhaps originated with heinrich von kleist: a passionate endeavor to place the whole of life at the service of observation or to spend it in the study of technique. the consequence was not seldom a nervous derangement of the whole apparatus of the soul, just at the moment when it should have been ready for its greatest performances, as in the case of nikolaus lenau; however, it also frequently resulted in an endlessly increased receptivity for every experience, as in the case of bettina von arnim, heine, or annette von droste, and the most recent writers. the infinitely difficult task of the modern poet is made still harder by the fact that, in spite of all his efforts, he, happily, seldom succeeds in transforming himself into, one would like to say, an artistically working apparatus, such as ibsen very nearly became; not, however, without deploring the fact at the close of his life. the german poet in particular has too strong a lyrical inheritance not to reëcho the impressions _directly_ received by his heart. the struggle between the demands of a purely artistic presentation of reality, i. e., one governed exclusively by esthetic rules, and its sympathetic rendering, constitutes the poetic tragedy of most of our "naturalistic writers," and especially of the most important one among them, gerhart hauptmann. but from this general ideal of the poet, who only through his own experience will give to reality a true existence and the possibility of permanence, there follows a straining after technical requirements such as was formerly almost unknown. this results in an effort in germany all the more strenuous in proportion to the former slackness regarding questions of artistic form. the peculiarities of the different literary _genres_ are heeded with a severity such as has been practised before only in antiquity or perhaps by the french. poets like detlev von liliencron, who formerly had appeared as advocates of poetical frivolity, now chafed over banal aids for rhyming, as once alfred de musset had done. friedrich spielhagen, the brothers heinrich and thomas mann, and jacob wassermann are seen to busy themselves with the technical questions pertaining to the prose-epic, no longer in a merely esthetical and easy-going fashion, but as though they were working out questions vital to existence; and truly it is bitter earnest with them where their art is concerned. often, as in painting, technique becomes the principal object, and the young naturalism of arno holz and johannes schlaf has in all seriousness raised technique to a dogma, without, however, in the long run being able to get the upper hand of the german need of establishing intimate relations with the subject of the art. we must, however, at this point again remind ourselves that the question is not one of abstract "poets" but one of a large number of living _men_ who, happily, differ widely from one another. above all, when considering them we must think of the typical development of the generations. those for whom patriotic interests, at least in a direct sense, seemed to have little meaning, were always followed by generations patriotically inspired. the germany of to-day hides, under the self-deluding appearance of a confinement to purely esthetic problems, a predominating and lively joy in the growth of the fatherland, and naturally also in its mental broadening. to have given the strongest expression to this joy constitutes the historical significance of gustav frenssen, just as solicitude for its future inspired the muse of wilhelm von polenz. the preference shown to individual literary _genres_ changes in an almost regular order of sequence--the swiss bovet has even tried recently to lay down a regular law of alternation. especially is the theatre from time to time abused for being a destructive negation of art, in just as lively a fashion as it is declared at other times to be the sole realization of the artistic ideal. as to prevailing temperaments, a preferably pathetic tone--as, for example, in the epoch of freytag, geibel, treitschke--alternates with a sceptically satiric one--as in fontane who (like so many writers, in germany especially) did not belong to his own generation nor even to the immediately succeeding one, but to the next after that! with these are associated preferences for verse or prose; for idealism or realism and naturalism; a falling away from philosophy or an inclination to introduce it into poetry; and numerous other disguises for those antagonistic principles, to which kuno francke in a general survey of our literature has sought to trace back its different phases. we have now said about all that, in our opinion, seems necessary for a general introduction to modern german literature. for the rest, it is of course quite obvious that it is german--and that it is a literature. that it is german, is precisely why it is not exclusively german: for in every epoch has it not been proclaimed in accents of praise or of blame, until we are almost tired of hearing it, that the inclination to take up and appropriate foreign possessions is peculiar to the german nation--and to the germanic spirit in general? thus we possess special presentations of german literature considered from the standpoint of its antique elements, and also from that of its christian elements, and we could in the same way present theses which would show its development from the standpoint of the romance or of the english influence. and yet latterly an exactly contrary attempt has been made--in a spirited, if somewhat arbitrary book by nadler, which consists in trying to build up the history of german literature entirely upon the peculiarities of the different tribes and provinces. for the essence of the german, nay, even of the swabian, or bavarian, or north german, or austrian individuality, is in the long run nourished rather than extinguished by all foreign influences. in spite of this, it is of course important in the consideration of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to observe how the french pattern that is at first followed almost with the unquestioned obedience accorded to a fixed ethical model, is confronted by the english, which brings about the celebrated--and probably overrated--struggle between gottsched and the swiss school. we should also notice precisely how the tendency of british literature toward originality--in which the insular peculiarities were strongly emphasized--served to increase the self-reliance of german literature; how a new movement in the style of the antique was cultivated by the classical writers; and how the romantic school favored medieval-christian tendencies--much to goethe's annoyance. it is of importance likewise to note the way in which young germany learned how to gain political-literary effects from the new french models; and finally, how the northern realism of presentation, amalgamated with tolstoy's, björnson's, strindberg's and also ibsen's ethical subjectivity, educated the naturalism of the germans. it is precisely those poets that are especially characterized by german peculiarities who have also trained themselves in the use of foreign subjects and forms: thus did uhland, mörike, hebbel, and all the romanticists. we have already had occasion many times to call attention in detail to the educational effect of foreign countries. german literature is, in short, one that possesses the typical moments of development which mark all literatures, and which wilhelm scherer was the first to call to our notice: that is to say, it is a complicated organism in which the most varied tendencies cross one another, the most dissimilar generations of writers meet together, and the most remarkable events occur in the most unforeseen manner. if we should now try to get a closer view of the last and by far the most important factor of literature, namely, the individual writers themselves, this difficulty in obtaining a general view of the whole, this working of the different parts against one another, this pulling away from one another, presents itself more clearly to us here than anywhere else. the attempt to classify the development of our literature into distinct groups according to the personalities which compose them has been frequently made, since i, in spite of all the difficulties and dangers of such a hazardous enterprise, first undertook, in my _german literature of the nineteenth century_, to give an historical and complete presentation of a literature which had as yet scarcely become historic. i can here merely refer in passing to my own efforts and to those of bartels, biese, riemann, and soergel--to name only these; for in compliance with the purpose of this introduction we must confine ourselves to giving a general comprehensive outline--although it would be easy to improve upon it if one went more into detail. it seems to me under these conditions that the groundlines of the development of our literature from - would be best impressed upon us by comparing the order of its evolution with that of the most "normal" poetic genius who ever lived--namely, with that of goethe; and thereby we should prove its development to be an essentially normal one. like all "natural geniuses" goethe begins as an imitator, dependent upon others; for the poet also must first learn to speak and to walk. the earliest literary effort of his which we possess is the poem _on christ's descent into hell_, which naturally seemed strange enough to goethe when this long forgotten first printed specimen of his literary productiveness was laid before him again after he had grown old. in this poem traditional phrases are repeated without the addition of anything new and original; conventional feelings are expressed, usual methods are employed; all this, however, not without a certain moderation of expression constituting a first sign of the otherwise still completely concealed poetic individuality. such is the character that the world of virtuosos also bears about the year . the poems of rudolf von canitz and johann von besser are, though in entirely different spheres, just the same kind of first attempts of an imperfect art anxiously following foreign models as goethe's first christian poem--though truly with the tremendous difference that they represented the utmost that frenchified courtly art could ever attain to; while goethe's poem, on the contrary, was the immature sprig cut away before its time from the stem of a tree soon to stand in the full glory of its bloom. when now in the leipzig period the young student discovers the poet within him, he first does so in the customary way: he recognizes the ability on his part to handle the language of the contemporary poets, and also perhaps to imbue it with his own personal feelings. his poems inserted in letters, which make a show of the elegant pretence of improvisation, but in reality already display a great dexterity in rhyming and in the use of imagery, may be compared to hagedorn's poetry; but at the same time goethe is trying to attain the serious tone of the "pindarian" odes, just as haller's stilted scholarly poetry conquered a place beside hagedorn's epicurean philosophy of life. the _book of annette_ ( ) as a whole, however, presents the first attempt on the part of goethe to reach a certain completeness in his treatment of the poetic theme. in all his subsequent collections of poems the same attempt is made, it is true with increasingly rigid interpretation of the idea of "completeness," and in so far one is reminded in this connection of the theoretic intentions and performances of gottsched. the "new songs" (_neue lieder_) of give a lop-sided exhibition of the style which leipzig and the times acts. two great acts follow: in comes _götz_; in , _werther_. and with _götz_ the great "subjects of humanity" seize possession of goethe's poetry, as they had taken possession of the poetry of germany with lessing--as shown by his whole work up to _nathan_: for lessing, the strongest adversary of mere "estheticism," really accomplished what those anacreontic poets had merely wished to do--or seemed to wish--and brought literature into close touch with life. _the sorrows of werther_ lays hold of the subjective problems of the age just as the drama of liberty lays hold of the objective; in them a typical character of the times is analyzed not without zealously making use of models--both innovations of wieland! but now indeed comes the most important of all, that which in its greatness represents something completely new, although in detail goethe had here all his teachers to teach him--lessing who had written _faust_-scenes, and wieland who was so fond of placing the two souls of man side by side, and herder who had an absolutely faust-like nature; so that people have tried, with the exaggeration of the theorist, to hold up before us the whole _faust_ as a kind of dramatized portrayal of herder! and with _faust_ goethe in german literature has reached his own time--"for his century bears his name!" but in the period which followed the predominating position of the classical writers we once more find the same parallelism of development. again with goethe's dilettante beginnings we compare a school of weak imitators, which unhappily was protected by goethe himself (and also by schiller in his literary organs); again with the strassburg period and its storm and stress we compare romanticism, which is characterized by its german nationalism and its antique tendencies, which is sentimental and philosophical, critical and programmatical like the time of _götz_, which latter surely must have had a strong effect on men like tieck and arnim. and out of the sentiment for his country, which, in goethe's whole literary career, is peculiar only to the poetry of the strassburg period, tendencies develop like those which manifest themselves in the literature of the wars of liberation, of the swabian school, in the older poetry of political conflict--in short, like all those tendencies which we connect with ludwig uhland's name. goethe's literary satires and poems for special occasions are a prelude to the purely literary existence and the belligerent spirit of men like platen and immermann, who both, as it were by accident, found their way into the open of national poesy. the self-absorption in _werther_, the delving after new poetical experiences and mediums of expression; the method of expression hovering between form and illusory improvisation--all this we find again in the strongest individualists, in heine, in annette von droste, in lenau. the weimar period, however, when the poet by means of a great and severe self-discipline trains himself to the point of rigidity in order to become the instrument of his art--that period is, with _tasso_, paving the way for the school of grillparzer, while that infinite deepening of the poetic calling is a preparation for otto ludwig, richard wagner, and friedrich hebbel. the contemporary novel in the style of _wilhelm meister_ is revived by the young germans, above all by gutzkow, in the same way that tendencies found in _nathan_ and in _götz_ are brought out again in gutzkow's and in heinrich laube's dramas, so rich in allusions. the national spirit of which _egmont_ is full also fills the novels of willibald alexis and berthold auerbach. finally those works, besides _tasso_, which we are wont to consider the crowning achievements of the weimar period, above all, _iphigenia_, have permanently served as models of the new, and in their way classical, "antiques"--for the munich school, for the geibels and the heyses. but we must also remember mörike and stifter, and their absorption in the fullness of the inner life, which none of them could attain to without somewhat stunting the growth of life's realities--hebbel perceived this clearly enough not only in stifter but in goethe himself. above all, however, this whole epoch of the "intellectual poets" may, in a certain sense, be called the _italian journey_ of german literature. like goethe in the years - , the german muse in this period only feels entirely at home in italy, or at least in the south; in her own country she feels misnamed. now let us consider goethe after he had settled down in weimar for the second time. scientific work seems for a while to have entirely replaced poetic activity, as for a moment the scientific prose of ranke and helmholtz came near to being of more consequence for the german language than most of what was produced at the same time by so-called poetry. then the _campaign in champagne_ ( ), and the new employment of his time with political problems, constitutes for goethe a temporary phase that may be compared with that recapturing of history by political-historical writers like freytag and treitschke, in the same way that _hermann and dorothea_ ( ), in which an old historical anecdote of the time of the expulsion of the protestants from salzburg is transplanted to the time of the french revolution, may be compared with the historical "novellen" of riehl, scheffel, and c.f. meyer. goethe's ballads ( - ) maintain the tradition that was to be given new life by fontane, strachwitz, and c.f. meyer. goethe's later novels with their didactic tendencies, and the inclination to interpolate "novellen" and diaries, lead up to gottfried keller, wilhelm raabe and again to fontane. the table-songs and other convivial poetry of goethe's old age are taken up again by scheffel; goethe's "novellen" themselves were continued by all those eminent writers whom we have already named. the _divan_, with its bent toward immutable relations, prepares the way for the new lyric, until finally, with the second part of _faust_, mythical world-poetry and symbolism complete the circle, just as the cycle of german literature finishes with nietzsche, stefan george, spitteler and hofmannsthal. at the same time new forces are starting to form the new cycle, or, to speak like goethe, the newest spiral: hauptmann, frenssen, ricarda huch, enrica von handel, to name only these. and how many others have we not previously left unnamed! but all this has not been merely to exercise our ingenuity. by drawing this parallel, which is naturally only to be taken approximately, we have intended to make clear the comforting probability that, in spite of all the exaggerating, narrowing down, and forcing to which it has been obliged to submit, our modern and most recent german literature is essentially a healthy literature. that, in spite of all deviation caused by influential theorists--of the storm and stress, of the romantic school, of the period of goethe's old age, of the epigonean or naturalistic criticism, or by the dazzling phenomena of foreign countries,--nevertheless in the essentials it obeys its own inner laws. that in spite of all which in the present stage of our literature may create a painful or confusing impression, _we have no cause to doubt that a new and powerful upward development will take place, and no cause either to underrate the literature of our own day_! it is richer in great, and what is perhaps more important, in serious talents than any other contemporary literature. no other can show such wealth of material, no other such abundance of interesting and, in part, entirely new productions. we do not say this in order to disparage others who in some ways were, only a short time ago, so far superior to us--as were the french in surety of form, the scandinavians in greatness of talents, the russians in originality, the english in cultivation of the general public; but we are inspired to utter it by the hopeful joy which every one must feel who, in the contemplation of our modern lyric poetry, our novels, dramas, epic and didactic poetry, does not allow himself to be blinded by prejudice or offended vanity. a great literature such as we possessed about we of a certainty do not have to-day. a more hopeful chaos or one more rich in fertile seeds we have not possessed since the days of romanticism. it is surely worth while to study this literature, and in all its twists and turns to admire the heliotropism of the german ideal and the importance which our german literature has won as a mediator, an experimenter, and a model for that world-literature, the outline of which the prophetic eye of the greatest german poet was the first to discern, and his hand, equally expert in scientific and poetic creation, the first to describe. the life of goethe by calvin thomas, ll.d. professor of germanic languages and literatures, columbia university goethe, the illustrious poet-sage whom matthew arnold called the "clearest, largest, and most helpful thinker of modern times," was born august , , at frankfurt on the main.[ ] he was christened johann wolfgang. in his early years his familiar name was wolfgang, or simply wolf, never johann. his family was of the middle class, the aristocratic _von_ which sometimes appears in his name, in accordance with german custom, having come to him with a patent of nobility which he received in the year . johann caspar goethe, the poet's father, was the son of a prosperous tailor, who was also a tailor's son. having abundant means and being of an ambitious turn, johann caspar prepared himself for the profession of law, spent some time in italy, and then settled in frankfurt in the hope of rising to distinction in the public service. disappointed in this hope, he procured the imperial title of councilor, which gave him a dignified social status but nothing in particular to do. he thus became virtually a gentleman of leisure, since his law practise was quite insignificant. in he married katharina elisabeth textor, whose father, johann wolfgang textor, was the town's chief magistrate and most eminent citizen. she was eighteen years old at the time of her marriage--twenty years younger than her husband--and well fitted to become a poet's mother. the gift on which she especially prided herself was her story-telling. wolfgang was the first child of these parents. the paternal strain in goethe's blood made for level-headedness, precise and methodical ways, a serious view of life, and a desire to make the most of it. by his mother he was a poet who liked nothing else so well as to invent dream-worlds and commune with the spirits of his imagination. he also ascribes to his mother his _frohnatur_, his joyous nature. and certain it is that his temperament was on the whole sunny. as he grew to manhood men and women alike were charmed by him. he became a virtuoso in love and had a genius for friendship. but he was not always cheerful. in his youth, particularly, he was often moody and given to brooding over indefinable woes. he suffered acutely at times from what is now called the melancholia of adolescence. this was a phase of that emotional sensitiveness and nervous instability which are nearly always a part of the poet's dower. wolfgang grew up in a wholesome atmosphere of comfort and refinement. he never knew the tonic bitterness of poverty. on the other hand, he was never spoiled by his advantages; to his dying day he disliked luxury. at home under private tutors the boy studied latin, french, and english, and picked up a little italian by overhearing his sister's lessons. in frankfurt was occupied by a french army, and a french playhouse was set going for the diversion of the officers. in the interest of his french wolfgang was allowed to go to the theatre, and he made such rapid progress that he was soon studying the dramatic unities as expounded by corneille and actually trying to write a french play. withal he was left much to himself, so that he had time to explore frankfurt to his heart's content. [illustration: johann wolfgang von goethe _from the painting by c. jäger_] he was much in contact with people of the humbler sort and learned to like their racy dialect. he penetrated into the ghetto and learned the jargon of the jews. he even attacked biblical hebrew, being led thereto by his great love of the old testament. it was his boyish ambition to become a great poet. his favorite amusement was a puppet-show, for which he invented elaborate plays. from his tenth year on he wrote a great deal of verse, early acquiring technical facility and local renown and coming to regard himself as a "thunderer." he attempted a polyglot novel, also a biblical tale on the subject of joseph, which he destroyed on observing that the hero did nothing but pray and weep. when he was ready for the university he wished to go to göttingen to study the old humanities, but his father was bent on making a lawyer of him. so it came about that some ten years of his early life were devoted, first as a student and then as a practitioner, to a reluctant and half-hearted grapple with the intricacies of holy roman law. at the age of sixteen goethe entered the university of leipzig, where he remained about three years. the law lectures bored him and he soon ceased to attend them. the other studies that he took up, especially logic and philosophy, seemed to him arid and unprofitable--mere conventional verbiage without any bed-rock of real knowledge. so he presently fell into that mood of disgust with academic learning which was afterwards to form the keynote of _faust_. outside the university he found congenial work in oeser's drawing-school. oeser was an artist of no great power with the brush, but a genial man, a friend of winckelmann, and an enthusiast for greek art. goethe learned to admire and love him, and from this time on, for some twenty years, his constant need of artistic expression found hardly less satisfaction in drawing from nature than in poetry. his poetic ambition received little encouragement in university circles. those to whom he read his ambitious verses made light of them. the venerated gellert, himself a poet of repute, advised the lad to cultivate a good prose style and look to his handwriting. no wonder that he despaired of his talent, concluded that he could never be a poet, and burnt his effusions. a maddening love-affair with his landlady's daughter, anna katharina schönkopf, revived the dying lyric flame, and he began to write verses in the gallant erotic vein then and there fashionable--verses that tell of love-lorn shepherds and shepherdesses, give sage advice to girls about keeping their innocence, and moralize on the ways of this wicked world. they show no signs of lyric genius. his short-lived passion for annette, as he called her, whom he tormented with his jealousy until she lost patience and broke off the intimacy, was also responsible for his first play, _die laune des verliebten_, or _the lover's wayward humor_. it is a pretty one-act pastoral in alexandrine verse, the theme being the punishment of an over-jealous lover. what is mainly significant in these leipzig poetizings is the fact that they grew out of genuine experience. goethe had resolved to drop his ambitious projects, such as _belshazzar_, and coin his own real thoughts and feelings into verse. thus early he was led into the way of poetic "confession." in the summer of he was suddenly prostrated by a grave illness--an internal hemorrhage which was at first thought to portend consumption. pale and languid he returned to his father's house, and for several months it was uncertain whether he was to live or die. during this period of seclusion he became deeply interested in magic, alchemy, astrology, cabalism, and all that sort of thing. he even set up a kind of alchemist's laboratory to search experimentally for the panacea. out of these abstruse studies grew faust's wonderful dream of an ecstatic spirit-life to be attained by natural magic. of course the menace of impending death drew his thoughts in the direction of religion. among the intimate friends of the family was the devout susanna von klettenberg, one of the leading spirits in a local conventicle of the moravian brethren. this lady--afterwards immortalized as the "beautiful soul" of _wilhelm meister_--tried to have the sick youth make his peace with god in her way, that is, by accepting christ as an ever-present personal saviour. while he never would admit a conviction of sin he envied the calm of the saintly maiden and was so far converted that he attended the meetings of the brethren, took part in their communion service, and for a while spoke the language of a devout pietist. this religious experience of his youth bit deep into goethe's character. he soon drifted away from the pietists and their ways, he came to have a poor opinion of priests and priestcraft, and in time men called him a heathen. nevertheless his nature had been so deeply stirred in his youth by religion's mystic appeal that he never afterwards lost his reverence for genuine religious feeling. to the end of his days the aspiration of the human soul for communion with god found in him a delicate and sympathetic interpreter. during his convalescence goethe retouched a score of his leipzig songs and published them anonymously, with music by his friend breitkopf, under the title of _new songs_. he regarded them at the time as trifles that had come into being without art or effort. "young, in love, and full of feeling," he had sung them so, while "playing the old game of youth." to-day they seem to convey little forewarning of the matchless lyric gift that was soon to awaken, being a shade too intellectual and sententious. one hears more of the critic's comment than of the poet's cry. it was at this time also that he rewrote an earlier leipzig play, expanding it from one act to three and giving it the title _die mitschuldigen_, or _the fellow-culprits_. it is a sort of rogue's comedy in middle-class life, written in the alexandrine verse, which was soon to be discarded along with other french fashions. we have a quartet consisting of an inquisitive inn-keeper, his mismated sentimental daughter, her worthless husband, and her former lover. they tangle themselves up in a series of low intrigues and are finally unmasked as one and all poor miserable sinners. technically it is a good play--lively, diverting, well put together. but one can not call it very edifying. in the spring of goethe entered the university of strassburg, which was at that time in french territory. it was a part of his general purpose to better his french, but the actual effect of his sojourn in alsatia was to put him out of humor with all french standards, especially with the classic french drama, and to excite in him a fervid enthusiasm for the things of the fatherland. this was due partly to the influence of herder, with whom he now came into close personal relations. from herder, who was six years his senior and already known by his _fragments_ and _critical forests_ as a trenchant and original critic, he heard the gospel of a literary revolution. rules and conventions were to be thrown overboard; the new watchwords were nature, power, originality, genius, fulness of expression. he conceived a boundless admiration for homer, ossian, and shakespeare, in each of whom he saw the mirror of an epoch and a national life. he became an enthusiastic collector of alsatian folksongs and was fascinated by the strassburg minster--at a time when "gothic" was generally regarded as a synonym of barbarous. withal his gift for song-making came to a new stage of perfection under the inspiration of his love for the village maid friederike brion. from this time forth he was the prince of german lyrists. in the summer of he returned to frankfurt once more, this time with the title of licentiate in law, and began to practise in a perfunctory way, with his heart in his literary projects. by the end of the year he had written out the first draft of a play which he afterwards revised and published anonymously (in ) under the title of _götz von berlichingen_. by its exuberant fulness of life, its bluff german heartiness, and the freshness and variety of its scenes, it took the public by storm, notwithstanding its disregard of the approved rules of play-writing. [illustration: johann wolfgang von goethe _from the painting by j. stieler_] the next year he published _the sufferings of young werther_, a tragic tale of a weak-willed sentimental youth of hyperesthetic tendencies, who commits suicide because of disappointment in love. the story was the greatest literary triumph that germany had ever known, and in point of sheer artistic power it remains to this day the best of novels in the tragic-sentimental vein. these two works carried the name of goethe far and wide and made him the accepted leader of the literary revolution which long afterwards came to be known, from the title of a play by klinger, as the storm and stress. the years - were for goethe a time of high emotional tension, from which he sought relief in rapid, desultory, and multifarious writing. exquisite songs, musical comedies of a sentimental tinge, humorous and satiric skits in dramatic form, prose tragedy of passionate error, and poetic tragedy of titanic revolt--all these and more welled up from a sub-conscious spring of feeling, taking little counsel of the sober intellect. several minor productions were left unfinished and were afterwards published in fragmentary form. such is the case with _prometheus_, a splendid fragment, in which we get a glimpse of the titan battling, as the friend of man, against the ever-living gods. of the works completed and published at this time, aside from _götz_ and _werther_, the most notable were _clavigo_ and _stella_, prose tragedies in which a fickle lover meets with condign punishment. another prose tragedy, _egmont_, with its hero conceived as a "demonic" nature borne on to his doom by his own buoyancy of spirit, was nearly finished. most important of all, a considerable portion of _faust_, which was to be its author's great life-work, was "stormed out" during these early years at frankfurt. the legendary faust is presented as a bad man who sells his soul to the devil for twenty-four years of power and pleasure, gets what he bargained for, and in the end goes to perdition. young goethe conceived his hero differently: not as a bad man on the way to hell, and not--at first--as a good man on the way to heaven. he thought of him rather as a towering personality passionately athirst for transcendental knowledge and universal experience; as a man whose nature contained the very largest possibilities both for good and for evil. it is probable that, when he began to write, goethe did not intend to anticipate the judgment of god upon faust's career. the essence of his dramatic plan was to carry his hero through a lifetime of varied experience, letting him sin and suffer grandly, and at last to give him something to do which would seem worth having lived for. after the going down of the curtain, in all probability, he was to be left in the hands of the eternal pardoner. later in life, as we shall see, goethe decided not only to save his hero, but to make his salvation a part of the dramatic action. the close of the year brought a momentous change in goethe's life and prospects. on the invitation of the young duke karl august, who had met him and taken a liking to him, he went to visit the weimar court, not expecting to stay more than a few weeks. but the duke was so pleased with his gifted and now famous guest that he presently decided to keep him in weimar, if possible, by making him a member of the council of state. goethe was the more willing to remain, since he detested his law practise, and his income from authorship was pitifully small. moreover, he saw in the boyish, impulsive, sport-loving prince a sterling nature that might be led in the ways of wise rulership. for the nonce this was mission enough. he took his seat in the council in june, , with the title of councilor of legation. at first there was not very much for him to do except to familiarize himself with the physical and economic conditions of the little duchy. this he did with a will. he set about studying mineralogy, geology, botany, and was soon observing the homologies of the vertebrate skeleton. withal he was very attentive to routine business. [illustration: . goethe's garden house in weimar] [illustration: . goethe's house in weimar] one after another important departments of administration were turned over to him, until he became, in , the president of the chambers and hence the leading statesman of the duchy. all this produced a sobering and clarifying effect. the inner storm and stress gradually subsided, and the new goethe--statesman, scientific investigator, man of the world, courtier, friend of princes--came to see that after all feeling was not everything, and that its untrammeled expression was not the whole of art. form and decorum counted for more than he had supposed, and revolution was not the word of wisdom. self-control was the only basis of character, and limitation lay at the foundation of all art. to work to make things better, even in a humble sphere, was better than to fret over the badness of the world. nature's method was that of bit-by-bit progress, and to puzzle out her ways was a noble and fascinating employment. in this general way of thinking he was confirmed by the study of spinoza's _ethics_, a book which, as he said long afterwards, quieted his passions and gave him a large and free outlook over the world. in this process of quieting the passions some influence must be ascribed to charlotte von stein, a woman in whom, for some twelve years of his life, he found his muse and his madonna. his letters often address her in terms of idolatrous endearment. she was a wife and a mother, but weimar society regarded her relation to goethe as a platonic attachment not to be condemned. the artistic expression of the new life in weimar is found in various short poems, notably _wanderer's nightsong_, _ilmenau_, _the divine_, and _the mysteries_; also in a number of plays which were written for the amateur stage of the court circle. the weimarians were very fond of play-acting, and goethe became their purveyor of dramatic supplies. it was to meet this demand that he wrote _brother and sister (die geschwister), the triumph of sentimentalism, the fisher-maid, the birds_, and other pieces. much more important than any of these bagatelles, which were often hastily composed for a birthday celebration or some other festive occasion, are the two fine poetic dramas, _iphigenie_ and _tasso_. the former was first written rather rapidly in stately rhythmic prose and played by the amateurs, with goethe himself in the rôle of orestes, in the spring of . eight years later, the author being then in italy, it was recast with great care in mellifluous blank verse. _iphigenie_ is essentially a drama of the soul, there being little in it of what is commonly called action. a youth who is the prey of morbid illusions, so that his life has become a burden, is cured by finding a noble-minded sister, whose whole being radiates peace and self-possession. the entire power of goethe's chastened art is here lavished on the figure of his heroine who, by her goodness, her candor, her sweet reasonableness, not only heals her soul-sick brother, but so works on the barbarian king thoas, who would fain have her for his wife, that he wins a notable victory over himself. by the end of his first decade in weimar goethe began to feel that he needed and had earned a vacation. his conduct of the public business had been highly successful, but he had starved his esthetic nature; for after all weimar was only a good-sized village that could offer little to the lover of art. overwork had so told upon him that he was unable to hold himself long to any literary project. he had begun half a dozen important works, but had completed none of them, and the public was beginning to suspect that the author of _götz_ and _werther_ was lost to literature. the effect of the whole situation--that inner conflict between the poetic dreamer and the man of affairs which is the theme of _tasso_--was to produce a feeling of depression, as of a bird caught in a net. so acute did the trouble become that he afterwards spoke of it as a terrible disease. in the summer of he contracted with the leipzig publisher göschen for a new edition of his works in eight volumes; and to gain time for this enterprise he resolved to take a trip to the land upon which he had already twice looked down with longing--once in and again in --from the summit of the gotthard. [illustration: goethe in the campagna] on the d of september, at three o'clock in the morning, he stole away from karlsbad, where he had been taking the waters, and hurried southward, alone and incognito, over the alps. in italy, where he remained nearly two years, goethe's mind and art underwent another notable change. he himself called it a spiritual rebirth. freed from all oppressive engagements, he gave himself to the study of ancient sculpture and architecture, reveled in the splendors of renaissance painting, and pursued his botanical studies in the enticing plant-world of the italian gardens. venice, naples, vesuvius, sicily, the sea, fascinated him in their several ways and gave him the sense of being richer for the rest of his life. sharing in the care-free existence of the german artist-colony in rome made him very happy. it not only disciplined his judgment in matters of art and opened a vast new world of ideas and impressions, but it restored the lost balance between the intellectual and duty-bound man on the one hand and the esthetic and sensual man on the other. he resolved never again to put on the harness of an administrative drudge, but to claim the freedom of a poet, an artist, a man of science. to this desire the duke of weimar generously assented. on his return to weimar, in june, , goethe made it his first task to finish the remaining works that were called for by his contract with göschen. _egmont_ and _tasso_ were soon disposed of, but _faust_ proved intractable. while in rome he had taken out the old manuscript and written a scene or two, and had then somehow lost touch with the subject. so he decided to revise what he had on hand and to publish a part of the scenes as a fragment. this fragmentary _faust_ came out in . it attracted little attention, nor was any other of the new works received with much warmth by the public of that day. they expected something like _götz_ and _werther_, and did not understand the new goethe, who showed in many ways that his heart was still in italy and that he found weimar a little dull and provincial. thus the greatest of german poets had for the time being lost touch with the german public; he saw that he must wait for the growth of the taste by which he was to be understood and enjoyed. matters were hardly made better by his taking christiane vulpius into his house as his unwedded wife. this step, which shocked weimar society--except the duke and herder--had the effect of ending his unwholesome relation to frau von stein, who was getting old and peevish. the character of christiane has often been pictured too harshly. she was certainly not her husband's intellectual peer--he would have looked long for a wife of that grade--and she became a little too fond of wine. on the other hand, she was affectionate, devoted, true, and by no means lacking in mental gifts. she and goethe were happy together and faithful to each other. for several years after his return from italy goethe wrote nothing that is of much importance in the history of his literary life. he devoted himself largely to scientific studies in plant and animal morphology and the theory of color. his discovery of the intermaxillary bone in the human skull, and his theory that the lateral organs of a plant are but successive phases of the leaf, have given him an assured if modest place in the history of the development hypothesis. on the other hand, his long and laborious effort to refute newton's theory of the composition of white light is now generally regarded as a misdirection of energy. in his _roman elegies_ ( ) he struck a note of pagan sensuality. the pensive distichs, telling of the wanton doings of amor amid the grandeur that was rome, were a little shocking in their frank portraiture of the emancipated flesh. the outbreak of violence in france seemed to him nothing but madness and folly, since he did not see the real revolution, but only the paris terror. he wrote two or three very ordinary plays to satirize various phases of the revolutionary excitement--phases that now seem as insignificant as the plays themselves. in he accompanied the duke of weimar on the inglorious austro-prussian invasion of france, heard the cannonade at valmy, and was an interested observer as the allies tumbled back over the rhine. perhaps the best literary achievement of these years is the fine hexameter version of the medieval _reynard the fox_. the year marks the beginning of more intimate relations between goethe and schiller. their memorable friendship lasted until schiller's death, in --the richest decade in the whole history of german letters. the two men became in a sense allies and stood together in the championship of good taste and humane idealism. goethe's literary occupations during this period were very multifarious; a list of his writings in the various fields of poetry, drama, prose fiction, criticism, biography, art and art-history, literary scholarship, and half a dozen sciences, would show a many-sidedness to which there is no modern parallel. of all this mass of writing only a few works of major importance can even be mentioned here. in appeared _wilhelm meister's apprenticeship_, a novel which captivated the literary class, if not the general public, and was destined to exert great influence on german fiction for a generation to come. it had been some twenty years in the making. in its earlier form it was called _wilhelm meister's theatrical mission_.[ ] this tells the story of a werther-like youth who is to be saved from werther's fate by finding a work to do. his "mission," apparently, is to become a good actor and to promote high ideals of the histrionic art. incidentally he is ambitious to be a dramatic poet, and his childhood is simply that of wolfgang goethe. for reasons intimately connected with his own development goethe finally decided to change his plan and his title, and to present wilhelm's variegated experiences as an apprenticeship in the school of life. in the final version wilhelm comes to the conclusion that the theatre is _not_ his mission--all that was a mistaken ambition. just what use he _will_ make of his well-disciplined energy does not clearly appear at the end of the story, since goethe bundles him off to italy. he was already planning a continuation of the story under the title of _wilhelm meister's journeymanship_. in this second part the hero becomes interested in questions of social uplift and thinks of becoming a surgeon. taken as a whole _wilhelm meister_ moves with a slowness which is quite out of tune with later ideals of prose fiction. it also lacks concentration and artistic finality. but it is replete with goethe's ripe and mellow wisdom, and it contains more of his intimate self than any other work of his except _faust_. during this high noon of his life goethe again took up his long neglected _faust_, decided to make two parts of it, completed the first part, and thought out much that was to go into the second part. by this time he had become somewhat alienated from the spirit of his youth, when he had envisaged life in a mist of vague and stormy emotionalism. his present passion was for clearness. so he boldly decided to convert the old tragedy of sin and suffering into a drama of mental clearing-up. the early faust--the pessimist, murderer, seducer--was to be presented as temporarily wandering in the dark; as a man who had gone grievously wrong in passionate error, but was essentially "good" by virtue of his aspiring nature, and hence, in the lord's fulness of time, was to be led out into the light and saved. the first part, ending with the heart-rending death of margaret in her prison-cell, and leaving faust in an agony of remorse, was published in . faust's redemption, by enlarged experience of life and especially by his symbolic union with the greek queen of beauty, was reserved for the second part. [illustration: monument to goethe (berlin ) sculptor, fritz schaper] the other more notable works of this period are _hermann and dorothea_, a delightful poem in dactylic hexameters, picturing a bit of german still life against the sinister background of the french revolution, and the _natural daughter_, which was planned to body forth, in the form of a dramatic trilogy in blank verse, certain phases of goethe's thinking about the upheaval in france. in the former he appears once more as a poet of the plain people, with an eye and a heart for their ways and their outlook upon life. everybody likes _hermann and dorothea_. on the other hand, the _natural daughter_ is disappointing, and not merely because it is a fragment. (only the first part of the intended trilogy was written.) goethe had now convinced himself that the function of art is to present the typical. accordingly the characters appear as types of humanity divested of all that is accidental or peculiar to the individual. the most of them have not even a name. the consequence is that, notwithstanding the splendid verse and the abounding wisdom of the speeches, the personages do not seem to be made of genuine human stuff. as a great thinker's comment on the revolution the _natural daughter_ is almost negligible. the decade that followed the death of schiller was for germany a time of terrible trial, during which goethe pursued the even tenor of his way as a poet and man of science. he had little sympathy with the national uprising against napoleon, whom he looked on as the invincible subduer of the hated revolution. from the point of view of our modern nationalism, which was just then entering on its world-transforming career, his conduct was unpatriotic. but let him at least be rightly understood. it was not that he lacked sympathy for the german people, but he misjudged and underestimated the new forces that were coming into play. as the son of an earlier age he could only conceive a people's welfare as the gift of a wise ruler. he thought of politics as the affair of the great. he hated war and all eruptive violence, being convinced that good would come, not by such means, but by enlightenment, self-control and attending to one's work in one's sphere. to the historian luden he said in : "do not believe that i am indifferent to the great ideas of freedom, people, fatherland. no! these ideas are in us, they are a part of our being, and no one can cast them from him. i too have a warm heart for germany. i have often felt bitter pain in thinking of the german people, so worthy of respect in some ways, so miserable on the whole. a comparison of the german people with other peoples arouses painful emotions which i try in every way to surmount; and in science and art i have found the wings whereby i rise above them. but the comfort which these afford is after all a poor comfort that does not compensate for the proud consciousness of belonging to a great and strong people that is honored and feared." in he published _the elective affinities_, a novel in which the tragic effects of lawless passion invading the marriage relation were set forth with telling art. soon after this he began to write a memoir of his life. he was now a european celebrity, the dream of his youth had come true, and he purposed to show in detail how everything had happened; that is, how his literary personality had evolved amid the environing conditions. he conceived himself as a phenomenon to be explained. that he called his memoir _poetry and truth_ was perhaps an error of judgment, since the title has been widely misunderstood. for goethe poetry was not the antithesis of truth, but a higher species of truth--the actuality as seen by the selecting, combining, and harmonizing imagination. in themselves, he would have said, the facts of a man's life are meaningless, chaotic, discordant: it is the poet's office to put them into the crucible of his spirit and give them forth as a significant and harmonious whole. the "poetry" of goethe's autobiography--by far the best of autobiographies in the german language--must not be taken to imply concealment, perversion, substitution, or anything of that gross kind. [illustration: goethe's monument in rome. (sculptor, eberlein) presented to the city of rome by the german emperor (from seidel's _der kaiser and die kunst_)] it lies in the very style of the book and is a part of its author's method of self-revelation. that he devotes so much space to the seemingly transient and unimportant love-affairs of his youth is only his way of recognizing that the poet-soul is born of love and nourished by love. he felt that these fleeting amorosities were a part of the natural history of his inner being. and even in the serene afternoon of his life lovely woman often disturbed his soul, just as in the days of his youth. but the poetic expression of his feeling gradually became less simple and direct: he liked to embroider it with musing reflections and exotic fancies gathered from everywhere. just as he endeavored with indefatigable eagerness of mind to keep abreast of scientific research, so he tried to assimilate the poetry of all nations. the greeks and romans no longer sufficed his omnivorous appetite and his "panoramic ability." when hammer-purgstall's german version of the _d[=i]w[=a]n_ of h[=a]f[=i]z came into his hands he at once set about making himself at home in the mental world of the persian and arabic poets. thus arose his _divan_ ( ), in which he imitated the oriental costume, but not the form. his aim was to reproduce in german verse the peculiar savor of the orientals, with their unique blend of sensuality, wit, and mystic philosophy. but the feeling--the inner experience--was all his own. the best book of the _divan_, the one called _suleika_, was inspired by a very real liking for marianne willemer, a talented lady who played the love-game with him and actually wrote some of the poems long ascribed to goethe himself. at last, in , when he was seventy-five years old, he came back once more to his _faust_, the completion of which had long floated before his mind as a duty that he owed to himself and to the world. there was no longer any doubt as to what his great life-work was to be. with admirable energy and with perfect clarity of vision he addressed himself to the gigantic task, the general plan of which and many of the details had been thought out long before. it was finished in the summer of . about sixty years after he had penned the first words of faust, the disgruntled pessimist at war with life, he took leave of him as a purified soul mounting upward among the saints toward the ineffable light, under the mystic guidance of the eternal-womanly. goethe died march , . the story that his last words were "more light" is probably nothing more than a happy invention. admirers of the great german see more in him than the author of the various works which have been all too briefly characterized in the preceding sketch. his is a case where, in very truth, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. goethe is the representative of an epoch. he stands for certain ideals which are not those of the present hour, but which it was of inestimable value to the modern man to have thus nobly worked out and exemplified in practice. behind and beneath his writings, informing them and giving them their value for posterity, is a wonderful personality which it is a delight and an education to study in the whole process of its evolution. by way of struggle, pain and error, like his own faust, he arrived at a view of life, in which he found inspiration and inner peace. it is outlined in the verses which he placed before his short poems as a sort of motto: wide horizon, eager life, busy years of honest strife, ever seeking, ever founding, never ending, ever rounding, guarding tenderly the old, taking of the new glad hold, pure in purpose, light of heart, thus we gain--at least a start. [illustration: the death of goethe fritz fleischer] poems greeting and departure[ ] ( ) my heart throbbed high: to horse, away then! swift as a hero to the fight! earth in the arms of evening lay then, and o'er the mountains hung the night, now could i see like some huge giant the haze-enveloped oak-tree rise, while from the thicket stared defiant the darkness with its hundred eyes. the cloud-throned moon from his dominion peered drowsily through veils of mist. the wind with gently-wafting pinion gave forth a rustling strange and whist. with shapes of fear the night was thronging but all the more my courage glowed; my soul flamed up in passionate longing and hot my heart with rapture flowed. i saw thee; melting rays of pleasure streamed o'er me from thy tender glance, my heart beat only to thy measure, i drew my breath as in a trance. the radiant hue of spring caressing lay rosy on thy upturned face, and love--ye gods, how rich the blessing! i dared not hope to win such grace. to part--alas what grief in this is!-- in every look thy heart spoke plain. what ecstasy was in thy kisses! what changing thrill of joy and pain! i went. one solace yet to capture, thine eyes pursued in sweet distress. but to be loved, what holy rapture! to love, ah gods, what happiness! [illustration: the heathrose k. kogler] the heathrose[ ] ( ) once a boy a rosebud spied, heathrose fair and tender, all array'd in youthful pride,-- quickly to the spot he hied, ravished by her splendor. rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red, heathrose fair and tender! said the boy, "i'll now pick thee heathrose fair and tender!" rosebud cried "and i'll prick thee, so thou shalt remember me, ne'er will i surrender!" rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red, heathrose fair and tender! but the wanton plucked the rose, heathrose fair and tender; thorns the cruel theft oppose, brief the struggle and vain the woes, she must needs surrender. rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red, heathrose fair and tender! mahomet's song[ ] ( ) [this song was intended to be introduced in a dramatic poem entitled _mahomet_, the plan of which was not carried out by goethe. he mentions that it was to have been sung by ali toward the end of the piece, in honor of his master, mahomet, shortly before his death, and when at the height of his glory, of which it is typical.] see the rock-born stream! like the gleam of a star so bright! kindly spirits high above the clouds nourished him while youthful in the copse between the cliffs. young and fresh, from the clouds he danceth down upon the marble rocks; then tow'rd heaven leaps exulting. through the mountain-passes chaseth he the color'd pebbles, and, advancing like a chief, draws his brother streamlets with him in his course. in the vale below 'neath his footsteps spring the flowers, and the meadow in his breath finds life. yet no shady vale can stay him, nor can flowers, round his knees all softly twining with their loving eyes detain him; to the plain his course he taketh, serpent-winding. eager streamlets join his waters. and now moves he o'er the plain in silv'ry glory, and the plain in him exults, and the rivers from the plain, and the streamlets from the mountain, shout with joy, exclaiming: "brother, brother, take thy brethren with thee. with thee to thine agèd father, to the everlasting ocean, who, with arms outstretching far, waiteth for us; ah, in vain those arms lie open to embrace his yearning children; for the thirsty sand consumes us in the desert waste; the sunbeams drink our life-blood; hills around us into lakes would dam us! brother, take thy brethren of the plain, take thy brethren of the mountain with thee, to thy father's arms!"-- let all come, then!-- and now swells he lordlier still; yea, e'en a people bears his regal flood on high! and in triumph onward rolling, names to countries gives he,--cities spring to light beneath his foot. ever, ever, on he rushes, leaves the towers' flame-tipp'd summits, marble palaces, the offspring of his fulness, far behind. cedar-houses bears the atlas on his giant shoulders; flutt'ring in the breeze far, far above him thousand flags are gaily floating, bearing witness to his might. and so beareth he his brethren, all his treasures, all his children, wildly shouting, to the bosom of his long-expectant sire. prometheus[ ] ( ) cover thy spacious heavens, zeus, with clouds of mist, and, like the boy who lops the thistles' heads, disport with oaks and mountain-peaks; yet thou must leave my earth still standing; my cottage too, which was not raised by thee, leave me my hearth, whose kindly glow by thee is envied. i know nought poorer under the sun, than ye gods! ye nourish painfully, with sacrifices and votive prayers, your majesty; ye would e'en starve, if children and beggars were not trusting fools. while yet a child, and ignorant of life, i turned my wandering gaze up tow'rd the sun, as if with him there were an ear to hear my wailing, a heart, like mine to feel compassion for distress. who help'd me against the titans' insolence? who rescued me from certain death, from slavery? didst thou not do all this thyself, my sacred glowing heart? and glowedst, young and good, deceived with grateful thanks to yonder slumbering one? i honor thee! and why? hast thou e'er lighten'd the sorrows of the heavy laden? hast thou e'er dried up the tears [illustration: prometheus titian.] of the anguish-stricken? was i not fashion'd to be a man by omnipotent time, and by eternal fate, masters of me and thee? didst thou e'er fancy that life i should learn to hate, and fly to deserts, because not all my blossoming dreams grew ripe? here sit i, forming mortals after my image; a race resembling me, to suffer, to weep, to enjoy, to be glad, and thee to scorn, as i! the wanderer's night-song[ ] ( ) thou who comest from on high, who all woes and sorrows stillest, who, for two-fold misery, hearts with twofold balsam fillest, would this constant strife would cease! what avails the joy and pain? blissful peace, to my bosom come again! the sea-voyage[ ] ( ) many a day and night my bark stood ready laden; waiting fav'ring winds, i sat with true friends round me, pledging me to patience and to courage, in the haven. and they spoke thus with impatience twofold: "gladly pray we for thy rapid passage, gladly for thy happy voyage; fortune in the distant world is waiting for thee, in our arms thou'lt find thy prize, and love too, when returning." and when morning came, arose an uproar and the sailors' joyous shouts awoke us; all was stirring, all was living, moving, bent on sailing with the first kind zephyr. and the sails soon in the breeze are swelling, and the sun with fiery love invites us; fill'd the sails are, clouds on high are floating, on the shore each friend exulting raises songs of hope, in giddy joy expecting joy the voyage through, as on the morn of sailing, and the earliest starry nights so radiant. but by god-sent changing winds ere long he's driven sideways from the course he had intended, and he feigns as though he would surrender, while he gently striveth to outwit them, to his goal, e'en when thus press'd, still faithful. but from out the damp gray distance rising, softly now the storm proclaims its advent, presseth down each bird upon the waters, presseth down the throbbing hearts of mortals. and it cometh. at its stubborn fury, wisely ev'ry sail the seaman striketh; with the anguish-laden ball are sporting wind and water. and on yonder shore are gather'd standing, friends and lovers, trembling for the bold one: "why, alas, remain'd he here not with us! ah, the tempest i cast away by fortune! must the good one perish in this fashion? might not he perchance * * *. ye great immortals!" yet he, like a man, stands by his rudder; with the bark are sporting wind and water, wind and water sport not with his bosom: on the fierce deep looks he, as a master,-- in his gods, or shipwreck'd, or safe landed, trusting ever. to the moon[ ] ( ) bush and vale thou fill'st again with thy misty ray, and my spirit's heavy chain casteth far away. thou dost o'er my fields extend thy sweet soothing eye, watching like a gentle friend, o'er my destiny. vanish'd days of bliss and woe haunt me with their tone, joy and grief in turns i know, as i stray alone. stream beloved, flow on! flow on! ne'er can i be gay! thus have sport and kisses gone, truth thus pass'd away. once i seem'd the lord to be of that prize so fair! now, to our deep sorrow, we can forget it ne'er. murmur, stream, the vale along, never cease thy sighs; murmur, whisper to my song answering melodies! when thou in the winter's night overflow'st in wrath, or in spring-time sparklest bright, as the buds shoot forth. he who from the world retires, void of hate, is blest; who a friend's true love inspires, leaning on his breast! that which heedless man ne'er knew, or ne'er thought aright, roams the bosom's labyrinth through, boldly into night. the fisherman[ ] ( ) the waters rush'd, the waters rose, a fisherman sat by, while on his line in calm repose he cast his patient eye. and as he sat, and hearken'd there, the flood was cleft in twain, and, lo! a dripping mermaid fair sprang from the troubled main. she sang to him, and spake the while "why lurest thou my brood, with human wit and human guile from out their native flood? oh, couldst thou know how gladly dart the fish across the sea, thou wouldst descend, e'en as thou art, and truly happy be! do not the sun and moon with grace their forms in ocean lave? shines not with twofold charms their face, when rising from the wave? the deep, deep heavens, then lure thee not,-- the moist yet radiant blue,-- not thine own form,--to tempt thy lot 'midst this eternal dew?" the waters rush'd, the waters rose, wetting his naked feet; as if his true love's words were those, his heart with longing beat. she sang to him, to him spake she, his doom was fix'd, i ween; half drew she him, and half sank he, and ne'er again was seen. [illustration: the fisherman and the mermaid georg papperitz] the wanderer's night-song[ ] ( ) [written at night on the kickelhahn, a hill in the forest of ilmenau, on the walls of a little hermitage where goethe composed the last act of his _iphigenie_.] hush'd on the hill is the breeze; scarce by the zephyr the trees softly are press'd; the woodbird's asleep on the bough. wait, then, and thou soon wilt find rest. the erl-king[ ] ( ) who rides there so late through the night dark and drear? the father it is, with his infant so dear; he holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm, he holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm. "my son, wherefore seek's thou thy face thus to hide?" "look, father, the erl-king is close by our side! dost see not the erl-king, with crown and with train?" "my son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain." "oh come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me! full many a game i will play there with thee; on my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold, my mother shall grace thee with garments of gold." "my father, my father, and dost thou not hear the words that the erl-king now breathes in mine ear?" "be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives; 'tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves." "wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there? my daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care; my daughters by night their glad festival keep, they'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep." "my father, my father, and dost thou not see, how the erl-king his daughters has brought here for me?" "my darling, my darling, i see it aright, 'tis the agèd gray willows deceiving thy sight." "i love thee, i'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy! and if thou'rt unwilling, then force i'll employ." "my father, my father, he seizes me fast, full sorely the erl-king has hurt me at last." the father now gallops, with terror half wild, he grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child; he reaches his court-yard with toil and with dread,-- the child in his arms finds he motionless, dead. the godlike[ ] ( ) noble be man, helpful and good! for that alone distinguisheth him from all the beings unto us known. hail to the beings, unknown and glorious, whom we forebode! from _his_ example learn we to know them! for unfeeling nature is ever on bad and on good the sun alike shineth; and on the wicked, as on the best, the moon and stars gleam. tempest and torrent, thunder and hail, roar on their path, seizing the while, as they haste onward, one after another. even so, fortune gropes 'mid the throng-- innocent boyhood's curly head seizing,-- seizing the hoary head of the sinner. after laws mighty, brazen, eternal, must all we mortals finish the circuit of our existence. man, and man only can do the impossible he 'tis distinguisheth, chooseth and judgeth; he to the moment endurance can lend. he and he only the good can reward, the bad can he punish, can heal and can save; all that wanders and strays can usefully blend. and we pay homage to the immortals as though they were men, and did in the great, what the best, in the small, does or might do. be the man that is noble, both helpful and good, unweariedly forming the right and the useful, a type of those beings our mind hath foreshadow'd! mignon[ ] ( ) [this universally known poem is also to be found in _wilhelm meister_.] know'st thou the land where the fair citron blows, where the bright orange midst the foliage glows, where soft winds greet us from the azure skies, where silent myrtles, stately laurels rise, know'st thou it well? 'tis there, 'tis there, that i with thee, beloved one, would repair. know'st thou the house? on columns rests its pile, its halls are gleaming, and its chambers smile, and marble statues stand and gaze on me: "poor child! what sorrow hath befallen thee?" know'st thou it well? 'tis there, 'tis there, that i with thee, protector, would repair! know'st thou the mountain, and its cloudy bridge? the mule can scarcely find the misty ridge; in caverns dwells the dragon's olden brood, the frowning crag obstructs the raging flood. know'st thou it well? 'tis there, 'tis there, our path lies--father--thither, oh repair! proximity of the beloved one[ ] ( ) i think of thee, whene'er the sun his beams o'er ocean flings; i think of thee, whene'er the moonlight gleams in silv'ry springs. i see thee, when upon the distant ridge the dust awakes; at midnight's hour, when on the fragile bridge the wanderer quakes. i hear thee, when yon billows rise on high, with murmur deep. to tread the silent grove oft wander i, when all's asleep. i'm near thee, though thou far away mayst be-- thou, too, art near! the sun then sets, the stars soon lighten me, would thou wert here! the shepherd's lament[ ] ( ) up yonder on the mountain, i dwelt for days together; looked down into the valley, this pleasant summer weather. my sheep go feeding onward, my dog sits watching by; i've wandered to the valley, and yet i know not why. the meadow, it is pretty, with flowers so fair to see; i gather them, but no one will take the flowers from me. the good tree gives me shadow, and shelter from the rain; but yonder door is silent, it will not ope again! i see the rainbow bending, above her old abode, but she is there no longer; they've taken my love abroad. they took her o'er the mountains, they took her o'er the sea; move on, move on, my bonny sheep, there is no rest for me! nature and art[ ] ( ) nature and art asunder seem to fly, yet sooner than we think find common ground; in place of strife, harmonious songs resound, and both, at one, to my abode draw nigh. in sooth but one endeavor i descry: then only, when in ordered moments' round wisdom and toil our lives to art have bound, dare we rejoice in nature's liberty. thus is achievement fashioned everywhere: not by ungovernable, hasty zeal shalt thou the height of perfect form attain. husband thy strength, if great emprize thou dare; in self-restraint thy masterhood reveal, and under law thy perfect freedom gain. comfort in tears[ ] ( ) how is it that thou art so sad when others are so gay? thou hast been weeping--nay, thou hast! thine eyes the truth betray. "and if i may not choose but weep is not my grief mine own? no heart was heavier yet for tears-- o leave me, friend, alone!" come join this once the merry band, they call aloud for thee, and mourn no more for what is lost, but let the past go free. "o, little know ye in your mirth, what wrings my heart so deep! i have not lost the idol yet, for which i sigh and weep." then rouse thee and take heart! thy blood is young and full of fire; youth should have hope and might to win, and wear its best desire. "o, never may i hope to gain what dwells from me so far; it stands as high, it looks as bright, as yonder burning star." why, who would seek to woo the stars down from their glorious sphere? enough it is to worship them, when nights are calm and clear. "oh, i look up and worship too-- my star it shines by day-- then let me weep the livelong night the while it is away." epilogue to schiller's "song of the bell"[ ] [this fine piece, written originally in , on schiller's death, was altered and recast by goethe in , on the occasion of the performance on the stage of the _song of the bell_. hence the allusion in the last verse.] to this city joy reveal it! peace as its first signal peal it! (_song of the bell_--concluding lines). and so it proved! the nation felt, ere long, that peaceful signal, and, with blessings fraught, a new-born joy appeared; in gladsome song to hail the youthful princely pair we sought; while in the living, ever-swelling throng mingled the crowds from every region brought, and on the stage, in festal pomp arrayed, the homage of the arts[ ] we saw displayed. when, lo! a fearful midnight sound i hear, that with a dull and mournful echo rings. and can it be that of our friend so dear it tells, to whom each wish so fondly clings? shall death o'ercome a life that all revere? how such a loss to all confusion brings! how such a parting we must ever rue! the world is weeping--shall not we weep, too? he was our own! how social, yet how great seemed in the light of day his noble mind! how was his nature, pleasing yet sedate, now for glad converse joyously inclined, then swiftly changing, spirit-fraught elate, life's plan with deep-felt meaning it designed, fruitful alike in counsel and in deed! this have we proved, this tested, in our need. he was our own! o may that thought so blest o'ercome the voice of wailing and of woe! he might have sought the lasting, safe at rest in harbor, when the tempest ceased to blow. meanwhile his mighty spirit onward pressed where goodness, beauty, truth, forever grow; and in his rear, in shadowy outline, lay the vulgar, which we all, alas, obey! now doth he deck the garden-turret fair where the stars' language first illumed his soul, as secretly yet clearly through the air on the eterne, the living sense it stole; and to his own, and our great profit, there exchangeth to the seasons as they roll; thus nobly doth he vanquish, with renown, the twilight and the night that weigh us down. brighter now glowed his cheek, and still more bright, with that unchanging, ever-youthful glow,-- that courage which o'ercomes, in hard-fought fight, sooner or later, every earthly foe,-- that faith which, soaring to the realms of light, now boldly presseth on, now bendeth low, so that the good may work, wax, thrive amain, so that the day the noble may attain. yet, though so skilled, of such transcendent worth, this boarded scaffold doth he not despise; the fate that on its axis turns the earth from day to night, here shows he to our eyes, raising, through many a work of glorious birth, art and the artist's fame up toward the skies. he fills with blossoms of the noblest strife, with life itself, this effigy of life. his giant-step, as ye full surely know, measured the circle of the will and deed, each country's changing thoughts and morals, too, the darksome book with clearness could he read; yet how he, breathless 'midst his friends so true, despaired in sorrow, scarce from pain was freed,-- all this have we, in sadly happy years, for he was ours, bewailed with feeling tears. when from the agonizing weight of grief he raised his eyes upon the world again, we showed him how his thoughts might find relief from the uncertain present's heavy chain, gave his fresh-kindled mind a respite brief, with kindly skill beguiling every pain, and e'en at eve when setting was his sun, from his wan cheeks a gentle smile we won. full early had he read the stern decree, sorrow and death to him, alas, were known; ofttimes recovering, now departed he,-- dread tidings, that our hearts had feared to own! yet his transfigured being now can see itself, e'en here on earth, transfigured grown. what his own age reproved, and deemed a crime, hath been ennobled now by death and time. and many a soul that with him strove in fight, and his great merit grudged to recognize, now feels the impress of his wondrous might, and in his magic fetters gladly lies; e'en to the highest hath he winged his flight, in close communion linked with all we prize. extol him then! what mortals while they live but half receive, posterity shall give. thus is he left us, who so long ago,-- ten years, alas, already!--turned from earth; we all, to our great joy, his precepts know, oh, may the world confess their priceless worth! in swelling tide toward every region flow the thoughts that were his own peculiar birth; he gleams like some departing meteor bright, combining, with his own, eternal light. ergo bibamus![ ] ( ) for a praiseworthy object we're now gathered here, so, brethren, sing: ergo bibamus! tho' talk may be hushed, yet the glasses ring clear, remember then, ergo bibamus! in truth 'tis an old, 'tis an excellent word, with its sound befitting each bosom is stirred, and an echo the festal hall filling is heard, a glorious ergo bibamus! i saw mine own love in her beauty so rare, and bethought me of: ergo bibamus; so i gently approached, and she let me stand there, while i helped myself, thinking: bibamus! and when she's appeared, and will clasp you and kiss, or when those embraces and kisses ye miss, take refuge, till found is some worthier bliss, in the comforting ergo bibamus! i am called by my fate far away from each friend; ye loved ones, then: ergo bibamus! with wallet light-laden from hence i must wend, so double our ergo bibamus! whate'er to his treasure the niggard may add, yet regard for the joyous will ever be had, for gladness lends ever its charms to the glad, so, brethren, sing: ergo bibamus! and what shall we say of to-day as it flies? i thought but of: ergo bibamus! 'tis one of those truly that seldom arise, so again and again sing: bibamus! for joy through a wide-open portal it guides, bright glitter the clouds as the curtain divides, and a form, a divine one, to greet us in glides, while we thunder our: ergo bibamus. the walking bell[ ] ( ) a child refused to go betimes to church like other people; he roamed abroad, when rang the chimes on sundays from the steeple. his mother said: "loud rings the bell, its voice ne'er think of scorning; unless thou wilt behave thee well, 'twill fetch thee without warning." the child then thought: "high over head the bell is safe suspended--" so to the fields he straightway sped as if 'twas school-time ended. the bell now ceased as bell to ring, roused by the mother's twaddle; but soon ensued a dreadful thing!-- the bell begins to waddle. it waddles fast, though strange it seem; the child, with trembling wonder, runs off, and flies, as in a dream; the bell would draw him under. he finds the proper time at last, and straightway nimbly rushes to church, to chapel, hastening fast through pastures, plains, and bushes. each sunday and each feast as well, his late disaster heeds he; the moment that he hears the bell, no other summons needs he. found[ ] ( ) once through the forest alone i went; to seek for nothing my thoughts were bent. i saw i' the shadow a flower stand there; as stars it glisten'd, as eyes 'twas fair. i sought to pluck it,-- it gently said: "shall i be gather'd only to fade?" with all its roots i dug it with care, and took it home to my garden fair. in silent corner soon it was set; there grows it ever, there blooms it yet. hatem[ ] ( ) locks of brown, still bind your captive in the circle of her face! i, beloved sinuous tresses, naught possess that's worth your grace-- but a heart whose love enduring swells in youthful fervor yet: snow and mists envelop etna, making men the fire forget. yonder mountain's pride so stately thou dost shame like dawn's red glow; and its spell once more bids hatem thrill of spring and summer know. once more fill the glass, the flagon! let me drink to my desire. if she find a heap of ashes, say, "he perished in her fire!" reunion[ ] ( ) can it be, o star transcendent, that i fold thee to my breast? now i know, what depths of anguish may in parting be expressed. yes, 'tis thou, of all my blisses lovely, loving partner--thou! mindful of my bygone sorrows, e'en the present awes me now. when the world in first conception lay in god's eternal mind, in creative power delighting he the primal hour designed. when he gave command for being, then was heard a mighty sigh full of pain, as all creation broke into reality. up then sprang the light; and darkness doubtful stood apart to gaze; all the elements, dividing swiftly, took their several ways. in confused, disordered dreaming strove they all for freedom's range-- each for self, no fellow-feeling; single each, and cold and strange. lo, a marvel--god was lonely! all was still and cold and dumb. so he framed dawn's rosy blushes whence should consolation come-- to refresh the troubled spirit harmonies of color sweet: what had erst been forced asunder now at last could love and meet. then, ah then, of life unbounded sight and feeling passed the gates; then, ah then, with eager striving kindred atoms sought their mates. gently, roughly they may seize them, so they catch and hold them fast: "we," they cry, "are now creators-- allah now may rest at last!" so with rosy wings of morning towards thy lips my being moves; sets the starry night a thousand glowing seals upon our loves. we are as we should be--parted ne'er on earth in joy or pain; and no second word creative e'er can sunder us again! prooemion[ ] ( ) in his blest name, who was his own creation, who from all time makes _making_ his vocation; the name of him who makes our faith so bright, love, confidence, activity, and might; in that one's name, who, named though oft he be, unknown is ever in reality: as far as ear can reach, or eyesight dim, thou findest but the known resembling him; how high soe'er thy fiery spirit hovers, its simile and type it straight discovers; onward thou'rt drawn, with feelings light and gay, where e'er thou goest, smiling is the way; no more thou numberest, reckonest no time, each step is infinite, each step sublime. what god would _outwardly_ alone control, and on his finger whirl the mighty whole? he loves the _inner_ world to move, to view nature in him, himself in nature, too, so that what in him works, and is, and lives, the measure of his strength, his spirit gives. within us all a universe doth dwell; and hence each people's usage laudable, that every one the best that meets his eyes as god, yea, e'en _his_ god, doth recognize; to him both earth and heaven surrenders he, fears him, and loves him, too, if that may be. the one and the all[ ] ( ) called to a new employ in boundless space, the lonely monad quits its 'customed place and from life's weary round contented flees. no more of passionate striving, will perverse and hampering obligations, long a curse: free self-abandonment at last gives peace. soul of the world, come pierce our being through! across the drift of things our way to hew is our appointed task, our noblest war. good spirits by our destined pathway still lead gently on, best masters of our will, toward that which made and makes all things that are. to shape for further ends what now has breath, let nothing harden into ice and death, works endless living action everywhere. what has not yet existed strives for birth-- toward purer suns, more glorious-colored earth: to rest in idle stillness naught may dare. all must move onward, help transform the mass, assume a form, to yet another pass; 'tis but in seeming aught is fixed or still. in all things moves the eternal restless thought; for all, when comes the hour, must fall to naught if to persist in being is its will. lines on seeing schiller's skull[ ] ( ) [this curious imitation of the ternary metre of dante was written at the age of seventy-seven.] within a gloomy charnel-house one day i viewed the countless skulls, so strangely mated, and of old times i thought that now were gray. close packed they stand that once so fiercely hated, and hardy bones that to the death contended, are lying crossed,--to lie forever, fated. what held those crooked shoulder-blades suspended? no one now asks; and limbs with vigor fired, the hand, the foot--their use in life is ended. vainly ye sought the tomb for rest when tired; peace in the grave may not be yours; ye're driven back into daylight by a force inspired; but none can love the withered husk, though even a glorious noble kernel it contained. to me, an adept, was the writing given which not to all its holy sense explained. when 'mid the crowd, their icy shadows flinging, i saw a form that glorious still remained, and even there, where mould and damp were clinging, gave me a blest, a rapture-fraught emotion, as though from death a living fount were springing. what mystic joy i felt! what rapt devotion! that form, how pregnant with a godlike trace! a look, how did it whirl me toward that ocean whose rolling billows mightier shapes embrace! mysterious vessel! oracle how dear! even to grasp thee is my hand too base, except to steal thee from thy prison here with pious purpose, and devoutly go back to the air, free thoughts, and sunlight clear. what greater gain in life can man e'er know than when god-nature will to him explain how into spirit steadfastness may flow, how steadfast, too, the spirit-born remain. a legacy[ ] ( ) no living atom comes at last to naught! active in each is still the eternal thought: hold fast to being if thou wouldst be blest. being is without end; for changeless laws bind that from which the all its glory draws of living treasures endlessly possessed. unto the wise of old this truth was known, such wisdom knit their noble souls in one; then hold thou still the lore of ancient days! to that high power thou ow'st it, son of man, by whose decree the earth its circuit ran and all the planets went their various ways. then inward turn at once thy searching eyes; thence shalt thou see the central truth arise from which no lofty soul goes e'er astray; there shalt thou miss no needful guiding sign-- for conscience lives, and still its light divine shall be the sun of all thy moral day. next shalt thou trust thy senses' evidence, and fear from them no treacherous offence while the mind's watchful eye thy road commands: with lively pleasure contemplate the scene and roam securely, teachable, serene, at will throughout a world of fruitful lands. enjoy in moderation all life gives: where it rejoices in each thing that lives let reason be thy guide and make thee see. then shall the distant past be present still, the future, ere it comes, thy vision fill-- each single moment touch eternity. then at the last shalt thou achieve thy quest, and in one final, firm conviction rest: what bears for thee true fruit alone is true. prove all things, watch the movement of the world as down the various ways its tribes are whirled; take thou thy stand among the chosen few. thus hath it been of old; in solitude the artist shaped what thing to him seemed good, the wise man hearkened to his own soul's voice. thus also shalt thou find thy greatest bliss; to lead where the elect shall follow--this and this alone is worth a hero's choice. introduction to hermann and dorothea hermann and dorothea is universally known and prized in germany as no other work of the classical period of german literature except goethe's _faust_ and schiller's _wilhelm tell_, and, although distinctively german in subject and spirit, it early became and is still a precious possession of all the modern world. it marks the culmination of the renaissance in the literary art of germany and perhaps of europe. schiller hailed it as the pinnacle of goethe's and of all modern art. a. w. schlegel in judged it to be a finished work of art in the grand style, and at the same time intelligible, sympathetic, patriotic, popular, a book full of golden teachings of wisdom and virtue. two generations later one of the leading historians of german literature declared that there is no other poem that comes so near to the father of all poetry (homer) as this, none in which greek form and german content are so intimately blended, and that this is perhaps the only poem which without explanation and without embarrassment all the modern centuries could offer to an ancient greek to enjoy. in the view of the end of the nineteenth century, expressed by a distinguished philosopher-critic, this work is a unique amalgam of the artistic spirit, objectivity, and contemplative clearness of homer with the soul-life of the present, the heart-beat of the german people, the characteristic traits which mark the german nature. as longfellow's _evangeline_, treating in the same verse-form of the dactylic hexameter and in a way partly epic and partly idyllic a story of love and domestic interests in a contrasting setting of war and exile, was modeled on _hermann and dorothea_, so the latter poem was suggested by j. h. voss' idyl _luise_, published first in parts in and and as a whole revised in . of his delight in _luise_ goethe wrote to schiller in february, : "this proved to be much to my advantage, for this joy finally became productive in me, it drew me into this form (the epic), begot my _hermann_, and who knows what may yet come of it." but _luise_ is not really epic; it is without action, without unity, without any large historical outlook,--a series of minutely pictured, pleasing idyllic scenes. in contrast herewith goethe's purpose was in his own words, "in an epic crucible to free from its dross the purely human existence of a small german town, and at the same time mirror in a small glass the great movements and changes of the world's stage." this purpose he achieved in the writing of _hermann and dorothea_ at intervals from september, , through the summer of , in the autumn of which year the poem was published. the main sources from which the poet drew his material are four. in the first place the theme was invented by him out of an anecdote of the flight of protestant refugees from the archbishopric of salzburg in - . on the basis of this anecdote he drew the original outlines of the meeting and union of the lovers. secondly, as a consequence of the french revolution, germans were forced to flee from german territory west of the rhine. goethe was present with prussian troops in france in , and observed the siege of mainz in . hence his knowledge of war and exile, with their attendant cruelties and sufferings. thirdly, the personal experiences of his own life could not but contribute to his description of the then german present. features of frankfurt and ilmenau reappear. the characters show traits of goethe's parents, and possibly something of his wife is in dorothea. hermann's mother bears the name of the poet's and reveals many of her qualities. but some of these are given to the landlord-father, while the elder goethe's pedantry and petty weaknesses are shown in the apothecary. the poet's experiences in the field are realistically reproduced in many particulars of character and incident, as are doubtless also his mother's vivid reports of events in frankfurt during july and august, . we may feel sure too that it was the occurrences of this summer that led goethe to transform the short, pure idyl of his first intention into a longer epic of his own present. the fourth source is literary tradition, which we may trace back through the verse idyl of voss to the prose idyl of gessner, thence through the unnatural arcadian pastorals of the seventeenth and earlier centuries to the great greek creators,--theocritus, of the idyl, and homer, of the epic. from whatever source derived, the materials were transmuted and combined by goethe's genius into a broad, full picture of german life, with characters typical of the truly human and of profound ethical importance, interpreting to the attentive reader the significance of life for the individual, the family, the nation. hermann and dorothea ( )[ ] translated by ellen frothingham calliope fate and sympathy truly, i never have seen the market and street so deserted! how as if it were swept looks the town, or had perished! not fifty are there, methinks, of all our inhabitants in it remaining. what will not curiosity do! here is every one running, hurrying to gaze on the sad procession of pitiful exiles. fully a league it must be to the causeway they have to pass over, yet all are hurrying down in the dusty heat of the noonday. i, in good sooth, would not stir from my place to witness the sorrows borne by good, fugitive people, who now, with their rescued possessions, driven, alas! from beyond the rhine, their beautiful country, over to us are coming, and through the prosperous corner roam of this our luxuriant valley, and traverse its windings. "well hast thou done, good wife, our son in thus kindly dispatching, laden with something to eat and to drink, and with store of old linen, 'mongst the poor folk to distribute; for giving belongs to the wealthy. how the youth drives, to be sure! what control he has over the horses! makes not our carriage a handsome appearance,--the new one? with comfort, four could be seated within, with a place on the box for the coachman. this time, he drove by himself. how lightly it rolled round the corner!" thus, as he sat at his ease in the porch of his house on the market, unto his wife was speaking mine host of the golden lion. thereupon answered and said the prudent, intelligent housewife: "father, i am not inclined to be giving away my old linen: since it serves many a purpose; and cannot be purchased for money, when we may want it. to-day, however, i gave, and with pleasure, many a piece that was better, indeed, in shirts and in bed-clothes; for i was told of the aged and children who had to go naked. but wilt thou pardon me, father? thy wardrobe has also been plundered. and, in especial, the wrapper that has the east-indian flowers, made of the finest of chintz, and lined with delicate flannel, gave i away: it was thin and old, and quite out of the fashion." thereupon answered and said, with a smile, the excellent landlord: "faith! i am sorry to lose it, my good old calico wrapper, real east-indian stuff: i never shall get such another. well, i had given up wearing it: nowadays, custom compels us always to go in surtout, and never appear but in jacket; always to have on our boots; forbidden are night-cap and slippers." [illustration: hermann's parents in the doorway of the tavern ludwig richter] "see!" interrupted the wife; "even now some are yonder returning, who have beheld the procession: it must, then, already be over. look at the dust on their shoes! and see how their faces are glowing! every one carries his kerchief, and with it is wiping the sweat off. not for a sight like that would i run so far and so suffer, through such a heat; in sooth, enough shall i have in the telling." thereupon answered and said, with emphasis, thus, the good father: "rarely does weather like this attend such a harvest as this is. we shall be bringing our grain in dry, as the hay was before it. not the least cloud to be seen, so perfectly clear is the heaven; and, with delicious coolness, the wind blows in from the eastward. that is the weather to last! over-ripe are the cornfields already; we shall begin on the morrow to gather our copious harvest." constantly, while he thus spoke, the crowds of men and of women grew, who their homeward way were over the market-place wending; and, with the rest, there also returned, his daughters beside him, back to his modernized house on the opposite side of the market, foremost merchant of all the town, their opulent neighbor, rapidly driving his open barouche,--it was builded in landau. lively now grew the streets, for the city was handsomely peopled. many a trade was therein carried on, and large manufactures. under their doorway thus the affectionate couple were sitting, pleasing themselves with many remarks on the wandering people. finally broke in, however, the worthy housewife, exclaiming: "yonder our pastor, see! is hitherward coming, and with him comes our neighbor the doctor, so they shall every thing tell us; all they have witnessed abroad, and which 'tis a sorrow to look on." cordially then the two men drew nigh, and saluted the couple; sat themselves down on the benches of wood that were placed in the doorway, shaking the dust from their feet, and fanning themselves with their kerchiefs. then was the doctor, as soon as exchanged were the mutual greetings, first to begin, and said, almost in a tone of vexation: "such is mankind, forsooth! and one man is just like another, liking to gape and to stare when ill-luck has befallen his neighbor. every one hurries to look at the flames, as they soar in destruction; runs to behold the poor culprit, to execution conducted: now all are sallying forth to gaze on the need of these exiles, nor is there one who considers that he, by a similar fortune, may, in the future, if not indeed next, be likewise o'ertaken. levity not to be pardoned, i deem; yet it lies in man's nature." thereupon answered and said the noble, intelligent pastor; ornament he of the town, still young, in the prime of his manhood. he was acquainted with life,--with the needs of his hearers acquainted; deeply imbued he was with the holy scriptures' importance, as they reveal man's destiny to us, and man's disposition; thoroughly versed, besides, in best of secular writings. "i should be loath," he replied, "to censure an innocent instinct, which to mankind by good mother nature has always been given. what understanding and reason may sometimes fail to accomplish, oft will such fortunate impulse, that bears us resistlessly with it. did curiosity draw not man with its potent attraction, say, would he ever have learned how harmoniously fitted together worldly experiences are? for first what is novel he covets; then with unwearying industry follows he after the useful; finally longs for the good by which he is raised and ennobled. while he is young, such lightness of mind is a joyous companion, traces of pain-giving evil effacing as soon as 'tis over. he is indeed to be praised, who, out of this gladness of temper, has in his ripening years a sound understanding developed; who, in good fortune or ill, with zeal and activity labors: such an one bringeth to pass what is good, and repaireth the evil." then broke familiarly in the housewife impatient, exclaiming: "tell us of what ye have seen; for that i am longing to hear of!" "hardly," with emphasis then the village doctor made answer, "can i find spirits so soon after all the scenes i have witnessed. oh, the manifold miseries! who shall be able to tell them? e'en before crossing the meadows, and while we were yet at a distance, saw we the dust; but still from hill to hill the procession passed away out of our sight, and we could distinguish but little. but when at last we were come to the street that crosses the valley, great was the crowd and confusion of persons on foot and of wagons. there, alas! saw we enough of these poor unfortunates passing, and could from some of them learn how bitter the sorrowful flight was, yet how joyful the feeling of life thus hastily rescued. mournful it was to behold the most miscellaneous chattels,-- all those things which are housed in every well-furnished dwelling, all by the house-keeper's care set up in their suitable places, always ready for use; for useful is each and important.-- now these things to behold, piled up on all manner of wagons, one on the top of another, as hurriedly they had been rescued. over the chest of drawers were the sieve and wool coverlet lying; thrown in the kneading-trough lay the bed, and the sheets on the mirror. danger, alas! as we learned ourselves in our great conflagration twenty years since, will take from a man all power of reflection, so that he grasps things worthless and leaves what is precious behind him. here, too, with unconsidering care they were carrying with them pitiful trash, that only encumbered the horses and oxen; such as old barrels and boards, the pen for the goose, and the bird-cage. women and children, too, went toiling along with their bundles, panting 'neath baskets and tubs, full of things of no manner of value: so unwilling is man to relinquish his meanest possession. thus on the dusty road the crowded procession moved forward, all confused and disordered. the one whose beasts were the weaker, wanted more slowly to drive, while faster would hurry another. presently went up a scream from the closely squeezed women and children, and with the yelping of dogs was mingled the lowing of cattle, cries of distress from the aged and sick, who aloft on the wagon, heavy and thus overpacked, upon beds were sitting and swaying. pressed at last from the rut and out to the edge of the highway, slipped the creaking wheel; the cart lost its balance, and over fell in the ditch. in the swing the people were flung to a distance, far off into the field, with horrible screams; by good fortune later the boxes were thrown and fell more near to the wagon. verily all who had witnessed the fall, expected to see them crushed into pieces beneath the weight of trunks and of presses. so lay the cart all broken to fragments, and helpless the people. keeping their onward way, the others drove hastily by them, each thinking only of self, and carried away by the current. then we ran to the spot, and found the sick and the aged,-- those who at home and in bed could before their lingering ailments scarcely endure,--lying bruised on the ground, complaining and groaning, choked by the billowing dust and scorched by the heat of the noonday." thereupon answered and said the kind-hearted landlord, with feeling: "would that our hermann might meet them and give them refreshment and clothing! loath should i be to behold them: the looking on suffering pains me. touched by the earliest tidings of their so cruel afflictions, hastily sent we a mite from out of our super-abundance, only that some might be strengthened, and we might ourselves be made easy. but let us now no longer renew these sorrowful pictures knowing how readily fear steals into the heart of us mortals, and anxiety, worse to me than the actual evil. come with me into the room behind, our cool little parlor, where no sunbeam e'er shines, and no sultry breath ever enters through its thickness of wall. there mother will bring us a flagon of our old eighty-three, with which we may banish our fancies. here 'tis not cosey to drink: the flies so buzz round the glasses." thither adjourned they then, and all rejoiced in the coolness. carefully brought forth the mother the clear and glorious vintage, cased in a well-polished flask, on a waiter of glittering pewter, set round with large green glasses, the drinking cups meet for the rhine wine. so sat the three together about the highly waxed table, gleaming and round and brown, that on mighty feet was supported. joyously rang at once the glasses of landlord and pastor, but his motionless held the third, and sat lost in reflection, until with words of good-humor the landlord challenged him, saying,-- "come, sir neighbor, empty your glass, for god in his mercy thus far has kept us from evil, and so in the future will keep us. for who acknowledges not, that since our dread conflagration, when he so hardly chastised us, he now is continually blessing, constantly shielding, as man the apple of his eye watches over, holding it precious and dear above all the rest of his members? shall he in time to come not defend us and furnish us succor? only when danger is nigh do we see how great is his power. shall he this blooming town which he once by industrious burghers built up afresh from its ashes, and afterward blessed with abundance, now demolish again, and bring all the labor to nothing?" cheerfully said in reply the excellent pastor, and kindly: "keep thyself firm in the faith, and firm abide in this temper; for it makes steadfast and wise when fortune is fair, and when evil, furnishes sweet consolation and animates hopes the sublimest." then made answer the landlord, with thoughts judicious and manly: "often the rhine's broad stream have i with astonishment greeted, as i have neared it again, after travelling abroad upon business. always majestic it seemed, and my mind and spirit exalted. but i could never imagine its beautiful banks would so shortly be to a rampart transformed, to keep from our borders the frenchman, and its wide-spreading bed be a moat all passage to hinder. see! thus nature protects, the stout-hearted germans protect us, and thus protects us the lord, who then will be weakly despondent? weary already the combatants, all indications are peaceful. would it might be that when that festival, ardently longed for, shall in our church be observed, when the sacred _te deum_ is rising, swelled by the pealing of organ and bells, and the blaring of trumpets,-- would it might be that that day should behold my hermann, sir pastor, standing, his choice now made, with his bride before thee at the altar, making that festal day, that through every land shall be honored, my anniversary, too, henceforth of domestic rejoicing! but i observe with regret, that the youth so efficient and active ever in household affairs, when abroad is timid and backward. little enjoyment he finds in going about among others; nay, he will even avoid young ladies' society wholly; shuns the enlivening dance which all young persons delight in." thus he spoke and listened; for now was heard in the distance clattering of horses' hoofs drawing near, and the roll of the wagon, which, with furious haste, came thundering under the gateway. terpsichore hermann now when of comely mien the son came into the chamber, turned with a searching look the eyes of the preacher upon him, and, with the gaze of the student, who easily fathoms expression, scrutinized well his face and form and his general bearing. then with a smile he spoke, and said in words of affection: "truly a different being thou comest! i never have seen thee cheerful as now, nor ever beheld i thy glances so beaming. joyous thou comest, and happy: 'tis plain that among the poor people thou hast been sharing thy gifts, and receiving their blessings upon thee." quietly then, and with serious words, the son made him answer: "if i have acted as ye will commend, i know not; but i followed that which my heart bade me do, as i shall exactly relate you. thou wert, mother, so long in rummaging 'mong thy old pieces, picking and choosing, that not until late was thy bundle together; then, too, the wine and the beer took care and time in the packing. when i came forth through the gateway at last, and out on the high-road, backward the crowd of citizens streamed with women and children, coming to meet me; for far was already the band of the exiles. quicker i kept on my way, and drove with speed to the village, where they were meaning to rest, as i heard, and tarry till morning. thitherward up the new street as i hasted, a stout-timbered wagon, drawn by two oxen, i saw, of that region the largest and strongest; while, with vigorous steps, a maiden was walking beside them, and, a long staff in her hand, the two powerful creatures was guiding, urging them now, now holding them back; with skill did she drive them. [illustration: hermann hands to dorothea the linen for the emigrants ludwig richter] soon as the maiden perceived me, she calmly drew near to the horses, and in these words she addressed me: 'not thus deplorable always has our condition been, as to-day on this journey thou seest. i am not yet grown used to asking gifts of a stranger, which he will often unwillingly give, to be rid of the beggar. but necessity drives me to speak; for here, on the straw, lies newly delivered of child, a rich land-owner's wife, whom i scarcely have in her pregnancy, safe brought off with the oxen and wagon. naked, now in her arms the new-born infant is lying, and but little the help our friends will be able to furnish, if in the neighboring village, indeed, where to-day we would rest us, still we shall find them; though much do i fear they already have passed it. shouldst thou have linen to spare of any description, provided thou of this neighborhood art, to the poor in charity give it.' "thus she spoke, and the pale-faced mother raised herself feebly up from the straw, and toward me looked. then said i in answer 'surely unto the good, a spirit from heaven oft speaketh, making them feel the distress that threatens a suffering brother. for thou must know that my mother, already presaging thy sorrows, gave me a bundle to use it straightway for the need of the naked.' then i untied the knots of the string, and the wrapper of father's unto her gave, and gave her as well the shirts and the linen. and she thanked me with joy, and cried: 'the happy believe not miracles yet can be wrought: for only in need we acknowledge god's own hand and finger, that leads the good to show goodness. what unto us he has done through thee, may he do to thee also!' and i beheld with what pleasure the sick woman handled the linens, but with especial delight the dressing-gown's delicate flannel. 'let us make haste,' the maid to her said, 'and come to the village, where our people will halt for the night and already are resting. there these clothes for the children i, one and all, straightway will portion.' then she saluted again, her thanks most warmly expressing, started the oxen; the wagon went on; but there i still lingered, still held the horses in check; for now my heart was divided whether to drive with speed to the village, and there the provisions share 'mong the rest of the people, or whether i here to the maiden all should deliver at once, for her discreetly to portion. and in an instant my heart had decided, and quietly driving after the maiden, i soon overtook her, and said to her quickly: 'hearken, good maiden;--my mother packed up not linen-stuffs only into the carriage, that i should have clothes to furnish the naked; wine and beer she added besides, and supply of provisions: plenty of all these things i have in the box of the carriage. but now i feel myself moved to deliver these offerings also into thy hand; for so shall i best fulfil my commission. thou wilt divide them with judgment, while i must by chance be directed.' thereupon answered the maiden: 'i will with faithfulness portion these thy gifts, that all shall bring comfort to those who are needy.' thus she spoke, and quickly the bog of the carriage i opened, brought forth thence the substantial hams, and brought out the breadstuffs, bottles of wine and beer, and one and all gave to the maiden. willingly would i have given her more, but the carriage was empty. all she packed at the sick woman's feet, and went on her journey. i, with my horses and carriage, drove rapidly back to the city." instantly now, when hermann had ceased, the talkative neighbor took up the word, and cried: "oh happy, in days like the present, days of flight and confusion, who lives by himself in his dwelling, having no wife nor child to be clinging about him in terror! happy i feel myself now, and would not for much be called father; would not have wife and children to-day, for whom to be anxious. oft have i thought of this flight before; and have packed up together all my best things already, the chains and old pieces of money that were my sainted mother's, of which not one has been sold yet. much would be left behind, it is true, not easily gotten. even the roots and the herbs, that were with such industry gathered, i should be sorry to lose, though the worth of the goods is but trifling. if my purveyor remained, i could go from my dwelling contented. when my cash i have brought away safe, and have rescued my person, all is safe: none find it so easy to fly as the single." "neighbor," unto his words young hermann with emphasis answered: "i can in no wise agree with thee here, and censure thy language. is he indeed a man to be prized, who, in good and in evil, takes no thought but for self, and gladness and sorrow with others knows not how to divide, nor feels his heart so impel him? rather than ever to-day would i make up my mind to be married: many a worthy maiden is needing a husband's protection, and the man needs an inspiriting wife when ill is impending." thereupon smiling the father replied: "thus love i to hear thee! that is a sensible word such as rarely i've known thee to utter." straightway, however, the mother broke in with quickness, exclaiming: "son, to be sure, thou art right! we parents have set the example; seeing that not in our season of joy did we choose one another; rather the saddest of hours it was that bound us together. monday morning--i mind it well; for the day that preceded came that terrible fire by which our city was ravaged-- twenty years will have gone. the day was a sunday as this is; hot and dry was the season; the water was almost exhausted. all the people were strolling abroad in their holiday dresses, 'mong the villages partly, and part in the mills and the taverns. and at the end of the city the flames began, and went coursing quickly along the streets, creating a draught in their passage. burned were the barns where the copious harvest already was garnered; burned were the streets as far as the market; the house of my father, neighbor to this, was destroyed, and this one also fell with it. little we managed to save. i sat, that sorrowful night through, outside the town on the common, to guard the beds and the boxes. sleep overtook me at last, and when i again was awakened, feeling the chill of the morning that always descends before sunrise, there were the smoke and the glare, and the walls and chimneys in ruins. then fell a weight on my heart; but more majestic than ever came up the sun again, inspiring my bosom with courage. then i rose hastily up, with a yearning the place to revisit whereon our dwelling had stood, and to see if the hens had been rescued, which i especially loved, for i still was a child in my feelings. thus as i over the still-smoking timbers of house and of court-yard picked my way, and beheld the dwelling so ruined and wasted, thou camest up to examine the place, from the other direction. under the ruins thy horse in his stall had been buried; the rubbish lay on the spot and the glimmering beams; of the horse we saw nothing. thoughtful and grieving we stood there thus, each facing the other, now that the wall was fallen that once had divided our court-yards. thereupon thou by the hand didst take me, and speak to me, saying,-- 'lisa, how camest thou hither? go back! thy soles must be burning; hot the rubbish is here: it scorches my boots, which are stronger.' and thou didst lift me up, and carry me out through thy court-yard. there was the door of the house left standing yet with its archway, just as 'tis standing now, the one thing only remaining. then thou didst set me down and kiss me; to that i objected; but thou didst answer and say with kindly significant language: 'see! my house lies in ruins: remain here and help me rebuild it; so shall my help in return be given to building thy father's.' yet did i not comprehend thee until thou sentest thy mother unto my father, and quick were the happy espousals accomplished. e'en to this day i remember with joy those half-consumed timbers, and i can see once more the sun coming up in such splendor; for 'twas the day that gave me my husband; and, ere the first season passed of that wild desolation, a son to my youth had been given. therefore i praise thee, hermann, that thou, with an honest assurance, shouldst, in these sorrowful days, be thinking thyself of a maiden, and amid ruins and war shouldst thus have the courage to woo her." straightway, then, and with warmth, the father replied to her, saying: "worthy of praise is the feeling, and truthful also the story, mother, that thou hast related; for so indeed every thing happened. better, however, is better. it is not the business of all men thus their life and estate to begin from the very foundation: every one needs not to worry himself as we and the rest did. oh, how happy is he whose father and mother shall give him, furnished and ready, a house which he can adorn with his increase. every beginning is hard; but most the beginning a household. many are human wants, and every thing daily grows dearer, so that a man must consider the means of increasing his earnings. this i hope therefore of thee, my hermann, that into our dwelling thou wilt be bringing ere long a bride who is handsomely dowered; for it is meet that a gallant young man have an opulent maiden. great is the comfort of home whene'er, with the woman elected, enter the useful presents, besides, in box and in basket. not for this many a year in vain has the mother been busy making her daughter's linens of strong and delicate texture; god-parents have not in vain been giving their vessels of silver, and the father laid by in his desk the rare pieces of money; for there a day will come when she, with her gifts and possessions, shall that youth rejoice who has chosen her out of all others. well do i know how good in a house is a woman's position, who her own furniture round her knows, in kitchen and chamber; who herself the bed and herself the table has covered. only a well-dowered bride should i like to receive to my dwelling. she who is poor is sure, in the end, to be scorned by her husband; and will as servant be held, who as servant came in with her bundle. men will remain unjust when the season of love is gone over. yes, my hermann, thy father's old age thou greatly canst gladden, if thou a daughter-in-law will speedily bring to my dwelling, out of the neighborhood here,--from the house over yonder, the green one. rich is the man, i can tell thee. his manufactures and traffic daily are making him richer; for whence draws the merchant not profit? three daughters only he has, to divide his fortune among them. true that the eldest already is taken; but there is the second still to be had, as well as the third; and not long so, it may be. i would never have lingered till now, had i been in thy place; but had fetched one of the maidens, as once i bore off thy dear mother." modestly then did the son to the urgent father make answer: "truly 'twas my wish too, as well as thine own, to have chosen one of our neighbor's daughters, for we had been brought up together; played, in the early days, about the market-place fountain; and, from the other boys' rudeness, i often have been their defender. that, though, is long since past: the girls, as they grew to be older, properly stayed in the house, and shunned the more boisterous pastimes. well brought up are they, surely! i used sometimes to go over, partly to gratify thee, and because of our former acquaintance: but no pleasure i ever could take in being among them; for i was always obliged to endure their censures upon me. quite too long was my coat, the cloth too coarse, and the color quite too common; my hair was not cropped, as it should be, and frizzled. i was resolved, at last, that i, also, would dress myself finely, just as those office-boys do who always are seen there on sundays, wearing in summer their half-silken flaps, that dangle about them; but i discovered, betimes, they made ever a laughing-stock of me. and i was vexed when i saw it,--it wounded my pride; but more deeply felt i aggrieved that they the good-will should so far misinterpret that in my heart i bore them,--especially minna the youngest. it was on easter-day that last i went over to see them; wearing my best new coat, that is now hanging up in the closet, and having frizzled my hair, like that of the other young fellows. soon as i entered, they tittered; but that not at me, as i fancied. minna before the piano was seated; the father was present, hearing his daughters sing, and full of delight and good-humor. much i could not understand of all that was said in the singing; but of pamina i often heard, and oft of tamino: and i, besides, could not stay there dumb; so, as soon as she ended, something about the words i asked, and about the two persons. thereupon all were silent and smiled; but the father made answer: 'thou knowest no one, my friend, i believe, but adam and eve?' no one restrained himself longer, but loud laughed out then the maidens, loud laughed out the boys, the old man held his sides for his laughing. i, in embarrassment, dropped my hat, and the giggling continued, on and on and on, for all they kept playing and singing. back to the house here i hurried, o'ercome with shame and vexation, hung up my coat in the closet, and pulled out the curls with my fingers, swearing that never again my foot should cross over that threshold. and i was perfectly right; for vain are the maidens, and heartless. e'en to this day, as i hear, i am called by them ever 'tamino.'" thereupon answered the mother, and said: "thou shouldest not, hermann, be so long vexed with the children: indeed, they are all of them children. minna, believe me, is good, and was always disposed to thee kindly. 'twas not long since she was asking about thee. let her be thy chosen!" thoughtfully answered the son: "i know not. that mortification stamped itself in me so deeply, i never could bear to behold her seated before the piano or listen again to her singing." forth broke the father then, and in words of anger made answer: "little of joy will my life have in thee! i said it would be so when i perceived that thy pleasure was solely in horses and farming: work which a servant, indeed, performs for an opulent master, that thou doest; the father meanwhile must his son be deprived of, who should appear as his pride, in the sight of the rest of the townsmen. early with empty hopes thy mother was wont to deceive me, when in the school thy studies, thy reading and writing, would never as with the others succeed, but thy seat would be always the lowest. that comes about, forsooth, when a youth has no feeling of honor dwelling within his breast, nor the wish to raise himself higher. had but my father so cared for me as thou hast been cared for; if he had sent me to school, and provided me thus with instructors, i should be other, i trow, than host of the golden lion!" then the son rose from his seat and noiselessly moved to the doorway, slowly, and speaking no word. the father, however, in passion after him called, "yes, go, thou obstinate fellow! i know thee! go and look after the business henceforth, that i have not to chide thee; but do thou nowise imagine that ever a peasant-born maiden thou for a daughter-in-law shalt bring into my dwelling, the hussy! long have i lived in the world, and know how mankind should be dealt with; know how to entertain ladies and gentlemen so that contented they shall depart from my house, and strangers agreeably can flatter. yet i'm resolved that some day i one will have for a daughter, who shall requite me in kind and sweeten my manifold labors; who the piano shall play to me, too; so that there shall with pleasure all the handsomest people in town and the finest assemble, as they on sundays do now in the house of our neighbor." here hermann softly pressed on the latch, and so went out from the chamber. thalia the citizens thus did the modest son slip away from the angry up-braiding; but in the tone he had taken at first, the father continued: "that comes not out of a man which he has not in him; and hardly shall the joy ever be mine of seeing my dearest wish granted: that my son may not as his father be, but a better. what would become of the house, and what of the city if each one were not with pleasure and always intent on maintaining, renewing, yea, and improving, too, as time and the foreigner teach us! man is not meant, forsooth, to grow from the ground like a mushroom, quickly to perish away on the spot of ground that begot him, leaving no trace behind of himself and his animate action! as by the house we straightway can tell the mind of the master, so, when we walk through a city, we judge of the persons who rule it. for where the towers and walls are falling to ruin; where offal lies in heaps in the gutters, and alleys with offal are littered; where from its place has started the stone, and no one resets it; where the timbers are rotting away, and the house is awaiting vainly its new supports,--that place we may know is ill governed. since if not from above work order and cleanliness downward, easily grows the citizen used to untidy postponement; just as the beggar grows likewise used to his ragged apparel. therefore i wished that our hermann might early set out on some travels; that he at least might behold the cities of strasburg and frankfort, friendly mannheim, too, that is cheerful and evenly builded. he that has once beheld cities so cleanly and large, never after ceases his own native city, though small it may be, to embellish. do not the strangers who come here commend the repairs in our gateway, notice our whitewashed tower, and the church we have newly rebuilded? are not all praising our pavement? the covered canals full of water, laid with a wise distribution, which furnish us profit and safety, so that no sooner does fire break out than 'tis promptly arrested? has not all this come to pass since the time of our great conflagration? builder i six times was named by the council, and won the approval, won moreover the heartfelt thanks of all the good burghers, actively carrying out what i planned, and also fulfilling what had by upright men been designed, and left uncompleted. finally grew the same zeal in every one of the council; all now labor together, and firmly decided already stands it to build the new causeway that shall with the high-road connect us. but i am sorely afraid that will not be the way with our children. some think only of pleasure and perishable apparel; others will cower at home, and behind the stove will sit brooding. one of this kind, as i fear, we shall find to the last in our hermann." straightway answered and said the good and intelligent mother: "why wilt thou always, father, be doing our son such injustice? that least of all is the way to bring thy wish to fulfilment. we have no power to fashion our children as suiteth our fancy; as they are given by god, we so must have them and love them; teach them as best we can, and let each of them follow his nature. one will have talents of one sort, and different talents another. every one uses his own; in his own individual fashion, each must be happy and good. i will not have my hermann found fault with; for he is worthy, i know, of the goods he shall one day inherit; will be an excellent landlord, a pattern to burghers and builders; neither in council, as i can foresee, will he be the most backward. but thou keepest shut up in his breast all the poor fellow's spirit, finding such fault with him daily, and censuring as thou but now hast." and on the instant she quitted the room, and after him hurried, hoping she somewhere might find him, and might with her words of affection cheer him again, her excellent son, for well he deserved it. thereupon when she was gone, the father thus smiling continued: "what a strange folk, to be sure, are these women; and just like the children; both of them bent upon living according as suiteth their pleasure, while we others must never do aught but flatter and praise them. once for all time holds good the ancients' trustworthy proverb: 'whoever goes not forward comes backward.' so must it be always." thereupon answered and said, in a tone of reflection, the doctor: "that, sir neighbor, i willingly grant; for myself i am always casting about for improvement,--things new, so they be not too costly. [illustration: the mother defending hermann ludwig richter] but what profits a man, who has not abundance of money, being thus active and stirring, and bettering inside and outside? only too much is the citizen cramped: the good, though he know it, has he no means to acquire because too slender his purse is, while his needs are too great; and thus is he constantly hampered. many things i had done; but then the cost of such changes who does not fear, especially now in this season of danger? long since my house was smiling upon me in modish apparel! long since great panes of glass were gleaming in all of the windows! but who can do as the merchant does, who, with his resources, knows the methods as well by which the best is arrived at? look at that house over yonder,--the new one; behold with what splendor 'gainst the background of green stand out the white spirals of stucco! great are the panes in the windows; and how the glass sparkles and glitters, casting quite into the shade the rest of the market-place houses! yet just after the fire were our two houses the finest, this of the golden lion, and mine of the sign of the angel. so was my garden, too, throughout the whole neighborhood famous: every traveller stopped and gazed through the red palisadoes, caught by the beggars there carved in stone and the dwarfs of bright colors. then whosoever had coffee served in the beautiful grotto,-- standing there now all covered with dust and partly in ruins,-- used to be mightily pleased with the glimmering light of the mussels spread out in beautiful order; and even the eye of the critic used by the sight of my corals and potter's ore to be dazzled. so in my parlor, too, they would always admire the painting, where in a garden are gaily dressed ladies and gentlemen walking, and with their taper fingers are plucking and holding the flowers. but who would look at it now! in sooth, so great my vexation scarcely i venture abroad. all now must be other and tasteful, so they call it; and white are the laths and benches of woodwork; everything simple and smooth; no carving longer or gilding can be endured, and the woods from abroad are of all the most costly. well, i, too, should be glad could i get for myself something novel; glad to keep up with the times, and be changing my furniture often; yet must we all be afraid of touching the veriest trifle. for who among us has means for paying the work-people's wages? lately i had an idea of giving the archangel michael, making the sign of my shop, another fresh coating of gilding, and to the terrible dragon about his feet that is winding; but i e'en let him stay browned as he is: i dreaded the charges." euterpe mother and son thus entertaining themselves, the men sat talking. the mother went meanwhile to look for her son in front of the dwelling, first on the settle of stone, whereon 'twas his wont to be seated. when she perceived him not there, she went farther to look in the stable, if he were caring perhaps for his noble horses, the stallions, which he as colts had bought, and whose care he intrusted to no one. and by the servant she there was told: he is gone to the garden. then with a nimble step she traversed the long, double court-yards, leaving the stables behind, and the well-builded barns, too, behind her; entered the garden, that far as the walls of the city extended; walked through its length, rejoiced as she went in every thing growing; set upright the supports on which were resting the branches heavily laden with apples, and burdening boughs of the pear-tree. next some caterpillars removed from a stout, swelling cabbage; for an industrious woman allows no step to be wasted. thus was she come at last to the end of the far-reaching garden, where stood the arbor embowered in woodbine; nor there did she find him, more than she had hitherto in all her search through the garden. but the wicket was standing ajar, which out of the arbor, once by particular favor, had been through the walls of the city cut by a grandsire of hers, the worshipful burgomaster. so the now dried-up moat she next crossed over with comfort, where, by the side of the road, direct the well-fenced vine-yard, rose with a steep ascent, its slope exposed to the sunshine. up this also she went, and with pleasure as she was ascending marked the wealth of the clusters, that scarce by their leafage were hidden. shady and covered the way through the lofty middlemost alley, which upon steps that were made of unhewn blocks you ascended. there were the muscatel, and there were the chasselas hanging side by side, of unusual size and colored with purple, all set out with the purpose of decking the visitor's table; while with single vine-stocks the rest of the hillside was covered, bearing inferior clusters, from which the delicate wine comes. thus up the slopes she went, enjoying already the vintage, and that festive day on which the whole country, rejoicing, picks and tramples the grapes, and gathers the must into vessels: fireworks, when it is evening, from every direction and corner crackle and blaze, and so the fairest of harvests is honored. but more uneasy she went, her son after twice or thrice calling, and no answer receiving, except from the talkative echo, that with many repeats rang back from the towers of the city. strange it was for her to seek him; he never had gone to a distance that he told her not first, to spare his affectionate mother every anxious thought, and fear that aught ill had befallen. still did she constantly hope that, if further she went, she should find him; for the two doors of the vineyard, the lower as well as the upper, both were alike standing open. so now she entered the corn-field, that with its broad expanse the ridge of the hill covered over. still was the ground that she walked on her own; and the crops she rejoiced in,-- all of them still were hers, and hers was the proud-waving grain, too, over the whole broad field in golden strength that was stirring. keeping the ridgeway, the footpath, between the fields she went onward, having the lofty pear-tree in view, which stood on the summit, and was the boundary-mark of the fields that belonged to her dwelling. who might have planted it, none could know, but visible was it far and wide through the country; the fruit of the pear-tree was famous. 'neath it the reapers were wont to enjoy their meal at the noon-day, and the shepherds were used to tend their flocks in its shadow. benches of unhewn stones and of turf they found set about it. and she had not been mistaken, for there sat her hermann, and rested,-- sat with his head on his hand, and seemed to be viewing the landscape that to the mountains lay: his back was turned to his mother. toward him softly she crept, and lightly touched on the shoulder; quick he turned himself round; there were tears in his eyes as he met her. "mother, how hast thou surprised me!" he said in confusion; and quickly wiped the high-spirited youth his tears away. but the mother, "what! do i find thee weeping, my son?" exclaimed in amazement. "nay, that is not like thyself: i never before have so seen thee! tell me, what burdens thy heart? what drives thee here, to be sitting under the pear-tree alone? these tears in thine eyes, what has brought them?" then, collecting himself, the excellent youth made her answer: "truly no heart can that man have in his bosom of iron, who is insensible now to the needs of this emigrant people; he has no brains in his head, who not for his personal safety, not for his fatherland's weal, in days like the present is anxious. deeply my heart had been touched by the sights and sounds of the morning; then i went forth and beheld the broad and glorious landscape spreading its fertile slopes in every direction about us, saw the golden grain inclining itself to the reapers, and the promise of well-filled barns from the plentiful harvest. [illustration: mother and son ludwig richter] but, alas, how near is the foe! the rhine with its waters guards us, indeed; but, ah, what now are rivers and mountains 'gainst that terrible people that onward bears like a tempest! for they summon their youths from every quarter together, call up their old men too, and press with violence forward. death cannot frighten the crowd: one multitude follows another. and shall a german dare to linger behind in his homestead? hopes he perhaps to escape the everywhere threatened evil? nay, dear mother, i tell thee, today has made me regretful that i was lately exempt, when out of our townsmen were chosen those who should serve in the army. an only son i am truly, also our business is great, and the charge of our household is weighty. yet were it better, i deem, in the front to offer resistance there on the border, than here to await disaster and bondage. so has my spirit declared, and deep in my innermost bosom courage and longing have now been aroused to live for my country, yea, and to die, presenting to others a worthy example. if but the strength of germany's youth were banded together there on the frontier, resolved that it never would yield to the stranger, ah, he should not on our glorious soil be setting his footsteps, neither consuming before our eyes the fruit of our labor, ruling our men, and making his prey of our wives and our daughters. hark to me, mother: for i in the depths of my heart am determined quickly to do, and at once, what appears to me right and in reason; for he chooses not always the best who longest considers. hearken, i shall not again return to the house; but directly go from this spot to the city, and there present to the soldiers this right arm and this heart, to be spent in the fatherland's service. then let my father say if there be no feeling of honor dwelling within my breast, nor a wish to raise myself higher." then with significant words spoke the good and intelligent mother, while from her eyes the quick-starting tears were silently falling: "son, what change has come o'er thee today, and over thy temper, that thou speakest no more, as thou yesterday didst, and hast always, open and free, to thy mother, and tellest exactly thy wishes? any one else, had he heard thee thus speak, would in sooth have commended, and this decision of thine would have highly approved as most noble, being misled by thy tone and by thy significant language. yet have i nothing but censure to speak; for better i know thee. thou concealest thy heart, and thy thoughts are not such as thou tellest. well do i know that it is not the drum, not the trumpet that calls thee: neither in uniform wouldst thou figure in sight of the maidens; since, for all thou art honest and brave, it is thy vocation here in quiet to care for the farm and provide for the household. tell me honestly, therefore, what goads thee to such a decision?" earnestly answered the son: "nay, thou art mistaken, dear mother: one day is not like another. the youth matures into manhood: better in stillness oft ripening to deeds than when in the tumult wildering and wild of existence, that many a youth has corrupted. and, for as still as i am and was always, there yet in my bosom has such a heart been shaped as abhors all wrong and injustice; and i have learned aright between worldly things to distinguish. arm and foot, besides, have been mightily strengthened by labor. all this, i feel, is true: i dare with boldness maintain it. yet dost thou blame me with reason, o mother! for thou hast surprised me using a language half truthful and half that of dissimulation. for, let me honestly own,--it is not the near danger that calls me forth from my father's house; nor is it the lofty ambition helpful to be to my country, and terrible unto the foeman. they were but words that i spoke: they only were meant for concealing those emotions from thee with which my heart is distracted; and so leave me, o mother! for, since the wishes are fruitless which in my bosom i cherish, my life must go fruitlessly over. for, as i know, he injures himself who is singly devoted, when for the common cause the whole are not working together." "hesitate not," replied thereupon the intelligent mother, "every thing to relate me, the smallest as well as the greatest. men will always be hasty, their thoughts to extremes ever running: easily out of their course the hasty are turned by a hindrance. whereas a woman is clever in thinking of means, and will venture e'en on a roundabout way, adroitly to compass her object. let me know every thing, then; say wherefore so greatly excited as i ne'er saw thee before, why thy blood is coursing so hotly, wherefore, against thy will, tears are filling thine eyes to o'erflowing." then he abandoned himself, the poor boy, to his sorrow, and weeping, weeping aloud on his kind mother's breast, he brokenly answered: "truly my father's words today have wounded me sorely,-- words which i have not deserved; not today, nor at any time have i: for it was early my greatest delight to honor my parents. no one knew more, so i deemed, or was wiser than those who begot me, and had with strictness ruled throughout the dark season of childhood. many the things, in truth, i with patience endured from my playmates, when the good-will that i bore them they often requited with malice. often i suffered their flings and their blows to pass unresented; but if they ventured to ridicule father, when he of a sunday home from church would come, with his solemn and dignified bearing; if they made fun of his cap-string, or laughed at the flowers of the wrapper he with such stateliness wore, which was given away but this morning-- threateningly doubled my fist in an instant; with furious passion fell i upon them, and struck out and hit, assailing them blindly, seeing not where. they howled as the blood gushed out from their noses: scarcely they made their escape from my passionate kicking and beating. then, as i older grew, i had much to endure from my father; violent words he oft vented on me, instead of on others, when, at the board's last session, the council had roused his displeasure, and i was made to atone for the quarrels and wiles of his colleagues. thou has pitied me often thyself; for much did i suffer, ever remembering with cordial respect the kindness of parents, solely intent on increasing for us their goods and possessions, much denying themselves in order to save for their children. but, alas! saving alone, for the sake of a tardy enjoyment,-- that is not happiness: pile upon pile, and acre on acre, make us not happy, no matter how fair our estates may be rounded. for the father grows old, and with him will grow old the children, losing the joy of the day, and bearing the care of tomorrow. look thou below, and see how before us in glory are lying, fair and abundant, the corn-fields; beneath them, the vineyard and garden; yonder the stables and barns; our beautiful line of possessions. but when i look at the dwelling behind, where up in the gable we can distinguish the window that marks my room in the attic; when i look back, and remember how many a night from that window i for the moon have watched; for the sun, how many a morning! when the healthful sleep of a few short hours sufficed me,-- ah, so lonely they seem to me then, the chamber and courtyard, garden and glorious field, away o'er the hill that is stretching; all so desert before me lie: 'tis the wife that is wanting." thereupon spoke the good mother, and thus with intelligence answered: "son, not greater thy wish to bring thee a bride to thy chamber, that thou mayst find thy nights a beautiful part of existence, and that the work of the day may gain independence and freedom, than is thy father's wish too, and thy mother's. we always have counselled,-- yea, we have even insisted,--that thou shouldst elect thee a maiden. but i was ever aware, and now my heart gives me assurance, that till the hour appointed is come, and the maiden appointed shall with the hour appear, the choice will be left for the future, while more strong than all else will be fear of grasping the wrong one. if i may say it, my son, i believe thou already hast chosen; for thy heart has been touched, and been made more than wontedly tender. speak it out honestly, then; for my soul has told me before-hand: that same maiden it is, the exile, whom thou hast elected." "thou hast said, mother!" the son thereupon with eagerness answered. "yes, it is she; and if i today as my bride do not bring her home to our dwelling, she from me will go, perhaps vanish for ever, lost in the war's confusion and sad movings hither and thither. mother, forever in vain would then our abundant possessions prosper before me, and seasons to come be in vain to me fruitful. yea, i should hold in aversion the wonted house and the garden: even my mother's love, alas! would not comfort my sorrow. every tie, so i feel in my heart, by love is unloosened soon as she fastens her own; and not the maid is it only leaves behind father and mother, to follow the man she has chosen. he too, the youth, no longer knows aught of mother and father, when he the maiden, his only beloved, sees vanishing from him. suffer me, then, to go hence wherever despair shall impel me: since by my father himself the decisive words have been spoken; since his house can no longer be mine if he shut out the maiden, her whom alone as my bride i desire to bring to our dwelling." thereupon quickly made answer the good and intelligent mother: "how like to rocks, forsooth, two men will stand facing each other! proud and not to be moved, will neither draw near to his fellow; neither will stir his tongue to utter the first word of kindness. therefore i tell thee, my son, a hope yet lives in my bosom, so she be honest and good, thy father will let thee espouse her, even though poor, and against a poor girl so decisive his sentence. many a thing he is wont to speak out in his violent fashion which he yet never performs; and so what he denies will consent to. yet he requires a kindly word, and is right to require it: he is the father! besides, we know that his wrath after dinner,-- when he most hastily speaks, and questions all others' opinions,-- signifies naught; the full force of his violent will is excited then by the wine, which lets him not heed the language of others; none but himself does he see and feel. but now is come evening, talk upon various subjects has passed between him and his neighbors. gentle, he is; i am sure, now his little excitement is over, and he can feel how unjust his passion has made him to others. come, let us venture at once: success is alone to the valiant! further we need the friends, still sitting together there with him; and in especial the worthy pastor will give us assistance." thus she hastily spoke, and up from the stone then arising, drew from his seat her son, who willingly followed. in silence both descended the hill, their important purpose revolving. polyhymnia the citizen of the world there the three men, however, still sat conversing together, with mine host of the lion, the village doctor, and pastor; and their talk was still on the same unvarying subject, turning it this way and that, and viewing from every direction. but with his sober judgment the excellent pastor made answer: "here will i not contradict you. i know that man should be always striving for that which is better; indeed, as we see, he is reaching always after the higher, at least some novelty craving. but be careful ye go not too far, for with this disposition nature has given us pleasure in holding to what is familiar; taught us in that to delight to which we have long been accustomed. every condition is good that is founded on reason and nature. many are man's desires, yet little it is that he needeth; seeing the days are short and mortal destiny bounded. ne'er would i censure the man whom a restless activity urges, bold and industrious, over all pathways of land and of ocean, ever untiring to roam; who takes delight in the riches, heaping in generous abundance about himself and his children. yet not unprized by me is the quiet citizen also, making the noiseless round of his own inherited acres, tilling the ground as the ever-returning seasons command him. not with every year is the soil transfigured about him; not in haste does the tree stretch forth, as soon as 'tis planted, full-grown arms toward heaven and decked with plenteous blossoms. no: man has need of patience, and needful to him are also calmness and clearness of mind, and a pure and right understanding. few are the seeds he intrusts to earth's all-nourishing bosom; few are the creatures he knows how to raise and bring to perfection. centred are all his thoughts alone on that which is useful. happy to whom by nature a mind of such temper is given, for he supports us all! and hail, to the man whose abode is where in a town the country pursuits with the city are blended. on him lies not the pressure that painfully hampers the farmer, nor is he carried away by the greedy ambition of cities; where they of scanty possessions too often are given to aping, wives and daughters especially, those who are higher and richer. blessed be therefore thy son in his life of quiet employment; blessed the wife, of like mind with himself, whom he one day shall choose him." thus he spoke; and scarce had he ended when entered the mother, holding her son by the hand, and so led him up to her husband. "father," she said, "how oft when we two have been chatting together, have we rejoiced in the thought of hermann's future espousal, when he should bring his bride to be the light of our dwelling! over and over again the matter we pondered: this maiden fixing upon for him first, and then that, with the gossip of parents. but that day is now come; and heaven at last has the maiden brought to him hither, and shown him; and now his heart has decided. said we not always then he should have his own choice in the matter? was it not just now thy wish that he might with lively affection feel himself drawn to some maiden? the hour is come that we hoped for. yes; he has felt and has chosen and come to a manly decision. that same maiden it is that met him this morning, the stranger: say he may have her, or else, as he swears, his life shall be single." "give her me, father," so added the son: "my heart has elected clear and sure; she will be to you both the noblest of daughters." but the father was silent. then hastily rose the good pastor, took up the word and said: "the moment alone is decisive; fixes the life of man, and his future destiny settles. after long taking of counsel, yet only the work of a moment every decision must be; and the wise alone seizes the right one. dangerous always it is comparing the one with the other when we are making our choice, and so confusing our feelings. hermann is pure. from childhood up i have known him, and never e'en as a boy was he wont to be reaching for this and the other: what he desired was best for him too, and he held to it firmly. be not surprised and alarmed that now has appeared of a sudden, what thou hast wished for so long. it is true that the present appearance bears not the form of the wish, exactly as thou hadst conceived it: for our wishes oft hide from ourselves the object we wish for; gifts come down from above in the shapes appointed by heaven. therefore misjudge not the maiden who now of thy dearly beloved, good and intelligent son has been first to touch the affections: happy to whom at once his first love's hand shall be given, and in whose heart no tenderest wish must secretly languish. yes: his whole bearing assures me that now his fate is decided. genuine love matures in a moment the youth into manhood; he is not easily moved; and i fear that if this be refused him, sadly his years will go by, those years that should be the fairest." straightway then in a thoughtful tone the doctor made answer, on whose tongue for a long time past the words had been trembling: "pray let us here as before pursue the safe middle course only. make haste slowly: that was augustus the emperor's motto. willingly i myself place at my well-beloved neighbor's disposal, ready to do him what service i can with my poor understanding. youth most especially stands in need of some one to guide it. let me therefore go forth that i may examine the maiden, and may question the people among whom she lives and who know her. me 'tis not easy to cheat: i know how words should be valued." straightway the son broke in, and with wingèd words made he answer: "do so, neighbor, and go and make thine inquiries; but with thee i should be glad if our minister here were joined in the errand: two such excellent men would be irreproachable judges. o my father! believe me, she's none of those wandering maidens, not one of those who stroll through the land in search of adventure, and who seek to ensnare inexperienced youth in their meshes. no: the hard fortunes of war, that universal destroyer, which is convulsing the earth and has hurled from its deep foundations many a structure already, have sent the poor girl into exile. are not now men of high birth, the most noble, in misery roaming? princes fly in disguise and kings are in banishment living. so alas! also is she, the best among all of her sisters, driven an exile from home; yet, her personal sorrows forgetting, she is devoted to others; herself without help, she is helpful. great is the want and the suffering over the earth that are spreading: shall not some happiness, too, be begotten of all this affliction, and shall not i in the arms of my wife, my trusted companion, look back with joy to the war, as do ye to the great conflagration?" outspoke the father then in a tone of decision, and answered: "strangely thy tongue has been loosened, my son, which many a year past seemed to have stuck in thy mouth, and only to move on compulsion! i must experience to-day, it would seem, what threatens all fathers, that the son's headstrong will the mother with readiness favors, showing too easy indulgence; and every neighbor sides with them when there is aught to be carried against the father and husband. but i will not oppose you, thus banded together: how could i? for i already perceive here tears and defiance before-hand. go ye therefore, inquire, in god's name, bring me the daughter. but if not so, then the boy is to think no more of the maiden." thus the father. the son cried out with joyful demeanor, "ere it is evening the noblest of daughters shall hither be brought you, such as no man with sound sense in his breast can fail to be pleased with. happy, i venture to hope, will be also the excellent maiden. yes; she will ever be grateful for having had father and mother given once more in you, and such as a child most delights in. now i will tarry no longer, but straightway harness the horses, drive forth our friends at once on the footsteps of my beloved, leaving them then to act for themselves, as their wisdom shall dictate, guide myself wholly, i promise, according to what they determine, and, until i may call her my own, ne'er look on the maiden." thus he went forth: the others meanwhile remained in discussion, rapid and earnest, considering deeply their great undertaking. hermann hasted straightway to the stable, where quietly standing found he the spirited stallions, the clean oats quickly devouring, and the well-dried hay that was cut from the richest of meadows. on them without delay the shining bits he adjusted, hastily drew the straps through the buckles of beautiful plating, firmly fastened then the long broad reins, and the horses led without to the court-yard, whither the willing assistant had with ease, by the pole, already drawn forward the carriage. next to the whipple-tree they with care by the neatly kept traces joined the impetuous strength of the freely travelling horses. whip in hand took hermann his seat and drove under the doorway. soon as the friends straightway their commodious places had taken, quickly the carriage rolled off, and left the pavement behind it, left behind it the walls of the town and the fresh-whitened towers. thus drove hermann on till he came to the well-known causeway. rapidly, loitering nowhere, but hastening up hill and down hill. but as he now before him perceived the spire of the village, and no longer remote the garden-girt houses were lying, then in himself he thought that here he would rein up the horses. under the solemn shade of lofty linden-trees lying, which for centuries past upon this spot had been rooted, spread in front of the village a broad and grass-covered common, favorite place of resort for the peasants and neighboring townsfolk. here, at the foot of the trees, sunk deep in the ground was a well-spring; when you descended the steps, stone benches you found at the bottom, stationed about the spring, whose pure, living waters were bubbling ceaselessly forth, hemmed in by low walls for convenience of drawing. hermann resolved that here he would halt, with his horses and carriage, under the shade of the trees. he did so, and said to the others: "here alight, my friends, and go your ways to discover whether the maiden in truth be worthy the hand that i offer. that she is so, i believe; naught new or strange will ye tell me. had i to act for myself, i should go with speed to the village, where a few words from the maiden's own lips should determine my fortune. ye will with readiness single her out from all of the others, for there can scarcely be one that to her may be likened in bearing. but i will give you, besides, her modest attire for a token: mark, then, the stomacher's scarlet, that sets off the arch of her bosom, prettily laced, and the bodice of black fitting close to her figure; neatly the edge of her kerchief is plaited into a ruffle, which with a simple grace her chin's rounded outline encircles; freely and lightly rises above it the head's dainty oval; and her luxuriant hair over silver bodkins is braided; down from under her bodice, the full, blue petticoat falling, wraps itself, when she is walking, about her neatly shaped ankles. yet one thing will i say, and would make it my earnest petition,-- speak not yourselves with the maiden, nor let your intent be discovered; rather inquire of others, and hearken to what they may tell you. when ye have tidings enough to satisfy father and mother, then return to me here, and we will consider what further. so did i plan it all out in my mind while driving you hither." thus he spoke. the friends thereupon went their way to the village, where, in the houses and gardens and barns, the people were swarming; wagons on wagons stood crowded together along the broad highway. men for the harnessed horses and lowing cattle were caring, while the women were busy in drying their clothes on the hedges, and in the running brook the children were merrily splashing. making their way through the pressure of wagons, of people and cattle, went the commissioned spies, and to right and to left looked about them, if they a figure might see that answered the maiden's description; but not one of them all appeared the beautiful damsel. denser soon grew the press. a contest arose round the wagons 'mongst the threatening men, wherein blended the cries of the women. rapidly then to the spot, and with dignified step, came an elder, joined the clamoring group, and straightway the uproar was silenced, as he commanded peace, and rebuked with a fatherly sternness. "has, then, misfortune," he cried, "not yet so bound us together, that we have finally learned to bear and forbear one another, though each one, it may be, do not measure his share of the labor? he that is happy, forsooth, is contentious! will sufferings never teach you to cease from your brawls of old between brother and brother? grudge not one to another a place on the soil of the stranger; rather divide what ye have, as yourselves ye would hope to find mercy." [illustration: the emigrants in the village ludwig richter] thus spoke the man and all became silent: restored to good humor, peaceably then the people arranged their cattle and wagons. but when the clergyman now had heard what was said by the stranger, and had the steadfast mind of the foreign justice discovered, he to the man drew near and with words of meaning addressed him: "true it is, father, that when in prosperity people are living, feeding themselves from the earth, which far and wide opens her bosom, and in the years and months renews the coveted blessings,-- all goes on of itself, and each himself deems the wisest, deems the best, and so they continue abiding together, he of greatest intelligence ranking no higher than others; all that occurs, as if of itself, going quietly forward. but let disaster unsettle the usual course of existence, tear down the buildings about us, lay waste the crops and the garden, banish the husband and wife from their old, familiar-grown dwelling, drive them to wander abroad through nights and days of privation,-- then, ah then! we look round us to see what man is the wisest, and no longer in vain his glorious words will be spoken. tell me, art thou not judge among this fugitive people, father, who thus in an instant canst bid their passions be quiet? thou dost appear to-day as one of those earliest leaders, who through deserts and wanderings guided the emigrant nations. yea, i could even believe i were speaking with joshua or moses." then with serious look the magistrate answered him, saying: "truly our times might well be compared with all others in strangeness, which are in history mentioned, profane or sacred tradition; for who has yesterday lived and to-day in times like the present, he has already lived years, events are so crowded together. if i look back but a little, it seems that my head must be hoary under the burden of years, and yet my strength is still active. well may we of this day compare ourselves unto that people who, from the burning bush, beheld in the hour of their danger god the lord: we also in cloud and in fire have beheld him." seeing the priest was inclined to speak yet more with the stranger, and was desirous of learning his story and that of his people, privately into his ear his companion hastily whispered: "talk with the magistrate further, and lead him to speak of the maiden. i, however, will wander in search, and as soon as i find her, come and report to thee here." the minister nodded, assenting; and through the gardens, hedges, and barns, went the spy on his errand. clio the age now when the foreign judge had been by the minister questioned as to his people's distress, and how long their exile had lasted, thus made answer the man: "of no recent date are our sorrows; since of the gathering bitter of years our people have drunken,-- bitterness all the more dreadful because such fair hope had been blighted. who will pretend to deny that his heart swelled high in his bosom, and that his freer breast with purer pulses was beating, when we beheld the new sun arise in his earliest splendor, when of the rights of men we heard, which to all should be common, were of a righteous equality told, and inspiriting freedom? every one hoped that then he should live his own life, and the fetters, binding the various lands, appeared their hold to be loosing,-- fetters that had in the hand of sloth been held and self-seeking. looked not the eyes of all nations, throughout that calamitous season, toward the world's capital city, for so it had long been considered, and of that glorious title was now, more than ever, deserving? were not the names of those men who first delivered the message, names to compare with the highest that under the heavens are spoken? did not, in every man, grow courage and spirit and language? and, as neighbors, we, first of all, were zealously kindled. thereupon followed the war, and armèd bodies of frenchmen pressed to us nearer; yet nothing but friendship they seemed to be bringing; ay, and they brought it too; for exalted the spirit within them: they with rejoicing the festive trees of liberty planted, promising every man what was his own, and to each his own ruling. high beat the heart of the youths, and even the aged were joyful; gaily the dance began about the newly raised standard. thus had they speedily won, these overmastering frenchmen, first the spirits of men by the fire and dash of their bearing, then the hearts of the women with irresistible graces. even the pressure of hungry war seemed to weigh on us lightly, so before our vision did hope hang over the future, luring our eyes abroad into newly opening pathways. oh, how joyful the time when with her beloved the maiden whirls in the dance, the longed-for day of their union awaiting! but more glorious that day on which to our vision the highest heart of man can conceive seemed near and attainable to us. loosened was every tongue, and men--the aged, the stripling-- spoke aloud in words that were full of high feeling and wisdom. soon, however, the sky was o'ercast. a corrupt generation fought for the right of dominion, unworthy the good to establish; so that they slew one another, their new-made neighbors and brothers held in subjection, and then sent the self-seeking masses against us. chiefs committed excesses and wholesale plunder upon us, while those lower plundered and rioted down to the lowest: every one seemed but to care that something be left for the morrow. great past endurance the need, and daily grew the oppression: they were the lords of the day; there was none to hear our complaining. then fell trouble and rage upon even the quietest spirit. one thought only had all, and swore for their wrongs to have vengeance, and for the bitter loss of their hope thus doubly deluded. presently fortune turned and declared on the side of the german, and with hurried marches the french retreated before us. ah! then as never before did we feel the sad fortunes of warfare: he that is victor is great and good,--or at least he appears so,-- and he, as one of his own, will spare the man he has conquered, him whose service he daily needs, and whose property uses. but no law the fugitive knows, save of self-preservation, and, with a reckless greed, consumes all the possessions about him; then are his passions also inflamed: the despair that is in him out of his heart breaks forth, and takes shape in criminal action. nothing is further held sacred; but all is for plunder. his craving turns in fury on woman, and pleasure is changed into horror. death he sees everywhere round him, and madly enjoys his last moments, taking delight in blood, in the shriekings of anguish exulting. thereupon fiercely arose in our men the stern resolution what had been lost to avenge, and defend what'er was remaining. every man sprang to his arms, by the flight of the foeman encouraged, and by his blanching cheeks, and his timorous, wavering glances. ceaselessly now rang out the clanging peal of the tocsin. thought of no danger to come restrained their furious anger. quick into weapons of war the husbandman's peaceful utensils all were converted; dripped with blood the scythe and the ploughshare. quarter was shown to none: the enemy fell without mercy. fury everywhere raged and the cowardly cunning of weakness. ne'er may i men so carried away by injurious passion see again! the sight of the raging wild beast would be better. let not man prattle of freedom, as if himself he could govern! soon as the barriers are torn away, then all of the evil seems let loose, that by law had been driven deep back into corners." "excellent man!" thereupon with emphasis answered the pastor: "though thou misjudgest mankind, yet can i not censure thee for it. evil enough, i confess, thou hast had to endure from man's passions. yet wouldst thou look behind over this calamitous season, thou wouldst acknowledge thyself how much good thou also hast witnessed. how many excellent things that would in the heart have lain hidden, had not danger aroused them, and did not necessity's pressure bring forth the angel in man, and make him a god of deliv'rance." thereupon answered and said the reverend magistrate, smiling: "there thou remindest me aptly of how we console the poor fellow, after his house has been burned, by recounting the gold and the silver melted and scattered abroad in the rubbish, that still is remaining. little enough, it is true; but even that little is precious. then will the poor wretch after it dig and rejoice if he find it. thus i likewise with happier thoughts will gratefully turn me toward the few beautiful deeds of which i preserve the remembrance. yes, i will not deny, i have seen old quarrels forgotten, ill to avert from the state; i also have witnessed how friendship, love of parent and child, can impossibilities venture; seen how the stripling at once matured into man; how the aged grew again young; and even the child into youth was developed, yea, and the weaker sex too, as we are accustomed to call it, showed itself brave and strong and ready for every emergence. foremost among them all, one beautiful deed let me mention, bravely performed by the hand of a girl, an excellent maiden, who, with those younger than she, had been left in charge of a farmhouse, since there, also, the men had marched against the invader. suddenly fell on the house a fugitive band of marauders, eager for booty, who crowded straightway to the room of the women. there they beheld the beautiful form of the fully grown maiden, looked on the charming young girls, who rather might still be called children. savage desire possessed them; at once with merciless passion they that trembling band assailed and the high-hearted maiden. but she had snatched in an instant the sword of one from its scabbard, felled him with might to the ground, and stretched him bleeding before her. then with vigorous strokes she bravely delivered the maidens, smiting yet four of the robbers; who saved themselves only by flying. then she bolted the gates, and, armed, awaited assistance." now when this praise the minister heard bestowed on the maiden, rose straightway for his friend a feeling of hope in his bosom, and he had opened his lips to inquire what further befell her, if on this mournful flight she now with her people were present; when with a hasty step the village doctor approached them, twitched the clergyman's coat, and said in his ear in a whisper: "i have discovered the maiden at last among several hundreds; by the description i knew her, so come, let thine own eyes behold her! bring too the magistrate with thee, that so we may hear him yet further." but as they turned to go, the justice was summoned to leave them, sent for by some of his people by whom his counsel was needed. straightway the preacher, however, the lead of the doctor had followed up to a gap in the fence where his finger he meaningly pointed. "seest thou the maiden?" he said: "she has made some clothes for the baby out of the well-known chintz,--i distinguish it plainly; and further there are the covers of blue that hermann gave in his bundle. well and quickly, forsooth, she has turned to advantage the presents. evident tokens are these, and all else answers well the description. mark how the stomacher's scarlet sets off the arch of her bosom, prettily laced, and the bodice of black fits close to her figure; neatly the edge of her kerchief is plaited into a ruffle, which, with a simple grace, her chin's rounded outline encircles; freely and lightly rises above it the head's dainty oval, and her luxuriant hair over silver bodkins is braided. now she is sitting, yet still we behold her majestical stature, and the blue petticoat's ample plaits, that down from her bosom hangs in abundant folds about her neatly shaped ankles, she without question it is; come, therefore, and let us discover whether she honest and virtuous be, a housewifely maiden." then, as the seated figure he studied, the pastor made answer: "truly, i find it no wonder that she so enchanted the stripling, since, to a man's experienced eye, she seems lacking in nothing. happy to whom mother nature a shape harmonious has given! such will always commend him, and he can be nowhere a stranger. all approach with delight, and all are delighted to linger, if to the outward shape correspond but a courteous spirit. i can assure thee, in her the youth has found him a maiden, who, in the days to come, his life shall gloriously brighten, standing with womanly strength in every necessity by him. surely the soul must be pure that inhabits a body so perfect, and of a happy old age such vigorous youth is the promise." thereupon answered and said the doctor in language of caution: "often appearances cheat; i like not to trust to externals. [illustration: the parson and the apothecary watch dorothea ludwig richter] for i have oft seen put to the test the truth of the proverb: till thou a bushel of salt with a new acquaintance hast eaten, be not too ready to trust him; for time alone renders thee certain how ye shall fare with each other, and how well your friendship shall prosper. let us then rather at first make inquiries among the good people by whom the maiden is known, and who can inform us about her." "much i approve of thy caution," the preacher replied as he followed. "not for ourselves is the suit, and 'tis delicate wooing for others." toward the good magistrate, then, the men directed their footsteps, who was again ascending the street in discharge of his duties. him the judicious pastor at once addressed and with caution. "look! we a maiden have here descried in the neighboring garden, under an apple-tree sitting, and making up garments for children out of second-hand stuff that somebody doubtless has given; and we were pleased with her aspect: she seems like a girl to be trusted. tell us whatever thou knowest: we ask it with honest intentions." soon as the magistrate nearer had come, and looked into the garden, "her thou knowest already," he said; "for when i was telling of the heroic deed performed by the hand of that maiden, when she snatched the man's sword, and delivered herself and her charges, this was the one! she is vigorous born, as thou seest by her stature; yet she is good as strong, for her aged kinsman she tended until the day of his death, which was finally hastened by sorrow over his city's distress, and his own endangered possessions. also, with quiet submission, she bore the death of her lover, who a high-spirited youth, in the earliest flush of excitement, kindled by lofty resolve to fight for a glorious freedom, hurried to paris, where early a terrible death he encountered. for as at home, so there, his foes were deceit and oppression." thus the magistrate spoke. the others saluted and thanked him, and from his purse a gold-piece the pastor drew forth;--for the silver he had some hours before already in charity given, when he in mournful groups had seen the poor fugitives passing;-- and to the magistrate handed it, saying: "apportion the money 'mongst thy destitute people, and god vouchsafe it an increase." but the stranger declined it, and, answering, said: "we have rescued many a dollar among us, with clothing and other possessions, and shall return, as i hope, ere yet our stock is exhausted." then the pastor replied, and pressed the money upon him: "none should be backward in giving in days like the present, and no one ought to refuse to accept those gifts which in kindness are offered. none can tell how long he may hold what in peace he possesses, none how much longer yet he shall roam through the land of the stranger, and of his farm be deprived, and deprived of the garden that feeds him." "ay, to be sure!" in his bustling way interrupted the doctor: "if i had only some money about me, ye surely should have it, little and big; for certainly many among you must need it. yet i'll not go without giving thee something to show what my will is, even though sadly behind my good-will must lag the performance." thus, as he spoke, by its straps his embroidered pocket of leather, where his tobacco was kept, he drew forth,-enough was now in it several pipes to fill,--and daintily opened, and portioned. "small is the gift," he added. the justice, however, made answer: "good tobacco can ne'er to the traveller fail to be welcome." then did the village doctor begin to praise his canaster. but the clergyman drew him away, and they quitted the justice. "let us make haste," said the thoughtful man: "the youth's waiting in torture; come! let him hear, as soon as he may, the jubilant tidings." so they hastened their steps, and came to where under the lindens hermann against the carriage was leaning. the horses were stamping wildly the turf; he held them in check, and, buried in musing, stood, into vacancy gazing before him; nor saw the two envoys, till, as they came, they called out and made to him signals of triumph. e'en as far off as they then were, the doctor began to address him; but they were presently nearer come and then the good pastor grasped his hand and exclaimed, interrupting the word of his comrade: "hail to thee, o young man! thy true eye and heart have well chosen; joy be to thee and the wife of thy youth; for of thee she is worthy. come then and turn us the wagon, and drive straightway to the village, there the good maid to woo, and soon bring her home to thy dwelling." still, however, the young man stood, without sign of rejoicing, hearing his messenger's words, though heavenly they were and consoling. deeply he sighed as he said: "with hurrying wheels we came hither, and shall be forced, perchance, to go mortified homeward and slowly. for disquiet has fallen upon me since here i've been waiting, doubt and suspicion, and all that can torture the heart of a lover. think ye we have but to come, and that then the maiden will follow merely because we are rich, while she is poor and an exile? poverty, too, makes proud, when it comes unmerited! active seems she to be, and contented, and so of the world is she mistress. think ye a maiden like her, with the manners and beauty that she has, can into woman have grown, and no worthy man's love have attracted? think ye that love until now can have been shut out from her bosom? drive not thither too rashly: we might to our mortification have to turn softly homewards our horses' heads. for my fear is that to some youth already this heart has been given; already this brave hand has been clasped, has pledged faith to some fortunate lover. then with my offer, alas! i should stand in confusion before her." straightway the pastor had opened his lips to speak consolation, when his companion broke in, and said in his voluble fashion: "years ago, forsooth, unknown had been such a dilemma. all such affairs were then conducted in regular fashion. soon as a bride for their son had been by the parents selected, first some family friend they into their councils would summon, whom they afterward sent as a suitor to visit the parents of the elected bride. arrayed in his finest apparel, soon after dinner on sunday he sought the respectable burgher, when some friendly words were exchanged upon general subjects, he knowing how to direct the discourse as suited his purpose. after much circumlocution he finally mentioned the daughter, praising her highly, and praising the man and the house that had sent him. persons of tact perceived his intent, and the politic envoy readily saw how their minds were disposed, and explained himself further. then were the offer declined, e'en the 'no' brought not mortification; but did it meet with success, the suitor was ever thereafter made the chief guest in the house on every festive occasion. for, through the rest of their lives, the couple ne'er failed to remember that 'twas by his experienced hand the first knot had been gathered. all that, however, is changed, and, with many another good custom, quite fallen out of the fashion; for every man woos for himself now. therefore let every man hear to his face pronounced the refusal, if a refusal there be, and stand shamed in the sight of the maiden!" "let that be as it may!" made answer the youth, who had scarcely unto the words paid heed; but in silence had made his decision. "i will go thither myself, will myself hear my destiny spoken out of the lips of a maiden in whom i a confidence cherish greater than heart of man has e'er before cherished in woman. say what she will, 'twill be good and wise; of that i am certain. should i behold her never again, yet this once will i see her; yet this once the clear gaze of those dark eyes will encounter. if i must press her ne'er to my heart, yet that neck and that bosom will i behold once more, that my arm so longs to encircle; once more that mouth will see, whose kiss and whose 'yes' would for ever render me happy, from which a 'no' will for ever destroy me. but ye must leave me alone. do not wait for me here; but return ye back to my father and mother again, and give them the knowledge that their son has not been deceived, that the maiden is worthy. so then leave me alone! i shall follow the footpath that crosses over the hill by the pear-tree, and thence descends through our vineyard, taking a shorter way home. and oh, may i bring to our dwelling, joyful and quick my beloved! but perhaps i alone may come creeping over that path to the house, and ne'er again tread it with gladness." thus he spoke, and gave up the reins to the hand of the pastor, who understandingly grasped them, the foaming horses controlling, speedily mounted the carriage, and sat in the seat of the driver. but thou didst hesitate, provident neighbor, and say in remonstrance: "heart and soul and spirit, my friend, i willingly trust thee; but as for life and limb, they are not in the safest of keeping, when the temporal reins are usurped by the hand of the clergy." but thou didst laugh at his words, intelligent pastor, and answer: "sit thee down, and contentedly trust me both body and spirit; for, in holding the reins, my hand grew long ago skilful, long has my eye been trained in making the nicest of turnings; for we were practised well in driving the carriage in strasburg, when i the youthful baron accompanied thither; then daily rolled the carriage, guided by me, through the echoing gateway, out over dusty roads till we reached the meadows and lindens, steering through groups of the town's-folk beguiling the day there with walking." thereupon, half-reassured, the neighbor ascended the wagon, sat like one who for a prudent leap is holding him ready, and the stallions sped rapidly homeward, desiring their stable. clouds of dust whirled up from under their powerful hoof-beats. long the youth stood there yet, and saw the dust in its rising, saw the dust as it settled again: he stood there unheeding. erato dorothea like as the traveller, who, when the sun is approaching its setting, fixes his eyes on it once again ere quickly it vanish, then on the sides of the rocks, and on all the darkening bushes, sees its hovering image; whatever direction he look in that hastes before, and flickers and gleams in radiant colors,-- so before hermann's eyes moved the beautiful shape of the maiden softly, and seeming to follow the path that led into the corn-field. but he aroused from his wildering dream and turned himself slowly toward where the village lay and was wildered again; for again came moving to meet him the lofty form of the glorious maiden. fixedly gazed he upon her; herself it was and no phantom. bearing in either hand a larger jar and a smaller, each by the handle, with busy step she came on to the fountain. joyfully then he hastened to meet her; the sight of her gave him courage and strength; and thus the astonished girl he accosted: "do i then find thee, brave-hearted maiden, so soon again busy, rendering aid unto others, and happy in bringing them comfort? say why thou comest alone to this well which lies at such a distance, when all the rest are content with the water they find in the village? this has peculiar virtues, 'tis true; and the taste is delicious. thou to that mother wouldst bring it, i trow, whom thy faithfulness rescued." straightway with cordial greeting the kindly maiden made answer: "here has my walk to the spring already been amply rewarded, since i have found the good friend who bestowed so abundantly on us; for a pleasure not less than the gifts is the sight of the giver. come, i pray thee, and see for thyself who has tasted thy bounty; come, and the quiet thanks receive of all it has solaced. but that thou straightway the reason may'st know for which i am hither come to draw, where pure and unfailing the water is flowing, this i must tell thee,--that all the water we have in the village has by improvident people been troubled with horses and oxen wading direct through the source which brings the inhabitants water. and furthermore they have also made foul with their washings and rinsings all the troughs of the village, and all the fountains have sullied; for but one thought is in all, and that how to satisfy quickest self and the need of the moment, regardless of what may come after." [illustration: hermann and dorothea meet at the fountain ludwig richter] thus she spoke, and the broad stone steps meanwhile had descended with her companion beside her, and on the low wall of the fountain both sat them down. she bent herself over to draw, and he also took in his hand the jar that remained, and bent himself over; and in the blue of the heavens, they, seeing their image reflected, friendly greetings and nods exchanged in the quivering mirror. "give me to drink," the youth thereupon in his gladness petitioned, and she handed the pitcher. familiarly sat they and rested, both leaning over their jars, till she presently asked her companion: "tell me, why i find thee here, and without thy horses and wagon, far from the place where i met thee at first? how camest thou hither?" thoughtful he bent his eyes on the ground, then quietly raised them up to her face, and, meeting with frankness the gaze of the maiden, felt himself solaced and stilled. but then impossible was it, that he of love should speak; her eye told not of affection, only of clear understanding, requiring intelligent answer. and he composed himself quickly, and cordially said to the maiden: "hearken to me, my child, and let me reply to thy question. 'twas for thy sake that hither i came; why seek to conceal it? know i live happy at home with both my affectionate parents, faithfully giving my aid their house and estates in directing, being an only son, and because our affairs are extensive. mine is the charge of the farm; my father bears rule in the household; while the presiding spirit of all is the diligent mother. but thine experience doubtless has taught thee how grievously servants, now through deceit, and now through their carelessness, harass the mistress, forcing her ever to change and replace one fault with another. long for that reason my mother has wished for a maid in the household, who not with hand alone, but with heart, too, will lend her assistance, taking the daughter's place, whom alas! she was early deprived of. now when today by the wagon i saw thee, so ready and cheerful, witnessed the strength of thine arms, and thy limbs of such healthful proportion, when thy intelligent speech i heard, i was smitten with wonder. hastening homeward, i there to my parents and neighbors the stranger praised as she well deserved. but i now am come hither to tell thee what is their wish as mine.--forgive me my stammering language." "hesitate not," she, answering, said, "to tell me what follows. thou dost not give me offence; i have listened with gratitude to thee: speak it out honestly therefore; the sound of it will not alarm me. thou wouldst engage me as servant to wait on thy father and mother, and to look after the well-ordered house of which ye are the owners; and thou thinkest in me to find them a capable servant, one who is skilled in her work, and not of a rude disposition. short thy proposal has been, and short shall be also my answer. yes, i will go with thee home, and the call of fate i will follow. here my duty is done: i have brought the newly made mother back to her kindred again, who are all in her safety rejoicing. most of our people already are gathered; the others will follow. all think a few days more will certainly see them returning unto their homes; for such is the exile's constant delusion. but by no easy hope do i suffer myself to be cheated during these sorrowful days which promise yet more days of sorrow. all the bands of the world have been loosed, and what shall unite them, saving alone the need, the need supreme, that is on us? if in a good man's house i can earn my living by service, under the eye of an excellent mistress, i gladly will do it; since of doubtful repute, must be always a wandering maiden. yes, i will go with thee, soon as i first shall have carried the pitchers back to my friends, and prayed the good people to give me their blessing come, thou must see them thyself, and from their hands must receive me." joyfully hearkened the youth to the willing maiden's decision, doubtful whether he ought not at once to make honest confession. yet it appeared to him best to leave her awhile in her error, nor for her love to sue, before leading her home to his dwelling. ah! and the golden ring he perceived on the hand of the maiden, wherefore he let her speak on, and gave diligent ear to her language. "come," she presently said, "let us back to the village; for maidens always are sure to be blamed if they tarry too long at the fountain. yet how delightful it is to chat by the murmuring water!" then from their seats they rose, and both of them turned to the fountain one more look behind, and a tender longing possessed them. both of the water-jars then in silence she took by the handle, carried them up the steps, while behind her followed her lover. one of the pitchers he begged her to give him to lighten the burden. "nay, let it be!" she said: "i carry them better so balanced. nor shall the master, who is to command, be doing me service. look not so gravely upon me, as thinking my fortune a hard one. early a woman should learn to serve, for that is her calling; since through service alone she finally comes to the headship, comes to the due command that is hers of right in the household. early the sister must wait on her brother, and wait on her parents; life must be always with her a perpetual coming and going, or be a fetching and carrying, making and doing for others. happy for her be she wonted to think no way is too grievous, and if the hours of the night be to her as the hours of the daytime; if she find never a needle too fine, nor a labor too trifling; wholly forgetful of self, and caring to live but in others! for she will surely, as mother, have need of every virtue, when, in the time of her illness, the cries of her infant arouse her calling for food from her weakness, and cares are to suffering added. twenty men bound into one were not able to bear such a burden; nor is it meant that they should, yet should they with gratitude view it." thus she spoke, and was come, meanwhile, with her silent companion, far as the floor of the barn, at the furthermost end of the garden, where was the sick woman lying, whom, glad, she had left with her daughters, those late rescued maidens: fair pictures of innocence were they. both of them entered the barn; and, e'en as they did so, the justice, leading a child in each hand, came in from the other direction. these had been lost, hitherto, from the sight of their sorrowing mother; but in the midst of the crowd the old man now had descried them. joyfully sprang they forward to meet their dear mother's embraces, and to salute with delight their brother, their unknown companion. next upon dorothea they sprang with affectionate greeting, asking for bread and fruit, but more than all else for some water. so then she handed the water about; and not only the children drank, but the sick woman, too, and her daughters, and with them the justice. all were refreshed, and highly commended the glorious water; acid it was to the taste, and reviving, and wholesome to drink of. then with a serious face the maiden replied to them, saying: "friends, for the last time now to your mouth have i lifted my pitcher; and for the last time by me have your lips been moistened with water. but henceforth in the heat of the day when the draught shall refresh you, when in the shade ye enjoy your rest beside a clear fountain, think of me then sometimes and of all my affectionate service, prompted more by my love than the duty i owed you as kindred. i shall acknowledge as long as i live the kindness ye've shown me. 'tis with regret that i leave you; but every one now is a burden, more than a help to his neighbor, and all must be finally scattered far through a foreign land, if return to our homes be denied us. see, here stands the youth to whom we owe thanks for the presents. he gave the cloak for the baby, and all these welcome provisions. now he is come, and has asked me if i will make one in his dwelling, that i may serve therein his wealthy and excellent parents. and i refuse not the offer; for maidens must always be serving; burdensome were it for them to rest and be served in the household. therefore i follow him gladly. a youth of intelligence seems he, and so will also the parents be, as becometh the wealthy. so then farewell, dear friend; and may'st thou rejoice in thy nursling, living, and into thy face already so healthfully looking! when thou shalt press him against thy breast in these gay-colored wrappings, oh, then remember the kindly youth who bestowed them upon us, and who me also henceforth, thy sister, will shelter and nourish. thou, too, excellent man!" she said as she turned to the justice; "take my thanks that in many a need i have found thee a father." then she knelt down on the floor by the side of the newly made mother, kissing the weeping woman, and taking her low-whispered blessing. thou, meanwhile, worshipful justice, wast speaking to hermann and saying: "justly mayst thou, my friend, be counted among the good masters, careful to manage their household affairs with capable servants. for i have often observed how in sheep, as in horses and oxen, men conclude never a bargain without making closest inspection, while with a servant who all things preserves, if honest and able, and who will every thing lose and destroy, if he set to work falsely, him will a chance or an accident make us admit to our dwelling, and we are left, when too late, to repent an o'er hasty decision. thou understandest the matter it seems; because thou hast chosen, thee and thy parents to serve in the house, a maid who is honest. hold her with care; for as long as thy household is under her keeping, thou shalt not want for a sister, nor yet for a daughter thy parents." many were come, meanwhile, near relatives all of the mother, bringing her various gifts, and more suitable quarters announcing. all of them, hearing the maiden's decision, gave hermann their blessing, coupled with glances of meaning, while each made his special reflections. hastily one and another would say in the ear of his neighbor: "if in the master a lover she find, right well were she cared for." hermann took her at last by the hand, and said as he did so: "let us be going; the day is declining, and distant the city." eager and voluble then the women embraced dorothea. hermann drew her away; but other adieus must be spoken: lastly the children with cries fell upon her and terrible weeping, clung to her garments, and would not their dear second mother should leave them. but in a tone of command the women said, one and another: "hush now, children, she's going to the town, and will presently bring you plenty of nice sweet cake that was by your brother bespoken when by the stork just now he was brought past the shop of the baker. soon you will see her come back with sugar-plums splendidly gilded." then did the little ones loose their hold, and hermann, though hardly, tore her from further embraces away, and far-waving kerchiefs. melpomene herman and dorothea toward the setting sun the two thus went on their journey: close he had wrapped himself round with clouds portending a tempest. out from the veil, now here and now there, with fiery flashes, gleaming over the field shot forth the ominous lightning. "may not these threatening heavens," said hermann, "be presently sending hailstones upon us and violent rains; for fair is the harvest." and in the waving luxuriant grain they delighted together: almost as high it reached as the lofty shapes that moved through it. thereupon spoke the maiden, and said to her guide and companion: "friend, unto whom i soon am to owe so kindly a fortune, shelter and home, while many an exile's exposed to the tempest, tell me concerning thy parents, i pray thee, and teach me to know them, them whom with all my heart i desire to serve in the future. who understands his master, more easily gives satisfaction, having regard to the things which to him seem chief in importance, and on the doing of which his firm-set mind is determined. tell me therefore, i pray, how to win thy father and mother." and to her question made answer the good and intelligent hermann: "ah, what wisdom thou showest, thou good, thou excellent maiden, asking thus first of all concerning the tastes of my parents! know that in vain hitherto i have labored in serving my father, taking upon me as were it my own, the charge of the household; early and late at work in the fields, and o'erseeing the vine-yard. but my mother i fully content, who can value my service; and thou wilt also appear in her eyes the worthiest of maidens, if for the house thou carest, as were it thine own thou wast keeping. otherwise is it with father, who cares for the outward appearance. do not regard me, good maiden, as one who is cold and unfeeling, that unto thee a stranger i straightway discover my father. nay, i assure thee that never before have words such as these are freely dropped from my tongue, which is not accustomed to prattle; but from out of my bosom thou lurest its every secret. some of the graces of life my good father covets about him, outward signs of affection he wishes, as well as of honor; and an inferior servant might possibly give satisfaction, who could turn these to account, while he might be displeased with a better." thereupon said she with joy, the while him hastening footsteps over the darkening pathway with easy motion she quickened: "truly i hope to them both i shall equally give satisfaction: for in thy mother's nature i find such an one as mine own is, and to the outward graces i've been from my childhood accustomed. greatly was courtesy valued among our neighbors the frenchmen, during their earlier days; it was common to noble and burgher, as to the peasant, and every one made it the rule of his household. so, on the side of us germans, the children were likewise accustomed daily to bring to their parents, with kissing of hands and with curtseys, morning good-wishes, and all through the day to be prettily mannered. every thing thus that i learned, and to which i've been used from my childhood, all that my heart shall suggest, shall be brought into play for thy father. but who shall tell me of thee, and how thyself shouldst be treated, thou the only son of the house, and henceforth my master?" thus she said, and e'en as she spoke they stood under the pear-tree. down from the heavens the moon at her full was shedding her splendor. night had come on, and wholly obscured was the last gleam of sunlight, so that contrasting masses lay side by side with each other, clear and bright as the day, and black with the shadows of midnight; gratefully fell upon hermann's ear the kindly asked question under the shade of the glorious tree, the spot he so treasured, which but this morning had witnessed the tears he had shed for the exile. and while they sat themselves down to rest them here for a little, thus spoke the amorous youth, as he grasped the hand of the maiden: "suffer thy heart to make answer, and follow it freely in all things." yet naught further he ventured to say although so propitious seemed the hour; he feared he should only haste on a refusal. ah, and he felt besides the ring on her finger, sad token! therefore they sat there, silent and still, beside one another. first was the maiden to speak: "how sweet is this glorious moonlight!" said she at length: "it is as the light of the day in its brightness. [illustration: herman and dorothea under the pear tree ludwig richter] there in the city i plainly can see the houses and court-yards, and in the gable--methinks i can number its panes--is a window." "what thou seest," the modest youth thereupon made her answer,-- "what thou seest is our dwelling, to which i am leading thee downward, and that window yonder belongs to my room in the attic, which will be thine perhaps, for various changes are making. all these fields, too, are ours; they are ripe for the harvest to-morrow. here in the shade we will rest, and partake of our noon-tide refreshment. but it is time we began our descent through the vineyard and garden; for dost thou mark how yon threatening storm-cloud comes nearer and nearer, charged with lightning, and ready our fair full moon to extinguish?" so they arose from their seats, and over the corn fields descended, through the luxuriant grain, enjoying the brightness of evening, until they came to the vineyard, and so entered into its shadow. then he guided her down o'er the numerous blocks that were lying, rough and unhewn on the pathway, and served as the steps of the alley. slowly the maiden descended, and leaning her hands on his shoulder, while with uncertain beams, the moon through the leaves overlooked them, ere she was veiled by the cloud, and so left the couple in darkness. carefully hermann's strength supported the maid that hung o'er him; but, not knowing the path and the rough-hewn steps that led down it, missed she her footing, her ankle turned, and she surely had fallen, had not the dexterous youth his arm outstretched in an instant, and his beloved upheld. she gently sank on his shoulder; breast was pressed against breast, and cheek against cheek. thus he stood there fixed as a marble statue, the force of will keeping him steadfast, drew her not to him more closely, but braced himself under her pressure. thus he the glorious burden felt, the warmth of her bosom, and the perfume of her breath, that over his lips was exhaling; bore with the heart of a man the majestic form of the woman. but she with playfulness said, concealing the pain that she suffered: "that is a sign of misfortune, so timorous persons would tell us, when on approaching a house we stumble not far from the threshold; and for myself, i confess, i could wish for a happier omen. let us here linger awhile that thy parents may not have to blame thee, seeing a limping maid, and thou seem an incompetent landlord." urania prospect muses, o ye who the course of true love so willingly favor, ye who thus far on his way the excellent youth have conducted, even before the betrothal have pressed to his bosom the maiden; further your aid vouchsafe this charming pair in uniting, straightway dispersing the clouds which over their happiness lower! yet first of all declare what is passing meanwhile at the lion. now for the third time again the mother impatient had entered where were assembled the men, whom anxious but now she had quitted; spoke of the gathering storm, and the moonlight's rapid obscuring; then of her son's late tarrying abroad and the dangers of nightfall; sharply upbraided her friends that without having speech of the maiden, and without urging his suit, they had parted from hermann so early. "make it not worse than it is," the father replied with displeasure. "for, as thou seest, we tarry ourselves and are waiting the issue." calmly, however, from where he was sitting the neighbor made answer: "never in hours of disquiet like this do i fail to be grateful unto my late, blessed father, who every root of impatience tore from my heart when a child, and left no fibre remaining; so that i learned on the instant to wait as do none of your sages." "tell us," the pastor returned, "what legerdemain he made use of." "that will i gladly relate, for all may draw from it a lesson;" so made the neighbor reply. "when a boy i once stood of a sunday full of impatience, and looking with eagerness out for the carriage which was to carry us forth to the spring that lies under the lindens. still the coach came not. i ran, like a weasel, now hither, now thither, up stairs and down, and forward and back, 'twixt the door and the window; even my fingers itched to be moving; i scratched on the tables, went about pounding and stamping, and hardly could keep me from weeping. all was observed by the calm-tempered man; but at last when my folly came to be carried too far, by the arm he quietly took me, led me away to the window, and spoke in this serious language: 'seest thou yonder the carpenter's shop that is closed for the sunday? he will re-open to-morrow, when plane and saw will be started, and will keep on through the hours of labor from morning till evening. but consider you this,--a day will be presently coming when that man shall himself be astir and all of his workmen, making a coffin for thee to be quickly and skilfully finished. then that house of boards they will busily bring over hither, which must at last receive alike the impatient and patient, and which is destined soon with close-pressing roof to be covered.' straightway i saw the whole thing in my mind as if it were doing; saw the boards fitting together, and saw the black color preparing, sat me down patiently then, and in quiet awaited the carriage. now when others i see, in seasons of anxious expectance, running distracted about, i cannot but think of the coffin." smiling, the pastor replied: "the affecting picture of death stands not as a dread to the wise, and not as an end to the pious. those it presses again into life, and teaches to use it; these by affliction it strengthens in hope to future salvation. death becomes life unto both. thy father was greatly mistaken when to a sensitive boy he death in death thus depicted. let us the value of nobly ripe age, point out to the young man, and to the aged the youth, that in the eternal progression both may rejoice, and life may in life thus find its completion." but the door was now opened, and showed the majestical couple. filled with amaze were the friends, and amazed the affectionate parents, seeing the form of the maid so well matched with that of her lover. yea, the door seemed too low to allow the tall figures to enter, as they together now appeared coming over the threshold. hermann, with hurried words, presented her thus to his parents: "here is a maiden," he said; "such a one as ye wish in the household. kindly receive her, dear father: she merits it well; and thou, mother, question her straightway on all that belongs to a house-keeper's duty, that ye may see how well she deserves to ye both to be nearer." quickly he then drew aside the excellent clergyman, saying: "help me, o worthy sir, and speedily out of this trouble; loosen, i pray thee, this knot, at whose untying i tremble. know that 'tis not as a lover that i have brought hither the maiden; but she believes that as servant she comes to the house, and i tremble lest in displeasure she fly as soon as there's mention of marriage. but be it straightway decided; for she no longer in error thus shall be left, and i this suspense no longer can suffer. hasten and show us in this a proof of the wisdom we honor." toward the company then the clergyman instantly turned him; but already, alas! had the soul of the maiden been troubled, hearing the father's speech; for he, in his sociable fashion, had in these playful words, with the kindest intention addressed her: "ay, this is well, my child! with delight i perceive that my hermann has the good taste of his father, who often showed his in his young days, leading out always the fairest to dance, and bringing the fairest finally home as his wife; our dear little mother here that was. for by the bride that a man shall elect we can judge what himself is, tell what the spirit is in him, and whether he feel his own value. nor didst thou need for thyself, i'll engage, much time for decision; for, in good sooth, methinks, he's no difficult person to follow." hermann had heard but in part; his limbs were inwardly trembling, and of a sudden a stillness had fallen on all of the circle. but by these words of derision, for such she could not but deem them, wounded, and stung to the depths of her soul, the excellent maiden, stood, while the fugitive blood o'er her cheeks and e'en to her bosom poured its flush. but she governed herself, and her courage collecting, answered the old man thus, her pain not wholly concealing: "truly for such a reception thy son had in no wise prepared me, when he the ways of his father described, the excellent burgher. thou art a man of culture, i know, before whom i am standing; dealest with every one wisely, according as suits his position; but thou hast scanty compassion, it seems, on one such as i am, who, a poor girl, am now crossing thy threshold with purpose to serve thee; else, with such bitter derision, thou wouldst not have made me remember how far removed my fortune from that of thyself and thy son is. true, i come poor to thy house, and bring with me naught but my bundle here where is every abundance to gladden the prosperous inmates. yet i know well myself; i feel the relations between us. say, is it noble, with so much of mockery straightway to greet me, that i am sent from the house while my foot is scarce yet on the threshold?" anxiously hermann turned and signed to his ally the pastor that he should rush to the rescue and straightway dispel the delusion. then stepped the wise man hastily forward and looked on the maiden's tearful eyes, her silent pain and repressed indignation, and in his heart was impelled not at once to clear up the confusion, rather to put to the test the girl's disquieted spirit. therefore he unto her said in language intended to try her: "surely, thou foreign-born maiden, thou didst not maturely consider, when thou too rashly decidedst to enter the service of strangers, all that is meant by the placing thyself 'neath the rule of a master; for by our hand to a bargain the fate of the year is determined, and but a single 'yea' compels to much patient endurance. not the worst part of the service the wearisome steps to be taken, neither the bitter sweat of a labor that presses unceasing; since the industrious freeman must toil as well as the servant. but 'tis to bear with the master's caprice when he censures unjustly, or when, at variance with self, he orders now this, now the other; bear with the petulance, too, of the mistress, easily angered, and with the rude, overbearing ways of unmannerly children. all this is hard to endure, and yet to go on with thy duties quickly, without delay, nor thyself grow sullen and stubborn. yet thou appearest ill fitted for this, since already so deeply stung by the father's jests: whereas there is nothing more common than for a girl to be teased on account of a youth she may fancy." thus he spoke. the maiden had felt the full force of his language, and she restrained her no more; but with passionate out-burst her feelings made themselves way; a sob broke forth from her now heaving bosom, and, while the scalding tears poured down, she straightway made answer "ah, that rational man who thinks to advise us in sorrow, knows not how little of power his cold words have in relieving ever a heart from that woe which a sovereign fate has inflicted. ye are prosperous and glad; how then should a pleasantry wound you? yet but the lightest touch is a source of pain to the sick man. nay, concealment itself, if successful, had profited nothing. better show now what had later increased to a bitterer anguish, and to an inward consuming despair might perhaps have reduced me. let me go back! for here in this house i can tarry no longer. i will away, and wander in search of my hapless companions, whom i forsook in their need; for myself alone choosing the better. this is my firm resolve, and i therefore may make a confession which might for years perhaps have else lain hid in my bosom. deeply indeed was i hurt by the father's words of derision; not that i'm sensitive, proud beyond what is fitting a servant; but that my heart in truth had felt itself stirred with affection toward the youth who to-day had appeared to my eyes as a savior. when he first left me there on the road, he still remained present, haunting my every thought; i fancied the fortunate maiden whom as a bride, perhaps, his heart had already elected. when at the fountain i met him again, the sight of him wakened pleasure as great as if there had met me an angel from heaven; and with what gladness i followed, when asked to come as his servant. true, that i flattered myself in my heart,--i will not deny it,-- while we were hitherward coming, i might peradventure deserve him, should i become at last the important stay of the household. now i, alas! for the first time see what risk i was running, when i would make my home so near to the secretly loved one; now for the first time feel how far removed a poor maiden is from an opulent youth, no matter how great her deserving. all this i now confess, that my heart ye may not misinterpret, in that 'twas hurt by a chance to which i owe my awaking. hiding my secret desires, this dread had been ever before me, that at some early day he would bring him a bride to his dwelling; and ah, how could i then my inward anguish have suffered! happily i have been warned, and happily now has my bosom been of its secret relieved, while yet there is cure for the evil. but no more; i have spoken; and now shall nothing detain me longer here in a house where i stay but in shame and confusion, freely confessing my love and that foolish hope that i cherished. not the night which abroad is covered with lowering storm clouds; not the roll of the thunder--i hear its peal--shall deter me; not the pelt of the rain which without is beating in fury; neither the blustering tempest; for all these things have i suffered during our sorrowful flight, and while the near foe was pursuing. now i again go forth, as i have so long been accustomed, carried away by the whirl of the times, and from every thing parted. fare ye well! i tarry no longer; all now is over." thus she spoke and back to the door she hastily turned her, still bearing under her arm, as she with her had brought it, her bundle. but with both of her arms the mother seized hold of the maiden, clasping her round the waist, and exclaiming, amazed and bewildered: "tell me, what means all this? and these idle tears, say, what mean they? i will not let thee depart: thou art the betrothed of my hermann." but still the father stood, observing the scene with displeasure, looked on the weeping girl, and said in a tone of vexation: "this then must be the return that i get for all my indulgence, that at the close of the day this most irksome of all things should happen! for there is naught i can tolerate less than womanish weeping, violent outcries, which only involve in disorder and passion, what with a little of sense had been more smoothly adjusted. settle the thing for yourselves: i'm going to bed; i've no patience longer to be a spectator of these your marvelous doings." quickly he turned as he spoke, and hastened to go to the chamber where he was wonted to rest, and his marriage bed was kept standing, but he was held by his son, who said in a tone of entreaty: "father, hasten not from us, and be thou not wroth with the maiden. i, only i, am to blame as the cause of all this confusion, which by his dissimulation our friend unexpectedly heightened. speak, o worthy sir; for to thee my cause i intrusted. heap not up sorrow and anger, but rather let all this be ended; for i could hold thee never again in such high estimation, if thou shouldst show but delight in pain, not superior wisdom." thereupon answered and said the excellent clergyman, smiling: "tell me, what other device could have drawn this charming confession out of the good maiden's lips, and thus have revealed her affection? has not thy trouble been straightway transformed into gladness and rapture? therefore speak up for thyself; what need of the tongue of another?" thereupon hermann came forward, and spoke in these words of affection: "do not repent of thy tears, nor repent of these passing distresses; for they complete my joy, and--may i not hope it--thine also? not to engage the stranger, the excellent maid, as a servant, unto the fountain i came; but to sue for thy love i came thither. only, alas! my timorous look could thy heart's inclination nowise perceive; i read in thine eyes of nothing but kindness, as from the fountain's tranquil mirror thou gavest me greeting. might i but bring thee home, the half of my joy was accomplished. but thou completest it unto me now; oh, blest be thou for it!" then with a deep emotion the maiden gazed on the stripling; neither forbade she embrace and kiss, the summit of rapture, when to a loving pair they come as the longed for assurance, pledge of a lifetime of bliss, that appears to them now never-ending. unto the others, meanwhile, the pastor had made explanation. but with feeling and grace the maid now advanced to the father, bent her before him, and kissing the hand he would fain have withholden, said: "thou wilt surely be just and forgive one so startled as i was, first for my tears of distress, and now for the tears of my gladness. that emotion forgive me, and oh! forgive me this also. for i can scarce comprehend the happiness newly vouchsafed me. yes, let that first vexation of which i, bewildered, was guilty be, too, the last. whatever the maid of affectionate service faithfully promised, shall be to thee now performed by the daughter." straightway then, concealing his tears, the father embraced her, cordially, too, the mother came forward and kissed her with fervor, pressing her hands in her own: the weeping women were silent. thereupon quickly he seized, the good and intelligent pastor, first the father's hand, and the wedding-ring drew from his finger,-- not so easily either: the finger was plump and detained it,-- next took the mother's ring also, and with them betrothed he the children, saying: "these golden circlets once more their office performing firmly a tie shall unite, which in all things shall equal the old one, deeply is this young man imbued with love of the maiden, and, as the maiden confesses, her heart is gone out to him also. [illustration: the betrothal ludwig richter] here do i therefore betroth you and bless for the years that are coming, with the consent of the parents, and having this friend as a witness." then the neighbor saluted at once, and expressed his good wishes; but when the clergyman now the golden circlet was drawing over the maiden's hand, he observed with amazement the other, which had already by hermann been anxiously marked at the fountain. and with a kindly raillery thus thereupon he addressed her: "so, then thy second betrothal is this? let us hope the first bridegroom may not appear at the altar, and so prohibit the marriage." but she, answering, said: "oh, let me to this recollection yet one moment devote; for so much is due the good giver, him who bestowed it at parting, and never came back to his kindred. all that should come he foresaw, when in haste the passion for freedom, when a desire in the newly changed order of things to be working, urged him onward to paris, where chains and death he encountered. 'fare thee well,' were his words; 'i go, for all is in motion now for a time on the earth, and every thing seems to be parting. e'en in the firmest states fundamental laws are dissolving; property falls away from the hand of the ancient possessor; friend is parted from friend; and so parts lover from lover. here i leave thee, and where i shall find thee again, or if ever, who can tell? perhaps these words are our last ones together. man's but a stranger here on the earth, we are told and with reason; and we are each of us now become more of strangers than ever. ours no more is the soil, and our treasures are all of them changing: silver and gold are melting away from their time-honored patterns. all is in motion as though the already-shaped world into chaos meant to resolve itself backward into night, and to shape itself over. mine thou wilt keep thine heart, and should we be ever united over the ruins of earth, it will be as newly made creatures, beings transformed and free, no longer dependent on fortune; for can aught fetter the man who has lived through days such as these are! but if it is not to be, that, these dangers happily over, ever again we be granted the bliss of mutual embraces, oh, then before thy thoughts so keep my hovering image that with unshaken mind thou be ready for good or for evil! should new ties allure thee again, and a new habitation, enter with gratitude into the joys that fate shall prepare thee; love those purely who love thee; be grateful to them who show kindness. but thine uncertain foot should yet be planted but lightly, for there is lurking the twofold pain of a new separation. blessings attend thy life; but value existence no higher than thine other possessions, and all possessions are cheating!' thus spoke the noble youth, and never again i beheld him. meanwhile i lost my all, and a thousand times thought of his warning. here, too, i think of his words, when love is sweetly preparing happiness for me anew, and glorious hopes are reviving. oh, forgive me, excellent friend, that e'en while i hold thee close to my side i tremble! so unto the late-landed sailor seem the most solid foundations of firmest earth to be rocking." thus she spoke, and placed the two rings on her finger together. but her lover replied with a noble and manly emotion: "so much the firmer then, amid these universal convulsions, be, dorothea, our union! we two will hold fast and continue, firmly maintaining ourselves, and the right to our ample possessions. for that man, who, when times are uncertain, is faltering in spirit, only increases the evil, and further and further transmits it; while he refashions the world, who keeps himself steadfastly minded. poorly becomes it the german to give to these fearful excitements aught of continuance, or to be this way and that way inclining. this is our own! let that be our word, and let us maintain it! for to those resolute peoples respect will be ever accorded, who for god and the laws, for parents, women and children, fought and died, as together they stood with their front to the foeman. thou art mine own; and now what is mine, is mine more than ever. not with anxiety will i preserve it, and trembling enjoyment; rather with courage and strength. to-day should the enemy threaten, or in the future, equip me thyself and hand me my weapons. let me but know that under thy care are my house and dear parents, oh! i can then with assurance expose my breast to the foeman. and were but every man minded like me, there would be an upspring might against might, and peace should revisit us all with its gladness." * * * * * introduction to iphigenia in tauris by arthur h. palmer, a.m., ll.d. professor of german language and literature, yale university to what literary genus does goethe's _iphigenia_ belongs? dramatic in form, is it a drama? for a. w. schlegel "an echo of greek song," and for many german critics the best modern reproduction of greek tragedy, it is for others a thoroughly german work in its substitution of profound moral struggles for the older passionate, more external conflicts. schiller said: "it is, however, so astonishingly modern and un-greek, that i cannot understand how it was ever thought to resemble a greek play. it is purely moral; but the sensuous power, the life, the agitation, and everything which specifically belongs to a dramatic work is wanting." he adds, however, that it is a marvelous production which must forever remain the delight and wonderment of mankind. this is the view of g. h. lewes, whose characterization is so apt also in other respects: "a drama it is not; it is a marvelous dramatic poem. the grand and solemn movement responds to the large and simple ideas which it unfolds. it has the calmness of majesty. in the limpid clearness of its language the involved mental processes of the characters are as transparent as the operations of bees within a crystal hive; while a constant strain of high and lofty music makes the reader feel as if in a holy temple. and above all witcheries of detail there is one capital witchery, belonging to greek statues more than to other works of human cunning--the perfect unity of impression produced by the whole, so that nothing in it seems _made_, but all to _grow_; nothing is superfluous, but all is in organic dependence; nothing is there for detached effect, but the whole is effect. the poem fills the mind; beautiful as the separate passages are, admirers seldom think of passages, they think of the wondrous whole." but may we not deepen and spiritualize our conception of the drama and say that in _iphigenia_, goethe created a new dramatic genus, the soul-drama--the first psychological drama of modern literature, the result of ethical and artistic development through two milleniums? surely a greek dramatist of the first rank, come to life again in goethe's age and entering into the heritage of this development, would have modernized both subject and form in the same way. most intimate is the relation of _iphigenia_ to goethe's inner life, and this relation best illumines the spiritual import of the drama. like his _torquato tasso_, it springs entirely from conditions and experiences of the early weimar years and those just preceding. it was conceived and the first prose version written early in ; it received its final metrical form december, --in rome indeed, but it owed to italy only a higher artistic finish. in his autobiography goethe has revealed to us that his works are fragments of a great confession. moods of his pre-weimar storm and stress vibrate in his _iphigenia_--feverish unrest, defiance of conventionality, titanic trust in his individual genius, self-reproach, and remorse for guilt toward those he loved,--friederike and lili. thus feeling his inner conflicts to be like the sufferings of orestes, he wrote in a letter, august, , shortly after returning to frankfurt from his first swiss journey: "perhaps the invisible scourge of the eumenides will soon drive me out again from my fatherland." in november, , goethe went to weimar, and there he found redemption from his unrest and dejection in the friendship of frau von stein. her beneficent influence effected his new-birth into calm self-control and harmony of spirit. on august , , goethe wrote in his diary: "may the idea of purity, extending even to the morsel i take into my mouth, become ever more luminous in me!" if orestes is goethe, iphigenia is frau von stein; and in the personal sense the theme of the drama is the restoration of the poet to spiritual purity by the influence of noble womanhood. but there is a larger, universally human sense. such healing of orestes is typically human; noble womanhood best realizes the ideal of the truly human (_humanität_). in a way that transcends understanding, one pure, strong human personality may by its influence restore moral vigor and bring peace and hope to other souls rent by remorse and sunk in despair. this goethe himself expressed as the central thought of this drama in the lines: alle menschlichen gebrechen sühnet reine menschlichkeit (for each human fault and frailty pure humanity atones). the eighteenth century's conception of "humanity," the ideal of the truly human, found two-fold classic, artistic expression in germany at the same time; in lessing's _nathan the wise_ and in goethe's _iphigenia in tauris_, the former rationalistic, the latter broader, more subtle, mystical. iphigenia in tauris ( )[ ] a drama in five acts translated by anna swanwick like _torquato tasso, iphigenia_ was originally written in prose, and in that form was acted at the weimar court theatre about . goethe himself took the part of orestes. * * * * * dramatis personÆ iphigenia. thoas, _king of the taurians_. orestes. pylades. arkas. * * * * * act i scene i. _a grove before the temple of diana_. iphigenia beneath your leafy gloom, ye waving boughs of this old, shady, consecrated grove, as in the goddess' silent sanctuary, with the same shuddering feeling forth i step, as when i trod it first, nor ever here doth my unquiet spirit feel at home. long as a higher will, to which i bow, hath kept me here conceal'd, still, as at first, i feel myself a stranger. for the sea doth sever me, alas! from those i love, and day by day upon the shore i stand, the land of hellas seeking with my soul; but to my sighs, the hollow-sounding waves bring, save their own hoarse murmurs, no reply. alas for him! who friendless and alone, remote from parents and from brethren dwells; from him grief snatches every coming joy ere it doth reach his lip. his yearning thoughts throng back for ever to his father's halls, where first to him the radiant sun unclosed the gates of heav'n; where closer, day by day, brothers and sisters, leagued in pastime sweet, around each other twin'd love's tender bonds. i will not reckon with the gods; yet truly deserving of lament is woman's lot. man rules alike at home and in the field, nor is in foreign climes without resource; him conquest crowneth, him possession gladdens, and him an honorable death awaits. how circumscrib'd is woman's destiny! obedience to a harsh, imperious lord, her duty, and her comfort; sad her fate, whom hostile fortune drives to lands remote! thus thoas holds me here, a noble man bound with a heavy though a sacred chain. o how it shames me, goddess, to confess that with repugnance i perform these rites for thee, divine protectress! unto whom i would in freedom dedicate my life. in thee, diana, i have always hoped, and still i hope in thee, who didst infold within the holy shelter of thine arm the outcast daughter of the mighty king. daughter of jove! hast thou from ruin'd troy led back in triumph to his native land the mighty man, whom thou didst sore afflict, his daughter's life in sacrifice demanding,-- hast thou for him, the godlike agamemnon, who to thine altar led his darling child, preserv'd his wife, electra, and his son, his dearest treasures?--then at length restore thy suppliant also to her friends and home, and save her, as thou once from death didst save, so now, from living here, a second death. [illustration: iphigenia anselm feuerbach] scene ii iphigenia, arkas arkas the king hath sent me hither, bade me greet with hail, and fair salute, diana's priestess. for new and wondrous conquest, this the day, when to her goddess tauris renders thanks. i hasten on before the king and host, himself to herald, and its near approach. iphigenia we are prepar'd to give them worthy greeting; our goddess doth behold with gracious eye the welcome sacrifice from thoas' hand. arkas would that i also found the priestess' eye, much honor'd, much revered one, found thine eye, o consecrated maid, more calm, more bright, to all a happy omen! still doth grief, with gloom mysterious, shroud thy inner mind; vainly, through many a tedious year we wait for one confiding utterance from thy breast. long as i've known thee in this holy place, that look of thine hath ever made me shudder; and, as with iron bands, thy soul remains lock'd in the deep recesses of thy breast. iphigenia as doth become the exile and the orphan. arkas dost thou then here seem exil'd and an orphan? iphigenia can foreign scenes our fatherland replace? arkas thy fatherland is foreign now to thee. iphigenia hence is it that my bleeding heart ne'er heals. in early youth, when first my soul, in love, held father, mother, brethren fondly twin'd, a group of tender germs, in union sweet, we sprang in beauty from the parent stem, and heavenward grew; alas, a foreign curse then seized and sever'd me from those i loved, and wrench'd with iron grasp the beauteous bands it vanish'd then, the fairest charm of youth, the simple gladness of life's early dawn; though sav'd i was a shadow of myself, and life's fresh joyance blooms in me no more. arkas if thou wilt ever call thyself unblest, i must accuse thee of ingratitude. iphigenia thanks have you ever. arkas not the honest thanks which prompt the heart to offices of love; the joyous glance, revealing to the host a grateful spirit, with its lot content. when thee a deep mysterious destiny brought to this sacred fane, long years ago, to greet thee, as a treasure sent from heaven, with reverence and affection, thoas came. benign and friendly was this shore to thee, to every stranger else with horror fraught, for, till thy coming, none e'er trod our realm but fell, according to an ancient rite, a bloody victim at diana's shrine. iphigenia freely to breathe alone is not to live. say, is it life, within this holy fane, like a poor ghost around its sepulchre to linger out my days? or call you that a life of conscious happiness and joy, when every hour, dream'd listlessly away, still leadeth onward to those gloomy days, which the sad troop of the departed spend in self-forgetfulness on lethe's shore? a useless life is but an early death; this woman's destiny hath still been mine. arkas i can forgive, though i must needs deplore, the noble pride which underrates itself; it robs thee of the happiness of life. but hast thou, since thy coming here, done naught? who hath the monarch's gloomy temper cheered? who hath with gentle eloquence annull'd, from year to year, the usage of our sires, by which, a victim at diana's shrine, each stranger perish'd, thus from certain death sending so oft the rescued captive home? hath not diana, harboring no revenge for this suspension of her bloody rites, in richest measure heard thy gentle prayer? on joyous pinions o'er the advancing host, doth not triumphant conquest proudly soar? and feels not every one a happier lot, since thoas, who so long hath guided us with wisdom and with valor, sway'd by thee. the joy of mild benignity approves, which leads him to relax the rigid claims of mute submission? call thyself useless! thou, when from thy being o'er a thousand hearts, a healing balsam flows? when to a race, to whom a god consign'd thee, thou dost prove a fountain of perpetual happiness, and from this dire inhospitable coast, dost to the stranger grant a safe return? iphigenia the little done doth vanish to the mind, which forward sees how much remains to do. arkas him dost thou praise, who underrates his deeds? iphigenia who weigheth his own deeds is justly blam'd. arkas he too, real worth too proudly who condemns, as who, too vainly, spurious worth o'er-rateth. trust me, and heed the counsel of a man with honest zeal devoted to thy service: when thoas comes to-day to speak with thee, lend to his purposed words a gracious ear. iphigenia thy well-intention'd counsel troubles me: his offer i have ever sought to shun. arkas thy duty and thy interest calmly weigh. sithence king thoas lost his son and heir, among his followers he trusts but few, and trusts those few no more as formerly. with jealous eye he views each noble's son as the successor of his realm, he dreads a solitary, helpless age--perchance sudden rebellion and untimely death. a scythian studies not the rules of speech, and least of all the king. he who is used to act and to command, knows not the art, from far, with subtle tact, to guide discourse through many windings to its destin'd goal. thwart not his purpose by a cold refusal, by an intended misconception. meet, with gracious mien, half-way the royal wish. iphigenia shall i then speed the doom that threatens me? arkas his gracious offer canst thou call a threat? iphigenia 'tis the most terrible of all to me. arkas for his affection grant him confidence. iphigenia if he will first redeem my soul from fear. arkas why dost thou hide from him thy origin? iphigenia a priestess secrecy doth well become. arkas naught to a monarch should a secret be; and, though he doth not seek to fathom thine, his noble nature feels, ay, deeply feels, that thou with care dost hide thyself from him. iphigenia ill-will and anger harbors he against me? arkas almost it seems so. true, he speaks not of thee, but casual words have taught me that the wish thee to possess hath firmly seiz'd his soul; o leave him not a prey unto himself, lest his displeasure, rip'ning in his breast, should work thee woe, so with repentance thou too late my faithful counsel shalt recall. iphigenia how! doth the monarch purpose what no man of noble mind, who loves his honest name, whose bosom reverence for the gods restrains, would ever think of? will he force employ to drag me from the altar to his bed? then will i call the gods, and chiefly thee, diana, goddess resolute, to aid me; thyself a virgin, wilt a virgin shield, and to thy priestess gladly render aid. arkas be tranquil! passion, and youth's fiery blood impel not thoas rashly to commit a deed so lawless. in his present mood, i fear from him another harsh resolve, which (for his soul is steadfast and unmov'd) he then will execute without delay. therefore i pray thee, canst thou grant no more; at least be grateful--give thy confidence. iphigenia oh tell me what is further known to thee. arkas learn it from him. i see the king approach: him thou dost honor, thine own heart enjoins to meet him kindly and with confidence. a man of noble mind may oft be led by woman's gentle word. iphigenia (_alone_) how to observe his faithful counsel see i not in sooth. but willingly the duty i perform of giving thanks for benefits receiv'd, and much i wish that to the king my lips with truth could utter what would please his ear. scene iii iphigenia, thoas iphigenia her royal gifts the goddess shower on thee imparting conquest, wealth, and high renown dominion, and the welfare of thy house, with the fulfilment of each pious wish, that thou, whose sway for multitudes provides, thyself may'st be supreme in happiness! thoas contented were i with my people's praise; my conquests others more than i enjoy. oh! be he king or subject, he's most blest; whose happiness is centred in his home. my deep affliction thou didst share with me what time, in war's encounter, the fell sword tore from my side my last, my dearest son; so long as fierce revenge possessed my heart, i did not feel my dwelling's dreary void; but now, returning home, my rage appeas'd, their kingdom wasted, and my son aveng'd, i find there nothing left to comfort me. the glad obedience i was wont to see kindling in every eye, is smother'd now in discontent and gloom; each, pondering, weighs the changes which a future day may bring, and serves the childless king, because he must. to-day i come within this sacred fane, which i have often enter'd to implore and thank the gods for conquest. in my breast i bear an old and fondly-cherish'd wish, to which methinks thou canst not be a stranger; i hope, a blessing to myself and realm, to lead thee to my dwelling as my bride. iphigenia too great thine offer, king, to one unknown; abash'd the fugitive before thee stands, who on this shore sought only what thou gavest, safety and peace. thoas thus still to shroud thyself from me, as from the lowest, in the veil of mystery which wrapp'd thy coming here, would in no country be deem'd just or right. strangers this shore appall'd; 'twas so ordain'd, alike by law and stern necessity. from thee alone--a kindly welcom'd guest, who hast enjoy'd each hallow'd privilege, and spent thy days in freedom unrestrain'd-- from thee i hop'd that confidence to gain which every faithful host may justly claim. iphigenia if i conceal'd, o king, my name, my race, it was embarrassment, and not mistrust. for didst thou know who stands before thee now, and what accursed head thine arm protects, strange horror would possess thy mighty heart; and, far from wishing me to share thy throne, thou, ere the time appointed, from thy realm wouldst banish me; wouldst thrust me forth, perchance before a glad reunion with my friends and period to my wand'rings is ordain'd, to meet that sorrow, which in every clime, with cold, inhospitable, fearful hand, awaits the outcast, exil'd from his home. thoas whate'er respecting thee the gods decree, whate'er their doom for thee and for thy house, since thou hast dwelt amongst us, and enjoy'd the privilege the pious stranger claims, to me hath fail'd no blessing sent from heaven; and to persuade me, that protecting thee i shield a guilty head, were hard indeed. iphigenia thy bounty, not the guest, draws blessings down. thoas the kindness shown the wicked is not blest. end then thy silence, priestess; not unjust is he who doth demand it. in my hands the goddess placed thee; thou hast been to me as sacred as to her, and her behest shall for the future also be my law: if thou canst hope in safety to return back to thy kindred, i renounce my claims: but is thy homeward path for ever closed-- or doth thy race in hopeless exile rove, or lie extinguish'd by some mighty woe-- then may i claim thee by more laws than one. speak openly, thou know'st i keep my word. iphigenia its ancient bands reluctantly my tongue doth loose, a long hid secret to divulge; for once imparted, it resumes no more the safe asylum of the inmost heart, but thenceforth, as the powers above decree, doth work its ministry of weal or woe. attend! i issue from the titan's race. thoas a word momentous calmly hast thou spoken. him nam'st thou ancestor whom all the world knows as a sometime favorite of the gods? is it that tantalus, whom jove himself drew to his council and his social board? on whose experienc'd words, with wisdom fraught, as on the language of an oracle, e'en gods delighted hung? iphigenia 'tis even he; but the immortal gods with mortal men should not, on equal terms, hold intercourse; for all too feeble is the human race, not to grow dizzy on unwonted heights. ignoble was he not, and no betrayer; to be the thunderer's slave, he was too great; to be his friend and comrade,--but a man. his crime was human, and their doom severe; for poets sing, that treachery and pride did from jove's table hurl him headlong down to grovel in the depths of tartarus. alas, and his whole race must bear their hate. thoas bear they their own guilt, or their ancestor's? iphigenia the titan's mighty breast and nervous frame was his descendants' certain heritage; but round their brow jove forg'd a band of brass. wisdom and patience, prudence and restraint, he from their gloomy, fearful eye conceal'd; in them each passion grew to savage rage, and headlong rush'd with violence uncheck'd. already pelops, tantalus' loved son, mighty of will, obtained his beauteous bride, hippodamia, child of oenomaus, through treachery and murder; she ere long, to glad her consort's heart, bare him two sons, thyest and atreus. they with envy marked the ever-growing love their father bare to his first-born, sprung from another union. hate leagued the pair, and secretly they wrought, in fratricide, the first dread crime. the sire hippodamia held as murderess, with savage rage he claim'd from her his son, and she in terror did destroy herself-- thoas thou'rt silent? pause not in thy narrative; repent not of thy confidence--say on! iphigenia how blest is he who his progenitors with pride remembers, to the listener tells the story of their greatness, of their deeds, and, silently rejoicing, sees himself the latest link of this illustrious chain! for seldom does the selfsame stock produce the monster and the demigod: a line of good or evil ushers in, at last, the glory or the terror of the world.-- after the death of pelops, his two sons rul'd o'er the city with divided sway. but such an union could not long endure. his brother's honor first thyestes wounds. in vengeance atreus drove him from the realm. thyestes, planning horrors, long before had stealthily procur'd his brother's son, whom he in secret nurtur'd as his own. revenge and fury in his breast he pour'd, then to the royal city sent him forth, that in his uncle he might slay his sire. the meditated murder was disclos'd, and by the king most cruelly aveng'd, who slaughter'd as he thought, his brother's son. too late he learn'd whose dying tortures met his drunken gaze; and seeking to assuage the insatiate vengeance that possess'd his soul, he plann'd a deed unheard of. he assum'd a friendly tone, seem'd reconcil'd, appeas'd, and lur'd his brother, with his children twain, back to his kingdom; these he seiz'd and slew; then plac'd the loathsome and abhorrent food at his first meal before the unconscious sire. and when thyestes had his hunger still'd with his own flesh, a sadness seiz'd his soul; he for his children ask'd,--their steps, their voice fancied he heard already at the door; and atreus, grinning with malicious joy, threw in the members of the slaughter'd boys.-- shudd'ring, o king, thou dost avert thy face: so did the sun his radiant visage hide, and swerve his chariot from the eternal path. these, monarch, are thy priestess' ancestors, and many a dreadful fate of mortal doom, and many a deed of the bewilder'd brain, dark night doth cover with her sable wing, or shroud in gloomy twilight. thoas hidden there let them abide. a truce to horror now, and tell me by what miracle thou sprangest from race so savage. iphigenia atreus' eldest son was agamemnon; he, o king, my sire: but i may say with truth, that, from a child, in him the model of a perfect man i witness'd ever. clytemnestra bore to him, myself, the firstling of their love, electra then. peaceful the monarch rul'd, and to the house of tantalus was given a long-withheld repose. a son alone was wanting to complete my parents' bliss; scarce was this wish fulfill'd, and young orestes, the household's darling, with his sisters grew, when new misfortunes vex'd our ancient house. to you hath come the rumor of the war, which, to avenge the fairest woman's wrongs, the force united of the grecian kings round ilion's walls encamp'd. whether the town was humbled, and achieved their great revenge, i have not heard. my father led the host. in aulis vainly for a favoring gale they waited; for, enrag'd against their chief, diana stay'd their progress, and requir'd, through chalcas' voice, the monarch's eldest daughter. they lured me with my mother to the camp, they dragged me to the altar, and this head there to the goddess doomed.--she was appeased; she did not wish my blood, and shrouded me in a protecting cloud; within this temple i first awakened from the dream of death; yes, i myself am she, iphigenia, grandchild of atreus, agamemnon's child, diana's priestess, i who speak with thee. thoas i yield no higher honor or regard to the king's daughter than the maid unknown; once more my first proposal i repeat; come follow me, and share what i possess. iphigenia how dare i venture such a step, o king? hath not the goddess who protected me alone a right to my devoted head? 'twas she who chose for me this sanctuary, where she perchance reserves me for my sire, by my apparent death enough chastis'd. to be the joy and solace of his age. perchance my glad return is near; and how, if i, unmindful of her purposes, had here attach'd myself against her will? i ask'd a signal, did she wish my stay. thoas the signal is that still thou tarriest here. seek not evasively such vain pretexts. not many words are needed to refuse, the _no_ alone is heard by the refused. iphigenia mine are not words meant only to deceive; i have to thee my inmost heart reveal'd. and doth no inward voice suggest to thee, how i with yearning soul must pine to see my father, mother, and my long-lost home? oh let thy vessels bear me thither, king? that in the ancient halls, where sorrow still in accents low doth fondly breathe my name, joy, as in welcome of a new-born child, may round the columns twine the fairest wreath. new life thou wouldst to me and mine impart. thoas then go! obey the promptings of thy heart; and to the voice of reason and good counsel, close thou thine ear. be quite the woman, give to every wish the rein, that brideless may seize on thee, and whirl thee here and there. when burns the fire of passion in her breast, no sacred tie withholds her from the wretch who would allure her to forsake for him a husband's or a father's guardian arms; extinct within her heart its fiery glow, the golden tongue of eloquence in vain with words of truth and power assails her ear. iphigenia remember now, o king, thy noble words! my trust and candor wilt thou thus repay? thou seem'st, methinks, prepar'd to hear the truth. thoas for this unlook'd-for answer not prepar'd. yet 'twas to be expected; knew i not that with a woman i had now to deal? iphigenia upbraid not thus, o king, our feeble sex! though not in dignity to match with yours, the weapons woman wields are not ignoble. and trust me, thoas, in thy happiness i have a deeper insight than thyself. thou thinkest, ignorant alike of both, a closer union would augment our bliss; inspir'd with confidence and honest zeal thou strongly urgest me to yield consent; and here i thank the gods, who give me strength to shun a doom unratified by them. thoas 'tis not a god, 'tis thine own heart that speaks. iphigenia 'tis through the heart alone they speak to us. thoas to hear them have i not an equal right? iphigenia the raging tempest drowns the still small voice. thoas this voice no doubt the priestess hears alone. iphigenia before all others should the prince attend it. thoas thy sacred office, and ancestral right to jove's own table, place thee with the gods in closer union than an earth-born savage. iphigenia thus must i now the confidence atone thyself didst wring from me! thoas i am a man. and better 'tis we end this conference. hear then my last resolve. be priestess still of the great goddess who selected thee; and may she pardon me, that i from her, unjustly and with secret self-reproach, her ancient sacrifice so long withheld. from olden time no stranger near'd our shore but fell a victim at her sacred shrine. but thou, with kind affection (which at times seem'd like a gentle daughter's tender love, at times assum'd to my enraptur'd heart the modest inclination of a bride), didst so inthral me, as with magic bowls, that i forgot my duty. thou didst rock my senses in a dream: i did not hear my people's murmurs: now they cry aloud, ascribing my poor son's untimely death to this my guilt. no longer for thy sake will i oppose the wishes of the crowd, who urgently demand the sacrifice. iphigenia for mine own sake i ne'er desired it from thee. who to the gods ascribe a thirst for blood do misconceive their nature, and impute to them their own inhuman dark desires. did not diana snatch me from the priest, holding my service dearer than my death? thoas 'tis not for us, on reason's shifting grounds, lightly to guide and construe rites divine. perform thy duty; i'll accomplish mine. two strangers, whom in caverns of the shore we found conceal'd, and whose arrival here bodes to my realm no good, are in my power. with them thy goddess may once more resume her ancient, pious, long-suspended rites! i send them here,--thy duty not unknown. [_exit_.] iphigenia (_alone_) gracious protectress! thou hast clouds to shelter innocence distress'd, and from the arms of iron fate, gently to waft her o'er the sea, o'er the wide earth's remotest realms, where'er it seemeth good to thee. wise art thou,--thine all-seeing eye the future and the past surveys; thy glance doth o'er thy children rest, e'en as thy light, the life of night, keeps o'er the earth its silent watch. o goddess! keep my hands from blood! blessing it never brings, and peace; and still in evil hours the form of the chance-murder'd man appears to fill the unwilling murderer's soul with horrible and gloomy fears. for fondly the immortals view man's widely scatter'd simple race; and the poor mortal's transient life gladly prolong, that he may lift awhile to their eternal heavens his sympathetic joyous gaze. act ii scene i orestes, pylades orestes it is the path of death that now we tread at every step my soul grows more serene. when i implor'd apollo to remove the grisly band of furies from my side, he seem'd, with hope-inspiring, godlike words, to promise aid and safety in the fane of his lov'd sister, who o'er tauris rules. thus the prophetic word fulfils itself, that with my life shall terminate my woe. how easy 'tis for me, whose heart is crush'd, whose sense is deaden'd by a hand divine, thus to renounce the beauteous light of day! and must the son of atreus not entwine the wreath of conquest round his dying brow-- must i, as my forefathers, as my sire, bleed like a victim,--an ignoble death-- so be it! better at the altar here, than in a nook obscure, where kindred hands have spread assassination's wily net. yield me this brief repose, infernal powers! ye, who, like loosen'd hounds, still scent the blood which, trickling from my feet, betrays my path. leave me! ere long i come to you below. nor you, nor i, should view the light of day. the soft green carpet of the beauteous earth is no arena for unhallow'd fiends. below i seek you, where an equal fate binds all in murky, never-ending night. thee only, thee, my pylades, my friend, the guiltless partner of my crime and curse, thee am i loath, before thy time, to take to yonder cheerless shore! thy life or death alone awakens in me hope or fear. pylades like thee, orestes, i am not prepared downwards to wander to yon realm of shade. i purpose still, through the entangled paths, which seem as they would lead to blackest night, again to wind our upward way to life. of death i think not; i observe and mark whether the gods may not perchance present means and fit moment for a joyful flight. dreaded or not, the stroke of death must come; and though the priestess stood with hand uprais'd, prepar'd to cut our consecrated locks, our safety still should be my only thought; uplift thy soul above this weak despair; desponding doubts but hasten on our peril. apollo pledg'd to us his sacred word, that in his sister's holy fane for thee were comfort, aid, and glad return prepar'd. the words of heaven are not equivocal, as in despair the poor oppress'd one thinks. orestes the mystic web of life my mother cast around my infant head, and so i grew an image of my sire; and my mute look was aye a bitter and a keen reproof to her and base Ægisthus. oh, how oft, when silently within our gloomy hall electra sat, and mus'd beside the fire, have i with anguish'd spirit climb'd her knee, and watch'd her bitter tears with sad amaze! then would she tell me of our noble sire how much i long'd to see him--be with him! myself at troy one moment fondly wish'd, my sire's return, the next. the day arrived-- pylades oh, of that awful hour let fiends of hell hold nightly converse! of a time more fair may the remembrance animate our hearts to fresh heroic deeds. the gods require on this wide earth the service of the good, to work their pleasure. still they count on thee; for in thy father's train they sent thee not, when he to orcus went unwilling down. orestes would i had seized the border of his robe, and followed him! pylades they kindly cared for me who held thee here; for hadst thou ceased to live, i know not what had then become of me; since i with thee, and for thy sake alone, have from my childhood liv'd, and wish to live. orestes remind me not of those delightsome days, when me thy home a safe asylum gave; with fond solicitude thy noble sire the half-nipp'd, tender flow'ret gently rear'd: while thou, a friend and playmate always gay, like to a light and brilliant butterfly around a dusky flower, didst day by day around me with new life thy gambols urge, and breathe thy joyous spirit in my soul, until, my cares forgetting, i with thee was lur'd to snatch the eager joys of youth. pylades my very life began when thee i lov'd. orestes say, then thy woes began, and thou speak'st truly. this is the sharpest sorrow of my lot, that, like a plague-infected wretch, i bear death and destruction hid within my breast; that, where i tread, e'en on the healthiest spot, ere long the blooming faces round betray the anguish'd features of a ling'ring death. pylades were thy breath venom, i had been the first to die, that death, orestes. am i not, as ever, full of courage and of joy? and love and courage are the spirit's wings wafting to noble actions. orestes noble actions? time was, when fancy painted such before us! when oft, the game pursuing, on we roam'd o'er hill and valley; hoping that ere long, like our great ancestors in heart and hand, with club and weapon arm'd, we so might track the robber to his den, or monster huge. and then at twilight, by the boundless sea, peaceful we sat, reclin'd against each other, the waves came dancing to our very feet, and all before us lay the wide, wide world; then on a sudden one would seize his sword, and future deeds shone round us like the stars, which gemm'd in countless throngs the vault of night. pylades endless, my friend, the projects which the soul burns to accomplish. we would every deed at once perform as grandly as it shows after long ages, when from land to land the poet's swelling song hath roll'd it on. it sounds so lovely what our fathers did, when, in the silent evening shade reclin'd, we drink it in with music's melting tones; and what we do is, as their deeds to them, toilsome and incomplete! thus we pursue what always flies before; we disregard the path in which we tread, scarce see around the footsteps of our sires, or heed the trace of their career on earth. we ever hasten on to chase their shades, which, godlike, at a distance far remote, on golden clouds, the mountain summits crown. the man i prize not who esteems himself just as the people's breath may chance to raise him. but thou, orestes, to the gods give thanks. that they through thee have early done so much. orestes when they ordain a man to noble deeds, to shield from dire calamity his friends, extend his empire, or protect its bounds, or put to flight its ancient enemies, let him be grateful! for to him a god imparts the first, the sweetest joy of life. me have they doom'd to be a slaughterer, to be an honor'd mother's murderer, and shamefully a deed of shame avenging, me through their own decree they have o'erwhelm'd. trust me, the race of tantalus is doom'd; and i, his last descendant, may not perish, or crown'd with honor or unstain'd by crime. pylades the gods avenge not on the son the deeds done by the father. each, or good or bad, of his own actions reaps the due reward. the parents' blessing, not their curse, descends. orestes methinks their blessing did not lead us here. pylades it was at least the mighty gods' decree. orestes then is it their decree which doth destroy us. pylades perform what they command, and wait the event. do thou apollo's sister bear from hence, that they at delphi may united dwell, there by a noble-thoughted race revered, thee, for this deed, the lofty pair will view with gracious eye, and from the hateful grasp of the infernal powers will rescue thee. e'en now none dares intrude within this grove. orestes so shall i die at least a peaceful death. pylades far other are my thoughts, and not unskill'd have i the future and the past combin'd in quiet meditation. long, perchance, hath ripen'd in the counsel of the gods the great event. diana yearns to leave the savage coast of these barbarians, foul with their sacrifice of human blood. we were selected for the high emprize; to us it is assign'd, and strangely thus we are conducted to the threshold here. orestes my friend, with wondrous skill thou link'st thy wish with the predestin'd purpose of the gods. pylades of what avail is prudence, if it fail heedful to mark the purposes of heaven! a noble man, who much hath sinn'd, some god doth summon to a dangerous enterprize, which to achieve appears impossible. the hero conquers, and atoning serves mortals and gods, who thenceforth honor him. orestes am i foredoom'd to action and to life, would that a god from my distemper'd brain might chase this dizzy fever, which impels my restless steps along a slipp'ry path. stain'd with a mother's blood, to direful death; and pitying, dry the fountain, whence the blood, for ever spouting from a mother's wounds, eternally defiles me! pylades wait in peace! thou dost increase the evil, and dost take the office of the furies on thyself. let me contrive,--be still! and when at length the time for action claims our powers combin'd, then will i summon thee, and on we'll stride, with cautious boldness to achieve the event. orestes i hear ulysses speak. pylades nay, mock me not. each must select the hero after whom to climb the steep and difficult ascent of high olympus. and to me it seems that him nor stratagem nor art defiles who consecrates himself to noble deeds. orestes i most esteem the brave and upright man. pylades and therefore have i not desir'd thy counsel. one step's already taken. from our guards e'en now i this intelligence have gained. a strange and godlike woman holds in check the execution of that bloody law incense, and prayer, and an unsullied heart, these are the gifts she offers to the gods. rumor extols her highly, it is thought that from the race of amazon she springs, and hither fled some great calamity. orestes her gentle sway, it seems, lost all its power when hither came the culprit, whom the curse, like murky night, envelops and pursues. our doom to seal, the pious thirst for blood the ancient cruel rite again unchains the monarch's savage will decrees our death; a woman cannot save when he condemns. pylades that 'tis a woman, is a ground for hope! a man, the very best, with cruelty at length may so familiarize his mind, his character through custom so transform, that he shall come to make himself a law of what at first his very soul abhorr'd. but woman doth retain the stamp of mind she first assum'd. on her we may depend in good or evil with more certainty. she comes; leave us alone. i dare not tell at once our names, nor unreserv'd confide our fortunes to her. now retire awhile, and ere she speaks with thee we'll meet again. scene ii iphigenia, pylades iphigenia whence art thou? stranger, speak! to me thy bearing stamps thee of grecian, not of scythian race. [_she unbinds his chains_.] the freedom that i give is dangerous; the gods avert the doom that threatens you! pylades delicious music! dearly welcome tones of our own language in a foreign land with joy my captive eye once more beholds the azure mountains of my native coast. oh, let this joy that i, too, am a greek convince thee, priestess! how i need thine aid, a moment i forget, my spirit rapt in contemplation of so fair a vision. if fate's dread mandate doth not seal thy lips, from which of our illustrious races say, dost thou thy godlike origin derive? iphigenia the priestess whom the goddess hath herself selected and ordained, doth speak with thee. let that suffice: but tell me, who art thou, and what unbless'd o'erruling destiny hath hither led thee with thy friend? pylades the woe, whose hateful presence ever dogs our steps, i can with ease relate. oh, would that thou couldst with like ease, divine one, shed on us one ray of cheering hope! we are from crete, adrastus' sons, and i, the youngest born, named cephalus; my eldest brother, he, laodamas. between us stood a youth savage and wild, who severed e'en in sport the joy and concord of our early youth. long as our father led his powers at troy, passive our mother's mandate we obey'd; but when, enrich'd with booty, he return'd, and shortly after died, a contest fierce both for the kingdom and their father's wealth, his children parted. i the eldest joined; he slew our brother; and the furies hence for kindred murder dog his restless steps. but to this savage shore the delphian god hath sent us, cheer'd by hope. he bade us wait within his sister's consecrated fane the blessed hand of aid. captives we are, and, hither brought, before thee now we stand ordain'd for sacrifice. my tale is told. iphigenia fell troy! dear man, assure me of its fall. pylades prostrate it lies. o unto us ensure deliverance. the promised aid of heaven more swiftly bring. take pity on my brother. o say to him a kind, a gracious word; but spare him when thou speakest, earnestly this i implore: for all too easily through joy and sorrow and through memory torn and distracted is his inmost being. a feverish madness oft doth seize on him, yielding his spirit, beautiful and free, a prey to furies. iphigenia great as is thy woe, forget it, i conjure thee, for a while, till i am satisfied. pylades the stately town, which ten long years withstood the grecian host, now lies in ruins, ne'er to rise again; yet many a hero's grave will oft recall our sad remembrance to that barbarous shore. there lies achilles and his noble friend. iphigenia so are ye godlike forms reduc'd to dust! pylades nor palamede, nor ajax, ere again the daylight of their native land beheld. iphigenia he speaks not of my father, doth not name him with the fallen. he may yet survive! i may behold him! still hope on, fond heart! pylades yet happy are the thousands who receiv'd their bitter death-blow from a hostile hand! for terror wild, and end most tragical. some hostile, angry deity prepar'd, instead of triumph, for the home-returning. do human voices never reach this shore? far as their sound extends, they bear the fame of deeds unparallel'd. and is the woe which fills mycene's halls with ceaseless sighs to thee a secret still?--and know'st thou not that clytemnestra, with Ægisthus' aid, her royal consort artfully ensnar'd, and murder'd on the day of his return?-- the monarch's house thou honorest! i perceive. thy breast with tidings vainly doth contend fraught with such monstrous and unlook'd for woe. art thou the daughter of a friend? art born within the circuit of mycene's walls? conceal it not, nor call me to account that here the horrid crime i first announce. iphigenia proceed, and tell me how the deed was done. pylades the day of his return, as from the bath arose the monarch, tranquil and refresh'd, his robe demanding from his consort's hand, a tangled garment, complicate with folds, she o'er his shoulders flung and noble head; and when, as from a net, he vainly strove to extricate himself, the traitor, base Ægisthus, smote him, and envelop'd thus great agamemnon sought the shades below. iphigenia and what reward receiv'd the base accomplice? pylades a queen and kingdom he possess'd already. iphigenia base passion prompted then the deed of shame? pylades and feelings, cherish'd long, of deep revenge. iphigenia how had the monarch injured clytemnestra? pylades by such a dreadful deed, that if on earth aught could exculpate murder, it were this. to aulis he allur'd her, when the fleet with unpropitious winds the goddess stay'd; and there, a victim at diana's shrine, the monarch, for the welfare of the greeks, her eldest daughter doomed, iphigenia. and this, so rumor saith, within her heart planted such deep abhorrence that forthwith she to Ægisthus hath resigned herself, and round her husband flung the web of death. iphigenia (_veiling herself_) it is enough! thou wilt again behold me. pylades (_alone_) the fortune of this royal house, it seems, doth move her deeply. whosoe'er she be, she must herself have known the monarch well;-- for our good fortune, from a noble house, she hath been sold to bondage. peace, my heart! and let us steer our course with prudent zeal toward the star of hope which gleams upon us. act iii scene i iphigenia, orestes iphigenia unhappy man, i only loose thy bonds in token of a still severer doom. the freedom which the sanctuary imparts, like the last life-gleam o'er the dying face, but heralds death. i cannot, dare not, say your doom is hopeless; for, with murderous hand, could i inflict the fatal blow myself? and while i here am priestess of diana, none, be he who he may, dare touch your heads. but the incensed king, should i refuse compliance with the rites himself enjoin'd, will choose another virgin from my train as my successor. then, alas! with naught, save ardent wishes, can i succor you. much honored countrymen! the humblest slave, who had but near'd our sacred household hearth, is dearly welcome in a foreign land; how with proportion'd joy and blessing, then, shall i receive the man who doth recall the image of the heroes, whom i learn'd to honor from my parents, and who cheers my inmost heart with flatt'ring gleams of hope! orestes does prudent forethought prompt thee to conceal thy name and race? or may i hope to know who, like a heavenly vision, meets me thus? iphigenia yes, thou shalt know me. now conclude the tale of which thy brother only told me half relate their end, who coming home from troy, on their own threshold met a doom severe and most unlook'd for. young i was in sooth when first conducted to this foreign shore, yet well i recollect the timid glance of wonder and amazement which i cast on those heroic forms. when they went forth it seem'd as though olympus had sent down the glorious figures of a bygone world, to frighten ilion; and above them all, great agamemnon tower'd preeminent! oh, tell me! fell the hero in his home, through clytemnestra's and Ægisthus' wiles? orestes he fell! iphigenia unblest mycene! thus the sons of tantalus, with barbarous hands, have sown curse upon curse; and, as the shaken weed scatters around a thousand poison-seeds, so they assassins ceaseless generate, their children's children ruthless to destroy.-- now tell the remnant of thy brother's tale, which horror darkly hid from me before. how did the last descendant of the race,-- the gentle child, to whom the gods assign'd the office of avenger,--how did he escape that day of blood? did equal fate around orestes throw avernus' net say, was he saved? and is he still alive? and lives electra, too? orestes they both survive. iphigenia golden apollo, lend thy choicest beams! lay them an offering at the throne of jove! for i am poor and dumb. orestes if social bonds or ties more close connect thee with this house, as this thy rapturous joy betrayeth to me, o then rein in thy heart and hold it fast! for insupportable the sudden plunge from happiness to sorrow's gloomy depth. thou knowest only agamemnon's death. iphigenia and is not this intelligence enough? orestes half of the horror only hast thou heard. iphigenia what should i fear'? orestes, electra lives. orestes and fearest thou for clytemnestra naught? iphigenia her, neither hope nor fear have power to save. orestes she to the land of hope hath bid farewell. iphigenia did her repentant hand shed her own blood? orestes not so; yet her own blood inflicted death. iphigenia more plainly speak, nor leave me in suspense. uncertainty around my anxious head her dusky, thousand-folded pinion waves. orestes have then the powers above selected me to be the herald of a dreadful deed, which in the drear and soundless realms of night i fain would hide for ever? 'gainst my will thy gentle voice constrains me; it demands, and shall receive, a tale of direst woe. electra, on the day when fell her sire, her brother from impending doom conceal'd; him strophius, his father's relative, receiv'd with kindest care, and rear'd him up with his own son, named pylades, who soon around the stranger twin'd love's fairest bonds. and as they grew, within their inmost souls there sprang the burning longing to revenge the monarch's death. unlook'd for, and disguis'd, they reach mycene, feigning to have brought the mournful tidings of orestes' death, together with his ashes. them the queen gladly receives. within the house they enter; orestes to electra shows himself: she fans the fires of vengeance into flame, which in the sacred presence of a mother had burn'd more dimly. silently she leads her brother to the spot where fell their sire; where lurid blood-marks, on the oft-wash'd floor, with pallid streaks, anticipate revenge. with fiery eloquence she pictured forth each circumstance of that atrocious deed, her own oppress'd and miserable life, the prosperous traitor's insolent demeanor, the perils threat'ning agamemnon's race from her who had become their stepmother, then in his hand the ancient dagger thrust, which often in the house of tantalus with savage fury rag'd,--and by her son was clytemnestra slain. iphigenia immortal powers! whose pure and blest existence glides away 'mid ever shifting clouds, me have ye kept so many years secluded from the world, retain'd me near yourselves, consign'd to me the childlike task to feed the sacred fire, and taught my spirit, like the hallow'd flame, with never-clouded brightness to aspire to your pure mansions,--but at length to feel with keener woe the horror of my house? o tell me of the poor unfortunate! speak of orestes! orestes o could i speak to tell thee of his death! forth from the slain one's spouting blood arose his mother's ghost; and to the ancient daughters of the night cries,--"let him not escape,--the matricide! pursue the victim, dedicate to you!" they hear, and glare around with hollow eyes, like greedy eagles. in their murky dens they stir themselves, and from the corners creep their comrades, dire remorse and pallid fear; before them fumes a mist of acheron; perplexingly around the murderer's brow the eternal contemplation of the past rolls in its cloudy circles. once again the grisly band, commission'd to destroy, pollute earth's beautiful and heaven-sown fields, from which an ancient curse had banish'd them. their rapid feet the fugitive pursue; they only pause to start a wilder fear. iphigenia unhappy one; thy lot resembles his, thou feel'st what he, poor fugitive, must suffer. orestes what say'st thou? why presume my fate like his? iphigenia a brother's murder weighs upon thy soul; thy younger brother told the mournful tale. orestes i cannot suffer that thy noble soul should by a word of falsehood be deceived. in cunning rich and practised in deceit a web ensnaring let the stranger weave to snare the stranger's feet; between us twain be truth! i am orestes! and this guilty head is stooping to the tomb, and covets death; it will be welcome now in any shape. whoe'er thou art, for thee and for my friend i wish deliverance--i desire it not. thou seem'st to linger here against thy will; contrive some means of flight, and leave me here my lifeless corpse hurl'd headlong from the rock, my blood shall mingle with the dashing waves, and bring a curse upon this barbarous shore! return together home to lovely greece, with joy a new existence to commence. [orestes _retires_.] iphigenia at length fulfilment, fairest child of jove, thou dost descend upon me from on high! how vast thine image! scarce my straining eye can reach thy hands, which, fill'd with golden fruit and wreaths of blessing, from olympus' height shower treasures down. as by his bounteous gifts we recognize the monarch (for what seems to thousands opulence, is naught to him), so you, ye heavenly powers, are also known by bounty long withheld, and wisely plann'd. ye only know what things are good for us; ye view the future's wide-extended realm, while from our eye a dim or starry veil the prospect shrouds. calmly ye hear our prayers, when we like children sue for greater speed. not immature ye pluck heaven's golden fruit; and woe to him, who with impatient hand, his date of joy forestalling, gathers death. let not this long-awaited happiness, which yet my heart hath scarcely realiz'd, like to the shadow of departed friends, glide vainly by with triple sorrow fraught! orestes (_returning_) dost thou for pylades and for thyself implore the gods, blend not my name with yours; thou wilt not save the wretch whom thou wouldst join, but will participate his curse and woe. iphigenia my destiny is firmly bound to thine. orestes no; say not so: alone and unattended let me descend to hades. though thou shouldst in thine own veil enwrap the guilty one, thou couldst not shroud him from his wakeful foes; and e'en thy sacred presence, heavenly maid, but driveth them aside and scares them not. with brazen, impious feet they dare not tread within the precincts of this sacred grove yet in the distance, ever and anon, i hear their horrid laughter, like the howl of famish'd wolves, beneath the tree wherein the traveler hides. without, encamp'd they lie, and should i quit this consecrated grove, shaking their serpent locks, they would arise, and, raising clouds of dust on every side, ceaseless pursue their miserable prey. iphigenia orestes, canst thou hear a friendly word orestes reserve it for one favor'd by the gods. iphigenia to thee they give anew the light of hope. orestes through clouds and smoke i see the feeble gleam of the death-stream which lights me down to hell. iphigenia hast thou one sister only, thy electra? orestes i knew but one: yet her kind destiny, which seemed to us so terrible, betimes removed an elder sister from the woe which o'er the house of pelops aye impends. o cease thy questions, nor thus league thyself with the erinnys; still they blow away, with fiendish joy, the ashes from my soul, lest the last embers of the fiery brand the fatal heritage of pelops' house, should there be quenched. must then the fire for aye, deliberately kindled and supplied with hellish sulphur, sear my tortured soul! iphigenia i scatter fragrant incense in the flame. o let the pure, the gentle breath of love, low murmuring, cool thy bosom's fiery glow. orestes, fondly lov'd,--canst thou not hear me? hath the terrific furies' grisly band dried up the blood of life within thy veins? creeps there, as from the gorgon's direful head, a petrifying charm through all thy limbs? with hollow accents from a mother's blood, if voices call thee to the shades below, may not a sister's word with blessing rife call from olympus' height help-rendering gods? orestes she calls! she calls!--dost thou desire my doom? is there a fury shrouded in thy form? who art thou, that thy voice thus horribly can harrow up my bosom's inmost depths! iphigenia thine inmost heart reveals it. i am she,-- iphigenia,--look on me, orestes! orestes thou! iphigenia my own brother! orestes hence, away, begone! i counsel thee, touch not these fatal locks! as from creusa's bridal robe, from me an inextinguishable fire is kindled. leave me! like hercules, a death of shame, unworthy wretch, locked in myself, i'll die! iphigenia thou shalt not perish! would that i might hear one quiet word from thee! dispel my doubts, make sure the bliss i have implored so long. a wheel of joy and sorrow in my heart, ceaseless revolves. i from a man unknown with horror turn; but with resistless might my inmost heart impels me to my brother. orestes is this lyæus' temple? doth the glow of holy rage unbridled thus possess the sacred priestess? iphigenia hear me, oh, look up! see how my heart, which hath been closed so long doth open to the bliss of seeing thee, the dearest treasure that the world contains,-- of falling on thy neck, and folding thee within my longing arms, which have till now met the embraces of the empty wind. do not repulse me,--the eternal spring, whose crystal waters from parnassus flow, bounds not more gaily on from rock to rock, down to the golden vale, than from my heart the waters of affection freely gush, and round me form a circling sea of bliss. orestes! o my brother! orestes lovely nymph! nor thy caresses, nor thyself i trust; diana claims attendants more severe, and doth avenge her desecrated fane. remove thy circling arm! wilt thou indeed safety and love upon a youth bestow, and fondly tender him earth's fairest joy unto my friend, more worthy than myself, impart thy favors; 'mong yon rocks he roves. go, seek him; guide him hence, and heed not me. iphigenia brother, command thyself, and better know thy sister, newly found! misconstrue not her pure and heavenly rapture, blaming it as lustful heat unbridled. o ye gods, remove delusion from his rigid gaze, lest that this moment, fraught with bliss supreme, should make us trebly wretched! she is here, thine own, thy long-lost sister! from the altar the goddess rescued me, and placed me here, secure within her consecrated fane-- a captive thou, prepared for sacrifice, and findest here a sister in the priestess. orestes unblessèd one! so may the radiant sun the final horror of our house behold! is not electra here? that she with us may also perish, nor her life prolong for heavier destiny and direr woe. 'tis well,--i follow, priestess! fratricide is an old custom of our ancient house; and you, ye gods, i thank, that ye resolve childless to root me hence. thee let me counsel to view too fondly neither sun nor stars. come, follow to the gloomy realms below! as dragons, gender'd in the sulphur pool, swallow each other with voracious rage, so our accursed race destroys itself. childless and guiltless come below with me! there's pity in thy look! oh, gaze not so,-- 'twas with such looks that clytemnestra sought an entrance to her son orestes' heart, and yet his uprais'd arm her bosom pierc'd. his mother fell!--appear, indignant shade! within the circle step, ye fiends of hell, be present at the welcome spectacle, the last, most horrible that ye prepare! nor hate, nor vengeance whets the poniard now; a loving sister is constrain'd to deal the fatal blow. weep not! thou hast no guilt. from earliest infancy i naught have lov'd, as thee i could have lov'd, my sister. come, the weapon raise, spare not, this bosom rend, and make an outlet for its boiling streams! [_he sinks exhausted_.] iphigenia alone i cannot bear this bliss and woe. where art thou, pylades? thine aid i need. [iphigenia _retires_.] scene ii orestes (_recovering from his swoon and standing up_) give yet another! reach from lethe's stream the last reviving draught of cool refreshment! soon shall its waters in my bosom still life's fitful fever; and my spirit then adown oblivion's stream shall glide to you, ye spirits shrouded in eternal mist. with tranquil pleasure in your deep repose a weary son of earth may lave his soul!-- what whisp'ring sounds pervade the dreary grove? what hollow murmurs haunt its twilight gloom?-- they gather round to view the stranger guest! who are you troop in high communion met, like an assembled family of princes? they mingle peacefully, of every age, of either sex; godlike, of kindred mould, appear the gliding figures. yes, 'tis they, the fathers of my race! with atreus, in friendly converse glides thyestes' shade, and children playfully around them sport. is there no enmity among you now? and is revenge extinguish'd with the sun so am i also welcome, and may hope to mingle in your solemn company. welcome, my sires! orestes bids you hail! the seed that ye have sow'd, that hath he reap'd. laden with curses he descends to you. but burdens here are lighter far to bear. receive him, oh, receive him in your circle! thee, atreus, i revere, and thee, thyestes here all are free from enmity and hate.-- show me my father, whom i only once in life beheld.--art thou my father, thou, my mother leading thus familiarly? dares clytemnestra reach her hand to thee then may orestes also draw near her, and say, behold thy son!--my ancestors, behold your son, and bid him welcome here. among the sons of ancient tantalus, a kind salute on earth was murder's watchword, and all their joys commence beyond the grave. ye welcome me! ye bid me join your circle! oh, lead me to my honor'd ancestor! where is our aged sire? let me behold the dear, the venerable head of him who with the immortal gods in council sat. ye seem to shudder and to turn away! what may this mean? suffers the godlike man? alas! the mighty gods, with ruthless hate, to his heroic breast, with brazen chains, have cruel pangs indissolubly bound. scene iii orestes, iphigenia, pylades orestes how! are ye come already here below? welcome, my sister! still electra fails; o that some kindly god, with gentle arrow, her too, full speedily, would downward send! thee, hapless friend, i must compassionate! come with me! come! to pluto's gloomy throne, there to salute our hosts like stranger guests. iphigenia celestial pair, who from the realms above by night and day shed down the beauteous light to cheer mankind, but who may not illume departed spirits, save a mortal pair! a brother's and a sister's anguish pity! for thou, diana, lov'st thy gentle brother beyond what earth and heaven can offer thee; and dost, with quiet yearning, ever turn thy virgin face to his eternal light. [illustration: meeting of orestes and pylades] let not my only brother, found so late, rave in the darkness of insanity! and is thy will, when 'thou didst here conceal me, at length fulfill'd,--wouldst thou to me through him to him through me, thy gracious aid extend,-- oh, free him from the fetters of this curse, lest vainly pass the precious hours of safety. pylades dost thou not know us, and this sacred grove, and this blest light, which shines not on the dead? dost thou not feel thy sister and thy friend, who hold thee living in their firm embrace? us firmly grasp; we are not empty shades. mark well my words! collect thy scatter'd thoughts! attend! each moment is of priceless worth, and our return hangs on a slender thread, which, as it seems, some gracious fate doth spin. orestes (_to_ iphigenia) my sister, let me for the first time taste, with open hearts pure joy within thine arms! ye gods, who charge the heavy clouds with dread, and sternly gracious send the long-sought rain with thunder and the rush of mighty winds, a horrid deluge on the trembling earth; yet dissipate at length man's dread suspense, exchanging timid wonder's anxious gaze for grateful looks and joyous songs of praise, when in each sparkling drop which gems the leaves, apollo, thousand-fold, reflects his beam, and iris colors with a magic hand the dusty texture of the parting clouds; oh, let me also in my sister's arms, and on the bosom of my friend, enjoy with grateful thanks the bliss ye now bestow; my heart assures me that your curses cease. the dread eumenides at length retire, the brazen gates of tartarus i hear behind them closing with a thunderous clang. a quick'ning odor from the earth ascends, inviting me to chase, upon its plains, the joys of life and deeds of high emprize. pylades lose not the moments which are limited! the favoring gale, which swells our parting sail, must to olympus waft our perfect joy. quick counsel and resolve the time demands. act iv scene i iphigenia when the powers on high decree for a feeble child of earth dire perplexity and woe, and his spirit doom to pass with tumult wild from joy to grief, and back again from grief to joy, in fearful alternation; they in mercy then provide, in the precincts of his home, or upon the distant shore, that to him may never fail ready help in hours of need, a tranquil, faithful friend. oh, bless, ye heavenly powers, our pylades, and whatsoever he may undertake! he is in fight the vigorous arm of youth, and his the thoughtful eye of age in counsel; for tranquil is his soul; he guardeth there of calm a sacred and exhaustless dower, and from its depths, in rich supply, outpours comfort and counsel for the sore distressed. he tore me from my brother, upon whom, with fond amaze, i gaz'd and gaz'd again; i could not realize my happiness, nor loose him from my arms, and heeded not the danger's near approach that threatens us. to execute their project of escape, they hasten to the sea, where in a bay their comrades in the vessel lie conceal'd waiting a signal. me they have supplied with artful answers, should the monarch send to urge the sacrifice. alas! i see i must consent to follow like a child, i have not learn'd deception, nor the art to gain with crafty wiles my purposes. detested falsehood! it doth not relieve the breast like words of truth: it comforts not, but is a torment in the forger's heart, and, like an arrow which a god directs, flies back and wounds the archer. through my heart one fear doth chase another; perhaps with rage, again on the unconsecrated shore, the furies' grisly band my brother seize. perchance they are surpris'd! methinks, i hear the tread of armèd men. a messenger is coming from the king, with hasty steps. how throbs my heart, how troubled is my soul, now that i gaze upon the face of one, whom with a word untrue i must encounter! scene ii iphigenia, arkas arkas priestess, with speed conclude the sacrifice! impatiently the king and people wait. iphigenia i had perform'd my duty and thy will, had not an unforeseen impediment the execution of my purpose thwarted. arkas what is it that obstructs the king's commands? iphigenia chance, which from mortals will not brook control. arkas possess me with the reason, that with speed i may inform the king, who hath decreed the death of both. iphigenia the gods have not decreed it. the elder of these men doth bear the guilt of kindred murder; on his steps attend the dread erinnys. in the inner fane they seized upon their prey, polluting thus the holy sanctuary. i hasten now, together with my virgin-train, to bathe the goddess' image in the sea, and there with solemn rites its purity restore. let none presume our silent march to follow! arkas this hindrance to the monarch i'll announce commence not thou the rite till he permit. iphigenia the priestess interferes alone in this. arkas an incident so strange the king should know. iphigenia here, nor his counsel nor command avails. arkas oft are the great consulted out of form. iphigenia do not insist on what i must refuse. arkas a needful and a just demand refuse not. iphigenia i yield, if thou delay not. arkas i with speed will bear these tidings to the camp, and soon acquaint thee, priestess, with the king's reply. there is a message i would gladly bear him; 'twould quickly banish all perplexity thou didst not heed thy faithful friend's advice. iphigenia i willingly have done whate'er i could. arkas e'en now 'tis not too late to change thy purpose. iphigenia to do so is, alas, beyond our power. arkas what thou wouldst shun, thou deem'st impossible. iphigenia thy wish doth make thee deem it possible. arkas wilt thou so calmly venture everything? iphigenia my fate i have committed to the gods. arkas the gods are wont to save by human means. iphigenia by their appointment everything is done. arkas believe me, all doth now depend on thee. the irritated temper of the king alone condemns these men to bitter death. the soldiers from the cruel sacrifice and bloody service long have been disused; nay, many, whom their adverse fortunes cast in foreign regions, there themselves have felt how godlike to the exil'd wanderer the friendly countenance of man appears. do not deprive us of thy gentle aid! with ease thou canst thy sacred task fulfil; for nowhere doth benignity, which comes in human form from heaven, so quickly gain an empire o'er the heart, as where a race, gloomy and savage, full of life and power, without external guidance, and oppress'd with vague forebodings, bear life's heavy load. iphigenia shake not my spirit, which thou canst not bend according to thy will. arkas while there is time nor labor nor persuasion shall be spar'd. iphigenia thy labor but occasions pain to me; both are in vain; therefore, i pray, depart. arkas i summon pain to aid me, 'tis a friend who counsels wisely. iphigenia though it shakes my soul, it doth not banish thence my strong repugnance. arkas can then a gentle soul repugnance feel for benefits bestow'd by one so noble? [illustration: iphigenia from the painting by max nonnenbruch] iphigenia yes, when the donor, for those benefits, instead of gratitude, demands myself. arkas who no affection feels doth never want excuses. to the king i will relate what hath befallen. o that in thy soul thou wouldst revolve his noble conduct to thee since thy arrival to the present day! scene iii iphigenia (_alone_) these words at an unseasonable hour produce a strong revulsion in my breast; i am alarm'd!--for as the rushing tide in rapid currents eddies o'er the rocks which lie among the sand upon the shore; e'en so a stream of joy o'erwhelm'd my soul. i grasp'd what had appear'd impossible. it was as though another gentle cloud around me lay, to raise me from the earth, and rock my spirit in the same sweet sleep which the kind goddess shed around my brow, what time her circling arm from danger snatched me. my brother forcibly engross'd my heart; i listen'd only to his friend's advice; my soul rush'd eagerly to rescue them, and as the mariner with joy surveys the less'ning breakers of a desert isle, so tauris lay behind me. but the voice of faithful arkas wakes me from my dream, reminding me that those whom i forsake are also men. deceit doth now become doubly detested. o my soul, be still! beginn'st thou now to tremble and to doubt? thy lonely shelter on the firm-set earth must thou abandon? and, embark'd once more, at random drift upon tumultuous waves, a stranger to thyself and to the world? scene iv iphigenia, pylades pylades where is she? that my words with speed may tell the joyful tidings of our near escape! iphigenia oppress'd with gloomy care, i much require the certain comfort thou dost promise me. pylades thy brother is restor'd! the rocky paths of this unconsecrated shore we trod in friendly converse, while behind us lay, unmark'd by us, the consecrated grove; and ever with increasing glory shone the fire of youth around his noble brow. courage and hope his glowing eye inspir'd; and his exultant heart resigned itself to the delight, the joy, of rescuing thee, his deliverer, also me, his friend. iphigenia the gods shower blessings on thee, pylades! and from those lips which breathe such welcome news be the sad note of anguish never heard! pylades i bring yet more,--for fortune, like a prince, comes not alone, but well accompanied. our friends and comrades we have also found. within a bay they had conceal'd the ship, and mournful sat expectant. they beheld thy brother, and a joyous shout uprais'd, imploring him to haste the parting hour. each hand impatient long'd to grasp the oar, while from the shore a gently murmuring breeze, perceiv'd by all, unfurl'd its wing auspicious. let us then hasten; guide me to the fane, that i may tread the sanctuary, and win with sacred awe the goal of our desires. i can unaided on my shoulder bear the goddess' image: how i long to feel the precious burden! (_while speaking the last words, he approaches the temple, without perceiving that he is not followed by_ iphigenia: _at length he turns around_.) why thus lingering stand? why art thou silent? wherefore thus confus'd? doth some new obstacle oppose our bliss? inform me, hast thou to the king announc'd the prudent message we agreed upon? iphigenia i have, dear pylades; yet wilt thou chide. thy very aspect is a mute reproach. the royal messenger arriv'd, and i, according to thy counsel, fram'd my speech. he seem'd surpris'd, and urgently besought, that to the monarch i should first announce the rite unusual, and attend his will. i now await the messenger's return. pylades danger again doth hover o'er our heads! alas! why hast thou failed to shroud thyself within the veil of sacerdotal rites? iphigenia i never have employ'd them as a veil. pylades pure soul! thy scruples will destroy alike thyself and us. why did i not forsee such an emergency, and tutor thee this counsel also wisely to elude? iphigenia chide only me, for mine alone the blame. yet other answer could i not return to him, who strongly and with reason urged what my own heart acknowledg'd to be right. pylades the danger thickens; but let us be firm. nor with incautious haste betray ourselves; calmly await the messenger's return, and then stand fast, whatever his reply: for the appointment of such sacred rites doth to the priestess, not the king, belong. should he demand the stranger to behold, who is by madness heavily oppress'd, evasively pretend, that in the fane, well guarded, thou retainest him and me. thus you secure us time to fly with speed, bearing the sacred treasure from this race, unworthy its possession. phoebus sends auspicious omens, and fulfils his word, ere we the first conditions have perform'd. free is orestes, from the curse absolv'd! oh, with the freed one, to the rocky isle where dwells the god, waft us, propitious gales. thence to mycene, that she may revive; that from the ashes of the extinguish'd hearth, the household gods may joyously arise, and beauteous fire illumine their abode! thy hand from golden censers first shall strew the fragrant incense. o'er that threshold thou shalt life and blessing once again dispense, the curse atone, and all thy kindred grace with the fresh bloom of renovated life. iphigenia as doth the flower revolve to meet the sun, once more my spirit to sweet comfort turns, struck by thy words' invigorating ray. how dear the counsel of a present friend, lacking whose godlike power, the lonely one in silence droops! for, lock'd within his breast, slowly are ripen'd purpose and resolve, which friendship's genial warmth had soon matur'd. pylades farewell! i haste to re-assure our friends, who anxiously await us: then with speed i will return, and, hid within the brake, attend thy signal.--wherefore, all at once, doth anxious thought o'ercloud thy brow serene? iphigenia forgive me! as light clouds athwart the sun, so cares and fears float darkling o'er my soul. pylades oh, banish fear! with danger it hath form'd a close alliance,--they are constant friends. iphigenia it is an honest scruple, which forbids that i should cunningly deceive the king, and plunder him who was my second father. pylades him thou dost fly, who would have slain thy brother. iphigenia to me, at least, he hath been ever kind. pylades what fate commands is not ingratitude. iphigenia alas! it still remains ingratitude; necessity alone can justify it. pylades thee, before gods and men, it justifies. iphigenia but my own heart is still unsatisfied. pylades scruples too rigid are a cloak for pride. iphigenia i cannot argue, i can only feel. pylades conscious of right, thou shouldst respect thyself. iphigenia then only doth the heart know perfect ease. when not a stain pollutes it. pylades in this fane pure hast thou kept thy heart. life teaches us to be less strict with others and ourselves; thou'lt learn the lesson too. so wonderful is human nature, and its varied ties are so involv'd and complicate, that none may hope to keep his inmost spirit pure, and walk without perplexity through life. nor are we call'd upon to judge ourselves; with circumspection to pursue his path, is the immediate duty of a man; for seldom can he rightly estimate, of his past conduct or his present deeds. iphigenia almost thou dost persuade me to consent. pylades needs there persuasion when no choice is granted? to save thyself, thy brother, and a friend, one path presents itself, and canst thou ask if we shall follow it? iphigenia still let me pause, for such injustice thou couldst not thyself calmly return for benefits receiv'd. pylades if we should perish, bitter self-reproach, forerunner of despair, will be thy portion. it seems thou art not used to suffer much, when, to escape so great calamity, thou canst refuse to utter one false word. iphigenia oh, that i bore within a manly heart! which, when it hath conceiv'd a bold resolve, 'gainst every other voice doth close itself. pylades in vain thou dost refuse; with iron hand necessity commands; her stern decree is law supreme, to which the gods themselves must yield submission. in dread silence rules the uncounsell'd sister of eternal fate. what she appoints thee to endure,--endure; what to perform,--perform. the rest thou knowest. ere long i will return, and then receive the seal of safety from thy sacred hand. scene v iphigenia (_alone_) i must obey him, for i see my friends beset with peril. yet my own sad fate doth with increasing anguish move my heart. may i no longer feed the silent hope which in my solitude i fondly cherish'd? shall the dire curse eternally endure? and shall our fated race ne'er rise again with blessings crown'd?--all mortal things decay-- the noblest powers, the purest joys of life at length subside: then wherefore not the curse? and have i vainly hoped that, guarded here, secluded from the fortunes of my race, i, with pure heart and hands, some future day might cleanse the deep defilement of our house? scarce was my brother in my circling arms from raging madness suddenly restor'd, scarce had the ship, long pray'd for, near'd the strand once more to waft me to my native shores, when unrelenting fate, with iron hand, a double crime enjoins; commanding me to steal the image, sacred and rever'd, confided to my care, and him deceive to whom i owe my life and destiny. let not abhorrence spring within my heart! nor the old titan's hate, toward you, ye gods infix its vulture talons in my breast! save me and save your image in my soul! an ancient song comes back upon mine ear-- i had forgotten it, and willingly-- the parcæ's song, which horribly they sang, what time, hurl'd headlong from his golden seat, fell tantalus. they with their noble friend keen anguish suffer'd; savage was their breast and horrible their song. in days gone by, when we were children, oft our ancient nurse would sing it to us, and i mark'd it well. oh, fear the immortals, ye children of men! eternal dominion they hold in their hands, and o'er their wide empire wield absolute sway. whom they have exalted let him fear them most! around golden tables, on cliffs and clouds resting the seats are prepar'd. if contest ariseth, the guests are hurl'd headlong, disgrac'd and dishonor'd, to gloomy abysses, and, fetter'd in darkness, await the vain longing a juster decree. but in feasts everlasting, around the gold tables still dwell the immortals. from mountain to mountain they stride; while ascending from fathomless chasms the breath of the titans, half-stifled with anguish, like volumes of incense fumes up to the skies. from races ill-fated, their-aspect joy-bringing, oft turn the celestials, and shun in the children to gaze on the features once lov'd and still speaking of their mighty sire. so chanted the parcae; the banish'd one hearkens the song, the hoar captive immur'd in his dungeon, his children's doom ponders, and boweth his head. act v scene i thoas, arkas arkas i own i am perplex'd and scarcely know 'gainst whom to point the shaft of my suspicion, whether the priestess aids the captives' flight, or they themselves clandestinely contrive it. 'tis rumor'd that the ship which brought them here is lurking somewhere in a bay conceal'd. this stranger's madness, these new lustral rites, the specious pretext for delay, excite mistrust, and call aloud for vigilance. thoas summon the priestess to attend me here! then go with speed, and strictly search the shore, from yonder headland to diana's grove: forbear to violate its sacred depths, a watchful ambush set, attack and seize, according to your wont, whome'er ye find. [arkas _retires_.] scene ii thoas (_alone_) fierce anger rages in my riven breast, first against her, whom i esteemed so pure; then 'gainst myself, whose foolish lenity hath fashion'd her for treason. man is soon inur'd to slavery, and quickly learns submission, when of freedom quite depriv'd. if she had fallen in the savage hands of my rude sires, and had their holy rage forborne to slay her, grateful for her life, she would have recogniz'd her destiny, have shed before the shrine the stranger's blood, and duty nam'd what was necessity. now my forbearance in her breast allures audacious wishes. vainly i had hoped to bind her to me; rather she contrives to shape an independent destiny. she won my heart through flattery; and now that i oppose her, seeks to gain her ends by fraud and cunning, and my kindness deems a worthless and prescriptive property. scene iii iphigenia, thoas iphigenia me hast thou summon'd? wherefore art thou here? thoas wherefore delay the sacrifice? inform me. iphigenia i have acquainted arkas with the reasons. thoas from thee i wish to hear them more at large. iphigenia the goddess for reflection grants thee time. thoas to thee this time seems also opportune. iphigenia if to this cruel deed thy heart is steel'd, thou shouldst not come! a king who meditates a deed inhuman, may find slaves enow, willing for hire to bear one-half the curse, and leave the monarch's presence undefil'd. enrapt in gloomy clouds he forges death, flaming destruction then his ministers hurl down upon his wretched victim's head, while he abideth high above the storm, calm and untroubled, an impassive god. thoas a wild song, priestess, issued from thy lips. iphigenia no priestess, king! but agamemnon's daughter; while yet unknown, thou didst respect my words a princess now,--and think'st thou to command me? from youth i have been tutor'd to obey, my parents first and then the deity; and thus obeying, ever hath my soul known sweetest freedom. but nor then nor now have i been taught compliance with the voice and savage mandates of a man. thoas not i, an ancient law doth thy obedience claim. iphigenia our passions eagerly catch hold of laws which they can wield as weapons. but to me another law, one far more ancient, speaks and doth command me to withstand thee, king! that law declaring sacred every stranger. thoas these men, methinks, lie very near thy heart, when sympathy with them can lead thee thus to violate discretion's primal law, that those in power should never be provok'd. iphigenia speaking or silent, thou canst always know what is, and ever must be, in my heart. doth not remembrance of a common doom, to soft compassion melt the hardest heart? how much more mine! in them i see myself. i trembling kneel'd before the altar once, and solemnly the shade of early death environ'd me. aloft the knife was rais'd to pierce my bosom, throbbing with warm life; a dizzy horror overwhelm'd my soul; my eyes grew dim; i found myself in safety. are we not bound to render the distress'd the gracious kindness from the gods receiv'd? thou know'st we are, and yet wilt thou compel me? thoas obey thine office, priestess, not the king. iphigenia cease! nor thus seek to cloak the savage force which triumphs o'er a woman's feebleness. though woman, i am born as free as man. did agamemnon's son before thee stand, and thou requiredst what became him not, his arm and trusty weapon would defend his bosom's freedom. i have only words; but it becomes a noble-minded man to treat with due respect the words of woman. thoas i more respect them than a brother's sword. iphigenia uncertain ever is the chance of arms, no prudent warrior doth despise his foe; nor yet defenceless 'gainst severity hath nature left the weak; she gives him craft and, willy, cunning; artful he delays, evades, eludes, and finally escapes. such arms are justified by violence. thoas but circumspection countervails deceit. iphigenia which a pure spirit doth abhor to use. thoas do not incautiously condemn thyself. iphigenia oh, couldst thou see the struggle of my soul, courageously to ward the first attack of an unhappy doom, which threatens me! do i then stand before thee weaponless? prayer, lovely prayer, fair branch in woman's hand, more potent far than instruments of war, thou dost thrust back. what now remains for me wherewith my inborn freedom to defend? must i implore a miracle from heaven? is there no power within my spirit's depths? thoas extravagant thy interest in the fate of these two strangers. tell me who they are for whom thy heart is thus so deeply mov'd. iphigenia they are--they seem at least--i think them greeks. thoas thy countrymen; no doubt they have renew'd the pleasing picture of return. iphigenia (_after a pause_) doth man lay undisputed claim to noble deeds? doth he alone to his heroic breast clasp the impossible? what call we great? what deeds, though oft narrated, still uplift with shuddering horror the narrator's soul, but those which, with improbable success, the valiant have attempted? shall the man who all alone steals on his foes by night, and raging like an unexpected fire, destroys the slumbering host, and press'd at length by rous'd opponents on his foeman's steeds, retreats with booty--be alone extoll'd? or he who, scorning safety, boldly roams through woods and dreary wilds, to scour the land of thieves and robbers? is naught left for us? must gentle woman quite forego her nature, force against force employ, like amazons usurp the sword from man, and bloodily revenge oppression? in my heart i feel the stirrings of a noble enterprize; but if i fail--severe reproach, alas! and bitter misery will be my doom. thus on my knees i supplicate the gods! oh, are ye truthful, as men say ye are, now prove it by your countenance and aid; honor the truth in me! attend, o king a secret plot deceitfully is laid; touching the captives thou dost ask in vain; they have departed hence and seek their friends, who, with the ship, await them on the shore. the eldest,--whom dire madness lately seiz'd, and hath abandon'd now,--he is orestes, my brother, and the other pylades, his early friend and faithful confidant. from delphi, phoebus sent them to this shore with a divine command to steal away the image of diana, and to him bear back the sister thither, and for this he promised to the blood-stained matricide, the fury-haunted son, deliverance. i have surrender'd now into thy hands the remnants of the house of tantalus. destroy us--if thou canst. thoas and dost thou think that the uncultured scythian will attend the voice of truth and of humanity which atreus, the greek, heard not? iphigenia 'tis heard by every one, born 'neath whatever clime, within whose bosom flows the stream of life, pure and unhinder'd.--what thy thought? o king, what silent purpose broods in thy deep soul? is it destruction? let me perish first! for now, deliv'rance hopeless, i perceive the dreadful peril into which i have with rash precipitancy plung'd my friends. alas! i soon shall see them bound before me! how to my brother shall i say farewell? i, the unhappy author of his death. ne'er can i gaze again in his dear eyes! thoas the traitors have contrived a cunning web, and cast it round thee, who, secluded long, giv'st willing credence to thine own desires. iphigenia no, no! i'd pledge my life these men are true. and shouldst thou find them otherwise, o king, then let them perish both, and cast me forth, that on some rock-girt island's dreary shore i may atone my folly. are they true, and is this man indeed my dear orestes, my brother, long implor'd,--release us both, and o'er us stretch the kind protecting arm which long hath shelter'd me. my noble sire fell through his consort's guilt,--she by her son; on him alone the hope of atreus' race doth now repose. oh, with pure heart, pure hand, let me depart to purify our house. yes, thou wilt keep thy promise; thou didst swear, that were a safe return provided me, i should be free to go. the hour is come. a king doth never grant like common men, merely to gain a respite from petition; nor promise what he hopes will ne'er be claim'd. then first he feels his dignity supreme when he can make the long-expecting happy. thoas as fire opposes water, and doth seek with hissing rage to overcome its foe, so doth my anger strive against thy words. iphigenia let mercy, like the consecrated flame of silent sacrifice, encircled round with songs of gratitude, and joy, and praise, above the tumult gently rise to heaven. thoas how often hath this voice assuag'd my soul! iphigenia extend thy hand to me in sign of peace. thoas large thy demand within so short a time. iphigenia beneficence doth no reflection need. thoas 'tis needed oft, for evil springs from good. iphigenia 'tis doubt which good doth oft to evil turn. consider not; act as thy feelings prompt thee. scene iv orestes (_armed_), iphigenia, thoas orestes (_addressing his followers_) redouble your exertions! hold them back! few moments will suffice; maintain your ground, and keep a passage open to the ship for me and for my sister. (_to_ iphigenia, _without perceiving_ thoas.) come with speed! we are betray'd,--brief time remains for flight. (_he perceives the king_.) thoas (_laying his hand on his sword_) none in my presence with impunity his naked weapon wears. iphigenia do not profane diana's sanctuary with rage and blood. command your people to forbear awhile, and listen to the priestess, to the sister. orestes say, who is he that threatens us? iphigenia in him revere the king, who was my second father. forgive me, brother, that my childlike heart hath plac'd our fate thus wholly in his hands. i have betray'd your meditated flight, and thus from treachery redeem'd my soul. orestes will he permit our peaceable return? iphigenia thy gleaming sword forbids me to reply. orestes (_sheathing his sword_) then speak! thou seest i listen to thy words. scene v orestes, iphigenia, thoas _enter_ pylades, _soon after him_ arkas _both with drawn swords_. pylades do not delay! our friends are putting forth their final strength, and, yielding step by step, are slowly driven backward to the sea.-- a conference of princes find i here? is this the sacred person of the king? arkas calmly, as doth become thee, thou dost stand, o king, surrounded by thine enemies. soon their temerity shall be chastiz'd; their yielding followers fly,--their ship is ours, speak but the word and it is wrapt in flames. thoas go, and command my people to forbear! let none annoy the foe while we confer. [arkas _retires_.] orestes i willingly consent. go, pylades! collect the remnant of our friends, and wait the appointed issue of our enterprize. [pylades _retires_.] scene vi iphigenia, thoas, orestes iphigenia relieve my cares ere ye begin to speak. i fear contention, if thou wilt not hear the voice of equity, o king,--if thou wilt not, my brother, curb thy headstrong youth. thoas i, as becomes the elder, check my rage. now answer me: how dost thou prove thyself the priestess' brother, agamemnon's son? orestes behold the sword with which the hero slew the valiant trojans. from his murderer i took the weapon, and implor'd the gods to grant me agamemnon's mighty arm, success, and valor, with a death more noble. select one of the leaders of thy host, and place the best as my opponent here. where'er on earth the sons of heroes dwell, this boon is to the stranger ne'er refus'd. thoas this privilege hath ancient custom here to strangers ne'er accorded. orestes then from us commence the novel custom! a whole race in imitation soon will consecrate its monarch's noble action into law. nor let me only for our liberty,-- let me, a stranger, for all strangers fight. if i should fall, my doom be also theirs; but if kind fortune crown me with success, let none e'er tread this shore, and fail to meet the beaming eye of sympathy and love, or unconsoled depart! thoas thou dost not seem unworthy of thy boasted ancestry. great is the number of the valiant men who wait upon me; but i will myself, although advanc'd in years, oppose the foe, and am prepar'd to try the chance of arms. iphigenia no, no! such bloody proofs are not requir'd. unhand thy weapon, king! my lot consider; rash combat oft immortalizes man; if he should fall, he is renown'd in song; but after ages reckon not the tears which ceaseless the forsaken woman sheds; and poets tell not of the thousand nights consum'd in weeping, and the dreary days, wherein her anguish'd soul, a prey to grief, doth vainly yearn to call her lov'd one back. fear warn'd me to beware lest robbers' wiles might lure me from this sanctuary, and then betray me into bondage. anxiously i question'd them, each circumstance explor'd, demanded proofs, now is my heart assur'd. see here, the mark on his right hand impress'd as of three stars, which on his natal day were by the priest declar'd to indicate some dreadful deed therewith to be perform'd. and then this scar, which doth his eyebrow cleave, redoubles my conviction. when a child, electra, rash and inconsiderate, such was her nature, loos'd him from her arms, he fell against a tripos. oh, 'tis he!-- shall i adduce the likeness to his sire, or the deep rapture of my inmost heart, in further token of assurance, king? thoas e'en though thy words had banish'd every doubt, and i had curb'd the anger in my breast, still must our arms decide. i see no peace. their purpose, as thou didst thyself confess, was to deprive me of diana's image. and think ye i will look contented on? the greeks are wont to cast a longing eye upon the treasures of barbarians, a golden fleece, good steeds, or daughters fair; but force and guile not always have avail'd to lead them, with their booty, safely home. orestes the image shall not be a cause of strife! we now perceive the error which the god, our journey here commanding, like a veil, threw o'er our minds. his counsel i implor'd, to free me from the furies' grisly band. he answer'd, "back to greece the sister bring, who in the sanctuary on tauris' shore unwillingly abides; so ends the curse!" to phoebus' sister we applied the words, and he referr'd to thee! the bonds severe, which held thee from us, holy one, are rent, and thou art ours once more. at thy blest touch, i felt myself restor'd. within thine arms, madness once more around me coil'd its folds, crushing the marrow in my frame, and then forever, like a serpent, fled to hell. through thee, the daylight gladdens me anew, the counsel of the goddess now shines forth in all its beauty and beneficence. like to a sacred image, unto which an oracle immutably hath bound a city's welfare, thee she bore away, protectress of our house, and guarded here within this holy stillness, to become a blessing to thy brother and thy race. now when each passage to escape seems clos'd, and safety hopeless, thou dost give us all. o king, incline thine heart to thoughts of peace! let her fulfil her mission, and complete the consecration of our father's house, me to their purified abode restore, and place upon my brow the ancient crown! requite the blessing which her presence brought thee, and let me now my nearer right enjoy! cunning and force, the proudest boast of man, fade in the lustre of her perfect truth; nor unrequited will a noble mind leave confidence, so childlike and so pure. iphigenia think on thy promise; let thy heart be mov'd by what a true and honest tongue hath spoken! look on us, king! an opportunity for such a noble deed not oft occurs. refuse thou canst not,--give thy quick consent. thoas then go! iphigenia not so, my king! i cannot part without thy blessing, or in anger from thee, banish us not! the sacred right of guests still let us claim: so not eternally shall we be sever'd. honor'd and belov'd as mine own father was, art thou by me; and this impression in my soul abides, let but the least among thy people bring back to mine ear the tones i heard from thee, or should i on the humblest see thy garb, i will with joy receive him as a god, prepare his couch myself, beside our hearth invite him to a seat, and only ask touching thy fate and thee. oh, may the gods to thee the merited reward impart of all thy kindness and benignity! farewell! o turn thou not away, but give one kindly word of parting in return! so shall the wind more gently swell our sails, and from our eyes with soften'd anguish flow, the tears of separation. fare thee well! and graciously extend to me thy hand, in pledge of ancient friendship. thoas (_extending his hand_) fare thee well! * * * * * the faust legend from marlowe to goethe by kuno francke, ph.d., ll.d., litt.d. professor of the history of german culture, harvard university the faust legend is a conglomerate of anonymous popular traditions, largely of medieval origin, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century came to be associated with an actual individual of the name of faustus whose notorious career during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudo-scientific mountebank, juggler and magician can be traced through various parts of germany. the faust book of , the earliest collection of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. it represents faust as a sinner and reprobate, and it holds up his compact with mephistopheles and his subsequent damnation as an example of human recklessness and as a warning to the faithful. from this faust book, that is from its english translation, which appeared in , marlowe took his tragedy of _dr. faustus_ ( ; published ). in marlowe's drama faust appears as a typical man of the renaissance, as an explorer and adventurer, as a superman craving for extraordinary power, wealth, enjoyment, and worldly eminence. the finer emotions are hardly touched upon. mephistopheles is the medieval devil, harsh and grim and fierce, bent on seduction, without any comprehension of human aspirations. helen of troy is a she-devil, and becomes the final means of faust's destruction. faust's career has hardly an element of true greatness. none of the many tricks, conjurings and miracles, which faust performs with mephistopheles' help, has any relation to the deeper meaning of life. from the compact on to the end hardly anything happens which brings faust inwardly nearer either to heaven or hell. but there is a sturdiness of character and stirring intensity of action, with a happy admixture of buffoonery, through it all. and we feel something of the pathos and paradox of human passions in the fearful agony of faust's final doom. the german popular faust drama of the seventeenth century and its outgrowth the puppet plays, are a reflex both of marlowe's tragedy and the faust book of , although they contain a number of original scenes, notably the council of the devils at the beginning. here again, the underlying sentiment is the abhorrence of human recklessness and extravagance. in some of these plays, the vanity of bold ambition is brought out with particular emphasis through the contrast between the daring and dissatisfied faust and his farcical counterpart, the jolly and contented casperle. in the last scene, while faust in despair and contrition is waiting for the sound of the midnight bell which is to be the signal of his destruction, casperle, as night watchman, patrols the streets of the town, calling out the hours and singing the traditional verses of admonition to quiet and orderly conduct. to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then, faust appeared as a criminal who sins against the eternal laws of life, as a rebel against holiness who ruins his better self and finally earns the merited reward of his misdeeds. he could not appear thus to the eighteenth century. the eighteenth century is the age of rationalism and of romanticism. the eighteenth century glorifies human reason and human feeling. the right of man and the dignity of man are its principal watchwords. such an age was bound to see in faust a champion of freedom, nature, truth. such an age was bound to see in faust a symbol of human striving for completeness of life. it is lessing who has given to the faust legend this turn. his _faust_, unfortunately consisting only of a few fragmentary sketches, is a defense of rationalism. the most important of these fragments, preserved to us in copies by some friends of lessing's, is the prelude, a council of devils. satan is receiving reports from his subordinates as to what they have done to bring harm to the realm of god. the first devil who speaks has set the hut of some pious poor on fire; the second has buried a fleet of usurers in the waves. both excite satan's disgust. "for," he says, "to make the pious poor still poorer means only to chain him all the more firmly to god"; and the usurers, if, instead of being buried in the waves, they had been allowed to reach the goal of their voyage, would have wrought new evil on distant shores. much more satisfied is satan with the report of a third devil who has stolen the first kiss from a young innocent girl and thereby breathed the flame of desire into her veins; for he has worked evil in the world of the spirit and that means much more and is a much greater triumph for hell than to work evil in the world of bodies. but it is the fourth devil to whom satan gives the prize. he has not done anything as yet. he has only a plan, but a plan which, if carried out, would put the deeds of all the other devils into the shade--the plan "to snatch from god his favorite." this favorite of god is faust, "a solitary, brooding youth, renouncing all passion except the passion for truth, entirely living in truth, entirely absorbed in it." to snatch him from god--that would be a victory, over which the whole realm of night would rejoice. satan is enchanted; the war against truth is his element. yes, faust must be seduced, he must be destroyed. and he shall be destroyed through his very aspiration. "didst thou not say, he has desire for knowledge? that is enough for perdition!" his striving for truth is to lead him into darkness. under such exclamations the devils break up, to set about their work of seduction; but, as they are breaking up, there is heard from above a divine voice: "ye shall not conquer." it cannot be denied that goethe's earliest faust conception, the so-called _ur-faust_ of and ' , lacks the wide sweep of thought that characterizes these fragments of lessing's drama. his faust of the storm and stress period is essentially a romanticist. he is a dreamer, craving for a sight of the divine, longing to fathom the inner working of nature, drunk with the mysteries of the universe. but he is also an unruly individualist, a reckless despiser of accepted morality; and it is hard to see how his relation with gretchen, which forms by far the largest part of the _ur-faust_, can lead to anything but a tragic catastrophe. only goethe's second faust conception, which sets in with the end of the nineties of the eighteenth century, opens up a clear view of the heights of life. goethe was now in the full maturity of his powers, a man widely separated from the impetuous youth of the seventies whose promethean emotions had burst forth with volcanic passion. he had meanwhile become a statesman and a philosopher. he had come to know in the court of weimar a model of paternal government, conservative yet liberally inclined, and friendly to all higher culture. he had found in his truly spiritual relation to frau von stein a safe harbor for his tempestuous feelings. he had been brought face to face, during his sojourn in italy, with the wonders of classic art. the study of spinoza and his own scientific investigations had confirmed him in a thoroughly monistic view of the world and strengthened his belief in a universal law which makes evil itself an integral part of the good. the example of schiller as well as his own practical experience had taught him that the untrammelled living out of personality must go hand in hand with incessant work for the common welfare of mankind. all this is reflected in the completed part first of ; it finds its most comprehensive expression in part second, the bequest of the dying poet to posterity. restless endeavor, incessant striving from lower spheres of life to higher ones, from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment to work, from creed to deed, from self to humanity--this is the moving thought of goethe's completed _faust_. the keynote is struck in the "prologue in heaven." faust, so we hear, the daring idealist, the servant of god, is to be tempted by mephisto, the despiser of reason, the materialistic scoffer. but we also hear, and we hear it from god's own lips, that the tempter will not succeed. god allows the devil free play, because he knows that he will frustrate his own ends. faust will be led astray--"man errs while he strives"; but he will not abandon his higher aspirations; through aberration and sin he will find the true way toward which his inner nature instinctively guides him. he will not eat dust. even in the compact with mephisto the same ineradicable optimism asserts itself. faust's wager with the devil is nothing but an act of temporary despair, and the very fact that he does not hope anything from it shows that he will win it. he knows that sensual enjoyment will never give him satisfaction; he knows that, as long as he gives himself up to self-gratification, there will never be a moment to which he would say: "abide, thou art so fair!" from the outset we feel that by living up to the very terms of the compact, faust will rise superior to it; that by rushing into the whirlpool of earthly experience and passion, his being will be heightened and expanded. and thus, everything in the whole drama, all its incidents and all its characters, become episodes in the rounding out of this grand, all-comprehensive personality. gretchen and helena, wagner and mephisto, homunculus and euphorion, the emperor's court and the shades of the greek past, the broodings of medieval mysticism and the practical tasks of modern industrialism, the enlightened despotism of the eighteenth century and the ideal democracy of the future--all this and a great deal more enters into faust's being. he strides on from experience to experience, from task to task, expiating guilt by doing, losing himself and finding himself again. blinded in old age by dame care, he feels a new light kindled within. dying, he gazes into a far future. and even in the heavenly regions he goes on ever changing into new and higher and finer forms. it is this irrepressible spirit of striving which makes goethe's _faust_ the bible of modern humanity. introduction to faust by calvin thomas, ll.d. professor of germanic languages and literatures, columbia university the central theme of goethe's _faust_ may be put in the form of a question thus: shall a man hate life because it does not match his dreams, or shall he embrace it eagerly and try to make the best of it as a social being? goethe's answer is at once scientific and religious, which partly explains its vital interest for the modern man. to be sure, his answer is given at the end of a long symbolic poem which contains much that is not exactly relevant to the main issue. it must never be forgotten that _faust_ is not the orderly development of a thesis in ethics, but a long succession of imaginative pictures. some of them may seem too recondite and fantastic to meet our present-day demand for reality, but on the whole the poem deals with vital issues of the human spirit. at the end of it faust arrives at a noble view of life, and his last words undoubtedly tell how goethe himself thought that a good man might wish to end his days--unsated with life to the final moment, and expiring in an ecstasy of altruistic vision. goethe was about twenty years old when his imagination began to be haunted by the figure of the sixteenth century magician doctor faust. in or he commenced writing a play on the subject, little thinking of course that it would occupy him some sixty years. the old legend is a story of sin and damnation. faust is represented as an eager student impelled by intellectual curiosity to the study of magic. from the point of view of the superstitious folk who created the legend this addiction to magic is itself sinful. but faust is bad and reckless. by the aid of his black art he calls up a devil named (in the legend) mephostophiles with whom he makes a contract of service. for twenty-four years faust is to have all that he desires, and then his soul is to go to perdition. the contract is carried out. with the devil as comrade and servant he lords it over time and space, feeds on the fat of the land, travels far and wide, and does all sorts of wonderful things. at the end of the stipulated time the devil gets him. from the very beginning of his musings on the theme goethe thought of faust as a man better than his reputation; as a misunderstood truth-seeker who had dared the terrors with which the popular imagination invested hell, in order that he might exhaust the possibilities of this life. aside from his desire of transcendental knowledge and wide experience, there was a third trait of the legendary faust which could hardly seem to goethe anything but creditable to human nature: his passion for antique beauty. according to the old story faust at one time wishes to marry; but as marriage is a christian ordinance and he has forsworn christianity, the devil gives him, in place of a lawful wife, a fantom counterfeit of helena, the ancient queen of beauty. the lovely fantom becomes faust's paramour and bears him a remarkable son called justus faustus. what wonder if the young goethe, himself disappointed with book-learning, eager for life, and beset by vague yearnings for mystic insight into the nature of things, saw in faust a symbol of his own experience? but as soon as he began to identify himself with his hero it was all up with faust's utter damnableness: a young poet does not plan to send his own soul to perdition. at the same time, he could not very well imagine him as an out-and-out good man, since that would have been to turn the legend topsy-turvy. the league with the devil, who would of course have to be conceived as in some sense or other an embodiment of evil, was the very heart of the old story. at first goethe planned his drama on lines that had little to do with traditional ideas of good and bad, heaven and hell, god and devil. faust is introduced as a youngish professor who has studied everything and been teaching for some ten years, with the result that he feels his knowledge to be vanity and his life a dreary routine of hypocrisy. he resorts to magic in the hope of--what? it is important for the understanding of the poem in its initial stages to bear in mind that faust is not at first a votary of the vulgar black art which consists in calling up bad spirits and doing reprehensible things by their assistance. further on he shows that he is a master of that art too, but at first he is concerned with "natural magic," which some of the old mystics whom goethe read conceived as the highest and divinest of sciences. the fundamental assumption of natural magic is that the universe as a whole and each component part of it is dominated by an indwelling spirit with whom it is possible for the magician to get into communication. if he succeeds he becomes "like" a spirit--freed from the trammels of the flesh, a partaker of divine knowledge and ecstatic happiness. pursuing his wonderful vagaries by means of a magic book that has come into his possession, faust first experiments with the "sign" of the macrocosm, but makes no attempt to summon its presiding genius, that is, the world-spirit. he has a wonderful vision of the harmonious cosmos, but it is "only a spectacle," whereas he craves food for his soul. so he turns to the sign of the earth-spirit, whom he feels to be nearer to him. by an act of supreme daring he utters the formula which causes the spirit to appear in fire--grand, awe-inspiring, terrible. a colloquy ensues at the end of which the spirit rebuffs the presumptuous mortal with the words: "thou art like the spirit whom thou comprehendest, not like me"--and disappears. the meaning is that faust, who knows very little of the earth, having always led the narrow life of a brooding scholar in one little corner of it, is not fit for intimacy with the mighty being who presides over the entire planet, with its rush and change, its life and death, its vast and ceaseless energy. he must have a wider experience. how shall he get it? it is a moot question whether goethe at first conceived mephistopheles as the earth-spirit's envoy, sent for the express purpose of showing faust about the world, or whether the devil was thought of as coming of his own accord. be that as it may, _faust_ is an experience-drama, and the devil's function is to provide the experience. and he is _a_ devil, not _the_ devil, conceived as the bitter and malignant enemy of god, but a subordinate spirit whose business it is, in the world-economy, to spur man to activity. this he does partly by cynical criticism and opposition, but more especially by holding out the lures of the sensual life. at first mephistopheles was not thought of as working solely for a reward in the shape of souls captured for eternity, but as playing his part for the diabolical pleasure of so doing. in the course of time, however, goethe invested him more and more with the costume and traits of the traditionary devil. after the earth-spirit's rebuff faust is in despair. he has set all his hope on help from the spirit-world, and the hope has failed. his famulus wagner, a type of the ardent and contented bookworm, comes in to get instruction on the art of public speaking, and faust lays down the law to him. after wagner's exit faust is hopelessly despondent. after a mournful arraignment of life he is about to swallow a cup of poison that he has concocted, when his hand is staid by the first notes of the easter celebration in a neighboring church. it reminds him of his happy youth when he, too, believed. the coming day is easter sunday. faust and wagner take an afternoon walk together and witness the jollity of the common people. as they are about to return home at nightfall they pick up a casual black dog that has been circling around them. arrived in his comfortable study, faust feels more cheerful. in a mood of religious peace he sets about translating a passage of the new testament into german. the dog becomes uneasy and begins to take on the appearance of a horrid monster. faust sees that he has brought home a spirit and proceeds to conjure the beast. presently mephistopheles emerges from his canine disguise in the costume of a wandering scholar. faust is amused. he enters into conversation with his guest and learns something of his character. a familiar acquaintance ensues, and one day the devil finds him once more in a mood of bitter despair, advises him to quit the tedious professorial life, and offers to be his comrade and servant on a grand tour of pleasure. after some bickering they enter into a solemn agreement according to which faust's life is to end whenever he shall "stretch himself on a bed of ease," completely satisfied with the passing moment, and shall say to that moment, "pray tarry, thou art so fair." we see that the devil can win in only one way, namely, by somehow making faust a contented sensualist. on the other hand, faust may win in either of two ways. first, he might conceivably go on to his dying day as a bitter pessimist at war with life. in that event he would certainly never be content with the present moment. secondly, he may outgrow his pessimism, but never come to the point where he is willing to check the flight of time; when, that is, he shall have no more plans, hopes, dreams, that reach into the future and seem worth living for. the question is, then, whether mephistopheles, by any lure at his command, can subdue faust's forward-ranging idealism. the devil expects to win; faust wagers his immortal soul that the devil will not win. in the old story the devil appears promptly at the end of the twenty-four years, puts his victim to death, and takes possession of his soul. goethe's mephistopheles is a gentleman of culture for whom such savagery would be impossible. he will wait until his comrade dies a natural death and then put in his claim in the devil's fashion; and it will be for the lord in heaven to decide the case. such is the scheme of the drama, but after the compact is made we hear no more of it until just before the end of the second part. the action takes the form of a long succession of adventures undertaken for the sake of experience. duty, obligation, routine, have been left behind. faust has nothing to do but to go about and try experiments--first in the "little world" of humble folk (the remainder of part first), and then in the "great world" of court life, government, and war (the second part). by way of beginning faust is taken to auerbach's cellar, where four jolly companions are assembled for a drinking-bout. he is simply disgusted with the grossness and vulgarity of it all. he is too old--so the devil concludes--for the rôle he is playing and must have his youth renewed. so they repair to an old witch, who gives faust an elixir that makes him young again. the scene in the witch's kitchen was written in italy in , by which time goethe had come to think of his hero as an elderly man. the purpose of the scene was to account for the sudden change of faust's character from brooding philosopher to rake and seducer. of course the elixir of youth is at the same time a love-philter. then come the matchless scenes that body forth the short romance of margaret, her quick infatuation, her loss of virgin honor, the death of her mother and brother, her shame and misery, her agonizing death in prison. here we are in the realm of pure realism, and never again did goethe's art sound such depths of tragic pathos. the atmosphere of the love-tragedy is entirely different from that of the faust-legend. mephistopheles as the abettor of faust's amorous passion has no need of magic. the rôle of faust--that of a man pulled irresistibly by sexual passion, yet constantly tormented by his conscience--is repulsive, but very human. as he stands before the prison gate he says that "the whole sorrow of mankind" holds him in its grip. but this is a part of what he wished for. he wished for universal experience--to feel in his own soul all the weal and all the woe of humankind. at the end of the first part he has drained the cup of sin and suffering. imbedded in the love-tragedy is one scene which will seem out of tune with what has just been said--the walpurgis night. here we are back again in the atmosphere of the legend, with its magic, its witchcraft, its gross sensuality. we hardly recognize our friend faust when we find him dancing with naked witches and singing lewd songs on the brocken. the scene was written in when goethe had become a little cynical with respect to the artistic coherence of _faust_ and looked on it as a "monstrosity." it was a part of the early plan that faust should add to the burden of his soul by frivolously deserting margaret in the shame of her approaching motherhood and spending some time in gross pleasures. the visit to the witches' sabbath on the brocken was afterward invented to carry out this idea. in itself the idea was a good one; for if faust was to drain the cup of sorrow, the ingredient of self-contempt could not be left out of the bitter chalice. a sorrow's crown of sorrow is not so much remembering happier things as remembering that the happy state came to an end by one's own wrongdoing. still, most modern readers will think that goethe, in elaborating the brocken scene as an interesting study of the uncanny and the vile, let his hero sink needlessly far into the mire. at the beginning of the second part goethe does not reopen the book of crime and remorse with which the first part closes. he needs a new faust for whom that is all past--past, not in the sense of being lightly forgotten, but built into his character and remembered, say, as one remembers the ecstasy and the pain of twenty years ago. so he ushers him directly into the new life over a bridge of symbolism. the restoring process which in real life takes many years he concentrates into a single night and represents it as the work of kindly nocturnal fairies and the glorious alpine sunrise. faust awakens healed and reinvigorated, and the majesty of nature inspires in him a resolve to "strive ever onward toward the highest existence." but these fine words convey a promise which is not at once fulfilled. like the most of us, faust does not long continue to abide on the alpine heights of his own best insight and aspiration. the comrade is at hand who interrupts his lonely communion with the spirit of the mountains and draws him away to the emperor's court, where the pair soon ingratiate themselves as wonder-workers. they so please his majesty with their marvelous illusions that they are regularly installed at court as purveyors of amusement. the first demand that is made on them is that they produce, for the entertainment of the court, the shades of the supremely beautiful paris and helena. to this end mephistopheles devises the elaborate hocus-pocus of the mothers. he sends faust away to the vasty and viewless realm of the ideal, instructing him how to bring thence a certain wonderful tripod, from the incense of which the desired forms can be made to appear. the show proceeds successfully, so far as the spectators are concerned, but an accident happens. faust has been cautioned by his partner not to touch the fantom forms. but the moon-struck idealist falls in love with the beautiful helena and, disregarding orders, attempts to hold her fast. the consequence is an explosion; the spirits vanish, and faust receives an electric shock which paralyzes all his bodily functions. he is now in a trance; there is nothing left of him but a motionless body and a mute soul, dreaming of helena. mephistopheles pretends to be very much disgusted, but he knows where to go for help. at the beginning of the second act we return to the old study that was deserted years ago. faust's former famulus, dr. wagner, has now become a world-renowned professor and is engaged in a great experiment, namely, in the production of a chemical man. by the aid of mephisto's magic the experiment is quickly brought to a successful issue, and homunculus--one of goethe's whimsically delightful creations--emerges into being as an incorporeal radiant man in a glass bottle. the wonderful little fellow at once comprehends faust's malady and prescribes that he be taken to the land of his dreams. so away they go, the three of them, to the classical walpurgis night, which is celebrated annually on the battle-field of pharsalus in thessaly. as soon as faust's feet touch classic soil he recovers his senses and sets out with enthusiasm to find helena. after some wandering about among the classic fantoms he falls in with chiron the centaur, who carries him far away to the foot of mount olympus and leaves him with the wise priestess manto, who escorts him to the lower world and secures the consent of queen persephone to a temporary reappearance of helena on earth. meanwhile mephistopheles, delighted to find on classic ground creatures no less ugly than those familiar to him in the far northwest, enters, seemingly by way of a lark, into a curious arrangement with the three daughters of phorkys. these were imagined by the greeks as hideous old hags who lived in perpetual darkness and had one eye and one tooth which they used in common. mephistopheles borrows the form, the eye, and the tooth of a phorkyad and transforms himself very acceptably into an image of the supreme ugliness. in that shape he-she manages the fantasmagory of the third act. as for the third member of the expedition to thessaly, homunculus, he is possessed by a consuming desire to "begin existence," that is, to get a body and become a full-fledged member of the genus homo. his wanderings in search of the best place to begin take him out into the aegean sea, where he is entranced by the beauty of the scene. in an ecstasy of prophetic joy he dashes his bottle to pieces against the shell-chariot of the lovely sea-nymph galatea and dissolves himself with the shining animalculae of the sea. there he is now--coming up to the full estate of manhood by the various stages of protozoon, amoeba, mollusc, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, man. it will take time, but he has no need to hurry. then follows the third act, a classico-romantic fantasmagoria, in which faust as medieval knight, ruling his multitudinous vassals from his castle in arcadia, the fabled land of poetry, is wedded to the classic queen of beauty. it is all very fantastic, but also very beautiful and marvelously pregnant in its symbolism. but at last the fair illusion comes to an end. euphorion, the child of helena and faust, the ethereal, earth-spurning genius of poesy, perishes in an attempt to fly, and his grief-stricken mother follows him back to hades. nothing is left to faust but a majestic, inspiring memory. he gathers the robe of helena about him, and it bears him aloft and carries him, high up in the air and far above all that is vulgar, back to germany. his vehicle of cloud lands him on a mountain-summit, where he is soon joined by mephistopheles, who puts the question, what next? we are now at the beginning of act iv. faust proceeds to unfold a grand scheme of conflict with the sea. on his flight he has observed the tides eternally beating in upon the shore and evermore receding, all to no purpose. this blind waste of energy has excited in him the spirit of opposition. he proposes to fight the sea by building dikes which shall hold the rushing water in check and make dry land of the tide-swept area. mephistopheles enters readily into his plans. they help the emperor to win a critical battle, and by way of reward faust receives a vast tract of swampy sea-shore as his fief. in act v the great scheme has all been carried out. what was a watery desolation has been converted into a potential paradise. faust is a great feudal lord, with a boundless domain and a fleet of ships that bring him the riches of far-away lands. but thus far he has simply been amusing himself on a grand scale. he has thought always mainly of himself. he has courted experience, among other things the experience of putting forth his power in a contest with the sea and performing a great feat of engineering. but it has not brought him a satisfaction in which he can rest. and he has not become a saint. an aged couple, who belong to the old régime and obstinately refuse to part with the little plot of ground on which they have lived for years, anger him to the point of madness. he wants their land so that he may build on it a watch-tower from which to survey and govern his possessions. he sends his servitor to remove them to a better home which he has prepared for them. but mephistopheles carries out the order with reckless brutality, with the consequence that the old people are killed and their cottage burned to the ground. thus faust in his old age--by this time he is a hundred years old--has a fresh burden on his conscience. as he stands on the balcony of his palace at midnight, surveying the havoc he has unintentionally wrought, the smoke of the burning cottage is wafted toward him and takes the form of four gray old women. one of them, dame care, slips into the rich man's palace by way of the keyhole and croons in his ear her dismal litany of care. faust replies in a fine declaration of independence, beginning-- the circle of the earth is known to me, what's on the other side we can not see. as dame care leaves him she breathes on his eyelids and makes him blind. but the inner light is not quenched. his hunger for life still unabated, he summons up all his energy and orders out an army of workmen to complete a great undertaking on which he has set his heart. on the edge of his domain, running along the distant foot-hills, is a miasmatic swamp which poisons the air and renders the land uninhabitable. he proposes to drain the swamp and thus create a home for millions yet to come. his imagination ranges forward, picturing a free, industrious, self-reliant people swarming on the land that he has won from the sea and made fit for human uses. in the ecstasy of altruistic emotion he exclaims: "such a throng i would fain see, standing with a free people on a free soil; i might say to the passing moment, 'pray tarry, thou art so fair.' the traces of my earthly life can not pass away in eons." that same instant he sinks back to earth--dying. is there in all literature anything finer, grander, more nobly conceived? what follows--the conflict of the angels and devils for the final possession of faust's soul--need not detain us long. we know how that will turn out. indeed, the shrewd old devil, while he goes through the form of making a stiff fight for what he pretends to think his rights, knows from the first that his is a losing battle. while he is watching the body of faust to see where the soul is going to escape, the angels appear in a glory, bearing roses as their only weapon. with these they put the devil and his minions to rout and bear away the dead man's soul to the holy mountain, singing their triumphal chant-- wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen. the tragedy of faust dramatis personÆ _characters in the prologue for the theatre_. the manager. the dramatic poet. merryman. _characters in the prologue in heaven_. the lord. raphael} gabriel} the heavenly host. michael} mephistopheles. _characters in the tragedy_. faust. mephistopheles. wagner, a student. margaret. martha, margaret's neighbor. valentine, margaret's brother. old peasant. a student. elizabeth, an acquaintance of margaret's. frosch } brander } guests in auerbach's wine cellar. siebel } altmayer } witches, old and young; wizards, will-o'-the-wisp, witch peddler, protophantasmist, servibilis, monkeys, spirits, journeymen, country-folk, citizens, beggar, old fortune-teller, shepherd, soldier, students, etc. _in the intermezzo_. oberon. titania. ariel. puck, etc., etc. dedication ye wavering shapes, again ye do enfold me, as erst upon my troubled sight ye stole; shall i this time attempt to clasp, to hold ye? still for the fond illusion yearns my soul? ye press around! come then, your captive hold me, as upward from the vapory mist ye roll; within my breast youth's throbbing pulse is bounding, fann'd by the magic breath your march surrounding. shades fondly loved appear, your train attending, and visions fair of many a blissful day; first-love and friendship their fond accents blending, like to some ancient, half-expiring lay; sorrow revives, her wail of anguish sending back o'er life's devious labyrinthine way, and names the dear ones, they whom fate bereaving of life's fair hours, left me behind them grieving. they hear me not my later cadence singing, the souls to whom my earlier lays i sang; dispersed the throng, their severed flight now winging; mute are the voices that responsive rang. for stranger crowds the orphean lyre now stringing, e'en their applause is to my heart a pang; of old who listened to my song, glad hearted, if yet they live, now wander widely parted. a yearning long unfelt, each impulse swaying, to yon calm spirit-realm uplifts my soul; in faltering cadence, as when zephyr playing, fans the Æolian harp, my numbers roll; tear follows tear, my steadfast heart obeying the tender impulse, loses its control; what i possess as from afar i see; those i have lost become realities to me. prologue for the theatre manager. dramatic poet. merryman manager ye twain, in trouble and distress true friends whom i so oft have found, say, for our scheme on german ground, what prospect have we of success? fain would i please the public, win their thanks; they live and let live, hence it is but meet. the posts are now erected, and the planks, and all look forward to a festal treat. their places taken, they, with eyebrows rais'd, sit patiently, and fain would be amaz'd. i know the art to hit the public taste, yet ne'er of failure felt so keen a dread; true, they are not accustomed to the best, but then appalling the amount they've read. how make our entertainment striking, new, and yet significant and pleasing too? for to be plain, i love to see the throng, as to our booth the living tide progresses; as wave on wave successive rolls along, and through heaven's narrow portal forceful presses; still in broad daylight, ere the clock strikes four, with blows their way toward the box they take; and, as for bread in famine, at the baker's door, for tickets are content their necks to break. such various minds the bard alone can sway, my friend, oh work this miracle today! poet oh of the motley throng speak not before me, at whose aspect the spirit wings its flight! conceal the surging concourse, i implore thee, whose vortex draws us with resistless might. no, to some peaceful heavenly nook restore me, where only for the bard blooms pure delight, where love and friendship yield their choicest blessing, our heart's true bliss, with godlike hand caressing. what in the spirit's depths was there created, what shyly there the lip shaped forth in sound; a failure now, with words now fitly mated, in the wild tumult of the hour is drown'd; full oft the poet's thought for years hath waited until at length with perfect form 'tis crowned; what dazzles, for the moment born, must perish; what genuine is posterity will cherish. merryman this cant about posterity i hate; about posterity were i to prate, who then the living would amuse? for they will have diversion, ay, and 'tis their due. a sprightly fellow's presence at your play, methinks should also count for something too; whose genial wit the audience still inspires, knows from their changeful mood no angry feeling; a wider circle he desires, to their heart's depths more surely thus appealing. to work, then! give a master-piece, my friend; bring fancy with her choral trains before us, sense, reason, feeling, passion, but attend! let folly also swell the tragic chorus. manager in chief, of incident enough prepare! a show they want, they come to gape and stare. spin for their eyes abundant occupation, so that the multitude may wondering gaze, you by sheer bulk have won your reputation, the man you are all love to praise. by mass alone can you subdue the masses, each then selects in time what suits his bent. bring much, you something bring for various classes, and from the house goes every one content. you give a piece, abroad in pieces send it! 'tis a ragout--success must needs attend it; 'tis easy to serve up, as easy to invent. a finish'd whole what boots it to present! full soon the public will in pieces rend it. poet how mean such handicraft as this you cannot feel! how it revolts the genuine artist's mind! the sorry trash in which these coxcombs deal, is here approved on principle, i find. manager such a reproof disturbs me not a whit! who on efficient work is bent, must choose the fittest instrument. consider! 'tis soft wood you have to split; think too for whom you write, i pray! one comes to while an hour away; one from the festive board, a sated guest; others, more dreaded than the rest, from journal-reading hurry to the play. as to a masquerade, with absent minds, they press, sheer curiosity their footsteps winging; ladies display their persons and their dress, actors unpaid their service bringing. what dreams beguile you on your poet's height? what puts a full house in a merry mood? more closely view your patrons of the night! the half are cold, the half are rude. one, the play over, craves a game of cards; another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. poor fools the muses' fair regards why court for such a paltry end? i tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all i ask, thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; your audience seek to mystify, cajole;-- to satisfy them--that's a harder task. what ails thee? art enraptured or distressed? poet depart! elsewhere another servant choose. what! shall the bard his godlike power abuse? man's loftiest right, kind nature's high bequest, for your mean purpose basely sport away? whence comes his mastery o'er the human breast, whence o'er the elements his sway, but from the harmony that, gushing from his soul, draws back into his heart the wondrous whole? with careless hand when round her spindle, nature winds the interminable thread of life; when 'mid the clash of being every creature mingles in harsh inextricable strife; who deals their course unvaried till it falleth, in rhythmic flow to music's measur'd tone? each solitary note whose genius calleth, to swell the mighty choir in unison? who in the raging storm sees passion low'ring? or flush of earnest thought in evening's glow? who every blossom in sweet spring-time flowering along the loved one's path would strow? who, nature's green familiar leaves entwining, wreathes glory's garland, won on every field? makes sure olympus, heavenly powers combining? man's mighty spirit, in the bard reveal'd! merryman come then, employ your lofty inspiration, and carry on the poet's avocation, just as we carry on a love affair. two meet by chance, are pleased, they linger there, insensibly are link'd, they scarce know how; fortune seems now propitious, adverse now, then come alternate rapture and despair; and 'tis a true romance ere one's aware. just such a drama let us now compose. plunge boldly into life-its, depths disclose! each lives it, not to many is it known, 'twill interest wheresoever seiz'd and shown; bright pictures, but obscure their meaning: a ray of truth through error gleaming, thus you the best elixir brew, to charm mankind, and edify them too. then youth's fair blossoms crowd to view your play, and wait as on an oracle; while they, the tender souls, who love the melting mood, suck from your work their melancholy food; now this one, and now that, you deeply stir, each sees the working of his heart laid bare. their tears, their laughter, you command with ease, the lofty still they honor, the illusive love. your finish'd gentlemen you ne'er can please; a growing mind alone will grateful prove. poet then give me back youth's golden prime, when my own spirit too was growing, when from my heart th' unbidden rhyme gush'd forth, a fount for ever flowing; then shadowy mist the world conceal'd, and every bud sweet promise made, of wonders yet to be reveal'd, as through the vales, with blooms inlaid, culling a thousand flowers i stray'd. naught had i, yet a rich profusion! the thirst for truth, joy in each fond illusion. give me unquell'd those impulses to prove;-- rapture so deep, its ecstasy was pain, the power of hate, the energy of love, give me, oh give me back my youth again! merryman youth, my good friend, you certainly require when foes in battle round are pressing, when a fair maid, her heart on fire, hangs on your neck with fond caressing, when from afar, the victor's crown, to reach the hard-won goal inciteth; when from the whirling dance, to drown your sense, the nights carouse inviteth. but the familiar chords among boldly to sweep, with graceful cunning, while to its goal, the verse along its winding path is sweetly running; this task is yours, old gentlemen, today; nor are you therefore less in reverence held; age does not make us childish, as folk say, it finds us genuine children e'en in eld. manager a truce to words, mere empty sound, let deeds at length appear, my friends! while idle compliments you round, you might achieve some useful ends. why talk of the poetic vein? who hesitates will never know it; if bards ye are, as ye maintain, now let your inspiration show it. to you is known what we require, strong drink to sip is our desire; come, brew me such without delay! tomorrow sees undone, what happens not today; still forward press, nor ever tire! the possible, with steadfast trust, resolve should by the forelock grasp; then she will never let go her clasp, and labors on, because she must. on german boards, you're well aware, the taste of each may have full sway; therefore in bringing out your play, nor scenes nor mechanism spare! heaven's lamps employ, the greatest and the least, be lavish of the stellar lights, water, and fire, and rocky heights, spare not at all, nor birds, nor beast. thus let creation's ample sphere forthwith in this our narrow booth appear, and with considerate speed, through fancy's spell, journey from heaven, thence through the world, to hell! prologue in heaven the lord. the heavenly hosts. _afterward_ mephistopheles _the three archangels come forward_ raphael the sun, in ancient guise, competing with brother spheres in rival song, with thunder-march, his orb completing, moves his predestin'd course along; his aspect to the powers supernal gives strength, though fathom him none may; transcending thought, the works eternal are fair as on the primal day. gabriel with speed, thought baffling, unabating, earth's splendor whirls in circling flight; its eden-brightness alternating with solemn, awe-inspiring night; ocean's broad waves in wild commotion, against the rocks' deep base are hurled; and with the spheres, both rock and ocean eternally are swiftly whirled. michael and tempests roar in emulation from sea to land, from land to sea, and raging form, without cessation, a chain of wondrous agency, full in the thunder's path careering, flaring the swift destructions play; but, lord, thy servants are revering the mild procession of thy day. the three thine aspect to the powers supernal gives strength, though fathom thee none may; and all thy works, sublime, eternal, are fair as on the primal day. mephistopheles since thou, o lord, approachest us once more, and how it fares with us, to ask art fain, since thou hast kindly welcom'd me of yore, thou see'st me also now among thy train. excuse me, fine harangues i cannot make, though all the circle look on me with scorn; my pathos soon thy laughter would awake, hadst thou the laughing mood not long forsworn. of suns and worlds i nothing have to say, i see alone mankind's self-torturing pains. the little world-god still the self-same stamp retains, and is as wondrous now as on the primal day. better he might have fared, poor wight, hadst thou not given him a gleam of heavenly light; reason he names it, and doth so use it, than brutes more brutish still to grow. with deference to your grace, he seems to me like any long-legged grasshopper to be, which ever flies, and flying springs, and in the grass its ancient ditty sings. would he but always in the grass repose! in every heap of dung he thrusts his nose. the lord hast thou naught else to say? is blame in coming here, as ever, thy sole aim? does nothing on the earth to thee seem right? mephistopheles no, lord! i find things there, as ever, in sad plight. men, in their evil days, move my compassion; such sorry things to plague is nothing worth. the lord know'st thou my servant, faust? mephistopheles the doctor? the lord right. mephistopheles he serves thee truly in a wondrous fashion. poor fool! his food and drink are not of earth. an inward impulse hurries him afar, himself half conscious of his frenzied mood; from heaven claimeth he the fairest star, and from the earth craves every highest good, and all that's near, and all that's far, fails to allay the tumult in his blood. the lord though in perplexity he serves me now, i soon will lead him where more light appears; when buds the sapling, doth the gardener know that flowers and fruit will deck the coming years! mephistopheles what wilt thou wager? him thou yet shall lose, if leave to me thou wilt but give, gently to lead him as i choose! the lord so long as he on earth doth live, so long 'tis not forbidden thee. man still must err, while he doth strive. mephistopheles i thank you; for not willingly i traffic with the dead, and still aver that youth's plump blooming cheek i very much prefer. i'm not at home to corpses; 'tis my way, like cats with captive mice to toy and play. the lord enough! 'tis granted thee! divert this mortal spirit from his primal source; him, canst thou seize, thy power exert and lead him on thy downward course, then stand abash'd, when thou perforce must own, a good man in his darkest aberration, of the right path is conscious still. mephistopheles 'tis done! full soon thou'lt see my exultation; as for my bet no fears i entertain. and if my end i finally should gain, excuse my triumphing with all my soul. dust he shall eat, ay, and with relish take, as did my cousin, the renownèd snake. the lord here too thou'rt free to act without control; i ne'er have cherished hate for such as thee. of all the spirits who deny, the scoffer is least wearisome to me. ever too prone is man activity to shirk, in unconditioned rest he fain would live; hence this companion purposely i give, who stirs, excites, and must, as devil, work. but ye, the genuine sons of heaven, rejoice! in the full living beauty still rejoice! may that which works and lives, the ever-growing, in bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught, and seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing, do ye arrest, in ever-during thought! _[heaven closes, the, archangels disperse.]_ mephistopheles _(alone)_ the ancient one i like sometimes to see, and not to break with him am always civil; 'tis courteous in so great a lord as he, to speak so kindly even to the devil. faust--part i ( )[ ] translated by anna swanwick night _a high vaulted narrow gothic chamber_. faust, _restless, seated at his desk._ faust i have, alas! philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence too, and to my cost theology, with ardent labor, studied through. and here i stand, with all my lore, poor fool, no wiser than before. magister, doctor styled, indeed, already these ten years i lead, up, down, across, and to and fro, my pupils by the nose,--and learn, that we in truth can nothing know! that in my heart like fire doth burn. 'tis true, i've more cunning than all your dull tribe, magister and doctor, priest, parson, and scribe; scruple or doubt comes not to enthrall me, neither can devil nor hell now appal me-- hence also my heart must all pleasure forego! i may not pretend aught rightly to know, i may not pretend, through teaching, to find a means to improve or convert mankind. then i have neither goods nor treasure, no worldly honor, rank, or pleasure; no dog in such fashion would longer live! therefore myself to magic i give, in hope, through spirit-voice and might, secrets now veiled to bring to light, that i no more, with aching brow, need speak of what i nothing know; that i the force may recognize that binds creation's inmost energies; her vital powers, her embryo seeds survey, and fling the trade in empty words away. o full-orb'd moon, did but thy rays their last upon mine anguish gaze! beside this desk, at dead of night, oft have i watched to hail thy light: then, pensive friend! o'er book and scroll, with soothing power, thy radiance stole! in thy dear light, ah, might i climb, freely, some mountain height sublime, round mountain caves with spirits ride, in thy mild haze o'er meadows glide, and, purged from knowledge-fumes, renew my spirit, in thy healing dew! woe's me! still prison'd in the gloom of this abhorr'd and musty room! where heaven's dear light itself doth pass but dimly through the painted glass! hemmed in by book-heaps, piled around, worm-eaten, hid 'neath dust and mold, which to the high vault's topmast bound, a smoke-stained paper doth enfold; with boxes round thee piled, and glass, and many a useless instrument, with old ancestral lumber blent-- this is thy world! a world! alas! and dost thou ask why heaves thy heart, with tighten'd pressure in thy breast? why the dull ache will not depart, by which thy life-pulse is oppress'd? instead of nature's living sphere, created for mankind of old, brute skeletons surround thee here, and dead men's bones in smoke and mold. up! forth into the distant land! is not this book of mystery by nostradamus' proper hand, an all-sufficient guide? thou'lt see the courses of the stars unroll'd; when nature doth her thoughts unfold to thee, thy-soul shall rise, and seek communion high with her to hold, as spirit cloth with spirit speak! vain by dull poring to divine the meaning of each hallow'd sign. spirits! i feel you hov'ring near; make answer, if my voice ye hear! [_he opens the book and perceives the sign of the macrocosmos_.] ah! at this spectacle through every sense, what sudden ecstasy of joy is flowing! i feel new rapture, hallow'd and intense, through every nerve and vein with ardor glowing. was it a god who character'd this scroll, the tumult in my-spirit healing, o'er my sad heart with rapture stealing, and by a mystic impulse, to my soul, the powers of nature all around revealing. am i a god? what light intense in these pure symbols do i see nature exert her vital energy? now of the wise man's words i learn the sense; "unlock'd the spirit-world is lying, thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead! up scholar, lave, with zeal undying, thine earthly breast in the morning-red!" [_he contemplates the sign_.] how all things live and work, and ever blending, weave one vast whole from being's ample range! how powers celestial, rising and descending, their golden buckets ceaseless interchange! their flight on rapture-breathing pinions winging, from heaven to earth their genial influence bringing. through the wild sphere their chimes melodious ringing! a wondrous show! but ah! a show alone! where shall i grasp thee, infinite nature, where? ye breasts, ye fountains of all life, whereon hang heaven and earth, from which the withered heart for solace yearns, ye still impart your sweet and fostering tides-where are ye-where? ye gush, and must i languish in despair? [_he turns over the leaves of the book impatiently, and perceives the sign of the earth-spirit_.] how all unlike the influence of this sign! earth-spirit, thou to me art nigher, e'en now my strength is rising higher, e'en now i glow as with new wine; courage i feel, abroad the world to dare, the woe of earth, the bliss of earth to bear, with storms to wrestle, brave the lightning's glare, and mid the crashing shipwreck not despair. clouds gather over me-- the moon conceals her light-- the lamp is quench'd-- vapors are arising--quiv'ring round my head flash the red beams--down from the vaulted roof a shuddering horror floats, and seizes me! i feel it, spirit, prayer-compell'd, 'tis thou art hovering near! unveil thyself! ha! how my heart is riven now! each sense, with eager palpitation, is strain'd to catch some new sensation! i feel my heart surrender'd unto thee! thou must! thou must! though life should be the fee! [_he seizes the book, and pronounces mysteriously the sign of the spirit. a ruddy flame flashes up; the spirit appears in the flame_.] spirit who calls me? faust (_turning aside_) dreadful shape! spirit with might, thou hast compell'd me to appear, long hast been sucking at my sphere, and now-- faust woe's me! i cannot bear thy sight! spirit to see me thou dost breathe thine invocation, my voice to hear, to gaze upon my brow; me doth thy strong entreaty bow-- lo! i am here!--what cowering agitation grasps thee, the demigod! where's now the soul's deep cry? where is the breast, which in its depths a world conceiv'd, and bore and cherished? which, with ecstasy, to rank itself with us, the spirits, heaved? where art thou, faust? whose voice heard i resound who toward me press'd with energy profound? art thou he? thou,--who by my breath art blighted, who, in his spirit's depths affrighted, trembles, a crush'd and writhing worm! faust shall i yield, thing of flame, to thee? faust, and thine equal, i am he! spirit in the currents of life, in action's storm, i float and i wave with billowy motion! birth and the grave, o limitless ocean, a constant weaving with change still rife, a restless heaving, a glowing life--- thus time's whirring loom unceasing i ply, and weave the life-garment of deity. faust thou, restless spirit, dost from end to end o'ersweep the world; how near i feel to thee! spirit thou'rt like the spirit, thou dost comprehend, not me! [_vanishes_.] faust (_deeply moved_) not thee whom then? i, god's own image! and not rank with thee! [_a knock_.] oh death! i know it-'tis my famulus-- my fairest fortune now escapes! that all these visionary shapes a soulless groveller should banish thus! [wagner _in his dressing gown and night-cap, a lamp in his hand_. faust _turns round reluctantly_.] wagner pardon! i heard you here declaim; a grecian tragedy you doubtless read? improvement in this art is now my aim, for now-a-days it much avails. indeed an actor, oft i've heard it said, as teacher, may give instruction to a preacher. faust ay, if your priest should be an actor too, as not improbably may come to pass. wagner when in his study pent the whole year through, man views the world, as through an optic glass, on a chance holiday, and scarcely then, how by persuasion can he govern men? faust if feeling prompt not, if it doth not flow fresh from the spirit's depths, with strong control swaying to rapture every listener's soul, idle your toil; the chase you may forego! brood o'er your task! together glue, cook from another's feast your own ragout, still prosecute your paltry game, and fan your ash-heaps into flame! thus children's wonder you'll excite, and apes', if such your appetite; but that which issues from the heart alone, will bend the hearts of others to your own. wagner the speaker in delivery, will find success alone; i still am far behind. faust a worthy object still pursue! be not a hollow tinkling fool! sound understanding, judgment true, find utterance without art or rule; and when in earnest you are moved to speak, then is it needful cunning words to seek? your fine harangues, so polish'd in their kind, wherein the shreds of human thought ye twist, are unrefreshing as the empty wind, whistling through wither'd leaves and autumn mist! wagner oh god! how long is art, our life how short! with earnest zeal still as i ply the critic's task, i feel a strange oppression both of head and heart. the very means--how hardly are they won, by which we to the fountains rise! and, haply, ere one half the course is run, check'd in his progress, the poor devil dies. faust parchment, is that the sacred fount whence roll waters he thirsteth not who once hath quaffed? oh, if it gush not from thine inmost soul, thou hast not won the life-restoring draught. wagner your pardon! 'tis delightful to transport oneself into the spirit of the past, to see in times before us how a wise man thought, and what a glorious height we have achieved at last. faust ay, truly! even to the loftiest star! to us, my friend, the ages that are pass'd a book with seven seals, close-fasten'd, are; and what the spirit of the times men call, is merely their own spirit after all, wherein, distorted oft, the times are glass'd. then truly, 'tis a sight to grieve the soul! at the first glance we fly it in dismay; a very lumber-room, a rubbish-hole; at best a sort of mock-heroic play, with saws pragmatical, and maxims sage, to suit the puppets and their mimic stage. wagner but then the world and man, his heart and brain! touching these things all men would something know. faust ay! what 'mong men as knowledge doth obtain! who on the child its true name dares bestow? the few who somewhat of these things have known, who their full hearts unguardedly reveal'd, nor thoughts, nor feelings, from the mob conceal'd, have died on crosses, or in flames been thrown.-- excuse me, friend, far now the night is spent, for this time we must say adieu. wagner still to watch on i had been well content, thus to converse so learnedly with you. but as tomorrow will be easter-day, some further questions grant, i pray; with diligence to study still i fondly cling; already i know much, but would know everything. [exit.] faust (_alone_) how him alone all hope abandons never, to empty trash who clings, with zeal untired, with greed for treasure gropes, and, joy-inspir'd, exults if earth-worms second his endeavor. and dare a voice of merely human birth, e'en here, where shapes immortal throng'd, intrude? yet ah! thou poorest of the sons of earth, for once, i e'en to thee feel gratitude. despair the power of sense did well-nigh blast, and thou didst save me ere i sank dismay'd; so giant-like the vision seem'd, so vast, i felt myself shrink dwarf'd as i survey'd! i, god's own image, from this toil of clay already freed, with eager joy who hail'd the mirror of eternal truth unveil'd, mid light effulgent and celestial day i, more than cherub, whose unfetter'd soul with penetrative glance aspir'd to flow through nature's veins, and, still creating, know the life of gods,--how am i punish'd now! one thunder-word hath hurl'd me from the goal! spirit! i dare not lift me to thy sphere. what though my power compell'd thee to appear, my art was powerless to detain thee here. in that great moment, rapture-fraught, i felt myself so small, so great; fiercely didst thrust me from the realm of thought back on humanity's uncertain fate! who'll teach me now? what ought i to forego? ought i that impulse to obey? alas! our every deed, as well as every woe, impedes the tenor of life's onward way! e'en to the noblest by the soul conceiv'd, some feelings cling of baser quality; and when the goods of this world are achiev'd, each nobler aim is term'd a cheat, a lie. our aspirations, our soul's genuine life, grow torpid in the din of earthly strife. though youthful phantasy, while hope inspires, stretch o'er the infinite her wing sublime, a narrow compass limits her desires, when wreck'd our fortunes in the gulf of time. in the deep heart of man care builds her nest, o'er secret woes she broodeth there, sleepless she rocks herself and scareth joy and rest; still is she wont some new disguise to wear-- she may as house and court, as wife and child appear, as dagger, poison, fire and flood; imagined evils chill thy blood, and what thou ne'er shalt lose, o'er that dost shed the tear. i am not like the gods! feel it i must; i'm like the earth-worm, writhing in the dust, which, as on dust it feeds, its native fare, crushed 'neath the passer's tread, lies buried there. is it not dust, wherewith this lofty wall, with hundred shelves, confines me round; rubbish, in thousand shapes, may i not call what in this moth-world doth my being bound? here, what doth fail me, shall i find? read in a thousand tomes that, everywhere, self-torture is the lot of human-kind, with but one mortal happy, here and there thou hollow skull, that grin, what should it say, but that thy brain, like mine, of old perplexed, still yearning for the truth, hath sought the light of day, and in the twilight wandered, sorely vexed? ye instruments, forsooth, ye mock at me,-- with wheel, and cog, and ring, and cylinder; to nature's portals ye should be the key; cunning your wards, and yet the bolts ye fail to stir. inscrutable in broadest light, to be unveil'd by force she doth refuse, what she reveals not to thy mental sight thou wilt not wrest from her with levers and with screws. old useless furnitures, yet stand ye here, because my sire ye served, now dead and gone. old scroll, the smoke of years dost wear, so long as o'er this desk the sorry lamp hath shone. better my little means hath squandered quite away than burden'd by that little here to sweat and groan! wouldst thou possess thy heritage, essay by use to render it thine own! what we employ not but impedes our way; that which the hour creates, that can it use alone! but wherefore to yon spot is riveted my gaze? is yonder flasket there a magnet to my sight? whence this mild radiance that around me plays, as when, 'mid forest gloom, reigneth the moon's soft light? hail, precious phial! thee, with reverent awe, down from thine old receptacle i draw! science in thee i hail and human art. essence of deadliest powers, refin'd and sure, of soothing anodynes abstraction pure, now in thy master's need thy grace impart! i gaze on thee, my pain is lull'd to rest; i grasp thee, calm'd the tumult in my breast; the flood-tide of my spirit ebbs away; onward i'm summon'd o'er a boundless main, calm at my feet expands the glassy plain, to shores unknown allures a brighter day. lo, where a car of fire, on airy pinion, comes floating towards me! i'm prepar'd to fly by a new track through ether's wide dominion, to distant spheres of pure activity. this life intense, this godlike ecstasy-- worm that thou art such rapture canst thou earn! only resolve, with courage stern and high, thy visage from the radiant sun to turn! dare with determin'd will to burst the portals past which in terror others fain would steal! now is the time, through deeds, to show that mortals the calm sublimity of gods can feel; to shudder not at yonder dark abyss where phantasy creates her own self-torturing brood; right onward to the yawning gulf to press, around whose narrow jaws rolleth hell's fiery flood; with glad resolve to take the fatal leap, though danger threaten thee, to sink in endless sleep! pure crystal goblet! forth i draw thee now from out thine antiquated case, where thou forgotten hast reposed for many a year! oft at my father's revels thou didst shine; to glad the earnest guests was thine, as each to other passed the generous cheer. the gorgeous brede of figures, quaintly wrought, which he who quaff'd must first in rhyme expound, then drain the goblet at one draught profound, hath nights of boyhood to fond memory brought. i to my neighbor shall not reach thee now, nor on thy rich device shall i my cunning show. here is a juice, makes drunk without delay; its dark brown flood thy crystal round doth fill; let this last draught, the product of my skill, my own free choice, be quaff'd with resolute will, a solemn festive greeting, to the coming day! [_he places the goblet to his mouth_.] [_the ringing of bells, and choral voices_.] chorus of angels christ is arisen! mortal, all hail to thee, thou whom mortality, earth's sad reality, held as in prison. faust what hum melodious, what clear silvery chime, thus draws the goblet from my lips away? ye deep-ton'd bells, do ye, with voice sublime, announce the solemn dawn of easter-day? sweet choir! are ye the hymn of comfort singing, which once around the darkness of the grave, from seraph-voices, in glad triumph ringing, of a new covenant assurance gave? chorus of women we, his true-hearted, with spices and myrrh. embalmed the departed, and swathed him with care; here we conveyed him, our master, so dear; alas! where we laid him, the christ is not here. chorus of angels christ is arisen! blessed the loving one, who from earth's trial-throes, healing and strengthening woes, soars as from prison. faust wherefore, ye tones celestial, sweet and strong, come ye a dweller in the dust to seek? ring out your chimes believing crowds among, the message well i hear, my faith alone is weak; from faith her darling, miracle, hath sprung. aloft to yonder spheres i dare not soar, whence sound the tidings of great joy; and yet, with this sweet strain familiar when a boy, back it recalleth me to life once more. then would celestial love, with holy kiss, come o'er me in the sabbath's stilly hour, while, fraught with solemn meaning and mysterious power, chim'd the deep-sounding bell, and prayer was bliss; a yearning impulse, undefin'd yet dear, drove me to wander on through wood and field; with heaving breast and many a burning tear, i felt with holy joy a world reveal'd. gay sports and festive hours proclaim'd with joyous pealing this easter hymn in days of old; and fond remembrance now doth me, with childlike feeling, back from the last, the solemn step, withhold. o still sound on, thou sweet celestial strain! the tear-drop flows--earth, i am thine again! chorus of disciples he whom we mourned as dead, living and glorious, from the dark grave hath fled, o'er death victorious; almost creative bliss waits on his growing powers; ah! him on earth we miss; sorrow and grief are ours. yearning he left his own, mid sore annoy; ah! we must needs bemoan, master, thy joy! chorus of angels christ is arisen, redeem'd from decay. the bonds which imprison your souls, rend away! praising the lord with zeal, by deeds that love reveal, like brethren true and leal sharing the daily meal, to all that sorrow feel whisp'ring of heaven's weal, still is the master near, still is he here! before the gate _promenaders of all sorts pass out_. artisans why choose ye that direction, pray? others to the hunting-lodge we're on our way. the first we toward the mill are strolling on. a mechanic a walk to wasserhof were best. a second the road is not a pleasant one. the others what will you do? a third i'll join the rest. a fourth let's up to burghof, there you'll find good cheer, the prettiest maidens and the best of beer, and brawls of a prime sort. a fifth you scapegrace! how? your skin still itching for a row? thither i will not go, i loathe the place. servant girl no, no! i to the town my steps retrace. another near yonder poplars he is sure to be. the first and if he is, what matters it to me! with you he'll walk, he'll dance with none but you, and with your pleasures what have i to do? the second today he will not be alone, he said his friend would be with him, the curly-head. student why how those buxom girls step on! come, brother, we will follow them anon. strong beer, a damsel smartly dress'd, stinging tobacco--these i love the best. burgher's daughter look at those handsome fellows there! 'tis really shameful, i declare; the very best society they shun, after those servant-girls forsooth, to run. second student (_to the first_) not quite so fast! for in our rear, two girls, well-dress'd, are drawing near; not far from us the one doth dwell, and, sooth to say, i like her well. they walk demurely, yet you'll see, that they will let us join them presently. the first not i! restraints of all kinds i detest. quick! let us catch the wild-game ere it flies; the hand on saturday the mop that plies will on the sunday fondle you the best. burgher no, this new burgomaster; i like him not, god knows; no, he's in office; daily more arrogant he grows; and for the town, what doth he do for it? are not things worse from day to day? to more restraints we must submit; and taxes more than ever pay. beggar (_sings_) kind gentlemen and ladies fair, so rosy-cheek'd and trimly dress'd, be pleas'd to listen to my prayer; relieve and pity the distress'd. let me not vainly sing my lay! his heart's most glad whose hand is free. now when all men keep holiday, should be a harvest-day to me. other burgher on holidays and sundays naught know i more inviting than chatting about war and war's alarms, when folk in turkey, up in arms, far off, are 'gainst each other fighting. we at the window stand, our glasses drain and watch adown the stream the painted vessels gliding; then joyful we at eve come home again, and peaceful times we bless, peace long-abiding. third burgher ay, neighbor! so let matters stand for me! there they may scatter one another's brains, and wild confusion round them see-- so here at home in quiet all remains! old woman (_to the_ burghers' daughters) heyday! how smart! the fresh young blood! who would not fall in love with you? not quite so proud! 'tis well and good! and what you wish, that i could help you to. burgher's daughter come, agatha! i care not to be seen walking in public with these witches. true, my future lover, last st. andrew's e'en, in flesh and blood she brought before my view. another and mine she show'd me also in the glass. a soldier's figure, with companions bold; i look around, i seek him as i pass-- in vain, his form i nowhere can behold. soldiers fortress with turrets and walls high in air, damsel disdainful, haughty and fair-- these be my prey! bold is the venture, costly the pay! hark, how the trumpet thither doth call us where either pleasure or death may befall us! hail to the tumult! life's in the field! damsel and fortress to us must yield. bold is the venture, costly the pay! gaily the soldier marches away. faust _and_ wagner faust loosed from their fetters are streams and rills through the gracious spring-tide's all-quickening glow; hope's budding joy in the vale doth blow; old winter back to the savage hills withdraweth his force, decrepid now. thence only impotent icy grains scatters he as he wings his flight, striping with sleet the verdant plains; but the sun endureth no trace of white; everywhere growth and movement are rife, all things investing with hues of life though flowers are lacking, varied of dye, their colors the motley throng supply. turn thee around, and, from this height, back to the town direct thy sight. forth from the hollow, gloomy gate, stream forth the masses, in bright array. gladly seek they the sun today; the lord's resurrection they celebrate: for they themselves have risen, with joy, from tenement sordid, from cheerless room, from bonds of toil, from care and annoy, from gable and roof's o'erhanging gloom, from crowded alley and narrow street, and from the churches' awe-breathing night all now have come forth into the light. look, only look, on nimble feet, through garden and field how spread the throng, how o'er the river's ample sheet many a gay wherry glides along; and see, deep sinking in the tide, pushes the last boat now away. e'en from yon far hill's path-worn side, flash the bright hues of garments gay. hark! sounds of village mirth arise; this is the people's paradise. both great and small send up a cheer; here am i man, i feel it here. wagner sir doctor, in a walk with you there's honor and instruction too; yet here alone i care not to resort, because i coarseness hate of every sort. this fiddling, shouting, skittling, i detest; i hate the tumult of the vulgar throng; they roar as by the evil one possess'd, and call it pleasure, call it song. peasants (_under the linden-tree_) _dance and sing_. the shepherd for the dance was dress'd, with ribbon, wreath, and colored vest, a gallant show displaying. and round about the linden-tree, they footed it right merrily. juchhe! juchhe! juchheisa! heisa! he! so fiddle-bow was braying. our swain amidst the circle press'd, he push'd a maiden trimly dress'd, and jogg'd her with his elbow; the buxom damsel turn'd her head, "now that's a stupid trick!" she said, juchhe! juchhe! juchheisa! heisa! he! don't be so rude, good fellow! swift in the circle they advanced, they danced to right, to left they danced, and all the skirts were swinging. and they grew red, and they grew warm, panting, they rested arm in arm, juchhe! juchhe! juchheisa! heisa! he! to hip their elbow bringing. don't make so free! how many a maid has been betroth'd and then betray'd; and has repented after! yet still he flatter'd her aside, and from the linden, far and wide, juchhe! juchhe! juchheisa! heisa! he! rang fiddle-bow and laughter. old peasant doctor, 'tis really kind of you, to condescend to come this way, a highly learned man like you, to join our mirthful throng today. our fairest cup i offer you, which we with sparkling drink have crown'd, and pledging you, i pray aloud, that every drop within its round, while it your present thirst allays, may swell the number of your days. faust i take the cup you kindly reach, thanks and prosperity to each! [_the crowd gather round in a circle_.] old peasant ay, truly! 'tis well done, that you our festive meeting thus attend; you, who in evil days of yore, so often show'd yourself our friend! full many a one stands living here, who from the fever's deadly blast your father rescu'd, when his skill the fatal sickness stay'd at last. a young man then, each house you sought, where reign'd the mortal pestilence. corpse after corpse was carried forth, but still unscath'd you issued thence. sore then your trials and severe; the helper yonder aids the helper here. all heaven bless the trusty friend, and long to help the poor his life prolong! faust to him above in homage bend, who prompts the helper and who help doth send. [_he proceeds with_ wagner.] wagner what feelings, great man, must thy breast inspire, at homage paid thee by this crowd! thrice blest who from the gifts by him possessed such benefit can draw! the sire thee to his boy with reverence shows, they press around, inquire, advance, hush'd is the fiddle, check'd the dance. where thou dost pass they stand in rows, and each aloft his bonnet throws, but little fails and they to thee, as though the host came by, would bend the knee. faust a few steps further, up to yonder stone! here rest we from our walk. in times long past, absorb'd in thought, here oft i sat alone, and disciplin'd myself with prayer and fast. then rich in hope, with faith sincere, with sighs, and hands in anguish press'd, the end of that sore plague, with many a tear, from heaven's dread lord, i sought to wrest. the crowd's applause assumes a scornful tone. oh, could'st thou in my inner being read how little either sire or son of such renown deserves the meed! my sire, of good repute, and sombre mood, o'er nature's powers and every mystic zone, with honest zeal, but methods of his own, with toil fantastic loved to brood; his time in dark alchemic cell, with brother-adepts he would spend, and there antagonists compel through numberless receipts to blend. a ruddy lion there, a suitor bold, in tepid bath was with the lily wed. thence both, while open flames around them roll'd, were tortur'd to another bridal bed. was then the youthful queen descried with varied colors in the flask-- this was our medicine; the patients died; "who were restored?" none cared to ask. with our infernal mixture thus, ere long. these hills and peaceful vales among we rag'd more fiercely than the pest; myself the deadly poison did to thousands give; they pined away, i yet must live to hear the reckless murderers blest. wagner why let this thought your soul o'ercast? can man do more than with nice skill, with firm and conscientious will, practise the art transmitted from the past? if thou thy sire dost honor in thy youth, his lore thou gladly wilt receive; in manhood, dost thou spread the bounds of truth, then may thy son a higher goal achieve. faust how blest, in whom the fond desire from error's sea to rise, hope still renews! what a man knows not, that he doth require, and what he knoweth, that he cannot use. but let not moody thoughts their shadow throw o'er the calm beauty of this hour serene! in the rich sunset see how brightly glow yon cottage homes, girt round with verdant green! slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more; yonder he hastens to diffuse new life. oh for a pinion from the earth to soar, and after, ever after him to strive! then should i see the world below, bathed in the deathless evening-beams, the vales reposing, every height a-glow, the silver brooklets meeting golden streams. the savage mountain, with its cavern'd side, bars not my godlike progress. lo, the ocean, its warm bays heaving with a tranquil motion, to my rapt vision opes its ample tide! but now at length the god appears to sink a new-born impulse wings my flight, onward i press, his quenchless light to drink, the day before me, and behind the night, the pathless waves beneath, and over me the skies. fair dream, it vanish'd with the parting day! alas! that when on spirit-wing we rise, no wing material lifts our mortal clay. but 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong, upwards and onwards still to urge our flight, when far above us pours its thrilling song the sky-lark, lost in azure light; when on extended wing amain o'er pine-crown'd height the eagle soars; and over moor and lake, the crane still striveth toward its native shores. wagner to strange conceits oft i myself must own, but impulse such as this i ne'er have known nor woods, nor fields, can long our thoughts engage; their wings i envy not the feather'd kind; far otherwise the pleasures of the mind bear us from book to book, from page to page i then winter nights grow cheerful; keen delight warms every limb; and ah! when we unroll some old and precious parchment, at the sight all heaven itself descends upon the soul. faust thy heart by one sole impulse is possess'd; unconscious of the other still remain! two souls, alas! are lodg'd within my breast, which struggle there for undivided reign one to the world, with obstinate desire, and closely-cleaving organs, still adheres; above the mist, the other doth aspire, with sacred vehemence, to purer spheres. oh, are there spirits in the air who float 'twixt heaven and earth dominion wielding, stoop hither from your golden atmosphere, lead me to scenes, new life and fuller yielding! a magic mantle did i but possess, abroad to waft me as on viewless wings, i'd prize it far beyond the costliest dress, nor would i change it for the robe of kings. wagner call not the spirits who on mischief wait! their troop familiar, streaming through the air, from every quarter threaten man's estate, and danger in a thousand forms prepare! they drive impetuous from the frozen north, with fangs sharp-piercing, and keen arrowy tongues; from the ungenial east they issue forth, and prey, with parching breath, upon thy lungs; if, waft'd on the desert's flaming wing, they from the south heap fire upon the brain, refreshment from the west at first they bring, anon to drown thyself and field and plain. in wait for mischief, they are prompt to hear; with guileful purpose our behests obey; like ministers of grace they oft appear, and lisp like angels, to betray. but let us hence! gray eve doth all things blend, the air grows chill, the mists descend! 'tis in the evening first our home we prize-- why stand you thus, and gaze with wondering eyes? what in the gloom thus moves you? faust yon black hound see 'st thou, through corn and stubble scampering round? wagner i've mark'd him long, naught strange in him i see! faust note him! what takest thou the brute to be? wagner but for a poodle, whom his instinct serves his master's track to find once more. faust dost mark how round us, with wide spiral curves, he wheels, each circle closer than before? and, if i err not, he appears to me a line of 'fire upon his track to leave. wagner naught but a poodle black of hue i see; 'tis some illusion doth your sight deceive. faust methinks a magic coil our feet around, he for a future snare doth lightly spread. wagner around us as in doubt i see him shyly bound, since he two strangers seeth in his master's stead. faust the circle narrows, he's already near! wagner a dog dost see, no spectre have we here; he growls, doubts, lays him on his belly too, and wags his tail-as dogs are wont to do. faust come hither, sirrah! join our company! wagner a very poodle, he appears to be! thou standest still, for thee he'll wait; thou speak'st to him, he fawns upon thee straight; aught thou mayst lose, again he'll bring, and for thy stick will into water spring. faust thou'rt right indeed; no traces now i see whatever of a spirit's agency, 'tis training--nothing more. wagner a dog well taught e'en by the wisest of us may be sought. ay, to your favor he's entitled too, apt scholar of the students, 'tis his due! [_they enter the gate of the town_.] study faust (_entering with, the poodle_) now field and meadow i've forsaken; o'er them deep night her veil doth draw; in us the better soul doth waken, with feelings of foreboding awe. all lawless promptings, deeds unholy, now slumber, and all wild desires; the love of man doth sway us wholly, and love to god the soul inspires. peace, poodle, peace! scamper not thus; obey me! why at the threshold snuffest thou so? behind the stove now quietly lay thee, my softest cushion to thee i'll throw. as thou, without, didst please and amuse me, running and frisking about on the hill, so tendance now i will not refuse thee; a welcome guest, if thou'lt be still. ah! when the friendly taper gloweth, once more within our narrow cell, then in the heart itself that knoweth, a light the darkness doth dispel. reason her voice resumes; returneth hope's gracious bloom, with promise rife; for streams of life the spirit yearneth, ah! for the very fount of life. poodle, snarl not! with the tone that arises, hallow'd and peaceful, my soul within, accords not thy growl, thy bestial din. we find it not strange, that man despises what he conceives not; that he the good and fair misprizes-- finding them often beyond his ken; will the dog snarl at them like men? but ah! despite my will, it stands confessed; contentment welleth up no longer in my breast. yet wherefore must the stream, alas, so soon be dry, that we once more athirst should lie? full oft this sad experience hath been mine; nathless the want admits of compensation; for things above the earth we learn to pine, our spirits yearn for revelation, which nowhere burns with purer beauty blent, than here in the new testament. to ope the ancient text an impulse strong impels me, and its sacred lore, with honest purpose to explore, and render into my loved german tongue. [_he opens a volume and applies himself to it_.] 'tis writ, "in the beginning was the word!" i pause, perplex'd! who now will help afford? i cannot the mere word so highly prize; i must translate it otherwise, if by the spirit guided as i read. "in the beginning was the sense!" take heed, the import of this primal sentence weigh, lest thy too hasty pen be led astray! is force creative then of sense the dower? "in the beginning was the power!" thus should it stand: yet, while the line i trace, a something warns me, once more to efface. the spirit aids! from anxious scruples freed, i write, "in the beginning was the deed!" am i with thee my room to share, poodle, thy barking now forbear, forbear thy howling! comrade so noisy, ever growling, i cannot suffer here to dwell. one or the other, mark me well, forthwith must leave the cell. i'm loath the guest-right to withhold; the door's ajar, the passage clear; but what must now mine eyes behold! are nature's laws suspended here? real is it, or a phantom show? in length and breadth how doth my poodle grow! he lifts himself with threat'ning mien, in likeness of a dog no longer seen! what spectre have i harbor'd thus! huge as a hippopotamus, with fiery eye, terrific tooth! ah! now i know thee, sure enough! for such a base, half-hellish brood, the key of solomon is good. spirits (_without_) captur'd there within is one! stay without and follow none! like a fox in iron snare, hell's old lynx is quaking there, but take heed'! hover round, above, below, to and fro, then from durance is he freed! can ye aid him, spirits all, leave him not in mortal thrall! many a time and oft hath he served us, when at liberty. faust the monster to confront, at first, the spell of four must be rehears'd; salamander shall kindle, writhe nymph of the wave, in air sylph shall dwindle, and kobold shall slave. who doth ignore the primal four, nor knows aright their use and might, o'er spirits will he ne'er master be! vanish in the fiery glow, salamander! rushingly together flow, undine! shimmer in the meteor's gleam, sylphide! hither bring thine homely aid, incubus! incubus! step forth! i do adjure thee thus! none of the four lurks in the beast; he grins at me, untroubled as before; i have not hurt him in the least. a spell of fear thou now shalt hear. art thou, comrade fell, fugitive from hell? see then this sign, before which incline the murky troops of hell! with bristling hair now doth the creature swell. canst thou, reprobate, read the uncreate, unspeakable, diffused throughout the heavenly sphere, shamefully abused, transpierced with nail and spear! behind the stove, tam'd by my spells, like an elephant he swells; wholly now he fills the room, he into mist will melt away. ascend not to the ceiling! come, thyself at the master's feet now lay! thou seest that mine is no idle threat. with holy fire i will scorch thee yet! wait not the might that lies in the triple-glowing light! wait not the might of all my arts in fullest measure! mephistopheles (_as the mist sinks, comes forward from behind the stove, in the dress of a traveling scholar_) why all this uproar? what's the master's pleasure? faust this then the kernel of the brute! a traveling scholar? why i needs must smile. mephistopheles your learned reverence humbly i salute! you've made me swelter in a pretty style. faust thy name? mephistopheles the question trifling seems from one, who it appears the word doth rate so low; who, undeluded by mere outward show, to being's depths would penetrate alone. faust with gentlemen like you indeed the inward essence from the name we read, as all too plainly it doth appear, when beelzebub, destroyer, liar, meets the ear. who then art thou? mephistopheles part of that power which still produceth good, whilst ever scheming ill. faust what hidden mystery in this riddle lies? mephistopheles the spirit i, which evermore denies! and justly; for whate'er to light is brought deserves again to be reduced to naught; then better 'twere that naught should be. thus all the elements which ye destruction, sin, or briefly, evil, name, as my peculiar element i claim. faust thou nam'st thyself a part, and yet a whole i see. mephistopheles the modest truth i speak to thee. though folly's microcosm, man, it seems, himself to be a perfect whole esteems: part of the part am i, which at the first was all, a part of darkness, which gave birth to light-- proud light, who now his mother would enthrall, contesting space and ancient rank with night. yet he succeedeth not, for struggle as he will, to forms material he adhereth still; from them he streameth, them he maketh fair, and still the progress of his beams they check; and so, i trust, when comes the final wreck, light will, ere long, the doom of matter share. faust thy worthy avocation now i guess! wholesale annihilation won't prevail, so thou'rt beginning on a smaller scale. mephistopheles and, to say truth, as yet with small success. oppos'd to naught, this clumsy world, the something--it subsisteth still; not yet is it to ruin hurl'd, despite the efforts of my will. tempests and earthquakes, fire and flood, i've tried; yet land and ocean still unchang'd abide! and then of humankind and beasts, the accursed brood,-- neither o'er them can i extend my sway. what countless myriads have i swept away! yet ever circulates the fresh young blood. it is enough to drive me to despair! as in the earth, in water, and in air, a thousand germs burst forth spontaneously; in moisture, drought, heat, cold, they still appear! had i not flame selected as my sphere, nothing apart had been reserved for me. faust so thou with thy cold devil's fist, still clench'd in malice impotent, dost the creative power resist, the active, the beneficent! henceforth some other task essay, of chaos thou the wondrous son! mephistopheles we will consider what you say, and talk about it more anon! for this time have i leave to go? faust why thou shouldst ask, i cannot see. since thee i now have learned to know, at thy good pleasure, visit me. here is the window, here the door, the chimney, too, may serve thy need. mephistopheles i must confess, my stepping o'er thy threshold a slight hindrance doth impede; the wizard-foot doth me retain. faust the pentagram thy peace doth mart to me, thou son of hell, explain, how camest thou in, if this thine exit bar? could such a spirit aught ensnare? mephistopheles observe it well, it is not drawn with care; one of the angles, that which points without, is, as thou seest, not quite closed. faust chance hath the matter happily dispos'd! so thou my captive art? no doubt! by accident thou thus art caught! mephistopheles in sprang the dog, indeed, observing naught; things now assume another shape, the devil's in the house and can't escape. faust why through the window not withdraw? mephistopheles for ghosts and for the devil 'tis a law, where they stole in, there they must forth. we're free the first to choose; as to the second, slaves are we. faust e'en hell hath its peculiar laws, i see! i'm glad of that! a pact may then be made, the which you gentlemen will surely keep? mephistopheles whate'er therein is promised thou shalt reap, no tittle shall remain unpaid. but such arrangements time require; we'll speak of them when next we meet; most earnestly i now entreat, this once permission to retire. faust another moment prithee here remain, me with some happy word to pleasure. mephistopheles now let me go! ere long i'll come again; then thou may'st question at thy leisure. faust 'twas not my purpose thee to lime; the snare hast entered of thine own free will: let him who holds the devil, hold him still! so soon he'll catch him not a second time. mephistopheles if it so please thee, i'm at thy command; only on this condition, understand; that worthily thy leisure to beguile, i here may exercise my arts awhile. faust thou'rt free to do so! gladly i'll attend; but be thine art a pleasant one! mephistopheles my friend, this hour enjoyment more intense shall captivate each ravish'd sense, than thou could'st compass in the bound of the whole year's unvarying round; and what the dainty spirits sing, the lovely images they bring, are no fantastic sorcery. rich odors shall regale your smell, on choicest sweets your palate dwell, your feelings thrill with ecstasy. no preparation do we need, here we together are. proceed. spirits hence overshadowing gloom, vanish from sight! o'er us thine azure dome, bend, beauteous light! dark clouds that o'er us spread, melt in thin air! stars, your soft radiance shed, tender and fair! girt with celestial might, winging their airy flight, spirits are thronging. follows their forms of light infinite longing! flutter their vestures bright o'er field and grove! where in their leafy bower lovers the livelong hour vow deathless love. soft bloometh bud and bower! bloometh the grove! grapes from the spreading vine crown the full measure; fountains of foaming wine gush from the pressure. still where the currents wind, gems brightly gleam; leaving the hills behind on rolls the stream; now into ample seas, spreadeth the flood-- laving the sunny leas, mantled with wood. [illustration: faust and mephisto liezen-mayer] rapture the feather'd throng, gaily careering, sip as they float along; sunward they're steering; on toward the isles of light winging their way, that on the waters bright dancingly play. hark to the choral strain, joyfully ringing! while on the grassy plain dancers are springing; climbing the steep hill's side, skimming the glassy tide, wander they there; others on pinions wide wing the blue air; all lifeward tending, upward still wending, toward yonder stars that gleam, far, far above; stars from whose tender beam rains blissful love. mephistopheles well done, my dainty spirits! now he slumbers! ye have entranc'd him fairly with your numbers! this minstrelsy of yours i must repay.-- thou art not yet the man to hold the devil fast!-- with fairest shapes your spells around him cast, and plunge him in a sea of dreams! but that this charm be rent, the threshold passed, tooth of rat the way must clear. i need not conjure long it seems, one rustles hitherward, and soon my voice will hear. the master of the rats and mice, of flies and frogs, of bugs and lice, commands thy presence; without fear come forth and gnaw the threshold here, where he with oil has smear'd it.--thou com'st hopping forth already! now to work! the point that holds me bound is in the outer angle found. another bite--so--now 'tis done-- now, faustus, till we meet again, dream on. faust (_awaking_) am i once more deluded! must i deem that thus the throng of spirits disappear? the devil's presence--was it but a dream? hath but a poodle scap'd and left me here? study faust, mephistopheles faust a knock? come in! who now would break my rest? mephistopheles 'tis i! faust come in! mephistopheles thrice be the words express'd. faust then i repeat, come in! mephistopheles 'tis well, i hope that we shall soon agree! for now your fancies to expel, here, as a youth of high degree, i come in gold-lac'd scarlet vest, and stiff-silk mantle richly dress'd, a cock's gay feather for a plume, a long and pointed rapier, too; and briefly i would counsel you to don at once the same costume, and, free from trammels, speed away, that what life is you may essay. faust in every garb i needs must feel oppress'd, my heart to earth's low cares a prey. too old the trifler's part to play, too young to live by no desire possess'd. what can the world to me afford? renounce! renounce! is still the word; this is the everlasting song in every ear that ceaseless rings, and which, alas, our whole life long, hoarsely each passing moment sings. but to new horror i awake each morn, and i could weep hot tears, to see the sun dawn on another day, whose round forlorn accomplishes no wish of mine--not one. which still, with froward captiousness, impains e'en the presentiment of every joy, while low realities and paltry cares the spirit's fond imaginings destroy. then must i too, when falls the veil of night, stretch'd on my pallet languish in despair. appalling dreams my soul affright; no rest vouchsafed me even there. the god, who throned within my breast resides, deep in my soul can stir the springs; with sovereign sway my energies he guides, he cannot move external things; and so existence is to me a weight, death fondly i desire, and life i hate. mephistopheles and yet, methinks, by most 'twill be confess'd that death is never quite a welcome guest. faust happy the man around whose brow he binds the bloodstain'd wreath in conquest's dazzling hour; or whom, excited by the dance, he finds dissolv'd in bliss, in love's delicious bower! o that before the lofty spirit's might, enraptured, i had rendered up my soul! mephistopheles yet did a certain man refrain one night of its brown juice to drain the crystal bowl. faust to play the spy diverts you then? mephistopheles i own, though not omniscient, much to me is known. faust if o'er my soul the tone familiar, stealing, drew me from harrowing thought's bewild'ring maze, touching the ling'ring chords of childlike feeling, with the sweet harmonies of happier days: so curse i all, around the soul that windeth its magic and alluring spell, and with delusive flattery bindeth its victim to this dreary cell! curs'd before all things be the high opinion wherewith the spirit girds itself around! of shows delusive curs'd be the dominion, within whose mocking sphere our sense is bound! accurs'd of dreams the treacherous wiles, the cheat of glory, deathless fame! accurs'd what each as property beguiles, wife, child, slave, plough, whate'er its name! accurs'd be mammon, when with treasure he doth to daring deeds incite: or when to steep the soul in pleasure, he spreads the couch of soft delight! curs'd be the grape's balsamic juice! accurs'd love's dream, of joys the first! accurs'd be hope! accurs'd be faith! and more than all, be patience curs'd! chorus of spirits (_invisible_) woe! woe! thou hast destroy'd the beautiful world with violent blow; 'tis shiver'd! 'tis shatter'd! the fragments abroad by a demigod scatter'd! now we sweep the wrecks into nothingness! fondly we weep the beauty that's gone! thou, 'mongst the sons of earth, lofty and mighty one, build it once more! in thine own bosom the lost world restore! now with unclouded sense enter a new career; songs shall salute thine ear, ne'er heard before! mephistopheles my little ones these spirits be. hark! with shrewd intelligence, how they recommend to thee action, and the joys of sense! in the busy world to dwell, fain they would allure thee hence for within this lonely cell, stagnate sap of life and sense. forbear to trifle longer with thy grief, which, vulture-like, consumes thee in this den. the worst society is some relief, making thee feel thyself a man with men. nathless, it is not meant, i trow, to thrust thee 'mid the vulgar throng. i to the upper ranks do not belong; yet if, by me companion'd, thou thy steps through life forthwith wilt take, upon the spot myself i'll make thy comrade;--should it suit thy need, i am thy servant, am thy slave indeed! faust and how must i thy services repay? mephistopheles thereto thou lengthen'd respite hast! faust no! no! the devil is an egoist i know and, for heaven's sake, 'tis not his way kindness to any one to show. let the condition plainly be exprest! such a domestic is a dangerous guest. mephistopheles i'll pledge myself to be thy servant _here_, still at thy back alert and prompt to be; but when together _yonder_ we appear, then shalt thou do the same for me. faust but small concern i feel for yonder world; hast thou this system into ruin hurl'd, another may arise the void to fill. this earth the fountain whence my pleasures flow, this sun doth daily shine upon my woe, and if this world i must forego, let happen then,--what can and will. i to this theme will close mine ears, if men hereafter hate and love, and if there be in yonder spheres a depth below or height above. mephistopheles in this mood thou mayst venture it. but make the compact! i at once will undertake to charm thee with mine arts. i'll give thee more than mortal eve hath e'er beheld before. faust what, sorry devil, hast thou to bestow? was ever mortal spirit, in its high endeavor, fathom'd by being such as thou? yet food thou least which satisfieth never; hast ruddy gold, that still doth flow like restless quicksilver away; a game thou hast, at which none win who play-- a girl who would, with amorous eyen, e'en from my breast a neighbor snare, lofty ambition's joy divine, that, meteor-like, dissolves in air. show me the fruit that, ere 'tis pluck'd, doth rot, and trees, whose verdure daily buds anew! mephistopheles such a commission scares me not; i can provide such treasures, it is true. but, my good friend, a season will come round when on what's good we may regale in peace. faust if e'er upon my couch, stretched at my ease, i'm found, then may my life that instant cease! me canst thou cheat with glozing wile till self-reproach away i cast,-- me with joy's lure canst thou beguile;-- let that day be for me the last! be this our wager! mephistopheles settled! faust sure and fast! when to the moment i shall say, "linger awhile! so fair thou art!" then mayst thou fetter me straightway, then to the abyss will i depart! then may the solemn death-bell sound, then from thy service thou art free, the index then may cease its round, and time be never more for me! mephistopheles i shall remember: pause, ere 'tis too late. faust thereto a perfect right hast thou. my strength i do not rashly overrate. slave am i here, at any rate, if thine, or whose, it matters not, i trow. mephistopheles at thine inaugural feast i will this day attend, my duties to commence.--but one thing!-- accidents may happen, hence a line or two in writing grant, i pray. faust a writing, pedant! dost demand from me? man, and man's plighted word, are these unknown to thee? is't not enough, that by the word i gave, my doom for evermore is cast? doth not the world in all its currents rave, and must a promise hold me fast? yet fixed is this delusion in our heart; who, of his own free will, therefrom would part? how blest within whose breast truth reigneth pure! no sacrifice will he repent when made! a formal deed, with seal and signature, a spectre this from which all shrink afraid. the word its life resigneth in the pen, leather and wax usurp the mastery then. spirits of evil! what dost thou require? brass, marble, parchment, paper, dost desire? shall i with chisel, pen, or graver write? thy choice is free; to me 'tis all the same. mephistopheles wherefore thy passion so excite, and thus thine eloquence inflame? a scrap is for our compact good. thou under-signest merely with a drop of blood. faust if this will satisfy thy mind, thy whim i'll gratify, howe'er absurd. mephistopheles blood is a juice of very special kind. faust be not afraid that i shall break my word! the scope of all my energy is in exact accordance with my vow. vainly i have aspired too high; i'm on a level but with such as thou; me the great spirit scorn'd, defied; nature from me herself doth hide; rent is the web of thought; my mind doth knowledge loathe of every kind. in depths of sensual pleasure drown'd, let us our fiery passions still! enwrapp'd in magic's veil profound, let wondrous charms our senses thrill! plunge we in time's tempestuous flow, stem we the rolling surge of chance! there may alternate weal and woe, success and failure, as they can, mingle and shift in changeful dance! excitement is the sphere for man. mephistopheles nor goal, nor measure is prescrib'd to you, if you desire to taste of every thing, to snatch at joy while on the wing, may your career amuse and profit too! only fall to and don't be over coy! faust hearken! the end i aim at is not joy; i crave excitement, agonizing bliss, enamor'd hatred, quickening vexation. purg'd from the love of knowledge, my vocation, the scope of all my powers henceforth be this, to bare my breast to every pang,--to know in my heart's core all human weal and woe, to grasp in thought the lofty and the deep, men's various fortunes on my breast to heap, and thus to theirs dilate my individual mind, and share at length with them the shipwreck of mankind. mephistopheles oh, credit me, who still as ages roll, have chew'd this bitter fare from year to year, no mortal, from the cradle to the bier, digests the ancient leaven! know, this whole doth for the deity alone subsist! he in eternal brightness doth exist; us unto darkness he hath brought, and here, where day and night alternate, is your sphere. faust but 'tis my will! mephistopheles well spoken, i admit! but one thing puzzles me, my friend; time's short, art long; methinks 'twere fit that you to friendly counsel should attend. a poet choose as your ally! let him thought's wide dominion sweep, each good and noble quality upon your honored brow to heap; the lion's magnanimity, the fleetness of the hind, the fiery blood of italy, the northern's stedfast mind. let him to you the mystery show to blend high aims and cunning low; and while youth's passions are aflame to fall in love by rule and plan! i fain would meet with such a man; would him sir microcosmus name. faust what then am i, if i aspire in vain the crown of our humanity to gain, toward which my every sense doth strain? mephistopheles thou'rt after all--just what thou art. put on thy head a wig with countless locks, and to a cubit's height upraise thy socks, still thou remainest ever, what thou art. faust i feel it, i have heap'd upon my brain the gather'd treasure of man's thought in vain; and when at length from studious toil i rest, no power, new-born, springs up within my breast; a hair's breadth is not added to my height; i am no nearer to the infinite. mephistopheles good sir, these things you view indeed, just as by other men they're view'd; we must more cleverly proceed, before life's joys our grasp elude. the devil! thou hast hands and feet, and head and heart are also thine; what i enjoy with relish sweet-- is it on that account less mine? if for six stallions i can pay, do i not own their strength and speed? a proper man i dash away, as their two dozen legs were mine indeed. up then, from idle pondering free, and forth into the world with me! i tell you what;--your speculative churl is like a beast which some ill spirit leads, on barren wilderness, in ceaseless whirl, while all around lie fair and verdant meads. faust but how shall we begin? mephistopheles we will go hence with speed, a place of torment this indeed! a precious life, thyself to bore, and some few youngsters evermore! leave that to neighbor paunch! withdraw? why wilt thou plague thyself with thrashing straw? the very best that thou dost know thou dar'st not to the striplings show. one in the passage now doth wait! faust i'm in no mood to see him now. mephistopheles poor lad! he must be tired, i trow; he must not go disconsolate. hand me thy cap and gown; the mask is for my purpose quite first rate. [_he changes his dress._] now leave it to my wit! i ask but quarter of an hour; meanwhile equip, and make all ready for our pleasant trip! [_exit_ faust.] mephistopheles (_in_ faust's _long gown_) mortal! the loftiest attributes of men, reason and knowledge, only thus contemn; still let the prince of lies, without control, with shows, and mocking charms delude thy soul, i have thee unconditionally then!-- fate hath endow'd him with an ardent mind, which unrestrain'd still presses on forever, and whose precipitate endeavor earth's joys o'erleaping, leaveth them behind. him will i drag through life's wild waste, through scenes of vapid dulness, where at last bewilder'd, he shall falter, and stick fast; and, still to mock his greedy haste, viands and drink shall float his craving lips beyond-- vainly he'll seek refreshment, anguish-tost, and were he not the devil's by his bond, yet must his soul infallibly be lost! a student _enters_. student but recently i've quitted home, full of devotion am i come a man to know and hear, whose name with reverence is known to fame. mephistopheles your courtesy much flatters me! a man like other men you see; pray have you yet applied elsewhere? student i would entreat your friendly care! i've youthful blood and courage high; of gold i bring a fair supply; to let me go my mother was not fain; but here i longed true knowledge to attain. mephistopheles you've hit upon the very place. student and yet my steps i would retrace. these walls, this melancholy room, o'erpower me with a sense of gloom; the space is narrow, nothing green, no friendly tree is to be seen and in these halls, with benches filled, distraught, sight, hearing fail me, and the power of thought. mephistopheles it all depends on habit. thus at first the infant takes not kindly to the breast, but before long, its eager thirst is fain to slake with hearty zest: thus at the breasts of wisdom day by day with keener relish you'll your thirst allay. student upon her neck i fain would hang with joy; to reach it, say, what means must i employ? mephistopheles explain, ere further time we lose, what special faculty you choose? student profoundly learned i would grow, what heaven contains would comprehend, o'er earth's wide realm my gaze extend, nature and science i desire to know. mephistopheles you are upon the proper track, i find; take heed, let nothing dissipate your mind. student my heart and soul are in the chase! though, to be sure, i fain would seize, on pleasant summer holidays, a little liberty and careless ease. mephistopheles use well your time, so rapidly it flies; method will teach you time to win; hence, my young friend, i would advise, with college logic to begin! then will your mind be so well braced, in spanish boots so tightly laced, that on 'twill circumspectly creep, thought's beaten track securely keep, nor will it, ignis-fatuus like, into the path of error strike. then many a day they'll teach you how the mind's spontaneous acts, till now as eating and as drinking free, require a process;--one! two! three! in truth the subtle web of thought is like the weaver's fabric wrought: one treadle moves a thousand lines, swift dart the shuttles to and fro, unseen the threads together flow, a thousand knots one stroke combines. then forward steps your sage to show, and prove to you, it must be so; the first being so, and so the second, the third and fourth deduc'd we see; and if there were no first and second, nor third nor fourth would ever be. this, scholars of all countries prize,-- yet 'mong themselves no weavers rise. he who would know and treat of aught alive, seeks first the living spirit thence to drive: then are the lifeless fragments in his hand, there only fails, alas! the spirit-band. this process, chemists name, in learned thesis, mocking themselves, _naturæ encheiresis_. student your words i cannot fully comprehend. mephistopheles in a short time you will improve, my friend, when of scholastic forms you learn the use; and how by method all things to reduce. student so doth all this my brain confound, as if a mill-wheel there were turning round. mephistopheles and next, before aught else you learn, you must with zeal to metaphysics turn! there see that you profoundly comprehend what doth the limit of man's brain transcend; for that which is or is not in the head a sounding phrase will serve you in good stead. but before all strive this half year from one fix'd order ne'er to swerve! five lectures daily you must hear; the hour still punctually observe! yourself with studious zeal prepare, and closely in your manual look, hereby may you be quite aware that all he utters standeth in the book; yet write away without cessation, as at the holy ghost's dictation! student this, sir, a second time you need not say! your counsel i appreciate quite; what we possess in black and white we can in peace and comfort bear away. mephistopheles a faculty i pray you name. student for jurisprudence some distaste i own. mephistopheles to me this branch of science is well known, and hence i cannot your repugnance blame. customs and laws in every place, like a disease, and heir-loom dread, still trail their curse from race to race, and furtively abroad they spread. to nonsense, reason's self they turn; beneficence becomes a pest; woe unto thee, that thou'rt a grandson born! as for the law born with us, unexpressed;-- that law, alas, none careth to discern. student you deepen my dislike. the youth whom you instruct, is blest in sooth! to try theology i feel inclined. mephistopheles i would not lead you willingly astray, but as regards this science, you will find so hard it is to shun the erring way, and so much hidden poison lies therein which scarce can you discern from medicine. here too it is the best, to listen but to one, and by the master's words to swear alone. to sum up all--to words hold fast! then the safe gate securely pass'd, you'll reach the fane of certainty at last. student but then some meaning must the words convey. mephistopheles right! but o'er-anxious thought you'll find of no avail; for there precisely where ideas fail, a word comes opportunely into play; most admirable weapons words are found, on words a system we securely ground, in words we can conveniently believe, nor of a single jot can we a word bereave. student your pardon for my importunity; yet once more must i trouble you: on medicine, i'll thank you to supply a pregnant utterance or two! three years! how brief the appointed tide! the field, heaven knows, is all too wide! if but a friendly hint be thrown, 'tis easier than to feel one's way. mephistopheles (_aside_) i'm weary of the dry pedantic tone, and must again the genuine devil play. (_aloud_) of medicine the spirit's caught with ease, the great and little world you study through, that things may then their course pursue, as heaven may please. in vain abroad you range through science's ample space, each man learns only that which learn he can; who knows the moment to embrace, he is your proper man. in person you are tolerably made, nor in assurance will you be deficient: self-confidence acquire, be not afraid, others will then esteem you a proficient. learn chiefly with the sex to deal! their thousand ahs and ohs, these the sage doctor knows, he only from one point can heal. assume a decent tone of courteous ease, you have them then to humor as you please. first a diploma must belief infuse, that you in your profession take the lead: you then at once those easy freedoms use for which another many a year must plead; learn how to feel with nice address the dainty wrist;--and how to press, with ardent, furtive glance, the slender waist, to feel how tightly it is laced. student there is some sense in that! one sees the how and why. mephistopheles gray is, young friend, all theory: and green of life the golden tree. student i swear it seemeth like a dream to me. may i some future time repeat my visit, to hear on what your wisdom grounds your views? mephistopheles command my humble service when you choose. student ere i retire, one boon i must solicit: here is my album; do not, sir, deny this token of your favor! mephistopheles willingly! [_he writes and returns the book._] student (_reads_) eritis sicut deus, scientes bonum et malum [_he reverently closes the book and retires._] mephistopheles let but this ancient proverb be your rule, my cousin follow still, the wily snake, and with your likeness to the gods, poor fool, ere long be sure your poor sick heart will quake! faust (_enters_) whither away? mephistopheles 'tis thine our course to steer. the little world, and then the great we'll view. with what delight, what profit too, thou'lt revel through thy gay career! faust despite my length of beard i need the easy manners that insure success; th' attempt i fear can ne'er succeed; to mingle in the world i want address; i still have an embarrass'd air, and then i feel myself so small with other men. mephistopheles time, my good friend, will all that's needful give; be only self-possessed, and thou hast learn'd to live. faust but how are we to start, i pray? steeds, servants, carriage, where are they? mephistopheles we've but to spread this mantle wide, 'twill serve whereon through air to ride; no heavy baggage need you take, when we our bold excursion make. a little gas, which i will soon prepare, lifts us from earth; aloft through air, light-laden, we shall swiftly steer;-- i wish you joy of your new life-career. auerbach's cellar in leipzig _a drinking party_ frosch no drinking? naught a laugh to raise? none of your gloomy looks, i pray! you, who so bright were wont to blaze, are dull as wetted straw today. brander 'tis all your fault; your part you do not bear, no beastliness, no folly. frosch (_pours a glass of wine over his head_) there, you have them both! brander you double beast! frosch 'tis what you ask'd me for, at least! siebel whoever quarrels, turn him out! with open throat drink, roar, and shout. hollo! hollo! ho! altmayer zounds, fellow, cease your deaf'ning cheers! bring cotton-wool! he splits my ears. siebel 'tis when the roof rings back the tone, then first the full power of the bass is known. frosch right! out with him who takes offence! a! tara lara da! altmayer a! tara lara da! frosch our throats are tuned. come, let's commence! (_sings_) the holy roman empire now, how holds it still together? brander an ugly song! a song political! a song offensive! thank god, every morn, to rule the roman empire that you were not born! i bless my stars at least that mine is not either a kaiser's or a chancellor's lot. yet, 'among ourselves, should one still lord it o'er the rest; that we elect a pope i now suggest. ye know what quality insures a man's success, his rise secures. frosch (_sings_) bear, lady nightingale above, ten thousand greetings to my love. siebel no greetings to a sweetheart! no love-songs shall there be! frosch love-greetings and love-kisses! thou shalt not hinder me! (_sings_) undo the bolt! in stilly night, undo the bolt! the lover wakes. shut to the bolt! when morning breaks. siebel ay, sing, sing on, praise her with all thy might! my turn to laugh will come some day. me hath she jilted once, you the same trick she'll play. some gnome her lover be! where cross-roads meet, with her to play the fool; or old he-goat, from blocksberg coming in swift gallop, bleat a good night to her from his hairy throat! a proper lad of genuine flesh and blood, is for the damsel far too good; the greeting she shall have from me, to smash her window-panes will be! brander (_striking on the table_) silence! attend! to me give ear! confess, sirs, i know how to live: some love-sick folk are sitting here! hence, 'tis but fit, their hearts to cheer, that i a good-night strain to them should give. hark! of the newest fashion is my song! strike boldly in the chorus, clear and strong! (_he sings_) once in a cellar lived a rat, he feasted there on butter, until his paunch became as fat as that of doctor luther. the cook laid poison for the guest, then was his heart with pangs oppress'd, as if his frame love wasted. chorus (_shouting_) as if his frame love wasted. brander he ran around, he ran abroad, of every puddle drinking. the house with rage he scratch'd and gnaw'd, in vain,--he fast was sinking; full many an anguish'd bound he gave, nothing the hapless brute could save, as if his frame love wasted. chorus as if his frame love wasted. brander by torture driven, in open day, the kitchen he invaded, convulsed upon the hearth he lay, with anguish sorely jaded; the poisoner laugh'd; ha! ha! quoth she, his life is ebbing fast, i see, as if his frame love wasted. chorus as if his frame love wasted. siebel how the dull boors exulting shout! poison for the poor rats to strew a fine exploit it is no doubt. brander they, as it seems, stand well with you! altmayer old bald-pate! with the paunch profound! the rat's mishap hath tamed his nature; for he his counterpart hath found depicted in the swollen creature. faust and mephistopheles mephistopheles i now must introduce to you before aught else, this jovial crew, to show how lightly life may glide away; with the folk here each day's a holiday. with little wit and much content, each on his own small round intent, like sportive kitten with its tail; while no sick-headache they bewail, and while their host will credit give, joyous and free from care they live. brander they're off a journey, that is clear,-- from their strange manners; they have scarce been here an hour. frosch you're right! leipzig's the place for me! 'tis quite a little paris; people there acquire a certain easy, finish'd air. siebel what take you now these travelers to be? frosch let me alone! o'er a full glass you'll see, as easily i'll worm their secret out as draw an infant's tooth. i've not a doubt that my two gentlemen are nobly born; they look dissatisfied and full of scorn. brander they are but mountebanks, i'll lay a bet! altmayer most like. frosch mark me, i'll screw it from them yet! mephistopheles (_to_ faust) these fellows would not scent the devil out, e'en though he had them by the very throat! faust good-morrow, gentlemen! stebel thanks for your fair salute. [_aside, glancing at_ mephistopheles.] how! goes the fellow on a halting foot? mephistopheles is it permitted here with you to sit? then, though good wine is not forthcoming here, good company at least our hearts will cheer. altmayer a dainty gentleman, no doubt of it! frosch you're doubtless recently from rippach? pray, did you with master hans there chance to sup? mephistopheles today we pass'd him, but we did not stop! when last we met him he had much to say touching his cousins, and to each he sent full many a greeting and kind compliment. [_with an inclination toward_ frosch.] altmayer (_aside to_ frosch) you have it there! siebel faith! he's a knowing one! frosch have patience! i will show him up anon! mephistopheles we heard erewhile, unless i'm wrong, voices well trained in chorus pealing? certes, most choicely here must song re-echo from this vaulted ceiling! frosch that you're an amateur one plainly sees! mephistopheles oh no, though strong the love, i cannot boast much skill. altmayer give us a song! mephistopheles as many as you will. siebel but be it a brand new one, if you please! mephistopheles but recently returned from spain are we, the pleasant land of wine and minstrelsy. (_sings_) a king there was once reigning, who had a goodly flea-- frosch hark! did you rightly catch the words? a flea! an odd sort of a guest he needs must be. mephistopheles (_sings_) a king there was once reigning, who had a goodly flea, him loved he without feigning, as his own son were he! his tailor then he summon'd-- the tailor to him goes: now measure me the youngster for jerkin and for hose! brander take proper heed, the tailor strictly charge, the nicest measurement to take, and as he loves his head, to make the hose quite smooth and not too large! mephistopheles in satin and in velvet, behold the younker dressed: bedizen'd o'er with ribbons, a cross upon his breast. prime minister they made him; he wore a star of state; and all his poor relations were courtiers, rich and great. the gentlemen and ladies at court were sore distressed; the queen and all her maidens were bitten by the pest, and yet they dared not scratch them or chase the fleas away. if we are bit, we catch them, and crack without delay. chorus _(shouting)_ if we are bit, etc. frosch bravo! that's the song for me! siebel such be the fate of every flea! brander with clever finger catch and kill! altmayer hurrah for wine and freedom still! mephistopheles were but your wine a trifle better, friend, a glass to freedom i would gladly drain. siebel you'd better not repeat those words again! mephistopheles i am afraid the landlord to offend; else freely would i treat each worthy guest from our own cellar to the very best. siebel out with it then! your doings i'll defend. frosch give a good glass, and straight we'll praise you, one and all. only let not your samples be too small; for if my judgment you desire, certes, an ample mouthful i require. altmayer _(aside)_ i guess, they're from the rhenish land. mephistopheles fetch me a gimlet here! brander say, what therewith to bore? you cannot have the wine-casks at the door? altmayer our landlord's tool-basket behind doth yonder stand. mephistopheles _(takes the gimlet_) _(to_ frosch) now only say! what liquor will you take? frosch how mean you that? have you of every sort? mephistopheles each may his own selection make. altmayer (_to_ frosch) ha! ha! you lick your lips already at the thought. frosch good, if i have my choice, the rhenish i propose; for still the fairest gifts the fatherland bestows. mephistopheles (_boring a hole in the edge of the table_ _opposite to where_ frosch _is sitting_) get me a little wax--and make some stoppers--quick! altmayer why, this is nothing but a juggler's trick! mephistopheles (_to_ brander) and you? brander champagne's the wine for me; right brisk, and sparkling let it be! [mephistopheles _bores, one of the party has in the meantime prepared the, wax-stoppers and stopped the holes_.] brander what foreign is one always can't decline, what's good is often scatter'd far apart. the french your genuine german hates with all his heart, yet has a relish for their wine. siebel (_as_ mephistopheles _approaches him_) i like not acid wine, i must allow, give me a glass of genuine sweet! mephistopheles (_bores_) tokay shall, if you wish it, flow without delay. altmayer come! look me in the face! no fooling now! you are but making fun of us, i trow. mephistopheles ah! ah! that would indeed be making free with such distinguished guests. come, no delay; what liquor can i serve you with, i pray? altmayer only be quick, it matters not to me. _[after the holes are all bored and, stopped.]_ mephistopheles (_with strange gestures_) grapes the vine-stock bears, horns the buck-goat wears! wine is sap, the vine is wood, the wooden board yields wine as good. with a deeper glance and true the mysteries of nature view! have faith and here's a miracle! your stoppers draw and drink your fill! all (_as they draw the stoppers and the wine chosen by each runs into his glass_) oh beauteous spring, which flows so far! mephistopheles spill not a single drop, of this beware! [_they drink repeatedly_.] all _(sing)_ happy as cannibals are we, or as five hundred swine. mephistopheles they're in their glory, mark their elevation! faust let's hence, nor here our stay prolong. mephistopheles attend, of brutishness ere long you'll see a glorious revelation. siebel _(drinks carelessly; the wine is spilt upon the ground, and turns to fame)_ help! fire! help! hell is burning! mephistopheles (_addressing the flames_) stop, kind element, be still, i say! (_to the company_) of purgatorial fire as yet 'tis but a drop. siebel what means the knave! for this you'll dearly pay! us, it appears, you do not know. frosch such tricks a second time he'd better show! altmayer methinks 'twere well we pack'd him quietly away. siebel what, sir! with us your hocus-pocus play! mephistopheles silence, old wine-cask! siebel how! add insult, too! vile broomstick! brander hold! or blows shall rain on you! altmayer (_draws a stopper out of the table; fire springs out against him_) i burn! i burn! siebel 'tis sorcery, i vow! strike home! the fellow is fair game, i trow! [_they draw their knives and attack_ mephistopheles.] mephistopheles (_with solemn gestures_) visionary scenes appear! words delusive cheat the ear! be ye there, and be ye here! [_they stand amazed and gale at one another._] altmayer where am i? what a beauteous land! frosch vineyards! unless my sight deceives? siebel and clust'ring grapes too, close at hand! brander and underneath the spreading leaves, what stems there be! what grapes i see! [_he seizes_ siebel _by the nose. the others reciprocally do the same, and raise, their knives._] mephistopheles (_as above_) delusion, from their eyes the bandage take! note how the devil loves a jest to break! [_he disappears with_ faust; _the fellows draw back from one another._] siebel what was it? altmayer how? frosch was that your nose? brander (_to_ siebel) and look, my hand doth thine inclose! altmayer i felt a shock, it went through every limb! a chair! i'm fainting! all things swim! frosch say! what has happened? what's it all about? siebel where is the fellow? could i scent him out, his body from his soul i'd soon divide! altmayer with my own eyes, upon a cask astride, forth through the cellar-door i saw him ride-- heavy as lead my feet are growing. [_turning to the table._] i wonder is the wine still flowing! siebel 'twas all delusion, cheat and lie. frosch 'twas wine i drank, most certainly. brander but with the grapes how was it, pray? altmayer that none may miracles believe, who now will say? witches' kitchen _a large caldron hangs over the fire on a low hearth; various figures appear in the vapor rising from it. a_ female monkey _sits beside the caldron to skim it, and watch that it does not boil over. the_ male monkey _with the young ones is seated near, warming himself. the walls and ceiling are adorned with the strangest articles of witch-furniture. faust, mephistopheles faust this senseless, juggling witchcraft i detest! dost promise that in this foul nest of madness i shall be restored? must i seek counsel from an ancient dame? and can she, by these rites abhorred, take thirty winters from my frame? woe's me, if thou naught better canst suggest! hope has already fled my breast. has neither nature nor a noble mind a balsam yet devis'd of any kind? mephistopheles my friend, you now speak sensibly. in truth, nature a method giveth to renew thy youth: but in another book the lesson's writ;-- it forms a curious chapter, i admit. faust i fain would know it. mephistopheles good! a remedy without physician, gold, or sorcery: away forthwith, and to the fields repair; begin to delve, to cultivate the ground; thy senses and thyself confine within the very narrowest round; support thyself upon the simplest fare; live like a very brute the brutes among; neither esteem it robbery the acre thou dost reap, thyself to dung. this the best method, credit me, again at eighty to grow hale and young. faust i am not used to it, nor can myself degrade so far, as in my hand to take the spade. this narrow life would suit me not at all. mephistopheles then we the witch must summon after all. faust will none but this old beldame do? canst not thyself the potion brew? mephistopheles a pretty play our leisure to beguile! a thousand bridges i could build meanwhile. not science only and consummate art-- patience must also bear her part. a quiet spirit worketh whole years long; time only makes the subtle ferment strong. and all things that belong thereto, are wondrous and exceeding rare! the devil taught her, it is true; but yet the draught the devil can't prepare. [_perceiving the beasts_.] look yonder, what a dainty pair! here is the maid! the knave is there! (_to the beasts_) it seems your dame is not at home? the monkeys gone to carouse, out of the house, thro' the chimney and away! mephistopheles how long is it her wont to roam? the monkeys while we can warm our paws she'll stay. mephistopheles (_to_ faust) what think you of the charming creatures? faust i loathe alike their form and features! mephistopheles nay, such discourse, be it confessed, is just the thing that pleases me the best. (_to the_ monkeys) tell me, ye whelps, accursed crew! what stir ye in the broth about? monkeys coarse beggar's gruel here we stew. mephistopheles of customers you'll have a rout. the he-monkey (_approaching and fawning on_ mephistopheles) quick! quick! throw the dice, make me rich in a trice, oh give me the prize! alas, for myself, had i plenty of pelf, i then should be wise. mephistopheles how blest the ape would think himself, if he could only put into the lottery! [_in the meantime the young_ monkeys _have been playing with a large globe, which they roll forward._] the he-monkey the world behold; unceasingly roll'd, it riseth and falleth ever; it ringeth like glass! how brittle, alas! 'tis hollow, and resteth never. how bright the sphere, still brighter here! now living am i! dear son, beware! nor venture there! thou too must die! it is of clay; 'twill crumble away; there fragments lie. mephistopheles of what use is the sieve the he-monkey (_taking it down_) the sieve would show, if thou wert a thief or no? [_he runs to the_ she-monkey, _and makes her look through it._] look through the sieve! dost know him the thief, and dar'st thou not call him so? mephistopheles (_approaching the fire_) and then this pot? the monkeys the half-witted sot! he knows not the pot! he knows not the kettle! mephistopheles unmannerly beast! be civil at least! the he-monkey take the whisk and sit down in the settle! [_he makes_ mephistopheles _sit down._] faust (_who all this time has been standing before a looking-glass, now approaching, and now retiring front it_) what do i see? what form, whose charms transcend the loveliness of earth, is mirror'd here! o love, to waft me to her sphere, to me the swiftest of thy pinions lend! alas! if i remain not rooted to this place, if to approach more near i'm fondly lur'd, her image fades, in veiling mist obscur'd!-- model of beauty both in form and face! is't possible? hath woman charms so rare? in this recumbent form, supremely fair, the essence must i see of heavenly grace? can aught so exquisite on earth be found? mephistopheles the six days' labor of a god, my friend, who doth himself cry bravo, at the end, by something clever doubtless should be crown'd. for this time gaze your fill, and when you please just such a prize for you i can provide; how blest is he to whom kind fate decrees, to take her to his home, a lovely bride! [faust _continues to gaze into the mirror._] mephistopheles [_stretching himself on the settle and playing with the whisk, continues to speak._] here sit i, like a king upon his throne; my sceptre this;--the crown i want alone. the monkeys (_who have hitherto been making all sorts of strange gestures, bring_ mephistopheles _a crown, with loud cries) oh, be so good, with sweat and with blood the crown to lime! [_they handle the crown awkwardly and break it in two pieces, with which they skip about._] 'twas fate's decree! we speak and see! we hear and rhyme. faust (_before the mirror_) woe's me! well-nigh distraught i feel! mephistopheles (_pointing to the beasts_) and even my own head almost begins to reel. the monkeys if good luck attend, if fitly things blend, our jargon with thought and with reason is fraught! faust (_as above_) a flame is kindled in my breast! let us begone! nor linger here! mephistopheles (_in the same position_) it now at least must be confessed, that poets sometimes are sincere. [_the caldron which the_ she-monkey _has neglected begins to boil over; a great flame arises, which streams up the chimney. the_ witch _comes down the chimney with horrible cries._] the witch ough! ough! ough! ough! accursed brute! accursed sow! the caldron dost neglect, for shame! accursed brute to scorch the dame! (_perceiving_ faust _and_ mephistopheles._) whom have we here? who's sneaking here? whence are ye come? with what desire? the plague of fire your bones consume! [_she dips the skimming-ladle into the caldron and throws flames at_ faust, mephistopheles, _and the_ monkeys. _the_ monkeys _whimper._] mephistopheles (_twirling the whisk which he holds in his hand, and striking among the glasses and pots_) dash! smash! there lies the glass! there lies the slime! 'tis but a jest; i but keep time, thou hellish pest, to thine own chime! [_while the_ witch _steps back in rage and astonishment_.] dost know me! skeleton! vile scarecrow, thou! thy lord and master dost thou know? what holds me, that i deal not now thee and thine apes a stunning blow? no more respect to my red vest dost pay? does my cock's feather no allegiance claim? have i my visage masked today? must i be forced myself to name? the witch master, forgive this rude salute! but i perceive no cloven foot. and your two ravens, where are they? mephistopheles this once i must admit your plea;-- for truly i must own that we each other have not seen for many a day. the culture, too, that shapes the world, at last hath e'en the devil in its sphere embraced; the northern phantom from the scene hath pass'd; tail, talons, horns, are nowhere to be traced! as for the foot, with which i can't dispense, 'twould injure me in company, and hence, like many a youthful cavalier, false calves i now have worn for many a year. the witch (_dancing_) i am beside myself with joy, to see once more the gallant satan here! mephistopheles woman, no more that name employ! the witch but why? what mischief hath it done? mephistopheles to fable-books it now doth appertain; but people from the change have nothing won. rid of the evil one, the evil ones remain. lord baron call thou me, so is the matter good; of other cavaliers the mien i wear. dost make no question of my gentle blood; see here, this is the scutcheon that i bear! [_he makes an unseemly gesture._] the witch (_laughing immoderately_) ha! ha! just like yourself! you are, i ween, the same mad wag that you have ever been! mephistopheles (_to_ faust) my friend, learn this to understand, i pray! to deal with witches this is still the way. the witch now tell me, gentlemen, what you desire? mephistopheles of your known juice a goblet we require. but for the very oldest let me ask; double its strength with years doth grow. the witch most willingly! and here i have a flask, from which i've sipp'd myself ere now; what's more, it doth no longer stink; to you a glass i joyfully will give. (_aside._) if unprepar'd, however, this man drink, he hath not, as you know, an hour to live. mephistopheles he's my good friend, with whom 'twill prosper well; i grudge him not the choicest of thy store. now draw thy circle, speak thy spell, and straight a bumper for him pour! [_the_ witch, _with extraordinary gestures, describes a circle, and places strange things within it. the glasses meanwhile begin to ring, and the caldron to sound and make music. lastly, she brings a great book; places the_ monkeys _in the circle to serve her as a desk, and to hold the torches. she beckons_ faust _to approach._] faust (_to_ mephistopheles) tell me, to what doth all this tend? where will these frantic gestures end? this loathsome cheat, this senseless stuff i've known and hated long enough. mephistopheles mere mummery, a laugh to raise! pray don't be so fastidious! she but as a leech, her hocus-pocus plays, that well with you her potion may agree. [_he compels_ faust _to enter the circle._] [_the,_ witch, _with great emphasis, begins to declaim from the book._] this must thou ken: of one make ten, pass two, and then make square the three, so rich thou'lt be. drop out the four! from five and six, thus says the witch, make seven and eight. so all is straight! and nine is one, and ten is none, this is the witch's one-time-one! faust the hag doth as in fever rave. mephistopheles to these will follow many a stave. i know it well, so rings the book throughout; much time i've lost in puzzling o'er its pages, for downright paradox, no doubt, a mystery remains alike to fools and sages. ancient the art and modern too, my friend. 'tis still the fashion as it used to be, error instead of truth abroad to send by means of three and one, and one and three. 'tis ever taught and babbled in the schools. who'd take the trouble to dispute with fools? when words men hear, in sooth, they usually believe, that there must needs therein be something to conceive. the witch (_continues_) the lofty power of wisdom's dower, from all the world conceal'd! who thinketh not, to him i wot, unsought it is reveal'd. faust what nonsense doth the hag propound? my brain it doth well-nigh confound. a hundred thousand fools or more, methinks i hear in chorus roar. mephistopheles incomparable sibyl cease, i pray! hand us thy liquor without more delay. and to the very brim the goblet crown! my friend he is, and need not be afraid; besides, he is a man of many a grade, who hath drunk deep already. [_the_ witch, _with many ceremonies, pours the liquor into a cup; as_ faust _lifts it to his mouth, a light flame arises._] mephistopheles gulp it down! no hesitation! it will prove a cordial, and your heart inspire! what! with the devil hand and glove, and yet shrink back afraid of fire? [_the_ witch _dissolves the circle._ faust _steps out._] mephistopheles now forth at once! thou dar'st not rest. witch and much, sir, may the liquor profit you! mephistopheles (_to the_ witch) and if to pleasure thee i aught can do, pray on walpurgis mention thy request. witch here is a song, sung o'er, sometimes you'll see, that 'twill a singular effect produce. mephistopheles (_to_ faust) come, quick, and let thyself be led by me; thou must perspire, in order that the juice thy frame may penetrate through every part. then noble idleness i thee will teach to prize, and soon with ecstasy thou'lt recognize how cupid stirs and gambols in thy heart. faust let me but gaze one moment in the glass! too lovely was that female form! mephistopheles nay! nay! a model which all women shall surpass, in flesh and blood ere long thou shalt survey. (_aside._) as works the draught, thou presently shalt greet a helen in each woman thou dost meet. a street faust (margaret _passing by_). faust fair lady, may i thus make free to offer you my arm and company? margaret i am no lady, am not fair, can without escort home repair. _[she disengages herself and exit._] faust by heaven! this girl is fair indeed! no form like hers can i recall. virtue she hath, and modest heed, is piquant too, and sharp withal. her cheek's soft light, her rosy lips, no length of time will e'er eclipse! her downward glance in passing by, deep in my heart is stamp'd for aye; how curt and sharp her answer too, to ecstasy the feeling grew! [mephistopheles _enters._] faust this girl must win for me! dost hear? mephistopheles which? faust she who but now passed. mephistopheles what! she? she from confession cometh here, from every sin absolved and free; i crept near the confessor's chair. all innocence her virgin soul, for next to nothing went she there; o'er such as she i've no control! [illustration: margaret _from the painting by wilhelm von kaulbach_] faust she's past fourteen. mephistopheles you really talk like any gay lothario, who every floweret from its stalk would pluck, and deems nor grace, nor truth, secure against his arts, forsooth! this ne'er the less won't always do. faust sir moralizer, prithee, pause; nor plague me with your tiresome laws! to cut the matter short, my friend, she must this very night be mine,-- and if to help me you decline, midnight shall see our compact end. mephistopheles what may occur just bear in mind! a fortnight's space, at least, i need, a fit occasion but to find. faust with but seven hours i could succeed; nor should i want the devil's wile, so young a creature to beguile. mephistopheles like any frenchman now you speak, but do not fret, i pray; why seek to hurry to enjoyment straight? the pleasure is not half so great, as when at first, around, above, with all the fooleries of love, the puppet you can knead and mold as in italian story oft is told. faust no such incentives, do i need. mephistopheles but now, without offence or jest! you cannot quickly, i protest, in winning this sweet child succeed. by storm we cannot take the fort, to stratagem we must resort. faust conduct me to her place of rest! some token of the angel bring! a kerchief from her snowy breast, a garter bring me--any thing! mephistopheles that i my anxious zeal may prove, your pangs to soothe and aid your love, a single moment will we not delay, will lead you to her room this very day. faust and shall i see her?--have her? mephistopheles no! she to a neighbor's house will go; but in her atmosphere alone the tedious hours meanwhile you may employ in blissful dreams of future joy. faust can we go now? mephistopheles 'tis yet too soon. faust some present for my love procure! [_exit._] mephistopheles presents so soon! 'tis well! success is sure! full many a goodly place i know, and treasures buried long ago; i must a bit o'erlook them now. [_exit._] evening. a small and neat room margaret (_braiding and binding up her hair_) i would give something now to know who yonder gentleman could be! he had a gallant air, i trow, and doubtless was of high degree: that written on his brow was seen-- nor else would he so bold have been. [_exit_] mephistopheles come in! tread softly! be discreet! faust (_after a pause_) _begone and leave me, i entreat! mephistopheles (_looking round_) not every maiden is so neat. [_exit_] faust (_gazing round_) welcome sweet twilight, calm and blest, that in this hallow'd precinct reigns! fond yearning love, inspire my breast, feeding on hope's sweet dew thy blissful pains! what stillness here environs me! content and order brood around. what fulness in this poverty! in this small cell what bliss profound! [_he throws himself on the leather arm-chair beside the bed_.] receive me thou, who hast in thine embrace, welcom'd in joy and grief the ages flown! how oft the children of a by-gone race have cluster'd round this patriarchal throne! haply she, also, whom i hold so dear, for christmas gift, with grateful joy possess'd, hath with the full round cheek of childhood, here, her grandsire's wither'd hand devoutly press'd. maiden! i feel thy spirit haunt the place, breathing of order and abounding grace. as with a mother's voice it prompteth thee the pure white cover o'er the board to spread, to stew the crisping sand beneath thy tread. dear hand! so godlike in its ministry! the hut becomes a paradise through thee! and here-- [_he raises the bed curtain_.] how thrills my pulse with strange delight! here could i linger hours untold; thou, nature, didst in vision bright, the embryo angel here unfold. here lay the child, her bosom warm with life; while steeped in slumber's dew, to perfect grace, her godlike form, with pure and hallow'd weavings grew! and thou! ah here what seekest thou? how quails mine inmost being now! what wouldst thou here? what makes thy heart so sore? unhappy faust! i know thee now no more. do i a magic atmosphere inhale? erewhile, my passion would not brook delay! now in a pure love-dream i melt away. are we the sport of every passing gale? should she return and enter now, how wouldst thou rue thy guilty flame! proud vaunter--thou wouldst hide thy brow-- and at her feet sink down with shame. mephistopheles quick! quick! below i see her there. faust away! i will return no more! mephistopheles here is a casket, with a store of jewels, which i got elsewhere. just lay it in the press; make haste! i swear to you, 'twill turn her brain; therein some trifles i have placed, wherewith another to obtain. but child is child, and play is play. faust i know not--shall i? mephistopheles do you ask? perchance you would retain the treasure? if such your wish, why then, i say, henceforth absolve me from my task, nor longer waste your hours of leisure. i trust you're not by avarice led! i rub my hands, i scratch my head,-- [_he places the casket in the press and closes the lock._] now quick! away! that soon the sweet young creature may the wish and purpose of your heart obey; yet stand you there as would you to the lecture-room repair, as if before you stood, arrayed in flesh and blood, physics and metaphysics weird and gray!-- away! [_exeunt_.] margaret (_with a lamp_) here 'tis so close, so sultry now, [_she opens the window._] yet out of doors 'tis not so warm. i feel so strange, i know not how-- i wish my mother would come home. through me there runs a shuddering-- i'm but a foolish timid thing! [_while undressing herself she begins to sing._] there was a king in thule, true even to the grave; to whom his dying mistress a golden beaker gave. at every feast he drained it, naught was to him so dear, and often as he drained it, gush'd from his eyes the tear. when death came, unrepining his cities o'er he told; all to his heir resigning, except his cup of gold. with many a knightly vassal at a royal feast sat he, in yon proud hall ancestral, in his castle o'er the sea. up stood the jovial monarch, and quaff'd his last life's glow, then hurled the hallow'd goblet into the flood below. he saw it splashing, drinking, and plunging in the sea; his eyes meanwhile were sinking, and never again drank he. [_she opens the press to put away her clothes, and perceives the casket_.] how comes this lovely casket here? the press i locked, of that i'm confident. 'tis very wonderful! what's in it i can't guess; perhaps 'twas brought by some one in distress, and left in pledge for loan my mother lent. here by a ribbon hangs a little key! i have a mind to open it and see! heavens! only look! what have we here! in all my days ne'er saw i such a sight! jewels! which any noble dame might wear, for some high pageant richly dight this chain--how would it look on me! these splendid gems, whose may they be? [_she puts them on and steps before the glass._] were but the earrings only mine! thus one has quite another air. what boots it to be young and fair? it doubtless may be very fine; but then, alas, none cares for you, and praise sounds half like pity too. gold all doth lure, gold doth secure all things. alas, we poor! promenade _faust walking thoughtfully up and down. to him_ mephistopheles mephistopheles by all rejected love! by hellish fire i curse, would i knew aught to make my imprecation worse! faust what aileth thee? what chafes thee now so sore? a face like that i never saw before! mephistopheles i'd yield me to the devil instantly, did it not happen that myself am he! faust there must be some disorder in thy wit! to rave thus like a madman, is it fit? mephistopheles think! only think! the gems for gretchen brought, them hath a priest now made his own!-- a glimpse of them the mother caught, and 'gan with secret fear to groan. the woman's scent is keen enough; doth ever in the prayer-book snuff; smells every article to ascertain whether the thing is holy or profane, and scented in the jewels rare, that there was not much blessing there. "my child," she cries; "ill-gotten good ensnares the soul, consumes the blood; with them we'll deck our lady shrine, she'll cheer our souls with bread divine!" at this poor gretchen 'gan to pout; 'tis a gift-horse, at least, she thought, and sure, he godless cannot be, who brought them here so cleverly. straight for a priest the mother sent, who, when he understood the jest, with what he saw was well content. "this shows a pious mind!" quoth he: "self-conquest is true victory. the church hath a good stomach, she, with zest, whole countries hath swallow'd down, and never yet a surfeit known. the church alone, be it confessed, daughters, can ill-got wealth digest." faust it is a general custom, too, practised alike by king and jew. mephistopheles with that, clasp, chain, and ring, he swept as they were mushrooms; and the casket, without one word of thanks, he kept, as if of nuts it were a basket. promised reward in heaven, then forth he hied-- and greatly they were edified. faust and gretchen! mephistopheles in unquiet mood knows neither what she would or should; the trinkets night and day thinks o'er; on him who brought them, dwells still more. faust the darling's sorrow grieves me, bring another set without delay! the first, methinks, was no great thing. mephistopheles all's to my gentleman child's play! faust plan all things to achieve my end! engage the attention of her friend! no milk-and-water devil be, and bring fresh jewels instantly! mephistopheles ay, sir! most gladly i'll obey. [faust _exit_.] mephistopheles your doting love-sick fool, with ease, merely his lady-love to please, sun, moon, and stars in sport would puff away. [_exit._] the neighbor's house martha (_alone_) god pardon my dear husband, he doth not in truth act well by me! forth in the world abroad to roam, and leave me on the straw at home. and yet his will i ne'er did thwart, god knows, i lov'd him from my heart. [_she weeps._] perchance he's dead!--oh wretched state!-- had i but a certificate! (margaret _comes_.) margaret dame martha! martha gretchen? margaret only think! my knees beneath me well-nigh sink! within my press i've found today another case, of ebony. and things--magnificent they are, more costly than the first, by far. martha you must not name it to your mother! it would to shrift, just like the other. margaret nay look at them! now only see! martha (_dresses her up_) thou happy creature! margaret woe is me! them in the street i cannot wear, or in the church, or anywhere. martha come often over here to me, the gems put on quite privately; and then before the mirror walk an hour or so, thus we shall have our pleasure too. then suitable occasions we must seize, as at a feast, to show them by degrees: a chain at first, pearl ear-drops then,--your mother won't see them, or we'll coin some tale or other. margaret but, who, i wonder, could the caskets bring? i fear there's something wrong about the thing! [_a knock._] good heavens! can that my mother be? martha (_peering through the blind_) 'tis a strange gentleman, i see. come in! [mephistopheles _enters_.] mephistopheles i've ventur'd to intrude today. ladies, excuse the liberty, i pray. [_he steps back respectfully before_ margaret.] after dame martha schwerdtlein i inquire! martha 'tis i. pray what have you to say to me? mephistopheles (_aside to her_) i know you now,--and therefore will retire; at present you've distinguished company. pardon the freedom, madam, with your leave, i will make free to call again at eve. martha (_aloud_) why, child, of all strange notions, he for some grand lady taketh thee! margaret i am, in truth, of humble blood-- the gentleman is far too good-- nor gems nor trinkets are my own. mephistopheles oh 'tis not the mere ornaments alone; her glance and mien far more betray. rejoiced i am that i may stay. martha your business, sir? i long to know-- mephistopheles would i could happier tidings show! i trust mine errand you'll not let me rue; your husband's dead, and greeteth you. martha is dead? true heart! oh misery! my husband dead! oh, i shall die! margaret alas! good martha! don't despair! mephistopheles now listen to the sad affair! margaret i for this cause should fear to love. the loss my certain death would prove. mephistopheles joy still must sorrow, sorrow joy attend. martha proceed, and tell the story of his end! mephistopheles at padua, in st. anthony's, in holy ground his body lies; quiet and cool his place of rest, with pious ceremonials blest. martha and had you naught besides to bring? mephistopheles oh yes! one grave and solemn prayer; let them for him three hundred masses sing! but in my pockets, i have nothing there. martha no trinket! no love-token did he send! what every journeyman safe in his pouch will hoard there for remembrance fondly stored, and rather hungers, rather begs than spend! mephistopheles madam, in truth, it grieves me sore, but he his gold not lavishly hath spent. his failings too he deeply did repent, ay! and his evil plight bewail'd still more. margaret alas! that men should thus be doomed to woe! i for his soul will many a requiem pray. mephistopheles a husband you deserve this very day; a child so worthy to be loved. margaret ah no, that time hath not yet come for me. mephistopheles if not a spouse, a gallant let it be. among heaven's choicest gifts, i place, so sweet a darling to embrace. margaret our land doth no such usage know. mephistopheles usage or not, it happens so. martha go on, i pray! mephistopheles i stood by his bedside. something less foul it was than dung; 'twas straw half rotten; yet, he as a christian died. and sorely hath remorse his conscience wrung. "wretch that i was," quoth he, with parting breath, "so to forsake my business and my wife! ah! the remembrance is my death. could i but have her pardon in this life!"-- martha (_weeping_) dear soul! i've long forgiven him, indeed! mephistopheles "though she, god knows, was more to blame than i." martha he lied! what, on the brink of death to lie! mephistopheles if i am skill'd the countenance to read, he doubtless fabled as he parted hence.-- "no time had i to gape, or take my ease," he said, "first to get children, and then get them bread; and bread, too, in the very widest sense; nor could i eat in peace even my proper share." martha what, all my truth, my love forgotten quite? my weary drudgery by day and night! mephistopheles not so! he thought of you with tender care. quoth he: "heaven knows how fervently i prayed, for wife and children when from malta bound;-- the prayer hath heaven with favor crowned; we took a turkish vessel which conveyed rich store of treasure for the sultan's court; its own reward our gallant action brought; the captur'd prize was shared among the crew, and of the treasure i received my due." martha how? where? the treasure hath he buried, pray? mephistopheles where the four winds have blown it, who can say? in naples as he stroll'd, a stranger there,-- a comely maid took pity on my friend: and gave such tokens of her love and care, that he retained them to his blessed end. martha scoundrel! to rob his children of their bread! and all this misery, this bitter need, could not his course of recklessness impede! mephistopheles well, he hath paid the forfeit, and is dead. now were i in your place, my counsel hear; my weeds i'd wear for one chaste year, and for another lover meanwhile would look out. martha alas, i might search far and near, not quickly should i find another like my first! there could not be a fonder fool than mine, only he loved too well abroad to roam; loved foreign women too, and foreign wine, and loved besides the dice accurs'd. mephistopheles all had gone swimmingly, no doubt, had he but given you at home, on his side, just as wide a range. upon such terms, to you i swear, myself with you would gladly rings exchange! martha the gentleman is surely pleas'd to jest! mephistopheles (_aside_) now to be off in time, were best! she'd make the very devil marry her. (_to_ margaret) how fares it with your heart? margaret how mean you, sir? mephistopheles (_aside_) the sweet young innocent! (_aloud_) ladies, farewell! margaret farewell! martha but ere you leave us, quickly tell! i from a witness fain had heard, where, how, and when my husband died and was interr'd. to forms i've always been attached indeed, his death i fain would in the journals read. mephistopheles ay, madam, what two witnesses declare is held as valid everywhere; a gallant friend i have, not far from here, who will for you before the judge appear. i'll bring him straight. martha i pray you do! mephistopheles and this young lady, we shall find her too? a noble youth, far traveled, he shows to the sex all courtesy. margaret i in his presence needs must blush for shame. mephistopheles not in the presence of a crownèd king! martha the garden, then, behind my house, we'll name, there we'll await you both this evening. a street faust, mephistopheles faust how is it now? how speeds it? is't in train? mephistopheles bravo! i find you all aflame! gretchen full soon your own you'll name. this eve, at neighbor martha's, her you'll meet again; the woman seems expressly made to drive the pimp and gipsy's trade. faust good! mephistopheles but from us she something would request. faust a favor claims return, as this world goes. mephistopheles we have on oath but duly to attest that her dead husband's limbs, outstretch'd, repose in holy ground at padua. faust sage indeed! so i suppose we straight must journey there! mephistopheles _sancta simplicitas!_ for that no need! without much knowledge we have but to swear. faust if you have nothing better to suggest, against your plan i must at once protest. mephistopheles oh, holy man! methinks i have you there! in all your life, say, have you ne'er false witness borne, until this hour? have you of god, the world, and all it doth contain, of man, and that which worketh in his heart and brain, not definitions given, in words of weight and power, with front unblushing, and a dauntless breast? yet, if into the depth of things you go, touching these matters, it must be confess'd, as much as of herr schwerdtlein's death you know! faust thou art and dost remain liar and sophist too. mephistopheles ay, if one did not take a somewhat deeper view! tomorrow, in all honor, thou poor gretchen wilt befool, and vow thy soul's deep love, in lover's fashion. faust and from my heart. mephistopheles all good and fair! then deathless constancy thou'lt swear; speak of one all o'ermastering passion-- will that too issue from the heart? faust forbear! when passion sways me, and i seek to frame fit utterance for feeling, deep, intense, and for my frenzy finding no fit name, sweep round the ample world with every sense, grasp at the loftiest words to speak my flame, and call the glow, wherewith i burn, quenchless, eternal, yea, eterne-- is that of sophistry a devilish play? mephistopheles yet am i right! faust mark this, my friend, and spare my lungs; who would the right maintain, and hath a tongue wherewith his point to gain, will gain it in the end. but come, of gossip i am weary quite; because i've no resource, thou'rt in the right. garden margaret _on_ faust's _arm_. martha _with_ mephistopheles _walking up and down_. margaret i feel it, you but spare my ignorance, the gentleman to blame me stoops thus low. [illustration: faust and margaret _from the painting by carl becker_] a traveler from complaisance still makes the best of things; i know too well, my humble prattle never can have power to entertain so wise a man. faust one glance, one word from thee doth charm me more than the world's wisdom or the sage's lore. [_he kisses her hand._] margaret nay! trouble not yourself! a hand so coarse, so rude as mine, how can you kiss! what constant work at home must i not do perforce! my mother too exacting is. [_they pass on._] martha thus, sir, unceasing travel is your lot? mephistopheles traffic and duty urge us! with what pain are we compelled to leave full many a spot, where yet we dare not once remain! martha in youth's wild years, with vigor crown'd, 'tis not amiss thus through the world to sweep; but ah, the evil days come round! and to a lonely grave as bachelor to creep a pleasant thing has no one found. mephistopheles the prospect fills me with dismay. martha therefore in time, dear sir, reflect, i pray. [_they pass on._] margaret ay, out of sight is out of mind! politeness easy is to you; friends everywhere, and not a few, wiser than i am, you will find. faust o dearest, trust me, what doth pass for sense full oft is self-conceit and blindness! margaret how? faust simplicity and holy innocence-- when will ye learn your hallow'd worth to know! ah, when will meekness and humility, kind and all-bounteous nature's loftiest dower-- margaret only one little moment think of me! to think of you i shall have many an hour. faust you are perhaps much alone? margaret yes, small our household is, i own, yet must i see to it. no maid we keep, and i must cook, sew, knit, and sweep, still early on my feet and late; my mother is in all things, great and small, so accurate! not that for thrift there is such pressing need, than others we might make more show indeed; my father left behind a small estate, a house and garden near the city-wall. but fairly quiet now my days, i own; as soldier is my brother gone; my little sister's dead; the babe to rear occasion'd me some care and fond annoy; but i would go through all again with joy, the darling was to me so dear. faust an angel, sweet, if it resembled thee! margaret i reared it up, and it grew fond of me. after my father's death it saw the day; we gave my mother up for lost, she lay in such a wretched plight, and then at length so very slowly she regain'd her strength. weak as she was, 'twas vain for her to try herself to suckle the poor babe, so i reared it on milk and water all alone; and thus the child became as 'twere my own; within my arms it stretched itself and grew, and smiling, nestled in my bosom too. faust doubtless the purest happiness was thine. margaret but many weary hours, in sooth, were also mine. at night its little cradle stood close to my bed; so was i wide awake if it but stirred; one while i was obliged to give it food, or to my arms the darling take; from bed full oft must rise, whene'er its cry i heard, and, dancing it, must pace the chamber to and fro; stand at the wash-tub early; forthwith go to market, and then mind the cooking too-- tomorrow like today, the whole year through. ah, sir, thus living, it must be confess'd one's spirits are not always of the best; yet it a relish gives to food and rest. [_they pass on._] martha poor women! we are badly off, i own; a bachelor's conversion's hard, indeed! mephistopheles madam, with one like you it rests alone, to tutor me a better course to lead. martha speak frankly, sir, none is there you have met? has your heart ne'er attach'd itself as yet? mephistopheles one's own fire-side and a good wife are gold and pearls of price, so says the proverb old. martha i mean, has passion never stirred your breast? mephistopheles i've everywhere been well received, i own. martha yet hath your heart no earnest preference known? mephistopheles with ladies one should ne'er presume to jest. martha ah! you mistake! mephistopheles i'm sorry i'm so blind! but this i know--that you are very kind. [_they pass on._] faust me, little angel, didst thou recognize, when in the garden first i came? margaret did you not see it? i cast down my eyes. faust thou dost forgive my boldness, dost not blame the liberty i took that day, when thou from church didst lately wend thy way? margaret i was confused. so had it never been; no one of me could any evil say. alas, thought i, he doubtless in thy mien, something unmaidenly or bold hath seen? [illustration: faust and margaret in the garden liezen-mayer] it seemed as if it struck him suddenly, here's just a girl with whom one may make free! yet i must own that then i scarcely knew what in your favor here began at once to plead; yet i was angry with myself indeed that i more angry could not feel with you. faust sweet love! margaret just wait awhile! [_she gathers a star-flower and plucks off the leaves one after another._] faust a nosegay may that be? margaret no! it is but a game. faust how? margaret go, you'll laugh at me! [_she plucks off the leaves and murmurs to herself._] faust what murmurest thou? margaret (_half aloud_) he loves me--loves me not. faust sweet angel, with thy face of heavenly bliss! margaret (_continues_) he loves me--not--he loves me--not-- [_plucking off the last leaf with fond joy_.] he loves me! faust yes! and this flower-language, darling, let it be a heavenly oracle! he loveth thee! know'st thou the meaning of, he loveth thee? [_he seizes both her hands._] margaret i tremble so! faust nay! do not tremble, love! let this hand-pressure, let this glance reveal feelings, all power of speech above; to give oneself up wholly and to feel a joy that must eternal prove! eternal!--yes, its end would be despair, no end!--it cannot end! [margaret _presses his hand, extricates herself, and runs away. he stands a moment in thought, and then follows her_.] martha (_approaching_) night's closing. mephistopheles yes, we'll presently away. martha i would entreat you longer yet to stay; but 'tis a wicked place, just here about; it is as if the folk had nothing else to do, nothing to think of too, but gaping watch their neighbors, who goes in and out; and scandal's busy still, do whatsoe'er one may. and our young couple? mephistopheles they have flown up there, the wanton butterflies! martha he seems to take to her. and she to him. 'tis of the world the way! a summer-house [margaret _runs in, hides behind the door, holds the tip of her finger to her lip, and peeps through the crevice_.] margaret he comes! faust ah, little rogue, so thou think'st to provoke me! i have caught thee now! [_he kisses her._] margaret (_embracing him, and returning the kiss_) dearest of men! i love thee from my heart! [mephistopheles _knocks_.] faust (_stamping_) who's there? mephistopheles a friend! faust a brute! mephistopheles 'tis time to part. martha (_comes_) ay, it is late, good sir. faust mayn't i attend you, then? margaret oh no--my mother would--adieu, adieu! faust and must i really then take leave of you? farewell! martha good-bye! margaret ere long to meet again! [_exeunt_ faust _and_ mephistopheles.] margaret good heavens! how all things far and near must fill his mind--a man like this! abash'd before him i appear, and say to all things only, yes. poor simple child, i cannot see what 'tis that he can find in me. [_exit._] forest and cavern faust (_alone_) spirit sublime! thou gav'st me, gav'st me all for which i prayed! not vainly hast thou turn'd to me thy countenance in flaming fire: gavest me glorious nature for my realm, and also power to feel her and enjoy; not merely with a cold and wondering glance, thou dost permit me in her depths profound, as in the bosom of a friend to gaze. before me thou dost lead her living tribes, and dost in silent grove, in air and stream teach me to know my kindred. and when roars the howling storm-blast through the groaning wood, wrenching the giant pine, which in its fall crashing sweeps down its neighbor trunks and boughs, while hollow thunder from the hill resounds: then thou dost lead me to some shelter'd cave, dost there reveal me to myself, and show of my own bosom the mysterious depths. and when with soothing beam, the moon's pale orb full in my view climbs up the pathless sky, from crag and dewy grove, the silvery forms of by-gone ages hover, and assuage the joy austere of contemplative thought. oh, that naught perfect is assign'd to man, i feel, alas! with this exalted joy, which lifts me near, and nearer to the gods, thou gav'st me this companion, unto whom i needs must cling, though cold and insolent, he still degrades me to myself, and turns thy glorious gifts to nothing, with a breath. he in my bosom with malicious zeal for that fair image fans a raging fire; from craving to enjoyment thus i reel, and in enjoyment languish for desire. [mephistopheles _enters_.] mephistopheles of this lone life have you not had your fill? how for so long can it have charms for you? 'tis well enough to try it if you will; but then away again to something new! faust would you could better occupy your leisure, than in disturbing thus my hours of joy. mephistopheles well! well! i'll leave you to yourself with pleasure, a serious tone you hardly dare employ. to part from one so crazy, harsh, and cross, were not in truth a grievous loss. the live-long day, for you i toil and fret; ne'er from his worship's face a hint i get, what pleases him, or what to let alone. faust ay truly! that is just the proper tone! he wearies me, and would with thanks be paid! mephistopheles poor son of earth, without my aid, how would thy weary days have flown? thee of thy foolish whims i've cured, thy vain imaginations banished. and but for me, be well assured, thou from this sphere must soon have vanished. in rocky hollows and in caverns drear, why like an owl sit moping here? wherefore from dripping stones and moss with ooze embued, dost suck, like any toad, thy food? a rare, sweet pastime. verily! the doctor cleaveth still to thee. faust dost comprehend what bliss without alloy from this wild wand'ring in the desert springs?-- couldst thou but guess the new life-power it brings, thou wouldst be fiend enough to envy me my joy. mephistopheles what super-earthly ecstasy! at night, to lie in darkness on the dewy height, embracing heaven and earth in rapture high, the soul dilating to a deity; with prescient yearnings pierce the core of earth, feel in your laboring breast the six-days' birth, enjoy, in proud delight what no one knows, while your love-rapture o'er creation flows-- the earthly lost in beatific vision, and then the lofty intuition-- (_with a gesture_) i need not tell you how--to close! faust fie on you! mephistopheles this displeases you? "for shame!" you are forsooth entitled to exclaim; we to chaste ears it seems must not pronounce what, nathless, the chaste heart cannot renounce. well, to be brief, the joy as fit occasions rise, i grudge you not, of specious lies. but long this mood thou'lt not retain. already thou'rt again outworn, and should this last, thou wilt be torn by frenzy or remorse and pain. enough of this! thy true love dwells apart, and all to her seems flat and tame; alone thine image fills her heart, she loves thee with an all-devouring flame. first came thy passion with o'erpowering rush, like mountain torrent, swollen by the melted snow; full in her heart didst pour the sudden gush, now has thy brooklet ceased to flow. instead of sitting throned midst forests wild, it would become so great a lord to comfort the enamor'd child, and the young monkey for her love reward. to her the hours seem miserably long; she from the window sees the clouds float by as o'er the lofty city-walls they fly. "if i a birdie were!" so runs her song, half through the night and all day long. cheerful sometimes, more oft at heart full sore; fairly outwept seem now her tears, anon she tranquil is, or so appears, and love-sick evermore. faust snake! serpent vile! mephistopheles (_aside_) good! if i catch thee with my guile! faust vile reprobate! go get thee hence; forbear the lovely girl to name! nor in my half-distracted sense kindle anew the smouldering flame! mephistopheles what wouldest thou! she thinks you've taken flight; it seems, she's partly in the right. faust i'm near her still--and should i distant rove, her i can ne'er forget, ne'er lose her love; and all things touch'd by those sweet lips of hers, even the very host, my envy stirs. mephistopheles 'tis well! i oft have envied you indeed, the twin-pair that among the roses feed. faust pander, avaunt! mephistopheles go to! i laugh, the while you rail; the power which fashion'd youth and maid well understood the noble trade; so neither shall occasion fail. but hence!--a mighty grief i trow! unto thy lov'd one's chamber thou and not to death shouldst go. faust what is to me heaven's joy within her arms? what though my life her bosom warms!-- do i not ever feel her woe? the outcast am i not, unhoused, unblest, inhuman monster, without aim or rest, who, like the greedy surge, from rock to rock, sweeps down the dread abyss with desperate shock? while she, within her lowly cot, which graced the alpine slope, beside the waters wild, her homely cares in that small world embraced, secluded lived, a simple artless child. was't not enough, in thy delirious whirl to blast the stedfast rocks! her, and her peace as well, must i, god-hated one, to ruin hurl! dost claim this holocaust, remorseless hell! fiend, help me to cut short the hours of dread! let what must happen, happen speedily! her direful doom fall crushing on my head, and into ruin let her plunge with me! mephistopheles why how again it seethes and glows! away, thou fool! her torment ease! when such a head no issue sees, it pictures straight the final close. long life to him who boldly dares! a devil's pluck thou'rt wont to show; as for a devil who despairs-- nothing i find so mawkish here below. margaret's room margaret (_alone at her spinning wheel_) my peace is gone, my heart is sore, i find it never, and nevermore! where him i have not, is the grave; and all the world to me is turned to gall. my wilder'd brain is overwrought; my feeble senses are distraught. my peace is gone, my heart is sore, i find it never, and nevermore! for him from the window i gaze, at home; for him and him only abroad i roam. his lofty step, his bearing high, the smile of his lip, the power of his eye, his witching words, their tones of bliss, his hand's fond pressure, and ah--his kiss! my peace is gone, my heart is sore, i find it never, and nevermore. my bosom aches to feel him near; ah, could i clasp and fold him here! kiss him and kiss him again would i, and on his kisses i fain would die. martha's garden margaret _and_ faust margaret promise me, henry! faust what i can! margaret how thy religion fares, i fain would hear. thou art a good kind-hearted man, only that way not well-disposed, i fear. faust forbear, my child! thou feelest thee i love; my heart, my blood i'd give, my love to prove, and none would of their faith or church bereave. margaret that's not enough, we must ourselves believe! faust must we? margaret ah, could i but thy soul inspire! thou honorest not the sacraments, alas! faust i honor them. margaret but yet without desire; 'tis long since thou hast been either to shrift or mass. dost thou believe in god? faust my darling, who dares say? yes, i in god believe. question or priest or sage, and they seem, in the answer you receive, to mock the questioner. margaret then thou dost not believe? faust sweet one! my meaning do not misconceive! him who dare name, and who proclaim-- him i believe? who that can feel, his heart can steel, to say: i believe him not? the all-embracer, all-sustainer, holds and sustains he not thee, me, himself? lifts not the heaven its dome above? doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie? and, beaming tenderly with looks of love, climb not the everlasting stars on high? do we not gaze into each other's eyes? nature's impenetrable agencies, are they not thronging on thy heart and brain, viewless, or visible to mortal ken, around thee weaving their mysterious chain? fill thence thy heart, how large soe'er it be; and in the feeling when thou utterly art blest, then call it, what thou wilt-- call it bliss! heart! love! god! i have no name for it! 'tis feeling all; name is but sound and smoke shrouding the glow of heaven. margaret all this is doubtless good and fair; almost the same the parson says, only in slightly different phrase. faust beneath heaven's sunshine, everywhere, this is the utterance of the human heart; each in his language doth the like impart; then why not i in mine? margaret what thus i hear sounds plausible, yet i'm not reconciled; there's something wrong about it; much i fear that thou art not a christian. faust my sweet child! margaret alas! it long hath sorely troubled me, to see thee in such odious company. faust how so? margaret the man who comes with thee, i hate, yea, in my spirit's inmost depths abhor; as his loath'd visage, in my life before, naught to my heart e'er gave a pang so great. faust him fear not, my sweet love! margaret his presence chills my blood. toward all beside i have a kindly mood; yet, though i yearn to gaze on thee, i feel at sight of him strange horror o'er me steal; that he's a villain my conviction's strong. may heaven forgive me, if i do him wrong! faust yet such strange fellows in the world must be! margaret i would not live with such an one as he. if for a moment he but enter here, he looks around him with a mocking sneer, and malice ill-conceal'd; that he with naught on earth can sympathize is clear; upon his brow 'tis legibly revealed that to his heart no living soul is dear. so blest i feel, within thine arms, so warm and happy--free from all alarms; and still my heart doth close when he comes near. faust foreboding angel! check thy fear! margaret it so o'ermasters me that when, or wheresoe'er, his step i hear, i almost think, no more i love thee then. besides, when he is near, i ne'er could pray. this eats into my heart; with thee the same, my henry, it must be. faust this is antipathy! margaret i must away. faust for one brief hour then may i never rest, and heart to heart, and soul to soul be pressed? margaret ah, if i slept alone! tonight the bolt i fain would leave undrawn for thee; but then my mother's sleep is light, were we surprised by her, ah me! upon the spot i should be dead. faust dear angel! there's no cause for dread. here is a little phial--if she take mixed in her drink three drops, 'twill steep her nature in a deep and soothing sleep. margaret what do i not for thy dear sake! to her it will not harmful prove? faust should i advise it else, sweet love? margaret i know not, dearest, when thy face i see, what doth my spirit to thy will constrain; already i have done so much for thee, that scarcely more to do doth now remain. [_exit._] (mephistopheles _enters_) mephistopheles the monkey! is she gone? faust again hast played the spy? mephistopheles of all that pass'd i'm well apprized, i heard the doctor catechized, and trust he'll profit much thereby! fain would the girls inquire indeed touching their lover's faith and creed, and whether pious in the good old way; they think, if pliant there, us too he will obey. faust thou monster, dost not see that this pure soul, possessed by ardent love, full of the living faith, to her of bliss the only pledge, must holy anguish prove, holding the man she loves fore-doomed to endless death! mephistopheles most sensual, supersensualist! the while a damsel leads thee by the nose! faust of filth and fire abortion vile! mephistopheles in physiognomy strange skill she shows; she in my presence feels she knows not how; my mask it seems a hidden sense reveals; that i'm a genius she must needs allow, that i'm the very devil perhaps she feels. so then tonight-- faust what's that to you? mephistopheles i've my amusement in it too! at the well margaret _and_ bessy, _with pitchers_ bessy of barbara hast nothing heard? margaret i rarely go from home--no, not a word. bessy 'tis true: sybilla told me so today! that comes of being proud, methinks; she played the fool at last. margaret how so? bessy they say that two she feedeth when she eats and drinks. margaret alas! bessy she's rightly served, in sooth. how long she hung upon the youth! what promenades, what jaunts there were to dancing booth and village fair! the first she everywhere must shine, he always treating her to pastry and to wine. of her good looks she was so vain, so shameless too, that to retain his presents, she did not disdain; sweet words and kisses came anon-- and then the virgin flower was gone. margaret poor thing! bessy forsooth dost pity her? at night, when at our wheels we sat, abroad our mothers ne'er would let us stir. then with her lover she must chat, or on the bench, or in the dusky walk, thinking the hours too brief for their sweet talk; her proud head she will have to bow, and in white sheet do penance now! margaret but he will surely marry her? bessy not he! he won't be such a fool! a gallant lad like him can roam o'er land and sea; besides, he's off. margaret that is not fair! bessy if she should get him, 'twere almost as bad! her myrtle wreath the boys would tear; and then we girls would plague her too, for we chopp'd straw before her door would strew! [_exit._] margaret (_walking toward home_) how stoutly once i could inveigh, if a poor maiden went astray; not words enough my tongue could find, 'gainst others' sin to speak my mind! black as it seemed, i blacken'd it still more, and strove to make it blacker than before. and did myself securely bless-- now my own trespass doth appear! yet ah!--what urg'd me to transgress, god knows, it was so sweet, so dear! zwinger _inclosure between the city-wall and the gate. (in the niche of the wall a devotional image of the mater dolorosa, with flower-pots before it.)_ margaret (_putting fresh flowers in the pots_) ah, rich in sorrow, thou, stoop thy maternal brow, and mark with pitying eye my misery! the sword in thy pierced heart, thou dost with bitter smart gaze upwards on thy son's death agony. to the dear god on high ascends thy piteous sigh, pleading for his and thy sore misery. ah, who can know the torturing woe, the pangs that rack me to the bone? how my poor heart, without relief, trembles and throbs, its yearning grief thou knowest, thou alone! ah, wheresoe'er i go, with woe, with woe, with woe, my anguish'd breast is aching! when all alone i creep, i weep, i weep, i weep, alas! my heart is breaking! the flower-pots at my window were wet with tears of mine, the while i pluck'd these blossoms at dawn to deck thy shrine! when early in my chamber shone bright the rising morn, i sat there on my pallet, my heart with anguish torn. help! from disgrace and death deliver me! ah! rich in sorrow, thou, stoop thy maternal brow, and mark with pitying eye my misery! night. street before margaret's door valentine (_a soldier_, margaret's _brother_) when seated 'mong the jovial crowd, where merry comrades boasting loud each named with pride his favorite lass, and in her honor drain'd his glass; upon my elbows i would lean, with easy quiet view the scene, nor give my tongue the rein, until each swaggering blade had talked his fill. then smiling i my beard would stroke, the while, with brimming glass, i spoke; "each to his taste!--but to my mind, where in the country will you find, a maid, as my dear gretchen fair, who with my sister can compare?" cling! clang! so rang the jovial sound! shouts of assent went circling round; pride of her sex is she!--cried some; then were the noisy boasters dumb. and now!--i could tear out my hair, or dash my brains out in despair!-- me every scurvy knave may twit, with stinging jest and taunting sneer! like skulking debtor i must sit, and sweat each casual word to hear! and though i smash'd them one and all,-- yet them i could not liars call. who comes this way? who's sneaking here? if i mistake not, two draw near. if he be one, have at him;--well i wot alive he shall not leave this spot! faust. mephistopheles faust how far from yon sacristy, athwart the night, its beams the ever-burning taper throws, while ever waning, fades the glimmering light, as gathering darkness doth around it close! so night like gloom doth in my bosom reign. mephistopheles i'm like a tom-cat in a thievish vein that up fire-ladders tall and steep and round the walls doth slyly creep; virtuous withal i feel, with, i confess. a touch of thievish joy and wantonness. thus through my limbs already burns the glorious walpurgis night! after tomorrow it returns; then why one wakes, one knows aright! faust meanwhile, the treasure i see glimmering there. will it ascend into the open air? mephistopheles ere long thou wilt proceed with pleasure to raise the casket with its treasure; i took a peep, therein are stored of lion-dollars a rich hoard. faust and not a trinket? not a ring? wherewith my lovely girl to deck? mephistopheles i saw among them some such thing, a string of pearls to grace her neck. faust 'tis well! i'm always loath to go, without some gift my love to show. mephistopheles some pleasures gratis to enjoy should surely cause you no annoy. while bright with stars the heavens appear, i'll sing a masterpiece of art: a moral song shall charm her ear, more surely to beguile her heart. (_sings to the guitar._) kathrina, say, why lingering stay at dawn of day before your lover's door? maiden, beware, nor enter there, lest forth you fare, a maiden never more. maiden take heed! reck well my rede! is't done, the deed? good night, you poor, poor thing! the spoiler's lies, his arts despise, nor yield your prize, without the marriage ring! valentine (_steps forward_) whom are you luring here? i'll give it you! accursed rat-catchers, your strains i'll end! first, to the devil the guitar i'll send! then to the devil with the singer too! mephistopheles the poor guitar! 'tis done for now. valentine your skull shall follow next, i trow! mephistopheles (_to_ faust) doctor, stand fast! your strength collect! be prompt, and do as i direct. out with your whisk! keep close, i pray, i'll parry! do you thrust away! valentine then parry that! mephistopheles why not? valentine that too! mephistopheles with ease! valentine the devil fights for you! why how is this? my hand's already lamed! mephistopheles (_to_ faust) thrust home! valentine (_falls_) alas! mephistopheles there! now the lubber's tamed! but quick, away! we must at once take wing; a cry of murder strikes upon the ear; with the police i know my course to steer, but with the blood-ban 'tis another thing. martha (_at the window_) without! without! margaret (_at the window_) quick, bring a light! martha (_as above_) they rail and scuffle, scream and fight! people one lieth here already dead! martha (_coming out_) where are the murderers? are they fled? margaret (_coming out_) who lieth here? people thy mother's son. margaret almighty god! i am undone! valentine i'm dying--'tis a soon-told tale, and sooner done the deed. why, women, do ye howl and wail? to my last words give heed! [_all gather round him._] my gretchen, see! still young art thou, art not discreet enough, i trow, thou dost thy matters ill; let this in confidence be said: since thou the path of shame dost tread, tread it with right good will! margaret my brother! god! what can this mean? valentine abstain, nor dare god's holy name profane! what's done, alas, is done and past! matters will take their course at last; by stealth thou dost begin with one, others will follow him anon; and when a dozen thee have known, thou'lt common be to all the town. when infamy is newly born, in secret she is brought to light, and the mysterious veil of night o'er head and ears is drawn; the loathsome birth men fain would slay; but soon, full grown, she waxes bold, and though not fairer to behold, with brazen front insults the day: the more abhorrent to the sight, the more she courts the day's pure light, the time already i discern, when thee all honest folk will spurn, and shun thy hated form to meet, as when a corpse infects the street. thy heart will sink in blank despair, when they shall look thee in the face! a golden chain no more thou'lt wear! nor near the altar take in church thy place! in fair lace collar simply dight thou'lt dance no more with spirits light! in darksome corners thou wilt bide, where beggars vile and cripples hide, and e'en though god thy crime forgive, on earth, a thing accursed, thou'lt live! martha your parting soul to god commend! your dying breath in slander will you spend? valentine could i but reach thy wither'd frame, thou wretched beldame, void of shame! full measure i might hope to win of pardon then for every sin. margaret brother! what agonizing pain! valentine i tell thee, from vain tears abstain! 'twas thy dishonor pierced my heart, thy fall the fatal death-stab gave. through the death-sleep i now depart to god, a soldier true and brave. [_dies._] cathedral _service, organ, and anthem._ margaret _amongst a number of people_ evil-spirit _behind_ margaret evil-spirit [illustration: valentine's death franz simm] how different, gretchen, was it once with thee, when thou, still full of innocence, here to the altar camest, and from the small and well-con'd book didst lisp thy prayer, half childish sport, half god in thy young heart! gretchen! what thoughts are thine? what deed of shame lurks in thy sinful heart? is thy prayer utter'd for thy mother's soul, who into long, long torment slept through thee? whose blood is on thy threshold?-- and stirs there not already 'neath thy heart another quick'ning pulse, that even now tortures itself and thee with its foreboding presence? margaret woe! woe! oh, could i free me from the thoughts that hither, thither, crowd upon my brain, against my will! chorus _dies irae, dies illa, solvet sæclum in favilla._ [_the organ sounds._] evil-spirit grim horror seizes thee! the trumpet sounds! the graves are shaken! and thy heart from ashy rest for torturing flames anew created, trembles into life! margaret would i were hence! it is as if the organ choked my breath, as if the choir melted my inmost heart! chorus _judex ergo cum sedebit, quidquid latet adparebit, nil inultum remanebit._ margaret i feel oppressed! the pillars of the wall imprison me! the vaulted roof weighs down upon me!--air! evil-spirit wouldst hide thee? sin and shame remain not hidden! air! light! woe's thee! chorus _quid sum miser tunc dicturus? quem patronum rogaturus! cum vix justus sit securus._ evil-spirit the glorified their faces turn away from thee! shudder the pure to reach their hands to thee! woe! chorus _quid sum miser tunc dicturus_-- margaret neighbor! your smelling bottle! [_she swoons away._] [illustration: margaret's downfall _from the painting by wilhelm von kaulbach_] walpurgis-night the hartz mountains. district of schierke and elend faust _and_ mephistopheles mephistopheles a broomstick dost thou not at least desire? the roughest he-goat fain would i bestride, by this road from our goal we're still far wide. faust while fresh upon my legs, so long i naught require, except this knotty staff. beside, what boots it to abridge a pleasant way? along the labyrinth of these vales to creep, then scale these rocks, whence, in eternal spray, adown the cliffs the silvery fountains leap: such is the joy that seasons paths like these! spring weaves already in the birchen trees; e'en the late pine-grove feels her quickening powers; should she not work within these limbs of ours? mephistopheles naught of this genial influence do i know! within me all is wintry. frost and snow i should prefer my dismal path to bound. how sadly, yonder, with belated glow rises the ruddy moon's imperfect round, shedding so faint a light, at every tread one's sure to stumble 'gainst a rock or tree! an ignis fatuus i must call instead. yonder one burning merrily, i see. holla! my friend! may i request your light? why should you flare away so uselessly? be kind enough to show us up the height! ignis fatuus through reverence, i hope i may subdue the lightness of my nature; true, our course is but a zigzag one. mephistopheles ho! ho! so men, forsooth, he thinks to imitate! now, in the devil's name, for once go straight! or out at once your flickering life i'll blow. ignis fatuus that you are master here is obvious quite; to do your will, i'll cordially essay; only reflect! the hill is magic-mad tonight; and if to show the path you choose a meteor's light, you must not wonder should we go astray. faust, mephistopheles, ignis fatuus (_in alternate song_) through the dream and magic-sphere, as it seems, we now are speeding; honor win, us rightly leading, that betimes we may appear in yon wide and desert region! trees on trees, a stalwart legion, swiftly past us are retreating, and the cliffs with lowly greeting; rocks long-snouted, row on row, how they snort, and how they blow! through the stones and heather springing, brook and brooklet haste below; hark the rustling! hark the singing! hearken to love's plaintive lays; voices of those heavenly days-- what we hope, and what we love! like a tale of olden time, echo's voice prolongs the chime. to-whit! to-who! it sounds more near; plover, owl, and jay appear, all awake, around, above? paunchy salamanders too peer, long-limbed, the bushes through! and, like snakes, the roots of trees coil themselves from rock and sand, stretching many a wondrous band, us to frighten, us to seize; from rude knots with life embued, polyp-fangs abroad they spread, to snare the wanderer! 'neath our tread, mice, in myriads, thousand-hued, through the heath and through the moss! and the fire-flies' glittering throng, wildering escort, whirls along, here and there, our path across. tell me, stand we motionless, or still forward do we press? all things round us whirl and fly, rocks and trees make strange grimaces, dazzling meteors change their places-- how they puff and multiply! mephistopheles now grasp my doublet--we at last a central peak have reached, which shows, if round a wondering glance we cast, how in the mountain mammon glows. faust how through the chasms strangely gleams, a lurid light, like dawn's red glow, pervading with its quivering beams, the gorges of the gulf below! here vapors rise, there clouds float by, here through the mist the light doth shine; now, like a fount, it bursts on high, meanders now, a slender line; far reaching, with a hundred veins, here through the valley see it glide; here, where its force the gorge restrains, at once it scatters, far and wide; anear, like showers of golden sand strewn broadcast, sputter sparks of light: and mark yon rocky walls that stand ablaze, in all their towering height! mephistopheles doth not sir mammon for this fête grandly illume his palace! thou art lucky to have seen it; now, the boisterous guests, i feel, are coming straight. faust how through the air the storm doth whirl! upon my neck it strikes with sudden shock. mephistopheles cling to these ancient ribs of granite rock, else to yon depths profound it you will hurl. a murky vapor thickens night. hark! through the woods the tempests roar! the owlets flit in wild affright. hark! splinter'd are the columns that upbore the leafy palace, green for aye: the shivered branches whirr and sigh, yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan, the roots, upriven, creak and moan! in fearful and entangled fall, one crashing ruin whelms them all, while through the desolate abyss, sweeping the wreck-strewn precipice, the raging storm-blasts howl and hiss! aloft strange voices dost thou hear? distant now and now more near? hark! the mountain ridge along, streameth a raving magic-song! witches (_in chorus_) now to the brocken the witches hie, the stubble is yellow, the corn is green; thither the gathering legions fly, and sitting aloft is sir urian seen: o'er stick and o'er stone they go whirling along, witches and he-goats, a motley throng. voices alone old baubo's coming now; she rides upon a farrow sow. chorus honor to her, to whom honor is due! forward, dame baubo! honor to you! a goodly sow and mother thereon, the whole witch chorus follows anon. voice which way didst come? voice o'er ilsenstein! there i peep'd in an owlet's nest. with her broad eye she gazed in mine! voice drive to the devil, thou hellish pest! why ride so hard? voice she has graz'd my side, look at the wounds, how deep and how wide! witches (_in chorus_) the way is broad, the way is long; what mad pursuit! what tumult wild! scratches the besom and sticks the prong; crush'd is the mother, and stifled the child. wizards (_half chorus_) like house-encumber'd snail we creep; while far ahead the women keep, for when to the devil's house we speed, by a thousand steps they take the lead. the other half not so, precisely do we view it; they with a thousand steps may do it; but let them hasten as they can, with one long bound 'tis clear'd by man. voices (_above_) come with us, come with us from felsensee. voices (_from below_) aloft to you we would mount with glee! we wash, and free from all stain are we, yet barren evermore must be! both choruses the wind is hushed, the stars grow pale, the pensive moon her light doth veil; and whirling on, the magic choir sputters forth sparks of drizzling fire. voice (_from below_) stay! stay! voice (_from above_) what voice of woe calls from the cavern'd depths below? voice (_from below_) take me with you! oh take me too! three centuries i climb in vain, and yet can ne'er the summit gain! to be with my kindred i am fain. both choruses broom and pitch-fork, goat and prong, mounted on these we whirl along; who vainly strives to climb tonight, is evermore a luckless wight! demi-witch (_below_) i hobble after, many a day; already the others are far away! no rest at home can i obtain-- here too my efforts are in vain! chorus of witches salve gives the witches strength to rise; a rag for a sail does well enough; a goodly ship is every trough; tonight who flies not, never flies. both choruses and when the topmost peak we round, then alight ye on the ground; the heath's wide regions cover ye with your mad swarms of witchery! [_they let themselves down._] mephistopheles they crowd and jostle, whirl and flutter! they whisper, babble, twirl, and splutter! they glimmer, sparkle, stink and flare-- a true witch-element! beware! stick close! else we shall severed be. where art thou? faust (_in the distance_) here! mephistopheles already, whirl'd so far away! the master then indeed i needs must play. give ground! squire voland comes! sweet folk, give ground! here, doctor, grasp me! with a single bound let us escape this ceaseless jar; even for me too mad these people are. hard by there shineth something with peculiar glare, yon brake allureth me; it is not far; come, come along with me! we'll slip in there. faust spirit of contradiction! lead! i'll follow straight! 'twas wisely done, however, to repair on may-night to the brocken, and when there, by our own choice ourselves to isolate! mephistopheles mark, of those flames the motley glare! a merry club assembles there. in a small circle one is not alone. faust i'd rather be above, though, i must own! already fire and eddying smoke i view; the impetuous millions to the devil ride; full many a riddle will be there untied. mephistopheles ay! and full many a riddle tied anew. but let the great world rave and riot! here will we house ourselves in quiet. a custom 'tis of ancient date, our lesser worlds within the great world to create! young witches there i see, naked and bare, and old ones, veil'd more prudently. for my sake only courteous be! the trouble small, the sport is rare. of instruments i hear the cursed din-- one must get used to it. come in! come in! there's now no help for it. i'll step before, and introducing you as my good friend, confer on you one obligation more. how say you now? 'tis no such paltry room; why only look, you scarce can see the end. a hundred fires in rows disperse the gloom; they dance, they talk, they cook, make love, and drink: where could we find aught better, do you think? faust to introduce us, do you purpose here as devil or as wizard to appear? mephistopheles though i am wont indeed to strict incognito, yet upon gala-days one must one's orders show. no garter have i to distinguish me, nathless the cloven foot doth here give dignity. seest thou yonder snail? crawling this way she hies; with searching feelers, she, no doubt, hath me already scented out; here, even if i would, for me there's no disguise. from fire to fire, we'll saunter at our leisure, the gallant you, i'll cater for your pleasure. (_to a party seated round, some expiring embers_) old gentleman, apart, why sit ye moping here? ye in the midst should be of all this jovial cheer, girt round with noise and youthful riot; at home one surely has enough of quiet. general in nations put his trust, who may, whate'er for them one may have done; for with the people, as with women, they honor your rising stars alone! minister now all too far they wander from the right; i praise the good old ways, to them i hold, then was the genuine age of gold, when we ourselves were foremost in men's sight. parvenu ne'er were we 'mong your dullards found, and what we ought not, that to do were fair; yet now are all things turning round and round, when on firm basis we would them maintain. author who, as a rule, a treatise now would care to read, of even moderate sense? as for the rising generation, ne'er has youth displayed such arrogant pretense. mephistopheles (_suddenly appearing very old_) since for the last time i the brocken scale, that folk are ripe for doomsday, now one sees; and just because my cask begins to fail, so the whole world is also on the lees. huckster-witch stop, gentlemen, nor pass me by, of wares i have a choice collection: pray honor them with your inspection. lose not this opportunity! yet nothing in my booth you'll find without its counterpart on earth; there's naught, which to the world, and to mankind, hath not some direful mischief wrought. no dagger here, which hath not flow'd with blood, no chalice, whence, into some healthy frame hath not been poured hot poison's wasting flood. no trinket, but hath wrought some woman's shame, no weapon but hath cut some sacred tie, or from behind hath stabb'd an enemy. mephistopheles gossip! for wares like these the time's gone by, what's done is past! what's past is done! with novelties your booth supply; us novelties attract alone. faust may this wild scene my senses spare! this, may in truth be called a fair! mephistopheles upward the eddying concourse throng; thinking to push, thyself art push'd along. faust who's that, pray? mephistopheles mark her well! that's lilith. faust who? mephistopheles adam's first wife. of her rich locks beware! that charm in which she's parallel'd by few, when in its toils a youth she doth ensnare he will not soon escape, i promise you. faust there sit a pair, the old one with the young; already they have bravely danced and sprung! mephistopheles here there is no repose today. another dance begins; we'll join it, come away! faust (_dancing with the young one_) once a fair vision came to me; therein i saw an apple-tree, two beauteous apples charmed mine eyes; i climb'd forthwith to reach the prize. the fair one apples still fondly ye desire, from paradise it hath been so. feelings of joy my breast inspire that such too in my garden grow. mephistopheles (_with the old one_) once a weird vision came to me; therein i saw a rifted tree. it had a.....; but as it was it pleased me too. the old one i beg most humbly to salute the gallant with the cloven foot! let him ... have ready here, if he a ... does not fear. proctophantasmist accursed mob! how dare ye thus to meet? have i not shown and demonstrated too, that ghosts stand not on ordinary feet? yet here ye dance, as other mortals do! the fair one (_dancing_) then at our ball, what doth he here? faust (_dancing_) oh! he must everywhere appear. he must adjudge, when others dance; if on each step his say's not said, so is that step as good as never made. he's most annoyed, so soon as we advance; if ye would circle in one narrow round. as he in his old mill, then doubtless he your dancing would approve,--especially if ye forthwith salute him with respect profound! proctophantasmist still here! what arrogance! unheard of quite! vanish; we now have fill'd the world with light! laws are unheeded by the devil's host; wise as we are, yet tegel hath its ghost! how long at this conceit i've swept with all my might, lost is the labor: 'tis unheard of quite! the fair one cease here to tease us any more, i pray. proctophantasmist spirits, i plainly to your face declare: no spiritual control myself will bear, since my own spirit can exert no sway. [_the dancing continues._] tonight, i see, i shall in naught succeed; but i'm prepar'd my travels to pursue, and hope, before my final step indeed, to triumph over bards and devils too. mephistopheles now in some puddle will he take his station, such is his mode of seeking consolation; where leeches, feasting on his rump, will drain spirits alike and spirit from his brain. (_to_ faust, _who has left the dance_) but why the charming damsel leave, i pray, who to you in the dance so sweetly sang? faust ah! in the very middle of her lay, out of her mouth a small red mouse there sprang. mephistopheles suppose there did! one must not be too nice. 'twas well it was not gray, let that suffice. who 'mid his pleasures for a trifle cares? faust then saw i-- mephistopheles what? faust mephisto, seest thou there standing far off, a lone child, pale and fair! slow from the spot her drooping form she tears, and seems with shackled feet to move along; i own, within me the delusion's strong, that she the likeness of my gretchen wears. mephistopheles gaze not upon her! 'tis not good! forbear! 'tis lifeless, magical, a shape of air, an idol. such to meet with, bodes no good; that rigid look of hers doth freeze man's blood, and well-nigh petrifies his heart to stone:-- the story of medusa thou hast known. faust ay, verily! a corpse's eyes are those, which there was no fond loving hand to close. that is the bosom i so fondly press'd, that my sweet gretchen's form, so oft caress'd! mephistopheles deluded fool! 'tis magic, i declare! to each she doth his lov'd one's image wear. faust what bliss! what torture! vainly i essay to turn me from that piteous look away. how strangely doth a single crimson line around that lovely neck its coil entwine, it shows no broader than a knife's blunt edge! mephistopheles quite right. i see it also, and allege that she beneath her arm her head can bear, since perseus cut it off.--but you i swear are craving for illusions still! come then, ascend yon little hill! as on the prater all is gay, and if my senses are not gone, i see a theatre,--what's going on? servibilis they are about to recommence;--the play, will be the last of seven, and spick-span new-- 'tis usual here that number to present. a dilettante did the piece invent, and dilettanti will enact it too. excuse me, gentlemen; to me's assign'd, as dilettante to uplift the curtain. mephistopheles you on the blocksberg i'm rejoiced to find, that 'tis your most appropriate sphere is certain. walpurgis-night's dream; or, oberon and titania's golden wedding-feast intermezzo * * * * * theatre manager vales, where mists still shift and play, to ancient hill succeeding,-- these our scenes;--so we, today, may rest, brave sons of mieding. herald that the marriage golden be, must fifty years be ended; more dear this feast of gold to me, contention now suspended. oberon spirits, if present, grace the scene, and if with me united, then gratulate the king and queen, their troth thus newly plighted! puck puck draws near and wheels about, in mazy circles dancing! hundreds swell his joyous shout, behind him still advancing. ariel ariel wakes his dainty air, his lyre celestial stringing.-- fools he lureth, and the fair, with his celestial singing. oberon wedded ones, would ye agree, we court your imitation: would ye fondly love as we, we counsel separation. titania if husband scold and wife retort, then bear them far asunder; her to the burning south transport, and him the north pole under. the whole orchestra (_fortissimo_) flies and midges all unite with frog and chirping cricket, our orchestra throughout the night, resounding in the thicket! (_solo_) yonder doth the bagpipe come! its sack an airy bubble. schnick, schnick, schnack, with nasal hum, its notes it doth redouble. embryo spirit spider's foot and midge's wing, a toad in form and feature; together verses it can string, though scarce a living creature. a little pair tiny step and lofty bound, through dew and exhalation; ye trip it deftly on the ground, but gain no elevation. inquisitive traveller can i indeed believe my eyes? is't not mere masquerading? what! oberon in beauteous guise, among the groups parading! orthodox no claws, no tail to whisk about, to fright us at our revel; yet like the gods of greece, no doubt, he too's a genuine devil. northern artist these that i'm hitting off today are sketches unpretending; toward italy without delay, my steps i think of bending. purist alas! ill-fortune leads me here, where riot still grows louder; and 'mong the witches gather'd here, but two alone wear powder! young witch your powder and your petticoat, suit hags, there's no gainsaying; hence i sit fearless on my goat, my naked charms displaying. matron we're too well-bred to squabble here, or insult back to render; but may you wither soon, my dear, although so young and tender. leader of the band nose of fly and gnat's proboscis, throng not the naked beauty! frogs and crickets in the mosses, keep time and do your duty! weathercock (_toward one side_) what charming company i view together here collected! gay bachelors, a hopeful crew, and brides so unaffected! weathercock (_toward the other side_) unless indeed the yawning ground should open to receive them, from this vile crew, with sudden bound, to hell i'd jump and leave them. xenien with small sharp shears, in insect guise, behold us at your revel! that we may tender, filial-wise, our homage to the devil. hennings look now at yonder eager crew, how naïvely they're jesting! that they have tender hearts and true, they stoutly keep protesting! musaget oneself amid this witchery how pleasantly one loses; for witches easier are to me to govern than the muses! ci-devant genius of the age with proper folks when we appear, no one can then surpass us! keep close, wide is the blocksberg here as germany's parnassus. inquisitive traveller how name ye that stiff formal man, who strides with lofty paces? he tracks the game where'er he can, "he scents the jesuits' traces." crane where waters troubled are or clear, to fish i am delighted; thus pious gentlemen appear with devils here united. worldling by pious people, it is true, no medium is rejected; conventicles, and not a few, on blocksberg are erected. dancer another chorus now succeeds, far off the drums are beating. be still! the bitterns 'mong the reeds their one note are repeating. dancing master each twirls about and never stops, and as he can he fareth. the crooked leaps, the clumsy hops, nor for appearance careth. fiddler to take each other's life, i trow, would cordially delight them! as orpheus' lyre the beasts, so now the bagpipe doth unite them. dogmatist my views, in spite of doubt and sneer, i hold with stout persistence, inferring from the devils here, the evil one's existence. idealist my every sense rules phantasy with sway quite too potential; sure i'm demented if the _i_ alone is the essential. realist this entity's a dreadful bore, and cannot choose but vex me; the ground beneath me ne'er before thus totter'd to perplex me. supernaturalist well pleased assembled here i view of spirits this profusion; from devils, touching angels too, i gather some conclusion. sceptic the ignis fatuus they track out, and think they're near the treasure. devil alliterates with doubt, here i abide with pleasure. leader of the band frog and cricket in the mosses,-- confound your gasconading! nose of fly and gnat's proboscis;-- most tuneful serenading! the knowing ones sans souci, so this host we greet, their jovial humor showing; there's now no walking on our feet, so on our heads we're going. the awkward ones in seasons past we snatch'd, 'tis true, some tit-bits by our cunning; our shoes, alas, are now danced through, on our bare soles we're running. will-o'-the-wisps from marshy bogs we sprang to light, yet here behold us dancing; the gayest gallants of the night, in glitt'ring rows advancing. shooting star with rapid motion from on high, i shot in starry splendor; now prostrate on the grass i lie;-- who aid will kindly render? the massive ones room! wheel round! they're coming! lo! down sink the bending grasses. though spirits, yet their limbs, we know, are huge substantial masses. puck don't stamp so heavily, i pray; like elephants you're treading! and 'mong the elves be puck today, the stoutest at the wedding! ariel if nature boon, or subtle sprite, endow your soul with pinions;-- then follow to you rosy height, through ether's calm dominions! orchestra (_pianissimo_) drifting cloud and misty wreathes are fill'd with light elysian; o'er reed and leaf the zephyr breathes-- so fades the fairy vision! a gloomy day. a plain faust _and_ mephistopheles faust in misery! despairing! long wandering pitifully on the face of the earth and now imprisoned! this gentle hapless creature, immured in the dungeon as a malefactor and reserved for horrid tortures! that it should come to this! to this!--perfidious, worthless spirit, and this thou hast concealed from me!--stand! ay, stand! roll in malicious rage thy fiendish eyes! stand and brave me with thine insupportable presence! imprisoned! in hopeless misery! delivered over to the power of evil spirits and the judgment of unpitying humanity!--and me, the while, thou went lulling with tasteless dissipations, concealing from me her growing anguish, and leaving her to perish without help! mephistopheles she is not the first. faust hound! execrable monster!--back with him, oh thou infinite spirit! back with the reptile into his dog's shape, in which it was his wont to scamper before me at eventide, to roll before the feet of the harmless wanderer, and to fasten on his shoulders when he fell! change him again into his favorite shape, that he may crouch on his belly before me in the dust, whilst i spurn him with my foot, the reprobate!--not the first!--woe! woe! by no human soul is it conceivable, that more than one human creature has ever sunk into a depth of wretchedness like this, or that the first in her writhing death-agony should not have atoned in the sight of all-pardoning heaven for the guilt of all the rest! the misery of this one pierces me to the very marrow, and harrows up my soul; thou art grinning calmly over the doom of thousands! mephistopheles now we are once again at our wit's end, just where the reason of you mortals snaps! why dost thou seek our fellowship, if thou canst not go through with it? wilt fly, and art not proof against dizziness? did we force ourselves on thee, or thou on us? faust cease thus to gnash thy ravenous fangs at me! i loathe thee!--great and glorious spirit, thou who didst vouchsafe to reveal thyself unto me, thou who dost know my very heart and soul, why hast thou linked me with this base associate, who feeds on mischief and revels in destruction? mephistopheles hast done? faust save her!--or woe to thee! the direst of curses on thee for thousands of years! mephistopheles i cannot loose the bands of the avenger, nor withdraw his bolts.--save her!--who was it plunged her into perdition? i or thou? faust (_looks wildly around_) mephistopheles would'st grasp the thunder? well for you, poor mortals, that 'tis not yours to wield! to smite to atoms the being, however innocent, who obstructs his path, such is the tyrant's fashion of relieving himself in difficulties! faust convey me thither! she shall be free! mephistopheles and the danger to which thou dost expose thyself? know, the guilt of blood, shed by thy hand, lies yet upon the town. over the place where fell the murdered one, avenging spirits hover and watch for the returning murderer. faust this too from thee? the death and downfall of a world be on thee, monster! conduct me thither, i say and set her free! mephistopheles i will conduct thee. and what i can do,--hear! have i all power in heaven and upon earth? i'll cloud the senses of the warder,--do thou possess thyself of the keys and lead her forth with human hand! i will keep watch! the magic steeds are waiting, i bear thee off. thus much is in my power. faust up and away! night. open country faust. mephistopheles (_rushing along on black horses_) faust what weave they yonder round the ravenstone? mephistopheles i know not what they shape and brew. faust they're soaring, swooping, bending, stooping. mephistopheles a witches' pack. faust they charm, they strew. mephistopheles on! on! dungeon faust (_with a bunch of keys and a lamp before a small iron door_) a fear unwonted o'er my spirit falls; man's concentrated woe o'erwhelms me here! she dwells immur'd within these dripping walls; her only trespass a delusion dear! thou lingerest at the fatal door? thou dread'st to see her face once more? on! while thou dalliest, draws her death-hour near. [_he seizes the lock. singing within._] my mother, the harlot, she took me and slew! my father, the scoundrel, hath eaten me too! my sweet little sister hath all my bones laid, where soft breezes whisper all in the cool shade! then became i a wood-bird, and sang on the spray, fly away! little bird, fly away! fly away! faust (_opening the lock_) ah! she forebodes not that her lover's near, the clanking chains, the rustling straw, to hear. [_he enters._] margaret (_hiding her face in the bed of straw_) woe! woe! they come! oh bitter 'tis to die! faust (_softly_) hush! hush! be still! i come to set thee free. margaret (_throwing herself at his feet_) if thou art human, feel my misery! faust thou wilt awake the jailer with thy cry! [_he grasps the chains to unlock them._] margaret (_on her knees_) who, headsman, unto thee this power o'er me could give? thou com'st for me at midnight-hour. be merciful, and let me live! is morrow's dawn not time enough? [_she stands up._] i'm still so young, so young-- and must so early die! fair was i too, and that was my undoing. my love is now afar, he then was nigh; tom lies the garland, the fair blossoms strew'd. nay, seize me not with hand so rude! spare me! what harm have i e'er done to thee? oh let me not in vain implore! i ne'er have seen thee in my life before! faust can i endure this bitter agony? margaret i now am at thy mercy quite. let me my babe but suckle once again! i fondled it the live-long night; they took it from me but to give me pain, and now, they say that i my child have slain. gladness i ne'er again shall know. then they sing songs about me,--'tis wicked of the throng-- an ancient ballad endeth so; who bade them thus apply the song? faust (_throwing himself on the ground_) a lover at thy feet bends low, to loose the bonds of wretchedness and woe. margaret (_throws herself beside him_) oh, let us kneel and move the saints by prayer! look! look! yon stairs below, under the threshold there, hell's flames are all aglow! beneath the floor, with hideous noise, the devils roar! faust (_aloud_) gretchen! gretchen! margaret (_listening_) that was my lov'd one's voice! [_she springs up, the chains fall off_.] where is he? i heard him calling me. free am i! there's none shall hinder me. to his neck will i fly, on his bosom will lie! gretchen, he called!--on yon threshold he stood; amidst all the howling of hell's fiery flood, the scoff and the scorn of its devilish crew, the tones of his voice, sweet and loving, i knew. faust 'tis i! margaret 'tis thou! o say so once again! [_embracing him_.] 'tis he! 'tis he! where's now the torturing pain? where are the fetters? where the dungeon's gloom? 'tis thou! to save me thou art come! and i am sav'd!-- already now the street i see where the first time i caught a glimpse of thee. there to the pleasant garden shade, where i and martha for thy coming stay'd. faust (_endeavoring to lead her away_) come! come away! margaret oh do not haste! i love to linger where thou stayest. [_caressing him_.] faust ah haste! for if thou still delayest, our lingering we shall both deplore. margaret how, dearest? canst thou kiss no more! so short a time away from me, and yet, to kiss thou couldst so soon forget! why on thy neck so anxious do i feel-- when formerly a perfect heaven of bliss from thy dear looks and words would o'er me steal? as thou wouldst stifle me thou then didst kiss!-- kiss me! or i'll kiss thee! [_she embraces him._] woe! woe! thy lips are cold,-- are dumb! thy love where hast thou left? who hath me of thy love bereft? [_she turns away from him._] faust come! follow me, my dearest love, be bold! i'll cherish thee with ardor thousand-fold; i but entreat thee now to follow me! margaret (_turning toward him_) and art thou he? and art thou really he? faust 'tis i! oh come! margaret thou wilt strike off my chain, and thou wilt take me to thine arms again. how comes it that thou dost not shrink from me?-- and dost thou know, love, whom thou wouldst set free? faust come! come! already night begins to wane. margaret i sent my mother to her grave, i drown'd my child beneath the wave. was it not given to thee and me--thee too? 'tis thou thyself! i scarce believe it yet. give me thy hand! it is no dream! 'tis true! thine own dear hand!--but how is this? 'tis wet! quick, wipe it off! meseems that yet there's blood thereon. ah god! what hast thou done? put up thy sword, i beg of thee! faust oh, dearest, let the past forgotten be! death is in every word. margaret no, thou must linger here in sorrow! the graves i will describe to thee, and thou to them must see tomorrow: the best place give to my mother, close at her side my brother, me at some distance lay-- but not too far away! and the little one place on my right breast. nobody else will near me lie! to nestle beside thee so lovingly, that was a rapture, gracious and sweet! a rapture i never again shall prove; methinks i would force myself on thee, love, and thou dost spurn me, and back retreat-- yet 'tis thyself, thy fond kind looks i see. faust if thou dost feel 'tis i, then come with me! margaret what, there? without? faust yes, forth in the free air. margaret ay, if the grave's without,--if death lurk there! hence to the everlasting resting-place, and not one step beyond!--thou'rt leaving me? oh henry! would that i could go with thee! faust thou canst! but will it! open stands the door. margaret i dare not go! i've naught to hope for more. what boots it to escape? they lurk for me! 'tis wretched to beg, as i must do, and with an evil conscience thereto! 'tis wretched, in foreign lands to stray; and me they will catch, do what i may! faust with thee will i abide. margaret quick! quick! save thy poor child! keep to the path the brook along, over the bridge to the wood beyond, to the left, where the plank is, in the pond. seize it at once! it fain would rise, it struggles still! save it. oh save! faust dear gretchen, more collected be! one little step, and thou art free! margaret were we but only past the hill there sits my mother upon a stone-- my brain, alas, is cold with dread!-- there sits my mother upon a stone, and to and fro she shakes her head; she winks not, she nods not, her head it droops sore; she slept so long, she waked no more; she slept, that we might taste of bliss: ah i those were happy times, i wis! faust since here avails nor argument nor prayer, thee hence by force i needs must bear. margaret loose me! i will not suffer violence! with murderous hand hold not so fast! i have done all to please thee in the past! faust day dawns! my love! my love! margaret yes! day draws near, the day of judgment too will soon appear! it should have been my bridal! no one tell, that thy poor gretchen thou hast known too well. woe to my garland! its bloom is o'er! though not at the dance-- we shall meet once more. the crowd doth gather, in silence it rolls; the squares, the streets, scarce hold the throng. the staff is broken,--the death-bell tolls,-- they bind and seize me! i'm hurried along, to the seat of blood already i'm bound! quivers each neck as the naked steel quivers on mine the blow to deal-- the silence of the grave now broods around! faust would i had ne'er been born! mephistopheles (_appears without_) up! or you're lost. vain hesitation! babbling, quaking! my steeds are shivering, morn is breaking. margaret what from the floor ascendeth like a ghost? 'tis he! 'tis he! him from my presence chase! what would he in this holy place? it is for me he cometh! faust thou shalt live! margaret judgment of god! to thee my soul i give! mephistopheles (_to_ faust) come, come! with her i'll else abandon thee! margaret father, i'm thine! do thou deliver me! ye angels! ye angelic hosts! descend, encamp around to guard me and defend!-- henry! i shudder now to look on thee! mephistopheles she now is judged! voices (_from above_) is saved! mephistopheles (_to_ faust) come thou with me! [_vanishes with_ faust.] voice (_from within, dying away_) henry! henry! end of part i. faust--selections from part ii ( ) act the first a pleasing landscape faust, _reclining upon flowery turf, restless, seeking sleep_ twilight _circle of spirits, hovering, flit around;--graceful, tiny forms_. ariel _song, accompanied by Æolian harps_ when, in vernal showers descending, blossoms gently veil the earth, when the fields' green wealth, up-tending, gleams on all of mortal birth; tiny elves, where help availeth, large of heart, there fly apace; pity they whom grief assaileth, be he holy, be he base. ye round this head on airy wing careering, attend, in noble elfin guise appearing; assuage the cruel strife that rends his heart, the burning shaft remove of keen remorse, from rankling horror cleanse his inmost part: four are the pauses of the nightly course; them, without rest, fill up with kindly art. and first his head upon cool pillow lay, then bathe ye him in dew from lethe's stream; his limbs, cramp-stiffen'd, will more freely play, if sleep-refreshed he wait morn's wakening beam. perform the noblest elfin-rite, restore ye him to the holy light! chorus (_singly, two or more, alternately and together_) softly when warm gales are stealing o'er the green-environed ground, twilight sheddeth all-concealing mists and balmy odors round: whispers low sweet peace to mortals, rocks the heart to childlike rest, and of day-light shuts the portals to these eyes, with care oppressed. night hath now descended darkling, holy star is linked to star; sovereign fires, or faintly sparkling, glitter near and shine afar; glitter here lake-mirror'd, yonder shine adown the clear night sky; sealing bliss of perfect slumber, reigns the moon's full majesty. now the hours are cancelled; sorrow, happiness, have passed away: whole thou shalt be on the morrow! feel it! trust the new-born day! swell the hills, green grow the valleys, in the dusk ere breaks the morn; and in silvery wavelets dallies, with the wind, the ripening corn. cherish hope, let naught appall thee! mark the east, with splendor dyed! slight the fetters that enthrall thee; fling the shell of sleep aside! gird thee for the high endeavor; shun the crowd's ignoble ease! fails the noble spirit never, wise to think, and prompt to seize. [_a tremendous tumult announces the uprising of the sun._] ariel hark, the horal tempest nears, sounding but for spirit ears, lo! the new-born day appears; clang the rocky portals, climb phoebus' wheels with thund'rous chime: breaks with tuneful noise the light! blare of trumpet, clarion sounding, eye-sight dazing, ear astounding! hear not the unheard; take flight! into petaled blossoms glide deeper, deeper, still to bide, in the clefts, 'neath thickets! ye, if it strike you, deaf will be. faust life's pulses reawakened freshly bound, the mild ethereal twilight fain to greet. thou, earth, this night wast also constant found, and, newly-quickened, breathing at my feet, beginnest now to gird me with delight; a strong resolve dost rouse, with noble heat aye to press on to being's sovereign height. the world in glimmering dawn still folded lies; with thousand-voicèd life the woods resound; mist-wreaths the valley shroud; yet from the skies sinks heaven's clear radiance to the depths profound; and bough and branch from dewy chasms rise, where they had drooped erewhile in slumber furled; earth is enamelled with unnumber'd dyes, leaflet and flower with dew-drops are impearled; around me everywhere is paradise. gaze now aloft! each mountain's giant height the solemn hour announces, herald-wise; they early may enjoy the eternal light, to us below which later finds its way. now are the alpine slopes and valleys dight with the clear radiance of the new-born day, which, downward, step by step, steals on apace.--it blazes forth,--and, blinded by the ray, with aching eyes, alas! i veil my face. so when a hope, the heart hath long held fast, trustful, still striving toward its highest goal, fulfilment's portals open finds at last;--sudden from those eternal depths doth roll an over-powering flame;--we stand aghast! the torch of life to kindle we were fain;--a fire-sea,--what a fire!--doth round us close; love is it? is it hate? with joy and pain, in alternation vast, that round us glows? so that to earth we turn our wistful gaze, in childhood's veil to shroud us once again! so let the sun behind me pour its rays! the cataract, through rocky cleft that roars, i view, with growing rapture and amaze. from fall to fall, with eddying shock, it pours, in thousand torrents to the depths below, aloft in air up-tossing showers of spray. but see, in splendor bursting from the storm, arches itself the many-colored bow, and ever-changeful, yet continuous form, now drawn distinctly, melting now away, diffusing dewy coolness all around! man's efforts there are glassed, his toil and strife; reflect, more true the emblem will be found: this bright reflected glory pictures life! imperial palace. throne-room _council of state, in expectation of the_ emperor trumpets _enter courtiers of every grade, splendidly attired. the emperor ascends the throne; to the right the_ astrologer. emperor i greet you, trusty friends and dear, assembled thus from far and wide!-- i see the wise man at my side, but wherefore is the fool not here? page entangled in thy mantle's flow. he tripped upon the stair below; the mass of fat they bare away, if dead or drunken--who can say? second page forthwith another comes apace, with wondrous speed to take his place; costly, yet so grotesque his gear, all start amazed as he draws near. crosswise the guards before his face, entrance to bar, their halberds hold-- yet there he is, the fool so bold. mephistopheles (_kneeling before the throne_) what is accursed and gladly hailed? what is desired and chased away? what is upbraided and assailed? what wins protection every day? whom darest thou not summon here? whose name doth plaudits still command? what to thy throne now draweth near? what from this place itself hath banned? emperor for this time thou thy words may'st spare! this is no place for riddles, friend; they are these gentlemen's affair,-- solve them! an ear i'll gladly lend. my old fool's gone, far, far away, i fear; take thou his place, come, stand beside me here! [mephistopheles _ascends and places himself at the_ emperor's _left._] _murmur of the crowd_ here's a new fool--for plague anew! whence cometh he?--how passed he through? the old one fell--he squander'd hath.-- he was a tub--now 'tis a lath.-- emperor so now, my friends, beloved and leal, be welcome all, from near and far! ye meet 'neath an auspicious star; for us above are written joy and weal. but tell me wherefore, on this day, when we all care would cast away, and don the masker's quaint array, and naught desire but to enjoy, should we with state affairs ourselves annoy? but if ye think it so must be indeed, why, well and good, let us forthwith proceed! chancellor the highest virtue circles halo-wise our cæsar's brow; virtue, which from the throne, he validly can exercise alone: justice!--what all men love and prize, what all demand, desire, and sorely want, it lies with him, this to the folk to grant. but ah! what help can intellect command, goodness of heart, or willingness of hand, when fever saps the state with deadly power, and mischief breedeth mischief, hour by hour? to him who downward from this height supreme views the wide realm, 'tis like a troubled dream, where the deformed deformity o'ersways, where lawlessness, through law, the tyrant plays, and error's ample world itself displays. one steals a woman, one a steer, lights from the altar, chalice, cross, boasts of his deed full many a year, unscathed in body, without harm or loss. now to the hall accusers throng; on cushioned throne the judge presides; surging meanwhile in eddying tides, confusion waxes fierce and strong. he may exalt in crime and shame, who on accomplices depends; guilty! the verdict they proclaim, when innocence her cause defends. so will the world succumb to ill, and what is worthy perish quite; how then may grow the sense which still instructs us to discern the right? e'en the right-minded man, in time, to briber and to flatterer yields; the judge, who cannot punish crime, joins with the culprit whom he shields.-- i've painted black, yet fain had been a veil to draw before the scene. _pause_ measures must needs be taken; when all injure or are injured, then e'en majesty becomes a prey. field marshal in these wild days what tumults reign! each smitten is and smites again, deaf to command, will none obey. the burgher, safe behind his wall, within his rocky nest, the knight, against us have conspired, and all firmly to hold their own unite. impatient is the hireling now, with vehemence he claims his due; and did we owe him naught, i trow, off he would run, nor bid adieu. who thwarts what fondly all expect, he bath disturbed a hornet's nest; the empire which they should protect, it lieth plundered and oppress'd. their furious rage may none restrain; already half the world's undone; abroad there still are kings who reign-- none thinks 'tis his concern, not one. treasurer who will depend upon allies! for us their promised subsidies like conduit-water, will not flow. say, sire, through your dominions vast to whom hath now possession passed! some upstart, wheresoe'er we go, keeps house, and independent reigns. we must look on, he holds his own; so many rights away we've thrown, that for ourselves no right remains. on so-called parties in the state there's no reliance, now-a-days; they may deal out or blame or praise, indifferent are love and hate. the ghibelline as well as guelph retire, that they may live at ease! who helps his neighbor now? himself each hath enough to do to please. barred are the golden gates; while each scrapes, snatches, gathers all within his reach-- empty, meanwhile, our chest remains. steward what worry must i, also, bear! our aim each day is still to spare-- and more each day we need; my pains, daily renewed, are never o'er. the cooks lack nothing;--deer, wild-boar, stags, hares, fowls, turkeys, ducks and geese,-- tribute in kind, sure payment, these come fairly in, and none complains. but now at last wine fails; and if of yore up-piled upon the cellar-floor, cask rose on cask, a goodly store, from the best slopes and vintage; now the swilling of our lords, i trow, unceasing, drains the very lees. e'en the town-council must give out its liquor;--bowls and cups they seize; and 'neath the table lies the drunken rout. now must i pay, whate'er betides; me the jew spares not; he provides anticipation-bonds which feed each year on that which must succeed; the swine are never fattened now; pawned is the pillow or the bed, and to the table comes fore-eaten bread. emperor (_after some reflection, to_ mephistopheles) say, fool, another grievance knowest thou? mephistopheles i, nowise. on this circling pomp to gaze, on thee and thine! there can reliance fail where majesty resistless sways, and ready power makes foemen quail? where loyal will, through reason strong, and prowess, manifold, unite, what could together join for wrong, for darkness, where such stars give light? _murmur of the crowd_ he is a knave--he comprehends-- he lies--while lying serves his ends-- full well i know--what lurks behind-- what next?--some scheme is in the wind!-- mephistopheles where is not something wanting here on earth? here this,--there that: of gold is here the dearth. it cannot from the floor be scrap'd, 'tis true; but what lies deepest wisdom brings to view. in mountain-veins, walls underground, is gold, both coined and uncoined, to be found. and if ye ask me,--bring it forth who can? spirit-and nature-power of gifted man. chancellor nature and spirit--christians ne'er should hear such words, with peril fraught and fear. these words doom atheists to the fire. nature is sin, spirit is devil; they, between them, doubt beget, their progeny, hermaphrodite, mis-shapen, dire. not so with us! within our cæsar's land two orders have arisen, two alone, who worthily support his ancient throne: clergy and knights, who fearless stand, bulwarks 'gainst every storm, and they take church and state as their appropriate pay. through lawless men, the vulgar herd to opposition have of late been stirred; the heretics these are, the wizards, who the city ruin and the country too. with thy bold jests, to this high sphere, such miscreants wilt smuggle in; hearts reprobate to you are dear; they to the fool are near of kin. mephistopheles herein your learned men i recognize! what you touch not, miles distant from you lies; what you grasp not, is naught in sooth to you; what you count not, cannot, you deem, be true; what you weigh not, that hath for you no weight; what you coin not, you're sure is counterfeit. emperor therewith our needs are not one whit the less. what meanest thou with this thy lent-address? i'm tired of this eternal if and how. 'tis gold we lack; so good, procure it thou! mephistopheles i'll furnish more, ay, more than all you ask. though light it seems, not easy is the task. there lies the gold, but to procure it thence, that is the art: who knoweth to commence? only consider, in those days of terror, when human floods swamped land and folk together, how every one, how great soe'er his fear, all that he treasured most, hid there or here; so was it 'neath the mighty roman's sway, so on till yesterday, ay, till today: that all beneath the soil still buried lies-- the soil is cæsar's, his shall be the prize. treasurer now for a fool he speaketh not amiss; our cæsar's ancient right, in sooth, was this. chancellor satan for you spreads golden snares; 'tis clear, something not right or pious worketh here. steward to us at court if welcome gifts he bring, a little wrong is no such serious thing. field marshal shrewd is the fool, he bids what all desire; the soldier, whence it comes, will not inquire. mephistopheles you think yourselves, perchance, deceived by me; ask the astrologer! this man is he! circle round circle, hour and house, he knows.-- then tell us, how the heavenly aspect shows. _murmur of the crowd_ two rascals--each to other known-- phantast and fool--so near the throne-- the old, old song,--now trite with age-- the fool still prompts--while speaks the sage.-- astrologer (_speaks_, mephistopheles _prompts_) the sun himself is purest gold; for pay and favor serves the herald, mercury; dame venus hath bewitched you from above, early and late, she looks on you with love; chaste luna's humor varies hour by hour; mars, though he strike not, threats you with his power, and jupiter is still the fairest star; saturn is great, small to the eye and far; as metal him we slightly venerate, little in worth, though ponderous in weight. now when with sol fair luna doth unite. silver with gold, cheerful the world and bright! then easy 'tis to gain whate'er one seeks; parks, gardens, palaces, and rosy cheeks; these things procures this highly learned man. he can accomplish what none other can. emperor double, methinks, his accents ring, and yet they no conviction bring. _murmur_ of what avail!--a worn-out tale-- calendery--and chemistry-- i the false word--full oft have heard-- and as of yore--we're hoax'd once more. mephistopheles the grand discovery they misprize, as, in amaze, they stand around; one prates of gnomes and sorceries, another of the sable hound. what matters it, though witlings rail, though one his suit 'gainst witchcraft press, if his sole tingle none the less, if his sure footing also fail? ye of all swaying nature feel the secret working, never-ending, and, from her lowest depths up-tending, e'en now her living trace doth steal. if sudden cramps your limbs surprise, if all uncanny seem the spot-- there dig and delve, but dally not! there lies the fiddler, there the treasure lies! _murmur_ like lead it lies my foot about-- cramp'd is my arm--'tis only gout-- twitchings i have in my great toe-- down all my back strange pains i know-- such indications make it clear that sumless treasuries are here. emperor to work--the time for flight is past.-- put to the test your frothy lies! these treasures bring before our eyes! sceptre and sword aside i'll cast, and with these royal hands, indeed, if thou lie not, to work proceed. thee, if thou lie, i'll send to hell! mephistopheles thither to find the way i know full well!-- yet can i not enough declare, what wealth unown'd lies waiting everywhere: the countryman, who ploughs the land, gold-crocks upturneth with the mould; nitre he seeks in lime-walls old, and findeth, in his meagre hand, scared, yet rejoiced, rouleaus of gold. how many a vault upblown must be, into what clefts, what shafts, must he who doth of hidden treasure know, descend, to reach the world below! in cellars vast, impervious made, goblets of gold he sees displayed, dishes and plates, row after row; there beakers, rich with rubies, stand; and would he use them, close at hand well stored the ancient moisture lies; yet--would ye him who knoweth, trust?-- the staves long since have turned to dust, a tartar cask their place supplies! not gold alone and jewels rare, essence of noblest wines are there, in night and horror veiled. the wise, unwearied here pursues his quest. to search by day, that were a jest; 'tis darkness that doth harbor mysteries. emperor what can the dark avail? look thou to that! if aught have worth, it cometh to the light. who can detect the rogue at dead of night? black are the cows, and gray is every cat. these pots of heavy gold, if they be there-- come, drive thy plough, upturn them with thy share! mephistopheles take spade and hoe thyself;--dig on-- great shalt thou be through peasant toil-- a herd of golden calves anon themselves shall tear from out the soil; then straight, with rapture newly born, thyself thou canst, thy sweet-heart wilt adorn. a sparkling gem, lustrous, of varied dye, beauty exalts as well as majesty. emperor to work, to work! how long wilt linger? mephistopheles sire, relax, i pray, such vehement desire! first let us see the motley, joyous show! a mind distraught conducts not to the goal. first must we calmness win through self-control, through things above deserve what lies below. who seeks for goodness, must himself be good; who seeks for joy, must moderate his blood; who wine desires, the luscious grape must press; who craveth miracles, more faith possess. emperor so be the interval in gladness spent! ash-wednesday cometh, to our heart's content. meanwhile we'll solemnize, whate'er befall, more merrily the joyous carnival. [_trumpets. exeunt._] mephistopheles that merit and success are link'd together, this to your fools occurreth never; could they appropriate the wise man's stone, that, not the wise man, they would prize alone. * * * * * act the second high-vaulted, narrow gothic chamber, formerly faust's, unaltered mephistopheles (_stepping from behind a curtain. while he raises it and looks back_, faust _is seen, stretched upon an old-fashioned bed_) lie there, ill-starred one! in love's chain, full hard to loose, he captive lies! not soon his senses will regain whom helena doth paralyze. (_looking round_) above, around, on every side i gaze, uninjured all remains: dimmer, methinks, appear the color'd panes, the spiders' webs are multiplied, yellow the paper, and the ink is dry; yet in its place each thing i find; and here the very pen doth lie, wherewith himself faust to the devil signed, yea, quite dried up, and deeper in the bore, the drop of blood, i lured from him of yore-- o'erjoyed to own such specimen unique were he who objects rare is fain to seek--; here on its hook hangs still the old fur cloak, me it remindeth of that merry joke, when to the boy i precepts gave, for truth, whereon, perchance, he's feeding now, as youth. the wish comes over me, with thee allied, enveloped in thy worn and rugged folds, once more to swell with the professor's pride! how quite infallible himself he holds; this feeling to obtain your savants know; the devil parted with it long ago. [_he shakes the fur cloak which he has taken down; crickets, moths, and chafers fly out._] chorus of insects we welcome thy coming, our patron of yore! we're dancing and humming, and know thee once more. us singly, in silence, hast planted, and lo! by thousands, oh father, we dance to and fro. the rogue hides discreetly the bosom within; we looseskins fly rather forth from the fur skin. mephistopheles o'erjoyed i am my progeny to know! we're sure to reap in time, if we but sow. i shake the old fur-mantle as before, and here and there out flutters one or more.-- above, around, hasten, belovèd elves, in hundred thousand nooks to hide yourselves! 'mid boxes there of by-gone time, here in these age-embrownèd scrolls, in broken potsherds, foul with grime, in yonder skulls' now eyeless holes! amid such rotten, mouldering life, must foolish whims for aye be rife. [_slips into the fur mantle_.] come shroud my shoulders as of yore! today i'm principal once more; but useless 'tis, to bear the name: where are the folk to recognize my claim? [_he pulls the bell, which emits a shrill penetrating sound, at which the halls shake and the doors spring open._] famulus (_tottering up the long dark passage_) what a clamor! what a quaking! stairs are rocking, walls are shaking: through the windows' quivering sheen, are the stormful lightnings seen; springs the ceiling,--thence, below, lime and mortar rattling flow: and, though bolted fast, the door is undone by magic power! there, in faust's old fleece bedight, stands a giant,--dreadful sight! at his glance, his beck, at me! i could sink upon my knee. shall i fly, or shall i stay? what will be my fate today? mephistopheles come hither, friend!--your name is nicodemus? famulus most honor'd sir, such is my name.--oremus! mephistopheles that we'll omit! famulus o joy, me you do not forget. mephistopheles i know it well: old, and a student yet; my mossy friend, even a learned man still studies on, because naught else he can: thus a card-house each builds of medium height; the greatest spirit fails to build it quite. your master, though, that title well may claim-- the noble doctor wagner, known to fame, first in the learned world! 'tis he, they say, who holds that world together; every day of wisdom he augments the store! who crave omniscience, evermore in crowds upon his teaching wait; he from the rostrum shines alone; the keys doth like saint peter own, and doth of hell and heaven ope the gate; as before all he glows and sparkles, no fame, no glory but grows dim, even the name of faustus darkles! inventor there is none like him. famulus pardon, most honor'd sir, excuse me, pray-- if i presume your utterance to gainsay-- this bears not on the question any way; a modest mind is his allotted share. the disappearance, unexplained as yet, of the great man, his mind doth sorely fret; comfort from his return and health are still his prayer. the chamber, as in doctor faustus' day, maintains, untouched, its former state, and for its ancient lord doth wait. venture therein i scarcely may. what now the aspect of the stars?-- awe-struck the very walls appear; the door-posts quivered, sprang the bars-- else you yourself could not have entered here. mephistopheles where then bestowed himself hath he? lead me to him! bring him to me! famulus alas! too strict his prohibition, scarce dare i, without his permission. months, on his mighty work intent, hath he, in strict seclusion spent. most dainty 'mong your men of books, like charcoal-burner now he looks, with face begrimed from ear to nose; his eyes are blear'd while fire he blows; thus for the crisis still he longs; his music is the clang of tongs. mephistopheles admittance unto me deny? to hasten his success, the man am i. [_exit_ famulus. mephistopheles _seats himself with a solemn air._] scarce have i ta'en my post, when lo! stirs from behind a guest, whom well i know; of the most recent school, this time, is he, and quite unbounded will his daring be. baccalaureus (_storming along the passage_) open find i door and gate! hope at last springs up elate, that the living shall no more corpse-like rot, as heretofore, and, while breathing living breath, waste and moulder as in death. here partition, screen, and wall are sinking, bowing to their fall, and, unless we soon retreat, wreck and ruin us will greet. me, though bold, nor soon afraid, to advance shall none persuade. what shall i experience next? years ago, when sore perplexed, came i not a freshman here, full of anxious doubt and fear, on these gray-beards then relied, by their talk was edified? what from musty tomes they drew, they lied to me; the things they knew believed they not; with falsehood rife, themselves and me they robbed of life. how?--yonder is the murky glare, there's one still sitting in the chair-- drawing near i wonder more-- just as him i left of yore, there he sits, in furry gown, wrapped in shaggy fleece, the brown! then he clever seemed, indeed, him as yet i could not read; naught will it avail today; so have at him, straight-away! if lethe's murky flood not yet hath passed, old sir, through your bald pate, that sideways bends, the scholar recognize, who hither wends, outgrown your academic rods at last. the same i find you, as of yore; but i am now the same no more. mephistopheles glad am i that i've rung you here. i prized you then not slightingly; in grub and chrysalis appear the future brilliant butterfly. a childish pleasure then you drew from collar, lace, and curls.--a queue you probably have never worn?-- now to a crop i see you shorn. all resolute and bold your air-- but from the _absolute_ forbear! baccalaureus we're in the ancient place, mine ancient sir, but think upon time's onward flow, and words of double-meaning spare! quite otherwise we hearken now. you fooled the simple, honest youth; it cost but little art in sooth, to do what none today will dare. mephistopheles if to the young the naked truth one speaks, it pleases in no wise the yellow beaks; but afterward, when in their turn on their own skin the painful truth they learn, they think, forsooth, from their own head it came; "the master was a fool," they straight proclaim. baccalaureus a rogue perchance!--for where's the teacher found who to our face, direct, will truth expound? children to edify, each knows the way, to add or to subtract, now grave, now gay. mephistopheles for learning there's in very truth a time; for teaching, i perceive, you now are prime. while a few suns and many moons have waned, a rich experience you have doubtless gained! baccalaureus experience! froth and scum alone, not with the mind of equal birth! confess! what men have always known, as knowledge now is nothing worth. mephistopheles (_after a pause_) i long have thought myself a fool; now shallow to myself i seem, and dull. baccalaureus that pleases me! like reason that doth sound; the first old man of sense i yet have found! mephistopheles i sought for hidden treasures, genuine gold-- and naught but hideous ashes forth i bore! baccalaureus confess that pate of yours, though bare and old, than yonder hollow skull is worth no more! mephistopheles (_good-naturedly_) thou know'st not, friend, how rude is thy reply. baccalaureus in german to be courteous is to lie. mephistopheles (_still moving his wheel-chair ever nearer to the proscenium, to the pit_) up here i am bereft of light and air; i perhaps shall find a refuge with you there? baccalaureus when at their worst, that men would something be, when they are naught, presumptuous seems to me. man's life is in the blood, and where, in sooth, pulses the blood so strongly as in youth? that's living blood, which with fresh vigor rife, the newer life createth out of life. there all is movement, something there is done; falleth the weak, the able presses on! while half the world we 'neath our sway have brought, what have ye done? slept, nodded, dream'd, and thought, plan after plan rejected;--nothing won. age is, in sooth, a fever cold, with frost of whims and peevish need: when more than thirty years are told, as good as dead one is indeed: you it were best, methinks, betimes to slay. mephistopheles the devil here has nothing more to say. baccalaureus save through my will, no devil dares to be. mephistopheles (_aside_) the devil now prepares a fall for thee! baccalaureus the noblest mission this of youth's estate. the world was not, till it i did create; the radiant sun i led from out the sea; her changeful course the moon began with me; the day arrayed herself my steps to meet, the earth grew green, and blossom'd me to greet: at my command, upon yon primal night, the starry hosts unveiled their glorious light. who, beside me, the galling chains unbound, which cramping thought had cast your spirits round? but i am free, as speaks my spirit-voice, my inward light i follow, and rejoice; swift i advance, enraptur'd, void of fear, brightness before me, darkness in the rear. [_exit._] mephistopheles go, in thy pride, original, thy way!-- true insight would, in truth, thy spirit grieve! what wise or stupid thoughts can man conceive, unponder'd in the ages passed away?-- yet we for him need no misgiving have; changed will he be, when a few years are past; howe'er absurdly may the must behave, nathless it yields a wine at last.-- (_to the younger part of the audience, who do not applaud._) though to my words you're somewhat cold, good children, me you don't offend; reflect! the devil, he is old; grow old then, him to comprehend! laboratory (_after the fashion of the middle ages; cumbrous, useless apparatus, for fantastic purposes_) wagner (_at the furnace_) soundeth the bell, the fearful clang thrills through these sooty walls; no more upon fulfilment waits the pang of hope or fear;--suspense is o'er; the darknesses begin to clear, within the inmost phial glows radiance, like living coal, that throws, as from a splendid carbuncle, its rays; athwart the gloom its lightning plays. a pure white lustre doth appear; o may i never lose it more!-- my god! what rattles at the door? mephistopheles (_entering_) welcome! as friend i enter here. wagner hail to the star that rules the hour! (_softly_) on breath and utterance let a ban be laid! soon will be consummate a work of power. mephistopheles (_in a whisper_) what is it, then? wagner a man is being made. mephistopheles a man? and pray what loving pair have in your smoke-hole their abode? wagner nay! heaven forbid! as nonsense we declare the ancient procreative mode; the tender point, life's spring, the gentle strength that took and gave, that from within hath pressed, and seized, intent itself to manifest, the nearest first, the more remote at length,-- this from its dignity is now dethron'd! the brute indeed may take delight therein, but man, by whom such mighty gifts are own'd, must have a purer, higher origin. (_he turns to the furnace_) it flashes, see!--now may we trustful hold, that if, of substances a hundred-fold, through mixture,--for on mixture it depends-- the human substance duly we compose, and then in a retort enclose, and cohobate; in still repose the work is perfected, our labor ends. (_again turning to the furnace_) it forms! more clear the substance shows! stronger, more strong, conviction grows! what nature's mystery we once did style, that now to test, our reason tries, and what she organized erewhile, we now are fain to crystallize. mephistopheles who lives, doth much experience glean; by naught in this world will he be surprised; already in my travel-years i've seen full many a race of mortals crystallized. wagner (_still gazing intently on the phial_) it mounts, it glows, and doth together run, one moment, and the work is done! as mad, a grand design at first is view'd; but we henceforth may laugh at fate, and so a brain, with thinking-power embued, henceforth your living thinker will create. (_surveying the phial with rapture_) the glass resounds, with gracious power possessed; it dims, grows clear; living it needs must be! and now in form of beauty dressed, a dainty mannikin i see. what more can we desire, what more mankind? unveiled is now what hidden was of late; give ear unto this sound, and you will find, a voice it will become, articulate.-- homunculus (_in the phial, to_ wagner) now, fatherkin, how goes it? 'twas no jest! come, let me to thy heart be fondly pressed-- lest the glass break, less tight be thine embrace this is the property of things: the all scarcely suffices for the natural; the artificial needs a bounded space. (_to_ mephistopheles) but thou, sir cousin, rogue, art thou too here? at the right moment! thee i thank. 'tis clear to us a happy fortune leadeth thee; while i exist, still must i active be, and to the work forthwith myself would gird; thou'rt skill'd the way to shorten. wagner just one word! i oft have been ashamed that knowledge failed, when old and young with problems me assailed. for instance: no one yet could comprehend, how soul and body so completely blend, together hold, as ne'er to part, while they torment each other through the live-long day. so then-- mephistopheles forbear! the problem solve for me, why man and wife so wretchedly agree? upon this point, my friend, thou'lt ne'er be clear; the mannikin wants work, he'll find it here. homunculus what's to be done? mephistopheles (_pointing to a side door_) yonder thy gifts display! wagner (_still gazing into the phial_) a very lovely boy, i needs must say! (_the side door opens_; faust _is seen stretched upon a couch_) homunculus (_amazed_) momentous! (_the phial slips from_ wagner's _hands, hovers over_ faust, _and sheds a light upon him_) girt with beauty!--water clear in the thick grove; fair women, who undress; most lovely creatures!--grows their loveliness: but o'er the rest one shines without a peer, as if from heroes, nay from gods she came; in the transparent sheen her foot she laves; the tender life-fire of her noble frame she cools in yielding crystal of the waves.-- of swiftly moving wings what sudden noise? what plash, what plunge the liquid glass destroys? the maidens fly, alarmed; alone, the queen, with calm composure gazes on the scene; with womanly and proud delight, she sees the prince of swans press fondly to her knees, persistent, tame; familiar now he grows.-- but suddenly up-floats a misty shroud, and with thick-woven veil doth over-cloud the loveliest of all lovely shows. mephistopheles why thou in sooth canst everything relate! small as thou art, as phantast thou art great. i can see nothing-- homunculus i believe it. thou, bred in the north, in the dark ages, how, in whirl of priesthood and knight-errantry, have for such sights thy vision free! in darkness only thou'rt at home. (_looking round_) ye brown, repulsive blocks of stone, arch-pointed, low, with mould o'ergrown! should he awake, new care were bred, he on the spot would straight be dead. wood-fountains, swans, fair nymphs undressed, such was his dream, presageful, rare; in place like this how could he rest, which i, of easy mood, scarce bear! away with him! mephistopheles i like your plan, proceed! homunculus command the warrior to the fight, the maiden to the dancers lead! they're satisfied, and all is right. e'en now a thought occurs, most bright; 'tis classical walpurgis-night--most fortunate! it suits his bent, so bring him straightway to his element! mephistopheles of such i ne'er have heard, i frankly own. homunculus upon your ear indeed how should it fall? only romantic ghosts to you are known; your genuine ghost is also classical. mephistopheles but whitherward to travel are we fain? your antique colleagues are against my grain. homunculus north-westward, satan, lies thy pleasure-ground; but, this time, we to the south-east are bound.-- an ample vale peneios floweth through, 'mid bush and tree its curving shores it laves; the plain extendeth to the mountain caves, above it lies pharsalus, old and new. mephistopheles alas! forbear! for ever be eschewed those wars of tyranny and servitude! i'm bored with them: for they, as soon as done, straight recommence; and no one calls to mind that he in sooth is only played upon by asmodeus, who still lurks behind. they battle, so 'tis said, for freedom's rights-- more clearly seen, 'tis slave 'gainst slave who fights. homunculus leave we to men their nature, quarrel-prone! each must defend himself, as best he can, from boyhood up; so he becomes a man. the question here is, how to cure this one? (_pointing to_ faust) hast thou a means, here let it tested be; canst thou do naught, then leave the task to me. mephistopheles full many a brocken-piece i might essay, but bolts of heathendom foreclose the way. the grecian folk were ne'er worth much, 'tis true, yet with the senses' play they dazzle you; to cheerful sins the human heart they lure, while ours are reckoned gloomy and obscure. and now what next? homunculus of old thou wert not shy; and if i name thessalian witches,--why, i something shall have said,--of that i'm sure. mephistopheles (_lustfully_) thessalian witches--well! the people they concerning whom i often have inquired. night after night, indeed, with them to stay, that were an ordeal not to be desired; but for a trial trip-- homunculus the mantle there reach hither, wrap it round the knight! as heretofore, the rag will bear both him and thee; the way i'll light. wagner (_alarmed_) and i? homunculus at home thou wilt remain, thee most important work doth there detain; the ancient scrolls unfolding cull life's elements, as taught by rule, and each with other then combine with care; upon the _what_, more on the _how_, reflect! meanwhile as through a piece of world i fare, i may the dot upon the "i" detect. then will the mighty aim accomplish'd be; such high reward deserves such striving;--wealth, honor and glory, lengthen'd life, sound health, knowledge withal and virtue--possibly. farewell! wagner farewell! that grieves my heart full sore! i fear indeed i ne'er shall see thee more. mephistopheles now to peneios forth we wend! we must not slight our cousin's aid. (_to the spectators_) at last, in sooth, we all depend on creatures we ourselves have made. * * * * * act the third before the palace of menelaus in sparta _enter_ helena, _with a chorus of captive trojan women_ penthalis, _leader of the chorus_ helena the much admired and much upbraided, helena, from yonder strand i come, where erst we disembark'd, still giddy from the roll of ocean's billowy surge, which, through poseidon's favor and through euros' might, on lofty crested backs hither hath wafted us, from phrygia's open field, to our ancestral bays. yonder king menelaus, glad of his return, with his brave men of war, rejoices on the beach. but oh, thou lofty mansion, bid me welcome home, thou, near the steep decline, which tyndareus, my sire, from pallas' hill returning, here hath builded up; which also was adorned beyond all sparta's homes, what time with clytemnestra, sister-like, i grew, with castor, pollux, too, playing in joyous sport. wings of yon brazen portals, you i also hail! through you, ye guest-inviting, hospitable gates, hath menelaus once, from many princes chosen, shone radiant on my sight, in nuptial sort arrayed. expand to me once more, that i the king's behest may faithfully discharge, as doth the spouse beseem. let me within, and all henceforth behind remain, that, charged with doom, till now darkly hath round me stormed! for since, by care untroubled, i these sites forsook, seeking cythera's fane, as sacred wont enjoined, and by the spoiler there was seized, the phrygian, happened have many things, whereof men far and wide are fain to tell, but which not fain to hear is he of whom the tale, expanding, hath to fable grown. chorus disparage not, oh glorious dame, honor'd possession of highest estate! for sole unto thee is the greatest boon given; the fame of beauty that all over-towers! the hero's name before him resounds, so strides he with pride; nathless at once the stubbornest yields to beauty, the presence which all things subdues. helena enough! i with my spouse, ship-borne, have hither sped, and to his city now by him before am sent. but what the thought he harbors, that i cannot guess. come i as consort hither? come i as a queen? come i as victim for the prince's bitter pangs, and for the evils dire, long suffered by the greeks? conquered i am; but whether captive, know i not: for the immortal powers fortune and fame for me have doomed ambiguous; direful ministers that wait on beauty's form, who even on this threshold here, with dark and threat'ning mien, stand bodeful at my side! already, ere we left the hollow ship, my spouse looked seldom on me, spake no comfortable word; as though he mischief brooded, facing me he sat. but now, when to eurotas' deeply curving shores steering our course, scarce had our foremost vessel's beak the land saluted, spake he, as by god inspired: "here let my men of war, in ordered ranks, disbark; i marshal them, drawn up upon the ocean strand; but thou, pursue thy way, not swerving from the banks, laden with fruit, that bound eurotas' sacred stream, thy coursers guiding o'er the moist enamelled meads, until thou may'st arrive at that delightful plain, where lacedæmon, once a broad fruit-bearing field, by mountains stern surrounded lifteth now its walls. set thou thy foot within the tower-crown'd princely house, assemble thou the maids, whom i at parting left, and with them summon too the wise old stewardess. bid her display to thee the treasures' ample store, as by thy sire bequeathed, and which, in peace and war, increasing evermore, i have myself up-piled. all standing shalt thou find in ancient order; for, this is the prince's privilege, that to his home, when he returns at last, safe everything he finds, each in its proper place, as he hath left it there. for nothing of himself the slave hath power to change." chorus oh gladden now, with glorious wealth, ever increasing, thine eye and heart! for beautiful chains, the adornment of crowns, are priding themselves, in haughty repose; but step thou in, and challenge them all, they arm themselves straight; i joy to see beauty contend for the prize, with gold, and with pearls, and with jewels of price. helena forthwith hath followed next this mandate of my lord: "now when in order thou all things hast duly seen, as many tripods take, as needful thou may'st deem, and vessels manifold, which he at hand requires, who duly would perform the sacrificial rite, the caldrons, and the bowls, and shallow altar-plates; let purest water, too, from sacred fount be there, in lofty pitchers; further, store of season'd wood, quick to accept the flame, hold thou in readiness; a knife, of sharpest edge, let it not fail at last. but i all other things to thy sole care resign." so spake he, urging me at once to part; but naught, breathing the breath of life, the orderer appoints, that, to the olympians' honor, he to slaughter doom'd: suspicious seems it! yet, dismiss i further care; to the high gods' decree be everything referred, who evermore fulfil, what they in thought conceive; it may, in sooth, by men, as evil or as good be counted, it by us, poor mortals, must be borne. full oft the ponderous axe on high the priest hath raised, in consecration o'er the earth-bowed victim's neck. nor could achieve the rite, for he was hinderèd, or by approaching foe, or intervening god. chorus what now will happen, canst thou not guess; enter, queen, enter thou in, strong of heart! evil cometh and good unexpected to mortals; though foretold, we credit it not. troya was burning, have we not seen death before us, terrible death! and are we not here, bound to thee, serving with joy, seeing the dazzling sunshine of heaven, and of earth too the fairest, kind one--thyself--happy are we! helena come what come may! whate'er impends, me it behoves to ascend, without delay, into the royal house, long missed, oft yearned-for, well-nigh forfeited; before mine eyes once more it stands, i know not how. my feet now bear me not so lightly as of yore, when up the lofty steps i, as a child, have sprung. chorus fling now, o sisters, ye captives who mourn your lot, all your sorrows far from you. share ye your mistress' joy! share ye helena's joy, who to the dear paternal hearth, though returning full late in sooth, nathless with surer, firmer tread joyfully now approaches! praise ye the holy ones, happy restoring ones, god's, the home-leaders, praise ye! soars the enfranchised one, as upon out-spread wings, over the roughest fate, while in vain pines the captured one, yearning-fraught over the prison-battlements arms out-stretching, in anguish. nathless her a god hath seized, the exiled one, and from ilion's wreck bare her hitherward back once more, to the ancient, the newly-adornèd father-house, after unspeakable pleasure and anguish, earlier youthful time, newly quicken'd, to ponder. penthalis (_as leader of the chorus_) forsake ye now of song the joy-surrounded path, as toward the portal-wings turn ye forthwith your gaze! what see i, sisters? here, returneth not the queen? with step of eager haste, comes she not back to us?-- what is it, mighty queen, that in the palace-halls, instead of friendly hail, could there encounter thee, and shatter thus thy being? thou conceal'st it not; for i abhorrence see, impressed upon thy brow, and noble anger, that contendeth with surprise. helena (_who has left the folded doors open, excited_) no vulgar fear beseems the daughter of high zeus, and her no lightly-fleeting terror-hand may touch; but that dire horror which, from womb of ancient night, in time primeval rising, still in divers shapes, like lurid clouds, from out the mountain's fiery gorge, whirls itself forth, may shake even the hero's breast. thus have the stygian gods, with horror fraught, today mine entrance to the house so marked, that fain i am, back from the oft-time trod, long-yearned-for threshold now, like to a guest dismissed, departing, to retire. yet no, retreated have i hither to the light; no further shall ye drive me, powers, who'er ye be! some expiation, i'll devise, then purified, the hearth-flame welcome may the consort as the lord. leader of the chorus discover, noble queen, to us thy handmaidens, devotedly who serve thee, what hath come to pass! helena what i have seen ye, too, with your own eyes, shall see, if ancient night, within her wonder-teeming womb, hath not forthwith engulfed, once more, her ghastly birth; but yet, that ye may know, with words i'll tell it you:-- what time the royal mansion's gloomy inner court, upon my task intent, with solemn step i trod, i wondered at the drear and silent corridors. fell on mine ear no sound of busy servitors, no stir of rapid haste, officious, met my gaze; before me there appeared no maid, no stewardess, who every stranger erst, with friendly greeting, hailed. but when i neared at length the bosom of the hearth, there saw i, by the light of dimly smouldering fire, crouched on the ground, a crone, close-veiled, of stature huge, not like to one asleep, but as absorbed in thought! with accent of command i summon her to work, the stewardess in her surmising, who perchance my spouse, departing hence, with foresight there had placed; yet, closely muted up, still sits she, motionless; at length, upon my threat, up-lifts she her right arm, as though from hearth and hall she motioned me away. wrathful from her i turn, and forthwith hasten out, toward the steps, whereon aloft the thalamos rises adorned, thereto the treasure-house hard by; when, on a sudden, starts the wonder from the floor; barring with lordly mien my passage, she herself in haggard height displays, with hollow eyes, blood-grimed, an aspect weird and strange, confounding eye and thought. yet speak i to the winds; for language all in vain creatively essays to body forth such shapes. there see herself! the light she ventures to confront! here are we master, till the lord and monarch comes; the ghastly brood of night doth phoebus, beauty's friend, back to their caverns drive, or them he subjugates. [phorkyas _stepping on the threshold, between the door-posts._] chorus much have i lived through, although my tresses youthfully waver still round my temples; manifold horrors have mine eyes witnessed; warfare's dire anguish, ilion's night, when it fell; through the o'erclouded, dust over-shadow'd tumult of war, to gods have i hearken'd, fearfully shouting; hearken'd while discord's brazen voices clang through the field rampart-wards. ah, yet standing were ilion's ramparts; nathless the glowing flames shot from neighbor to neighbor roof, ever spreading from here and there, with their tempest's fiery blast, over the night-darkened city.-- flying, saw i through smoke and glare, and the flash of the tonguèd flames, dreadful, threatening gods draw near; wondrous figures, of giant mould, onward striding through the weird gloom of fire-luminous vapor. saw i them, or did my mind, anguish-torn, itself body forth phantoms so terrible--never more can i tell; but that i this horrible shape with eyes behold, this of a surety know i! yea, with my hands could clutch it even, did not fear, from the perilous venture, ever withhold me. tell me, of phorkyas' daughters which art thou? for to that family thee must i liken. art thou, may be, one of the gray-born? one eye only, and but one tooth using still alternately? one of the graiæ art thou? darest thou, horror, thus beside beauty, or to the searching glance phoebus' unveil thee? nathless step thou forward undaunted; for the horrible sees he not, as his hallowed glances yet never gazed upon shadows. but a tragical fate, alas, us, poor mortals, constrains to bear anguish of vision, unspeakable, which the contemptible, ever-detestable, doth in lovers of beauty wake! yea, so hearken then, if thou dar'st us to encounter, hear our curse, hark to each imprecation's threat, out of the curse-breathing lips of the happy ones, who by the gods created are! phorkyas trite is the word, yet high and true remains the sense: that shame and beauty ne'er together, hand in hand, their onward way pursue, earth's verdant path along. deep-rooted in these twain dwelleth an ancient grudge, so that, where'er they happen on their way to meet, upon her hated rival turneth each her back; then onward speeds her course with greater vehemence, shame filled with sorrow, beauty insolent of mood, till her at length embraces orcus' hollow night, unless old age erewhile her haughtiness hath tamed. you find i now, ye wantons, from a foreign shore, with insolence o'erflowing, like the clamorous flight of cranes, with shrilly scream that high above our heads, a long and moving cloud, croaking send down their noise, which the lone pilgrim lures wending his silent way, aloft to turn his gaze; yet on their course they fare, he also upon his: so will it be with us. who are ye then, that thus around the monarch's house, with maenad rage, ye dare like drunken ones to rave? who are ye then that ye the house's stewardess thus bay, like pack of hounds hoarsely that bay the moon? think ye, 'tis hid from me, the race whereof ye are? thou youthful, war-begotten, battle-nurtured brood, lewd and lascivious thou, seducers and seduced, unnerving both, the soldier's and the burgher's strength! seeing your throng, to me a locust-swarm ye seem, which, settling down, conceals the young green harvest-field. wasters of others' toil! ye dainty revellers, destroyers in its bloom of all prosperity! thou conquer'd merchandise, exchanged and marketed! helena who in the mistress' presence chides her handmaidens, audacious, doth o'erstep her household privilege; for her alone beseems, the praise-worthy to praise, as also that to punish which doth merit blame. moreover with the service am i well-content, which these have rendered me, what time proud ilion's strength beleaguer'd stood, and fell and sank; nor less indeed when we, of our sea-voyage the dreary changeful woe endured, where commonly each thinks but of himself. here also i expect the like from this blithe train; not what the servant is, we ask, but how he serves. therefore be silent thou, and snarl at them no more! if thou the monarch's house till now hast guarded well, filling the mistress' place, that for thy praise shall count; but now herself is come, therefore do thou retire, lest chastisement be thine, instead of well-earn'd meed! phorkyas the menial train to threat, a sacred right remains, which the illustrious spouse of heaven-favor'd lord through many a year doth earn of prudent governance. since that, now recognized, thy ancient place as queen, and mistress of the house, once more thou dost resume, the long-time loosen'd reins grasp thou; be ruler here, and in possession take the treasures, us with them! me before all protect, who am the elder-born, from this young brood, who seem, thy swan-like beauty near, but as a basely wingèd flock of cackling geese! leader of the chorus how hideous beside beauty showeth hideousness! phorkyas how foolish by discretion's side shows foolishness! [_henceforth the choristers respond in turn, stepping forth singly from the chorus._] first chorister tell us of father erebus, tell us of mother night! phorkyas speak thou of scylla, speak of her, thy sister-born! second chorister from thy ancestral tree springs many a monster forth. phorkyas to orcus hence, away! seek thou thy kindred there! third chorister who yonder dwell, in sooth, for thee are far too young. phorkyas tiresias, the hoary, go, make love to him! fourth chorister orion's nurse of old, was thy great-grand-daughter. phorkyas harpies, so i suspect, did rear thee up in filth. fifth chorister thy cherished meagreness, whereon dost nourish that? phorkyas 'tis not with blood, for which so keenly thou dost thirst. sixth chorister for corpses dost thou hunger, loathsome corpse thyself! phorkyas within thy shameless jaw the teeth of vampires gleam. seventh chorister thine i should stop were i to tell thee who thou art. phorkyas first do thou name thyself; the riddle then is solved. helena not wrathful, but in grief, step i between you now, forbidding such alternate quarrel's angry noise; for to the ruler naught more hurtful can befall, than, 'mong his trusty servants, sworn and secret strife; the echo of his mandate then to him no more in swift accomplished deed responsively returns; no, stormful and self-will'd, it rages him around, the self-bewilder'd one, and chiding still in vain. nor this alone; ye have in rude unmanner'd wrath unblessèd images of dreadful shapes evoked, which so encompass me, that whirl'd i feel myself to orcus down, despite these my ancestral fields. is it remembrance? was it frenzy seized on me? was i all that? and am i? shall i henceforth be the dread and phantom-shape of those town-wasting ones? the maidens quail: but thou, the eldest, thou dost stand, calm and unmoved; speak, then, to me some word of sense! phorkyas who of long years recalls the fortune manifold, to him heaven's highest favor seems at last a dream. but thou, so highly favored, past all bound or goal, saw'st, in thy life-course, none but love-inflamèd men, kindled by impulse rash to boldest enterprise. theseus by passion stirred full early seized on thee, a man of glorious form, and strong as heracles. helena forceful he bore me off, a ten-year slender roe, and in aphidnus' keep shut me, in attica. phorkyas but thence full soon set free, by castor, pollux too, in marriage wast thou sought by chosen hero-band. helena yet hath patroclus, he, pelides' other self, my secret favor won, as willingly i own. phorkyas but thee thy father hath to menelaus wed, bold rover of the sea, and house-sustainer too. helena his daughter gave he, gave to him the kingdom's sway; and from our wedded union sprang hermione. phorkyas but while he strove afar, for crete, his heritage, to thee, all lonely, came an all too beauteous guest. helena wherefore the time recall of that half-widowhood, and what destruction dire to me therefrom hath grown! phorkyas that voyage unto me, a free-born dame of crete, hath also capture brought, and weary servitude. helena as stewardess forthwith, he did appoint thee here, with much intrusted,--fort and treasure boldly won. phorkyas all which thou didst forsake, by ilion's tower-girt town allured, and by the joys, the exhaustless joys of love. helena remind me not of joys: no, an infinitude of all too bitter woe o'erwhelm'd my heart and brain. phorkyas nathless 'tis said thou didst in two-fold shape appear; seen within ilion's walls, and seen in egypt too. helena confuse thou not my brain, distraught and desolate! here even, who i am in sooth i cannot tell. phorkyas 'tis also said, from out the hollow shadow-dream, achilles, passion-fired, hath joined himself to thee, whom he hath loved of old, 'gainst all resolves of fate. helena as phantom i myself, to him a phantom bound; a dream it was--thus e'en the very words declare. i faint, and to myself a phantom i become. [she sinks into the arms of the semi-chorus._] chorus silence! silence! false seeing one, false speaking one, thou! through thy horrible, single-tooth'd lips, ghastly, what exhaleth from such terrible loathsome gulf! for the malignant one, kindliness feigning, rage of wolf 'neath the sheep's woolly fleece, far more terrible is unto me than jaws of the hound three-headed. anxiously watching stand we here: when? how? where of such malice bursteth the tempest from this deep-lurking brood of hell? now, 'stead of friendly words, freighted with comfort, lethe-bestowing, gracious and mild, thou art summoning from times departed, thoughts of the past most hateful, overshadowing not alone all sheen gilding the present, also the future's mildly glimmering light of hope. silence! silence! that fair helena's soul, ready e'en now to take flight, still may keep, yea firmly keep the form of all forms, the loveliest, ever illumined of old by the sun. [helena _has revived, and again stands in the midst._] * * * * * (_the scene is entirely changed. close arbors recline against a series of rocky caverns. a shady grove extends to the base of the encircling rocks_. faust _and_ helena _are not seen. the_ chorus _lies sleeping, scattered here and there_.) phorkyas how long these maids have slept, in sooth i cannot tell; or whether they have dreamed what i before mine eyes saw bright and clear, to me is equally unknown. so wake i them. amazed the younger folks shall be, ye too, ye bearded ones, who sit below and wait, hoping to see at length these miracles resolved. arise! arise! and shake quickly your crisped locks! shake slumber from your eyes! blink not, and list to me! chorus only speak, relate, and tell us, what of wonderful hath chanced! we more willingly shall hearken that which we cannot believe; for we are aweary, weary, gazing on these rocks around. phorkyas children, how, already weary, though you scarce have rubbed your eyes? hearken then! within these caverns, in these grottoes, in these bowers, shield and shelter have been given, as to lover-twain idyllic, to our lord and to our lady-- chorus how, within there? phorkyas yea, secluded from the world; and me, me only, they to secret service called. highly honored stood i near them, yet, as one in trust beseemeth, round i gazed on other objects, turning hither, turning thither, sought for roots, for barks and mosses, with their properties acquainted; and they thus remained alone. chorus thou would'st make believe that yonder, world-wide spaces lie within, wood and meadow, lake and brooklet; what strange fable spinnest thou! phorkyas yea, in sooth, ye inexperienced, there lie regions undiscovered: hall on hall, and court on court; in my musings these i track. suddenly a peal of laughter echoes through the cavern'd spaces; in i gaze, a boy is springing from the bosom of the woman to the man, from sire to mother: the caressing and the fondling, all love's foolish playfulnesses, mirthful cry and shout of rapture, alternating, deafen me. naked, without wings, a genius, like a faun, with nothing bestial, on the solid ground he springeth; but the ground, with counter-action, up to ether sends him flying; with the second, third rebounding touches he the vaulted roof. anxiously the mother calleth: spring amain, and at thy pleasure; but beware, think not of flying, unto thee is flight denied. and so warns the faithful father: in the earth the force elastic lies, aloft that sends thee bounding; let thy toe but touch the surface, like the son of earth, antæus, straightway is thy strength renewed. and so o'er these rocky masses, on from dizzy ledge to ledge, leaps he ever, hither, thither, springing like a stricken ball. but in cleft of rugged cavern suddenly from sight he vanished; and now lost to us he seemeth, mother waileth, sire consoleth, anxiously i shrug my shoulders. but again, behold, what vision! lie there treasures hidden yonder? raiment broidered o'er with flowers he becomingly hath donned; tassels from his arms are waving, ribbons flutter on his bosom, in his hand the lyre all-golden, wholly like a tiny phoebus, boldly to the edge he steppeth, to the precipice; we wonder, and the parents, full of rapture, cast them on each other's heart; for around his brow what splendor! who can tell what there is shining? gold-work is it, or the flaming of surpassing spirit-power? thus he moveth, with such gesture, e'en as boy himself announcing future master of all beauty, through whose limbs, whose every member, flow the melodies eternal: and so shall ye hearken to him, and so shall ye gaze upon him, to your special wonderment. chorus this call'st thou marvelous, daughter of creta? unto the bard's pregnant word hast thou perchance never listened? hast thou not heard of ionia's, ne'er been instructed in hellas' legends, from ages primeval, godlike, heroical treasure? all, that still happeneth now in the present, sorrowful echo 'tis, of days ancestral, more noble; equals not in sooth thy story that which beautiful fiction, than truth more worthy of credence, chanted hath of maia's offspring! this so shapely and potent, yet scarcely-born delicate nursling, straight have his gossiping nurses folded in purest swaddling fleece, fastened in costly swathings, with their irrational notions. potent and shapely, ne'ertheless, draws the rogue his flexible limbs, body firm yet elastic, craftily forth; the purple shell, him so grievously binding, leaving quietly in its place; as the perfected butterfly, from the rigid chrysalid, pinion unfolding, rapidly glides, boldly and wantonly sailing through sun-impregnated ether. so he, too, the most dextrous, that to robbers and scoundrels, yea, and to all profit-seekers, he a favoring god might be, this he straightway made manifest, using arts the most cunning. swift from the ruler of ocean he steals the trident, yea, e'en from arès steals the sword from the scabbard; arrow and bow from phoebus too, also his tongs from hephæstos even zeus', the father's, bolt, him had fire not scared, he had ta'en. eros also worsted he, in limb-grappling, wrestling match; stole from cypria as she caressed him, from her bosom, the girdle. (_an exquisite, purely melodious lyre-music resounds from the cave. all become attentive, and appear soon to be inwardly moved; henceforth, to the pause indicated, there is a full musical accompaniment._) phorkyas hark those notes so sweetly sounding; cast aside your fabled lore: gods, in olden time abounding,-- let them go! their day is o'er. none will comprehend your singing; nobler theme the age requires: from the heart must flow, up-springing, what to touch the heart aspires. [_she retires behind the rock._] chorus to these tones, so sweetly flowing, dire one! dost incline thine ears, they in us, new health bestowing, waken now the joy of tears. vanish may the sun's clear shining, in our soul if day arise, in our heart we, unrepining, find what the whole world denies. (helena, faust, euphorion _in the costume indicated above_) euphorion songs of childhood hear ye ringing, your own mirth it seems; on me gazing, thus in measure springing, leap your parent-hearts with glee. helena love, terrestrial bliss to capture, two in noble union mates; but to wake celestial rapture, he a precious three creates. faust all hath been achieved. for ever i am thine, and mine thou art, blent our beings are--oh never may our present joy depart! chorus many a year of purest pleasure, in the mild light of their boy, crowns this pair in richest measure. me their union thrills with joy! euphorion now let me gambol, joyfully springing! upward to hasten through ether winging, this wakes my yearning, this prompts me now! faust gently! son, gently! be not so daring! lest ruin seize thee past all repairing, and our own darling whelm us in woe! euphorion from earth my spirit still upward presses; let go my hands now, let go my tresses, let go my garments, mine every one! helena to whom, bethink thee, now thou pertainest! think how it grieves us when thou disdainest mine, thine, and his,--the all that hath been won. chorus soon shall, i fear me, the bond be undone! helena _and_ faust curb for thy parents' sake, to us returning, curb thy importunate passionate yearning! make thou the rural plain tranquil and bright. euphorion but to content you stay i my flight. (_winding among the_ chorus _and drawing them forth to dance_) round this gay troop i flee with impulse light. say is the melody, say is the movement right? helena yea, 'tis well done; advance, lead to the graceful dance these maidens coy! faust could i the end but see! me this mad revelry fills with annoy. euphorion _and the_ chorus (_dancing and singing, they move about in interweaving lines_) moving thine arms so fair with graceful motion, tossing thy curling hair in bright commotion; when thou with foot so light over the earth doth skim, thither and back in flight, moving each graceful limb; thou hast attained thy goal, beautiful child, all hearts thou hast beguiled, won every soul. [_pause._] euphorion gracefully sporting, light-footed roes, new frolic courting scorn ye repose: i am the hunter, ye are the game. chorus us wilt thou capture, urge not thy pace; for it were rapture thee to embrace, beautiful creature, this our sole aim! euphorion through trees and heather, bound all together, o'er stock and stone! whate'er is lightly won, that i disdain; what i by force obtain, prize i alone. helena _and_ faust what vagaries, sense confounding! naught of measure to be hoped for! like the blare of trumpet sounding, over vale and forest ringing. what a riot! what a cry! chorus (_entering quickly one by one_) us he passed with glance scorn-laden; hastily still onward springing, bearing now the wildest maiden of our troop, he draweth nigh. euphorion (_bearing a young maiden_) i this wilful maid and coy carry to enforced caress; for my pleasure, for my joy her resisting bosom press, kiss her rebel lips, that so she my power and will may know. maiden loose me! in this frame residing, burns a spirit's strength and might; strong as thine, our will presiding swerveth not with purpose light. thinkest, on thy strength relying, that thou hast me in a strait? hold me, fool! thy strength defying, for my sport, i'll scorch thee yet! [_she flames up and flashes into the air_.] follow where light breezes wander, follow to rude caverns yonder, strive thy vanish'd prey to net! euphorion (_shaking off the last flames_) rocks all around i see, thickets and woods among! why should they prison me? still am i fresh and young. tempests, they loudly roar, billows, they lash the shore; both far away i hear; would i were near! [_he springs higher up the rock._] helena, faust, _and_ chorus wouldst thou chamois-like aspire? us thy threaten'd fall dismays! euphorion higher must i climb, yet higher, wider still must be my gaze. know i now, where i stand: 'midst of the sea-girt land, 'midst of great pelops' reign, kin both to earth and main. chorus canst not near copse and wold tarry, then yonder, ripe figs and apple-gold seeking, we'll wander; grapes too shall woo our hand, grapes from the mantling vine. ah, let this dearest land, dear one, be thine! euphorion dream ye of peaceful day? dream on, while dream ye may! war! is the signal cry, hark! cries of victory! chorus war who desireth while peace doth reign, to joy aspireth henceforth in vain. euphorion all whom this land hath bred, through peril onward led, free, of undaunted mood, still lavish of their blood, with soul untaught to yield, rending each chain! to such the bloody field, brings glorious gain. chorus high he soars,--mark, upward gazing,-- and to us not small doth seem: victor-like, in harness blazing, as of steel and brass the gleam! euphorion not on moat or wall relying, on himself let each one rest! firmest stronghold, all defying, ever is man's iron breast! dwell for aye unconquered would ye? arm, by no vain dreams beguiled! amazons your women should be, and a hero every child! chorus o hallowed poesie, heavenward still soareth she! shine on, thou brightest star, farther and still more far! yet us she still doth cheer; even her voice to hear, joyful we are. euphorion child no more; a stripling bearing arms appears, with valor fraught leagued with the strong, the free, the daring, in soul already who hath wrought. hence away! no delay! there where glory may be sought. helena _and_ faust scarcely summoned to life's gladness, scarcely given to day's bright gleam, downward now to pain and sadness wouldst thou rush, from heights supreme! are then we naught to thee? is our gracious bond a dream? euphorion hark! what thunders seaward rattle, echoing from vale to vale! 'mid dust and foam, in shock of battle, throng on throng, to grief and bale! and the command is, firm to stand; death to face, nor ever quail. helena, faust, _and_ chorus oh what horror! hast thou told it! is then death for thee decreed? euphorion from afar shall i behold it? no! i'll share the care and need! helena, faust _and_ chorus rashness to peril brings, and deadly fate! euphorion yet--see a pair of wings unfoldeth straight! thither--i must, i must-- grudge not my flight! [_he casts himself into the air; his garments support him for a moment; his head flames, a trail of light follows him._] chorus icarus! icarus! oh woeful sight! (_a beautiful youth falls at the parents' feet; we imagine that in the dead we recognize a well-known form; yet suddenly the corporeal part vanishes; the aureole rises like a comet to heaven; dress, mantle, and lyre remain lying on the ground._) helena _and_ faust follows on joy new-born anguishful moan! euphorion's voice, (_from the depths_) leave me in realms forlorn, mother, not all alone! [_pause._] chorus (_dirge_) not alone--for hope we cherish, where thou bidest thee to know! ah, from daylight though thou perish, ne'er a heart will let thee go! scarce we venture to bewail thee, envying we sing thy fate: did sunshine cheer, or storm assail thee, song and heart were fair and great. earthly fortune was thy dower, lofty lineage, ample might, ah, too early lost, thy flower withered by untimely blight! glance was thine the world discerning, sympathy with every wrong, woman's love for thee still yearning, and thine own enchanting song. yet the beaten path forsaking, thou didst run into the snare; so with law and usage breaking, on thy wilful course didst fare; yet at last high thought has given to thy noble courage weight, for the loftiest thou has striven-- it to win was not thy fate. who does win it? unreplying, destiny the question hears, when the bleeding people lying, dumb with grief, no cry uprears!-- now new songs chant forth, in sorrow deeply bowed lament no more; them the earth brings forth tomorrow, as she brought them forth of yore! [_full pause. the music ceases._] * * * * * act the fifth open country wanderer yes, 'tis they, their branches rearing, hoary lindens, strong in age;-- there i find them, reappearing, after my long pilgrimage! 'tis the very spot;--how gladly yonder hut once more i see, by the billows raging madly, cast ashore, which sheltered me! my old hosts, i fain would greet them, helpful they, an honest pair; may i hope today to meet them? even then they aged were. worthy folk, in god believing! shall i knock? or raise my voice? hail to you if, guest receiving, in good deeds ye still rejoice! baucis (_a very aged woman_) stranger dear, beware of breaking my dear husband's sweet repose! strength for brief and feeble waking lengthened sleep on age bestows. wanderer mother, say then, do i find thee, to receive my thanks once more, in my youth who didst so kindly, with thy spouse, my life restore? baucis, to my lips half-dying, art thou, who refreshment gave? [_the husband steps forth._] thou philemon, strength who plying, snatched my treasure from the wave? by your flames, so promptly kindled, by your bell's clear silver sound-- that adventure, horror-mingled, hath a happy issue found. forward let me step, and gazing forth upon the boundless main, kneel, and thankful prayers upraising, ease of my full heart the strain! [_he walks forward upon the downs._] philemon (_to_ baucis) haste to spread the table, under the green leafage of our trees. let him run, struck dumb with wonder, scarce he'll credit what he sees. [_he follows the wanderer. standing beside him._] where the billows did maltreat you, wave on wave in fury rolled, there a garden now doth greet you, fair as paradise of old. grown more aged, as when stronger, i could render aid no more; and, as waned my strength, no longer rolled the sea upon the shore; prudent lords, bold serfs directing, it with trench and dyke restrained; ocean's rights no more respecting, lords they were, where he had reigned. see, green meadows far extending;-- garden, village, woodland, plain. but return we, homeward wending, for the sun begins to wane. in the distance sails are gliding, nightly they to port repair; bird-like, in their nests confiding, for a haven waits them there. far away mine eye discerneth first the blue fringe of the main; right and left, where'er it turneth, spreads the thickly-peopled plain. in the garden _the three at table_ baucis (_to the stranger_) art thou dumb? no morsel raising to thy famished lips? philemon i trow, he of wonders so amazing fain would hear; inform him thou. baucis there was wrought a wonder truly, yet no rest it leaves to me; naught in the affair was duly done, as honest things should be! philemon who as sinful can pronounce it? 'twas the emperor gave the shore;-- did the trumpet not announce it as the herald passed our door? footing firm they first have planted near these downs. tents, huts, appeared; o'er the green, the eye, enchanted, saw ere long a palace reared. baucis shovel, axe, no labor sparing, vainly plied the men by day; where the fires at night shone flaring, stood a dam, in morning's ray. still from human victims bleeding, wailing sounds were nightly borne; seaward sped the flames, receding; a canal appeared at morn! godless is he, naught respecting; covets he our grove, our cot; though our neighbor, us subjecting, him to serve will be our lot. philemon yet he bids, our claims adjusting, homestead fair in his new land. baucis earth, from water saved, mistrusting, on thine own height take thy stand. philemon let us, to the chapel wending, watch the sun's last rays subside; let us ring, and prayerful bending, in our father's god confide! palace _spacious ornamental garden; broad, straight canal._ faust _in extreme old age, walking about, meditating._ lynceus, the warder (_through a speaking trumpet_) the sun sinks down, the ships belated rejoicing to the haven steer. a stately galley, deeply freighted, on the canal, now draweth near; her chequer'd flag the breeze caresses the masts unbending bear the sails: thee now the grateful seaman blesses, thee at this moment fortune hails. [_the bell rings on the downs._] faust (_starting_) accursed bell! its clamor sending, like spiteful shot it wounds mine ear! before me lies my realm unending; vexation dogs me in the rear; for i, these envious chimes still hearing, must at my narrow bounds repine; the linden grove, brown but thence peering, the moldering church, these are not mine. refreshment seek i, there repairing? another's shadow chills my heart, a thorn, nor foot nor vision sparing,-- o far from hence could i depart! warder (_as above_) how, wafted by the evening gales, blithely the painted galley sails; on its swift course, how richly stored! chest, coffer, sack, are heaped aboard. _a splendid galley, richly and brilliantly laden with the produce of foreign climes._ mephistopheles. the three mighty comrades chorus here do we land, here are we now. hail to our lord; our patron, thou! (_they disembark. the goods are brought ashore._) mephistopheles so have we proved our worth--content if we our patron's praises earn: with but two ships abroad we went, with twenty we to port return. by our rich lading all may see the great successes we have wrought. free ocean makes the spirit free: there claims compunction ne'er a thought! a rapid grip there needs alone; a fish, a ship, on both we seize. of three if we the lordship own, straightway we hook a fourth with ease, then is the fifth in sorry plight-- who hath the power, has still the right; the _what_ is asked for, not the _how_. else know i not the seaman's art: war, commerce, piracy, i trow, a trinity, we may not part. the three mighty comrades no thank and hail; no hail and thank! as were our cargo vile and rank! disgust upon his face one sees the kingly wealth doth him displease! mephistopheles expect ye now no further pay; for ye your share have ta'en away. the three mighty comrades to pass the time, as was but fair; we all expect an equal share. mephistopheles first range in order, hall on hall, these wares so costly, one and all! and when he steps the prize to view, and reckons all with judgment true, he'll be no niggard; as is meet, feast after feast he'll give the fleet, the gay birds come with morning tide; myself for them can best provide. [_the cargo is removed._] mephistopheles (_to_ faust) with gloomy look, with earnest brow thy fortune high receivest thou. thy lofty wisdom has been crowned; their limits shore and sea have bound; forth from the shore, in swift career, o'er the glad waves, thy vessels steer; speak only from thy pride of place, thine arm the whole world doth embrace. here it began; on this spot stood the first rude cabin formed of wood; a little ditch was sunk of yore where plashes now the busy oar. thy lofty thought, thy people's hand, have won the prize from sea and land. from here too-- faust that accursed here! it weighs upon me! lend thine ear;-- to thine experience i must tell, with thrust on thrust, what wounds my heart; to bear it is impossible-- nor can i, without shame, impart: the old folk there above must yield; would that my seat those lindens were; those few trees not mine own, that field, possession of the world impair. there i, wide view o'er all to take, from bough to bough would scaffolds raise; would, for the prospect, vistas make on all that i have done to gaze; to see at once before me brought the master-work of human thought, where wisdom hath achieved the plan, and won broad dwelling-place for man.-- thus are we tortured;--in our weal, that which we lack, we sorely feel! the chime, the scent of linden-bloom, surround me like a vaulted tomb. the will that nothing could withstand, is broken here upon the sand: how from the vexing thought be safe? the bell is pealing, and i chafe! mephistopheles such spiteful chance, 'tis natural, must thy existence fill with gall. who doubts it! to each noble ear, this clanging odious must appear; this cursed ding-dong, booming loud, the cheerful evening-sky doth shroud, with each event of life it blends, from birth to burial it attends, until this mortal life doth seem, twixt ding and dong, a vanished dream! faust resistance, stubborn selfishness, can trouble lordliest success, till, in deep angry pain one must grow tired at last of being first! mephistopheles why let thyself be troubled here? is colonizing not thy sphere? faust then go, to move them be thy care! thou knowest well the homestead fair, i've chosen for the aged pair-- mephistopheles we'll bear them off, and on new ground set them, ere one can look around. the violence outlived and past, shall a fair home atone at last. [_he whistles shrilly._] the three _enter_ mephistopheles come! straight fulfil the lord's behest; the fleet tomorrow he will feast. the three the old lord us did ill requite; a sumptuous feast is ours by right. mephistopheles (_to the spectators_) what happ'd of old, here happens too: still naboth's vineyard meets the view. (i _kings_, xvi.) deep night lynceus the warder (_on the watch-tower singing_) keen vision my birth-dower, i'm placed on this height, still sworn to the watch-tower, the world's my delight. i gaze on the distant, i look on the near, on moon and on planet, on wood and the deer: the beauty eternal in all things i see; and pleased with myself all bring pleasure to me. glad eyes, look around ye and gaze, for whate'er the sight they encounter, it still hath been fair! (_pause_) not alone for pleasure-taking am i planted thus on high; what dire vision, horror-waking, from yon dark world scares mine eye! fiery sparkles see i gleaming through the lindens' two-fold night; by the breezes fanned, their beaming gloweth now with fiercer light! ah! the peaceful hut is burning; stood its moss-grown walls for years; they for speedy help are yearning-- and no rescue, none appears! ah the aged folk, so kindly, once so careful of the fire, now, to smoke a prey, they blindly perish, oh misfortune dire! 'mid red flames, the vision dazing, stands the moss-hut, black and bare; from the hell, so fiercely blazing, could we save the honest pair! lightning-like the fire advances, 'mid the foliage, 'mid the branches; withered boughs,--they flicker, burning, swiftly glow, then fall;--ah me! must mine eyes, this woe discerning, must they so far-sighted be! down the lowly chapel crashes 'neath the branches' fall and weight; winding now, the pointed flashes to the summit climb elate. roots and trunks the flames have blighted, hollow, purple-red, they glow! (_long pause. song_) gone, what once the eye delighted, with the ages long ago! faust (_on the balcony, toward the downs_) from above what plaintive whimper? word and tone are here too late! wails my warder; me, in spirit grieves this deed precipitate! though in ruin unexpected charred now lie the lindens old, soon a height will be erected, whence the boundless to behold. i the home shall see, enfolding in its walls, that ancient pair, who, my gracious care beholding, shall their lives end joyful there. mephistopheles _and_ the three (_below_) hither we come full speed. we crave your pardon! things have not gone right! full many a knock and kick we gave, they opened not, in our despite; then rattled we and kick'd the more, and prostrate lay the rotten door; we called aloud with threat severe, yet sooth we found no listening ear. and as in such case still befalls, they heard not, would not hear our calls; forthwith thy mandate we obeyed, and straight for thee a clearance made. the pair--their sufferings were light, fainting they sank, and died of fright. a stranger, harbor'd there, made show of force, full soon was he laid low; in the brief space of this wild fray, from coals, that strewn around us lay, the straw caught fire; 'tis blazing free, as funeral death-pyre for the three. faust to my commandments deaf were ye! exchange i wished, not robbery. for this your wild and ruthless part;-- i curse it! share it and depart! chorus the ancient saw still rings today: force with a willing mind obey; if boldly thou canst stand the test, stake house, court, life, and all the rest! [_exeunt._] faust the stars their glance and radiance veil; smoulders the sinking fire, a gale fans it with moisture-laden wings, vapor to me and smoke it brings. rash mandate--rashly, too, obeyed!-- what hither sweeps like spectral shade? midnight _four gray women enter_ first my name, it is want. second and mine, it is blame. third my name, it is care. fourth need, that is my name. three (_together_) the door is fast-bolted, we cannot get in; the owner is wealthy, we may not within. want there fade i to shadow. blame there cease i to be. need his visage the pampered still turneth from me. care ye sisters, ye cannot, ye dare not go in; but care through the key-hole an entrance may win. [care _disappears_.] want sisters, gray sisters, away let us glide! blame i bind myself to thee, quite close to thy side. need and need at your heels doth with yours blend her breath.[ ] the three fast gather the clouds, they eclipse star on star. behind there, behind, from afar, from afar, there comes he, our brother, there cometh he-- death. faust (_in the palace_) four saw i come, but only three went hence. of their discourse i could not catch the sense; there fell upon mine ear a sound like breath, thereon a gloomy rhyme-word followed--death; hollow the sound, with spectral horror fraught! not yet have i, in sooth, my freedom wrought; could i my pathway but from magic free, and quite unlearn the spells of sorcery, stood i, oh nature, man alone 'fore thee, then were it worth the trouble man to be! such was i once, ere i in darkness sought, and curses dire, through words with error fraught, upon myself and on the world have brought; so teems the air with falsehood's juggling brood, that no one knows how them he may elude! if but one day shines clear, in reason's light-- in spectral dream envelopes us the night; from the fresh fields, as homeward we advance-- there croaks a bird: what croaks he? some mischance! ensnared by superstition, soon and late; as sign and portent, it on us doth wait-- by fear unmanned, we take our stand alone; the portal creaks, and no one enters,--none. (_agitated_) is some one here? care the question prompteth, yes! faust what art thou then? care here, once for all, am i. faust withdraw thyself! care my proper place is this. faust (_first angry, then appeased. aside_) take heed, and speak no word of sorcery. care though by outward ear unheard, by my moan the heart is stirred; and in ever-changeful guise, cruel force i exercise; on the shore and on the sea, comrade dire hath man in me ever found, though never sought, flattered, cursed, so have i wrought. hast thou as yet care never known? faust i have but hurried through the world, i own. i by the hair each pleasure seized; relinquished what no longer pleased, that which escaped me i let go, i've craved, accomplished, and then craved again; thus through my life i've storm'd--with might and main, grandly, with power, at first; but now indeed, it goes more cautiously, with wiser heed. i know enough of earth, enough of men; the view beyond is barred from mortal ken; fool, who would yonder peer with blinking eyes, and of his fellows dreams above the skies! firm let him stand, the prospect round him scan, not mute the world to the true-hearted man why need he wander through eternity? what he can grasp, that only knoweth he. so let him roam adown earth's fleeting day; if spirits haunt, let him pursue his way; in joy or torment ever onward stride, though every moment still unsatisfied! care to him whom i have made mine own all profitless the world hath grown: eternal gloom around him lies; for him suns neither set nor rise; with outward senses perfect, whole, dwell darknesses within his soul; though wealth he owneth, ne'ertheless he nothing truly can possess. weal, woe, become mere phantasy; he hungers 'mid satiety; be it joy, or be it sorrow, he postpones it till the morrow; of the future thinking ever, prompt for present action never. faust forbear! thou shalt not come near me! i will not hear such folly. hence! avaunt! this evil litany the wisest even might bereave of sense. care shall he come or go? he ponders;-- all resolve from him is taken; on the beaten path he wanders, groping on, as if forsaken. deeper still himself he loses, everything his sight abuses, both himself and others hating, taking breath--and suffocating, without life--yet scarcely dying, not despairing--not relying. rolling on without remission: loathsome ought, and sad permission, now deliverance, now vexation, semi-sleep,--poor recreation, nail him to his place and wear him, and at last for hell prepare him. faust unblessèd spectres! ye mankind have so treated a thousand times, their thoughts deranging; e'en uneventful days to mar ye know, into a tangled web of torment changing! 'tis hard, i know, from demons to get free, the mighty spirit-bond by force untying; yet care, i never will acknowledge thee, thy strong in-creeping, potency defying. care feel it then now; as thou shalt find when with a curse from thee i've wended: through their whole lives are mortals blind-- so be thou, faust, ere life be ended! [_she breathes on him._] faust (_blind_) deeper and deeper night is round me sinking; only within me shines a radiant light. i haste to realize, in act, my thinking; the master's word, that only giveth might. up, vassals, from your couch! my project bold, grandly completed, now let all behold! seize ye your tools; your spades, your shovels ply; the work laid down, accomplish instantly! strict rule, swift diligence,--these twain the richest recompense obtain. completion of the greatest work demands one guiding spirit for a thousand hands. great fore-court of the palace _torches_ mephistopheles (_as overseer leading the way_) this way! this way! come on! come on! le lemures, loose of tether, of tendon, sinew, and of bone, half natures, patched together! lemures (_in chorus_) at thy behest we're here at hand; thy destined aim half guessing-- it is that we a spacious land may win for our possessing. sharp-pointed stakes we bring with speed, long chains wherewith to measure. but we've forgotten why indeed to call us was thy pleasure. mephistopheles no artist-toil we need today: sufficeth your own measure here: at his full length the tallest let him lay! ye others round him straight the turf uprear; as for our sires was done of yore, an oblong square delve ye once more. out of the palace to the narrow home-- so at the last the sorry end must come! lemures (_digging, with mocking gestures_) in youth when i did live and love, methought, it was very sweet! where frolic rang and mirth was rife, thither still sped my feet. now with his crutch hath spiteful age dealt me a blow full sore: i stumbled o'er a yawning grave, why open stood the door! faust (_comes forth from the palace, groping his way by the door posts_) how doth the clang of spades delight my soul! for me my vassals toil, the while earth with itself they reconcile, the waves within their bounds control, and gird the sea with stedfast zone-- mephistopheles (_aside_) and yet for us dost work alone, while thou for dam and bulwark carest; since thus for neptune thou preparest, the water-fiend, a mighty fête; before thee naught but ruin lies; the elements are our allies; onward destruction strides elate. faust inspector! mephistopheles here. faust as many as you may, bring crowds on crowds to labor here; them by reward and rigor cheer; persuade, entice, give ample pay! each day be tidings brought me at what rate the moat extends which here we excavate. mephistopheles (_half aloud_) they speak, as if to me they gave report, not of a moat--but of a grave.[ ] faust a marsh along the mountain chain infecteth what's already won; also the noisome pool to drain-- my last, best triumph then were won: to many millions space i thus should give, though not secure, yet free to toil and live; green fields and fertile; men, with cattle blent, upon the newest earth would dwell content, settled forthwith upon the firm-based hill, up-lifted by a valiant people's skill; within, a land like paradise; outside, e'en to the brink, roars the impetuous tide, and as it gnaws, striving to enter there, all haste, combined, the damage to repair. yea, to this thought i cling, with virtue rife, wisdom's last fruit, profoundly true: freedom alone he earns as well as life, who day by day must conquer them anew. so girt by danger, childhood bravely here, youth, manhood, age, shall dwell from year to year; such busy crowds i fain would see, upon free soil stand with a people free; then to the moment might i say; linger awhile, so fair thou art! nor can the traces of my earthly day through ages from the world depart! in the presentiment of such high bliss, the highest moment i enjoy--'tis this. (faust _sinks back, the_ lemures _lay hold of him and lay him upon the ground_.) * * * * * [footnote : for lack of space, scientists and historians have been excluded.] [footnote : the chief original sources for the life of goethe are his own autobiographic writings, his letters, his diaries, and his conversations. of the autobiographic writings the most important are ( ) _poetry and truth from my life_, which ends with the year ; ( ) _italian journey_, covering the period from september, , to june, ; ( ) _campaign in france_ and _siege of antwerp_, dealing with episodes of the years and ; ( ) _annals (tag- und jahreshefte)_, which are useful for his later years down to . his letters, forty-nine volumes in all, and his diaries, thirteen volumes, are included in the great weimar edition of goethe's works. his conversations, so far as they were recorded, have been well edited by w. von biedermann, ten volumes, leipzig, - .] [footnote : this earlier version was long supposed to be lost, but in a copy of the original manuscript was discovered at zürich and published. its six books correspond very nearly to the first four of the final version.] [footnote : translator: charles wharton stork.] [footnote : adapted from e.a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e.a. bowring. (all poems in this section translated by e.a. bowring, w.e. aytoun and theodore martin appear by permission of thomas y. crowell & co.)] [footnote : translator: e.a. bowring.] [footnote : adapted from e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e.a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e.a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e.a. bowring.] [footnote : w.e. aytoun and theodore martin.] [footnote : translator: a.i. du p. coleman.] [footnote : translators: w.e. aytoun and theodore martin.] [footnote : translators: w. e. aytoun and theodore martin.] [footnote : the title of a lyric piece composed by schiller in honor of the marriage of the hereditary prince of weimar to the princess maria of russia, and performed in .] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translation: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: a. i. du p. coleman.] [footnote : translator: a. i. du p. coleman.] [footnote : translator: e. a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: a. i. du p. coleman.] [footnote : translator: e.a. bowring.] [footnote : translator: a. l. du p. coleman.] [footnote : harvard classics (copyright p. f. collier & son).] [footnote : harvard classics (copyright p. f. collier & son).] [footnote : permission the macmillan co., new york, and g. bell & sons, ltd., london.] [footnote : permission the macmillan co., new york, and g. bell and sons, ltd., london.] [footnote : not and tod, the german equivalents for need and death, form a rhyme. as this cannot be rendered in english, i have introduced a slight alteration into my translation.] [footnote : the play of words contained in the original cannot be reproduced in translation, the german for moat being graben, and for grave grab.] transcriber's notes: #################### this e-text is based on the edition of the book. minor punctuation errors have been tacitly corrected. inconsistent and uncommon spelling and hyphenation have been retained. words obviously missing a single letter have been tacitly corrected. italic text in the original book has been placed between underscores (_italic_); passages in small caps have been characterised by forward slashes (/small caps/). [oe] symbolises the corresponding ligature. the following passages have been corrected or need to be commented: # p. : "verlaszt": obsolete form of "verlaßt" # p. : "court-marshal": literal translation for "hofmarschall" (lord stewart) # p. : "voiec" --> "voice" # p. : "come, your majesty" --> "i come, your majesty" # p. : "may taken" --> "may be taken" # p. : "into the the room": doubled word removed. # p. : "after along" --> "after a long" # p. : "and taken up" --> "had taken up" # p. : "osberved" --> "observed" # p. : "countenanec" --> "countenance"; "opposite schiller's bed" --> "opposite goethe's bed" # p. : "wonderlich" --> "wunderlich" # p. : "signore" --> "signora" # p. : "than no soirée" --> "that no soirée" # p. : "charlotte's" --> "caroline's" # p. : "weningenjena" --> "wenigenjena" # footnote : "dante alighiere's" --> "dante alighieri's" # advertising pages: nd and th; rd and th page are identical in the original book --> th and th page deleted. [illustration: schiller in his attic.] goethe and schiller an historical romance by l. mÜhlbach author of joseph ii. and his court, frederick the great and his court, the empress josephine, andreas hofer, etc. translated from the german by chapman coleman new york d. appleton and company /copyright/, , /by/ d. appleton and company. contents. book i. chapter page i. introduction, ii. the trials of life, iii. henrietta von wolzogen, iv. joy and sorrow, v. charlotte von kalb, vi. the title, vii. adieu to mannheim! viii. plans for the future, ix. the last ride, book ii. i. after the king's death, ii. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" iii. the favorites, iv. the maid of honor, v. figaro, vi. the alliance, vii. the conditions, viii. new love, ix. the decision, x. the invocation, xi. the will, xii. leuchsenring, book iii. i. schiller in dresden, ii. gilded poverty, iii. marie von arnim, iv. souls in purgatory, v. separation, vi. the song "to joy," vii. together once more, viii. goethe and moritz, ix. leonora, x. a dream of love, xi. adieu to italy, book iv. i. the return, ii. reconciliation, iii. grim death, iv. goethe's return from rome, v. estrangement, vi. the two poets, vii. the first meeting, viii. wilhelmine rietz, ix. husband and wife, x. the attack, xi. youth victorious, xii. schiller's marriage, illustrations. facing page schiller in his attic _frontispiece_ the dead king portrait of schiller portrait of goethe goethe and schiller. book i. chapter i. introduction. the honest and peaceful inhabitants of mannheim, the capital of the palatinate, had long since retired to rest; the streets were deserted, and the houses wrapped in darkness. only high up in the little bow window of a corner house on the palace square still glimmered a faint light like the subdued gleam of a lamp in a sick-chamber. but the watch, who had just proclaimed at the corner in stentorian tones the third hour of the morning, knew better; and, as he entered the square, he again looked up at the illuminated window, gravely shaking his head. "mr. schiller has not yet gone to bed," said he to himself; "writing all night again, i suppose. but i will not stand it! did i not promise mr. streicher that i would always look up at his window, and, whenever i found the light burning after one o'clock, protest against it? well, then, i'll try it to-night, and keep my word, as an honest man should." and in stentorian tones the watchman cried out, "mr. schiller! halloo! mr. schiller!" for a moment the window was darkened by a shadow, and then opened, and a hoarse voice demanded, "who called? who called my name?" "i, mr. schiller. i, the watchman, fabian," roared the man in response. "and what do you desire of me, worthy guardian of the worthy city of mannheim?" "i wish to beg of you, mr. schiller, to be so good as to put out your light and go to bed." "what brought you to this strange and ridiculous idea?" exclaimed the voice from above, laughing loudly. "what does the light behind my windows concern you, a watchman and a guardian of the streets?" "really it doesn't concern me at all," cried the watchman. "i know that very well, but i have promised the music-teacher of my daughter, mr. streicher, to pay attention to your window, and every time i see the light burning in your room after one o'clock, to call you, and beg you in the name of your dear friend to be kind enough to put out your light and go to bed." "a very ridiculous idea of mr. streicher," said the voice of the invisible poet, laughingly, "and i am only surprised that you should do his bidding, and take this task upon yourself." "don't be surprised, sir, for i am not doing it gratis. mr. streicher told me that whenever i had called you, and begged you in his name to go to bed, i should have to pay only half-price for the next piano-lesson of my daughter; and i beg you, therefore, mr. schiller, to be good enough to tell mr. streicher to-morrow that i have done his bidding. and hereafter do as you please, sleep or wake. i have done my duty. good-night, mr. schiller." "good-night!" the poet rapidly closed the window, and drew the folds of the old threadbare coat which served him as a dressing-gown closer around his shivering form. "the good and true streicher," he murmured in a low voice, "is an honest soul, and means well, and does not know how he has injured me to-day! i was in the grandest flow of enthusiasm; all the discomforts and necessities of life had disappeared! i was no longer cold, there were no more tormenting creditors, no cares, and no pangs of love! i was in thy heaven, father zeus! and the messenger of my friend comes and calls me back to the cold, inhospitable earth. the fire of my enthusiasm is extinguished, and now i am sensible that there is no fire in the stove!" he raised his large blue eyes, and glanced through the dimly-lighted space toward the high black stove, within the open grate of which only a few glimmering coals were visible. "no fire," sighed schiller, shrugging his shoulders, "and no wood to make one. poor, feeble man! the fire of the soul does not suffice to warm thy shivering body, and the prose of life ever recalls thee from the elysian fields of poetry. but it shall have no power over me. i will defy it! forgive me, friend streicher, but i cannot do your bidding! your watchman calls to me to sleep, but don carlos calls to me to be wakeful! i cannot let the spanish prince call in vain! fortunately the coffee-pot is still standing in the stove. if it is yet warm, something can be done for the poor, shivering body." he rapidly went across the room to the stove, knelt down before the fire-place, drew the brown coffee-pot from its bed of ashes, raised it to his lips and refreshed himself with several long draughts, after which he carefully restored the vessel to its former place. truly a strange sight, this long, thin figure in the gray-yellow flannel gown, a pointed nightcap on his head, stooping before the stove and occupying himself with a coffee-pot! if the admirers of the tragic poet schiller could have seen him in this position, they would never have believed that the young man in this miserable apparel--the long, lean, angular figure, with the bony, homely face and yellow hair, loosed from the confinement of the queue, and falling in dishevelled masses over his sunken cheeks--that this man was the author of the three tragedies which for the last few years had filled all germany with astonishment, admiration, and terror. like the column of fire, harbinger of a new era, they towered on the grave of the old, licking the heavens with tongues of flame. about ten years before, goethe's "sufferings of young werther" had flooded germany with great enthusiasm. this wonderful book, half romance, half reality, had pierced the hearts of all like lightning--as if these hearts had been but tinder awaiting ignition and destruction at the touch of this eloquence, this passion of love, and revelling in destruction by such heavenly agents! in the impassioned and excited state of the public mind, goethe's "werner" had been received by the youth of germany--yes, of all europe--as a revelation of the spirit of the universe, as a proclaiming angel. on bended knees and in ecstatic devotion they listened to the heavenly voice which aroused their hearts from sleep with the holy sirocco of passion, and awakened them out of the tameness of prose to the passion and vehemence of poetry; to the blissful pain of unsatisfied longing and heaven-achieving love. and now, when the excited minds had hardly quieted down, when the dazzled eyes had hardly become accustomed to the heavenly effulgence shed upon them by "werther"--now, after scarcely ten years, another wonder occurred, another of the stormy, impassioned periods, of which klinger had been the father and creator, with his soul-stirring dramas, had given birth to a new genius, and a new light was diffused over germany. in the year goethe had published his romance, "sufferings of young werther." carried away with sympathy by his lofty enthusiasm, all germany--yes, all europe--applauded and hailed him as the wonderful poet who had embodied the sorrows and pangs which agitate the heart and soul of each individual, in a sublime symphony, in which every sigh and every thought of suffering, weeping, rejoicing, and exulting humanity, found expression. schiller's first tragedy, "the robbers," was produced upon the stage for the first time in ; and its effects and results were of the most vast and enduring character. goethe, with his "werner," had imbued all hearts with enthusiasm for love and feeling; schiller, with his "robbers," filled all hearts with yearnings after liberty and hatred of tyranny. the personal grandeur and freedom of man were idealized in the noble robber charles moor, and, not only was this magnanimous robber the hero of all young girls, but the hearts of all the young men were filled with abhorrence of and contempt for the tyrants who had compelled this high-minded man to flee to the bohemian forests and become a robber in order to escape the galling chains of subserviency to princes. enthusiasm for this champion of liberty, this robber, charles moor, at the same time imbued all with detestation of tyrants. the lion-rampant which was to be seen on the printed copies of "the robbers," and which bore the motto "_in tyrannos_," was only a representation of the german people, who, moved to the core by schiller's tragedy, and made conscious of the worth and dignity of man, asserted itself in its majesty against tyranny. "had i been present at the creation of the world as god," said a german prince at that time, "and had i foreseen that 'the robbers' would be written in this world, i would never have created it." in a german city where "the robbers" was produced on the stage, the performance had so powerful an effect on the minds of the youth, that twelve young men formed the plan of fleeing secretly from the houses of their parents to the bohemian forests, in order to make up a band of robbers. all the preparations had been made, and the twelve juvenile robbers had agreed to meet on the following night at a designated place outside the city gate; when one of the young heroes, in giving his mother a last good-night kiss, could no longer restrain his tears, and in this manner led to the discovery of the great secret and the prevention of the plan by the arrest of the youthful band of aspirants. as the german public was filled with rapture for the suicidal love-hero werther, it now worshipped the suicidal robber-hero charles moor: while love then excited its transports, liberty and the rights of humanity were now the objects of its enthusiasm. and the poet schiller added fuel to the flames of this enthusiasm. a new tragedy, the theme of which was liberty, "fiesco," soon followed his "robbers;" and the sensation which it caused was still to be surpassed by that excited throughout all germany by his third tragedy, "louise müllerin, or intrigues and love." this was, at the same time, an exaltation of noble love, and of the proud human heart, and a condemnation and denunciation of the established prejudices which arrogantly recognized nobility and gentle birth as conferring prerogatives and privileges. "the robbers," "fiesco," and "louise müllerin," these were the flaring torches of the revolution which in germany was to work out its ends in the minds of men, as it had done in a more material manner, in france, on their bodies. in france royalty and the nobility were conducted to the guillotine, in germany they were pilloried in public opinion by the prince and court marshal in "intrigues and love." goethe had given the german public the ideal of love--schiller gave them the ideal of liberty. and the poet of "the robbers" was as warmly enshrined in the heart of the german people as the poet of "werther" had been. but alas! the admiration and enthusiasm of the german public shows itself in words and praises, but not in deeds in material proofs. true, the germans give their poets a portion of their hearts, but not a portion of their fortune. schiller had given the germans his three tragedies; they had made their triumphal march over every stage in germany; but schiller had nevertheless remained the poor poet, whose only possession was the invisible laurel-wreath which adorned his noble brow, accorded him by the german people. his countless admirers saw him in their inspired thoughts with his youthful head entwined with laurel, and would, no doubt, have been horrified if they could have seen him in his dressing-gown, the nightcap pulled down over the laurel, stooping in front of his iron stove and endeavoring to rekindle the coals with his breath, in order that his coffee might be warmed a little. but it was a vain endeavor. the fire was almost out, the coals glowed but faintly, and the poet's breath was not strong enough to renew the flame. "all in vain," sighed schiller, replacing the coffee-pot on the ashes, with a disconsolate shrug of the shoulders; "where there is no fuel, there can be no fire." he slowly arose from his kneeling position, and, his hands folded behind his back, walked with rapid strides to and fro in his little chamber. the dimly-burning tallow-candle which stood on the table, covered with papers and books, flared up whenever he passed, and illuminated, for the moment, the large rugged figure and the pale countenance, with the high forehead and light-blue eyes. at first this countenance wore a gloomy, troubled look. but by degrees it assumed another expression; and soon the flaring light showed in this dingy little room the features of an inspired poet, with sparkling eyes, and an exulting smile. "yes," he exclaimed, in a loud voice, "yes, it shall be so! i will append this scene to the third act, and it must be the loftiest and grandest of the entire tragedy. not to prince carlos or to the queen shall posa proclaim his sublime ideas of liberty and his plans for the happiness of the people. no, he shall hurl them in the face of the tyrant, of king philip himself. with the lightning of his words he shall warm this rock of tyranny, and unseal the spring of inspiration in the breast of the man-despising, bigoted ruler, and make the waters of human love play joyfully! oh, ye eternal gods, give me words, fire my thoughts, and give wings to my inspiration, that i may be able to give expression, in a flow of rapture and poetry, to that which now fills my whole soul!" he rushed to his table and threw himself with such violence into his old stool that it groaned and cracked beneath him. but schiller paid no attention to this; his whole soul was in his work, his whole heart was filled with enthusiasm and delight. his hand flew over the paper, his smile brightened, his countenance became more radiant. at times he dictated to himself in a loud, energetic voice, the words which his flying pen conveyed to the paper, that they might henceforth to all eternity be indelibly imprinted in the hearts of his readers. but schiller was not thinking of his readers, nor of the possible effect of his words; he thought only of his work. there was no room in his soul but for poetry, for the sublime and lofty scene which he wished to add to his tragedy. "oh," he now exclaimed, his pen speeding like an arrow over the rustling paper, "oh, could the combined eloquence of all the thousands who are interested in this lofty hour, but tremble on my lips, to fan the spark which i feel into a flame! abandon this unnatural idolatry that destroys us. be our model of the eternal and the true, and--" a severe and painful cough interrupted the enraptured poet; he was compelled to discontinue his recitation; the pen faltered in his quivering hand; and from the sublime realms of the ideal, bodily pain recalled the poet to reality. he let fall the pen, the arrow which the gods had bestowed, to enable him to divide the clouds of prejudice and throw open to enraptured humanity the heaven of poetry,--he let fall the pen, and raised his hand to his trembling, panting breast. "how it pains, how it pricks!" he groaned. "is it not as if the tyrant philip had thrust his dagger into the breast of poor posa, in the anger of his offended majesty, and--" another attack of coughing silenced him, and resounded through the quiet solitary chamber. the sound struck upon his ear so dismally that he cast a hasty glance behind him into the gloomy space, as if looking for the ghost which had uttered such dreary tones. "if this continues, i am hardly repaid for having fled from my tyrannical duke," murmured schiller. "truly i had better have remained and served out my poor miserable existence as regimental surgeon, than cough my life out as a german, that is, as a hungry poet." but as he said this, his lips quivered, and self-reproach was depicted in his countenance. "be still," he exclaimed, "be still! shame upon you, schiller, for uttering such unmanly, cowardly words! you a poet, frederick schiller? you are not even a man! you aspire to ascend the heights of parnassus, and sink down disheartened and discouraged when an evil annoys you on the way, and admonishes you that you are only a man, a mortal who aspires to climb to the seat of the gods. if you are a poet, frederick schiller, remember that the gods are watching over you, and that they will not cruelly abandon you before the goal is half achieved. "no," he exclaimed in a loud voice, raising his head, and looking upward, "no, the gods will not abandon me! they will give me strength and health and a long life, that i may accomplish the task which my soul and mind and heart tell me is required at my hands. no, parnassus stands before me, and i will climb it!" his beaming eye glanced upward in ecstasy and saw not the low dusty ceiling, the want and indigence by which he was surrounded. he gazed into immensity; the low ceiling opened to his view, and through it "he saw the heavens and the countenance of the blessed!" a loud noise in the street awakened him from his trance. it was the watchman blowing his horn and calling the hour in stentorian tones. "four o'clock," murmured schiller, "the night approaches its end!--and my candle also," he continued, smiling, as he looked at the brass candlestick, from the upper rim of which the softened tallow was falling in heavy drops, while the wick had sunk down into the liquid mass. schiller shrugged his shoulders. "it appears that i must stop in the middle of my grand scene and go to bed. my good friend streicher has in vain begged me to do so, through his musical messenger of love; and now a tallow-candle compels me to do so! what poor, miserable beings we men are! a trifling, inanimate, material thing has more power over us than the spirit, and while we oppose the latter we must submit to be overcome by the former! therefore to bed, to bed! farewell, my posa! the poor human creature leaves you for a few hours, but the lofty human mind will soon return to you! good-night, my posa!" the wick of the miserable candle flared up once more and then expired with a crackling noise in the liquid tallow. "that is as it should be," laughed schiller; "the poet, like the mule, must be able to find his way in the dark on the verge of an abyss!" he groped his way through the little room to his bedchamber, and undressed himself rapidly; and the loud, regular breathing soon announced that the young poet, frederick schiller, was wrapped in health-giving and refreshing slumber. chapter ii. the trials of life. frederick schiller still slept, although the pale winter sun of december stood high in the heavens, and the streets of the little city of mannheim had long since awakened to new life and activity. frederick schiller still slept, and, worn out by his long vigils, his work, and his cough, might have slept on for a long time, had he not been aroused by a loud knocking at the door, and an audible step in the adjoining room. a young man stood on the threshold of the bedchamber and wished schiller a hearty good-morning. "i can account for this, fritz," said he, raising his finger threateningly--"not into bed at night, not out of bed in the morning! did i not send you my watchman as a love-messenger? but he has already complained to me that it was unavailing." "do not be angry, my andrew," exclaimed schiller, extending his hand to his friend with a cordial smile. "a poet must above all things wait upon the muses submissively, and may not show them the door when they pay him a visit at an unseemly hour of the night." "ah, the nine muses would have been satisfied if you had shown them out, and had graciously accorded them the privilege of knocking at your door again this morning! but get up, fritz! unfortunately, i have something of pressing and grave importance to communicate!" with one bound frederick schiller was out of his bed. "of pressing and grave importance," he repeated, dressing rapidly, "that sounds very mystical, andrew. and now that i look at you, i find that your usually open brow is clouded. it is no misfortune that you have to announce?" "no, fritz, no misfortune, thank god, but a very great annoyance. miserable, grovelling poverty once more stretches out its ravenous claws." "what is it?" asked schiller, breathlessly, as he drew the dressing-gown over his shoulders with trembling hands. "i am now composed and ready to hear all! some impatient creditor who wishes to throw me into prison. is it not so? speak it right out, andrew, without hesitation." "well, then, come with me into the other room. there you shall learn all," answered andrew streicher, taking his friend's hand and throwing the chamber door open, which he had closed behind him on his entrance. "come and see!" "mr. schwelm," exclaimed schiller, as he observed on crossing the threshold a gentleman standing in a window-niche, whose countenance indicated that he was very ill at ease. "yes, truly, this is my loved and faithful friend, oswald schwelm, from stuttgart, the literary godfather of my career as a poet, and--but how mournful you look, dear schwelm! and not a single word of friendship for me, no greeting?" "ah, schiller, these are hard times," sighed oswald schwelm. "anxiety and want have driven me from stuttgart, and i come to you as a right unwelcome guest. only believe that i deplore it deeply myself, but i cannot help it, and it is not my fault. i would gladly sacrifice every thing for my friend schiller, but i have nothing more; and painful necessity compels me to remind you of the old debt." "do not judge him harshly, schiller," said streicher, in a low voice. "poor schwelm's difficulties are of a very urgent nature. you know very well that at a time when no printer could be found to put your 'robbers' in press, schwelm guaranteed to the publisher in stuttgart the expense incurred in its publication, because he was convinced, as we all were, that the 'robbers' would make you a celebrated poet, and not only insure you a harvest of honor and renown, but also of money. now, unfortunately, the money has not yet been harvested, and poor oswald schwelm has had the additional misfortune of losing his capital by the failure of the commercial house in which it was deposited. since then the publisher has dunned him in an outrageous manner, and has even obtained a warrant for his arrest; and, in order to escape, schwelm fled from stuttgart and came here!" "forgive me, friend schwelm," said schiller, rushing forward and embracing the young merchant. "ah, my dear friends, it seems that you have mistaken me and my future; it seems that the lofty plans formed in our youthful days are not to be realized." "they have already been realized in part," said schwelm, gently. "you are a renowned poet; all germany admires and praises you! the 'robbers' has been given on every stage, and--" "and i have not even three hundred florins," interrupted schiller, sadly, "not even a paltry three hundred florins to meet the just demands of the friend who confided in and gave his bond for me, and who must now become involved in danger and difficulty on my account." "then you have not succeeded in getting the money together?" said streicher, mournfully. "i imparted to you two weeks ago the contents of the letter containing an anxious appeal for help, which schwelm had written to me, and you promised to procure the money. since then i disliked to speak of the matter again, because i knew you would surely leave no means untried to raise the amount." "and i have left no means untried," exclaimed schiller, with an angry gesture. "what can i do? no one is willing to lend or advance money on the pitiful capital of a poet's talent! the few florins which i have received for the representation of the 'robbers' and 'fiesco' have hardly sufficed to purchase the bare necessities of life; and when i begged the manager, mr. von dalberg, to advance me on 'louisa müllerin' at least three hundred florins, as he had determined to put it on the stage, he refused me, and i had the mortification of being turned off by this nobleman like a miserable begging writer." "and your father," said andrew schwelm, timidly. "did you not say that you would apply to your father, major schiller?" "i have done so," replied schiller, with a sigh. "i wrote urgently, representing my want and troubles, and begging him to have pity on his poor son, and to lend him a helping hand for this once. but it seems my words have not had power to touch his paternal heart, for until now i have in vain awaited a reply on every mail day. and it seems that the mail which comes from stuttgart to-day has brought me no letter, for i believe the hour at which letters are delivered has long since passed. i must therefore patiently wait another three days for a reply, and the next mail will perhaps condemn me to another trial of patience. oh, my friends, if you could see my heart, if you could estimate the pain this mortification causes me! for myself, i am ready to suffer want, to content myself with the bare necessities of life--yes, even to hunger and thirst, to attain the lofty ends to which i aspire. the path of a poet has ever been a thorny one, and poverty has always been the companion of poetry. this i am ready to bear. i do not crave riches; and even if the tempter should approach in this trying hour and offer me a million, but with the condition that i should forswear poetry, and write nothing more for the stage, i would reject the million with contempt, and a thousand times prefer to remain a poor poet than become a rich idler. but to see you, my friends, in trouble and suffering on my account, and powerless to relieve you, is truly bitter, and--" "the letter-carrier," exclaimed streicher joyfully, as, after a timid knock, the door was softly opened, and a man in the uniform of the thurn and taxis post-office officials entered the room. "a letter from ludwigsburg. ten kreutzers postage," said the carrier, holding out a large sealed letter. "ten kreutzers," murmured schiller, as he nervously fumbled in the pockets of his dressing-gown and then in the table-drawer. "here are the ten kreutzers, in case you should not happen to have the small change," said streicher, hastily, as he handed the carrier the money and received the letter. "and here it is, friend schiller. is it from your father?" "yes, my friends, it is from him. and may the gods have been graciously inclined, and have opened my father's heart to his son's prayer!" he hastily tore off the cover and threw open the large folded sheet. "alas, my friends," he sighed, "it is a very long letter, and that bodes no good, for he who gives says but little, but he who denies clothes his refusal in many prettily-turned phrases. let me read!" a few moments of silence followed. schiller, seated on his chair, his arm resting on the table, was reading his father's letter, while andrew streicher and oswald schwelm were standing opposite him, in the window-niche, regarding him anxiously and inquiringly. they saw that schiller's brow grew darker and darker; that his cheek became paler; and that the corners of his mouth quivered, as they always did when the poet's soul was moved with anger or pain. "read, andrew," said schiller, handing the letter to andrew streicher, after a long silence. "read my father's letter aloud, that you may both know what i have to expect; that you may perceive that i am nothing but a poor, miserable dreamer, in whom no one believes, not even his own father, and who must be awakened from his illusions by harsh words. andrew, read the lecture addressed by my father to his miserable son. to hear these unhappy words from your lips will serve as a penance, and may perhaps have the effect of bringing you to the conclusion that my father is right in giving me up. read it, streicher." streicher took the proffered letter and read aloud: "'/my son/!--here i sit with his letter before me, and its perusal has provoked tears of displeasure. i have long since foreseen his present position, the foundation of which has already been laid in stuttgart. i have faithfully warned him against it, given him the best advice, and cautioned him against expending any thing over his income, and thereby involving himself in debts, which are very readily made, but not so easily paid. i gave him an adequate outfit upon leaving the academy. to give him a start in the world, our gracious duke gave him for his services what, together with the little his parents were able to do for him from day to day, would have been an ample support for him as an unmarried man. but all these advantages, all my teachings, and all hopes of better prospects here, have been able to effect nothing. he has combated all my reasons, made light of my experience and of the experience of others, and has only listened to such counsels as would inevitably insure his destruction. god in his wisdom and goodness could choose no other way to bring him to a knowledge of himself than by sending this affliction to convince him that all our intellect and power, all reliance upon other men, and upon accidental and happy contingencies, are for the most part vain, foolish, and fallacious, and that it is he alone who helps all those who pray to him earnestly and patiently.'" "as if i had not done so!" interrupted schiller. "as if i had not besought the great ruler of the destinies of men, in deep fervor and humility of soul, to cast a ray of enlightening grace upon the head of him who had believed it to be his duty to follow the divine call of poetry, and who for its own sake had joyfully relinquished all other earthly prospects and hopes! but my fervid prayers were in vain; no ray of mercy has illumined my poor, gloomy chamber; and from god and man alike the poet receives an angry refusal, and is dismissed as a beggar!--read on, streicher! i will drink the cup of bitterness to the dregs; not a single drop of gall shall remain untasted. read on, my friend!" "but, frederick," said streicher, in a tender, imploring voice, "why impose upon yourself and us the penance of reading these hard words? your father means well with you undoubtedly. he is a good and honorable man, but from his stand-point the world has a different appearance than from that of the heights of parnassus. he estimates you by an ordinary scale, and that is not adapted to frederick schiller. that your father will not furnish you the required three hundred florins was evident from the commencement of the letter, and that suffices." "no, that is not enough," exclaimed schiller, earnestly. "you shall know what my own father thinks of me, that you may be under no more illusions concerning me, and not have to reproach me some day with having infected you with my fantasies, and held out hopes that would never be realized. i beg you, therefore, to read on. it seems as if the scorching words of paternal anger might in some degree expiate the criminality of my conduct. read!" "well, fritz, if you insist upon it, i will do so," sighed streicher; and in a loud voice he resumed the reading: "'he has not been humbled by all the chastening administered to him since his departure, and experience only has made him wiser. that he has suffered from intermittent fever for eight entire months, does no credit to his professional studies; and in the same case he would certainly have bitterly reproached a patient for not having followed instructions in regard to diet and mode of living. man is not always dependent upon circumstances, or he would be a mere machine. my dear son has never striven with himself, and it is highly improper and sinful to throw the responsibility of his not having done so upon his education in the academy. many young men have grown up in this institution who demanded and received as little assistance, and they are now doing well, and are much esteemed and provided for. how does he suppose we poor parents feel when we reflect that these troubles would not have overtaken him, that we would have been spared a thousand cares on his account, and that he would certainly have achieved what he sought if he had remained here? in brief, he would have been happier, more contented, and more useful in his day and generation, if he had been satisfied to pursue a medium course in life, and had not aspired to take so high a flight. nor is it necessary that a superior talent should be made manifest outwardly, at least not until the benefits accruing from its exercise can be shown and proven, and it can be said, "these are the fruits of diligence and intelligence." pastor hahn and pastor fulda are both great men, and are visited by all travelling scholars, and yet they look like other men. as for the three hundred florins, i must say that this demand has excited my great displeasure. i have never given him cause to think, "my father can and will rescue me when i become involved in difficulties." and he knows himself that i have three other children, none of whom are provided for, and from whom much has already been withheld on his account. on his prospects, hopes, plans, and promises, i can advance nothing, as i have already been so badly deceived. even if it were possible to place some faith in them, i could not raise the money; for, although i am known as an honest man, my financial condition, and the amount of my salary, are also well known; and it is evident that i would not be able to pay a debt of from two to three hundred florins out of my income. i can do nothing but pray for my son! his faithful father, /schiller/.'"[ ] "can do nothing but pray and scold," exclaimed schiller, emphatically. "there you see what an unworthy, trifling fellow i am. all the hopes which my family and friends entertained for me, yes, which i entertained for myself and my talents, are blighted, dissolved in smoke like burning straw. nothing real is left but the burden of my debts, and my poverty. my good oswald, you have had the weakness to believe in me, and to accept a draft on my future. to your own detriment, you must now perceive that this draft is worthless, and that my father was right in reproaching me for having had the temerity to attempt to make a german poet out of a wurtemberg regimental surgeon." "do not speak so, frederick schiller," exclaimed streicher, indignantly. "your words are blasphemous; and all germany would be angry with you if it heard them!" "but all germany would take good care not to pay my debts. while i, in holy and true disinterestedness, am ready to consecrate my whole being to the service of my country, and to devote all the powers of my mind and talents to its benefit, its instruction and entertainment, if i should demand of the german nation that it should also bring me an offering, that each individual who had read and seen my tragedies should give me a groschen, each one would deny that he had ever seen or read them, and, with a shrug of his shoulders, would turn from the beggar who had the temerity to require any thing of the public but its applause and its momentary delight. my friends, i am very miserable, for you must know that this is not the only large debt which troubles me. there were other noble souls who had confidence in my success, and allowed themselves to be bribed by 'the robbers.' my noble friend, madame von wolzogen, who gave the homeless one an asylum on her estate in bauerbach, when he had fled from ludwigsburg, did more than this. when, after a sojourn of seven months in her beautiful tusculum, i marched out into the world again, she loaned me two hundred florins, which i solemnly promised to return in a year. the year has expired, my noble friend depends on this sum to make a necessary payment on a mortgage which is attached to her estate, and i am not able to keep my word. i must expect her to consider me a swindler who has cheated her with empty promises!" "no, madame von wolzogen will not think so, for she knows you," exclaimed streicher, indignantly. "she will be as far from thinking so as i am," said oswald schwelm, gently. "it is not your fault that you are in pecuniary difficulties; the blame does not attach to you, but to the german public, to the german nation, which allows its poets to suffer want, even while enraptured with their works. the german people are prodigal with laurels and wreaths, but cannot be taught that laurels do not sustain life, and that wreaths are of no avail to the poet if they do not also prepare a home for him, where he can await the muses at his ease, and rest on his laurels. ah, frederick schiller, when i see how you, one of the noblest of poets, are tormented by the want of a paltry sum of money, my eyes fill with tears of compassion, not for you, but for the german fatherland, which disowns its most exalted sons, while it worships the foreigner and gives a warm reception to every stranger charlatan who condescends to come and pocket german money for his hackneyed performances." "no, no," said schiller, hastily. "you must not abuse and condemn the object of my highest and holiest love. as a true son never reviles his mother, even when he believes that she has been unjust to him, so the true son of germany must never scold his sublime mother, but must love her tenderly and endearingly, even if she should accord him nothing but a cradle and a grave. as we say, 'what god does is well done,' we must also say what germania does is well done. and believe me, my friends, if i truly deserve it, and if, as you say, and i hope, i am really a poet, the german fatherland will smile upon me, and give me the bread of life for the manna of poetry. men will not let him die of hunger to whom the gods have given the kiss of immortality." "amen," said streicher, with a slight touch of derision. "yes, amen," repeated schiller, smiling. "it was well, friend oswald, that you awakened the patriot in me by your indignation in my behalf, for the patriot has helped me to overlook my little earthly necessities. my friends, be patient and indulgent with me. better times are coming, and if i am really a poet the gods will take pity on me, and a day of recognition and renown will also come! to be sure, i have nothing to offer you at present but hope. the draft on the future is all i can give you, my good oswald, for the money you loaned me." "this draft is, in my eyes, the most beautiful coin," said oswald schwelm, heartily, "and truly it is not your fault that my hard-hearted creditor cannot take the same view of the matter, but demands payment for the publication of 'the robbers.' well, we will speak of it no more. forgive me, schiller, for having caused you disquiet by coming here. but, as i said before, i did not think of the ingratitude of the german fatherland, but only of the german poet who had given it 'the robbers,' 'fiesco,' and 'louise müllerin;' and i hoped that applause had made him rich. give me your hand, schiller, and let us say farewell." "and what will you do, my poor friend?" asked schiller, feelingly. "will you return to stuttgart, where the hard-hearted creditor awaits you?" "no, no," answered oswald, "i will not return to stuttgart, for the warrant of arrest would hang over my head like the sword of damocles! i will go to carlsruhe, where i have an old uncle, and will endeavor to soften his heart. do not trouble yourself about me, my friend; and may your cheerfulness and the creative power of the poet not for a single moment be darkened by the remembrance of me! we prosaic sons of humanity are often aided by accident, and find some little avenue of escape from the embarrassments of life, while you poets march through the grand portals into the temple of fame, where you are more exposed to the attacks of enemies. farewell, friend schiller, and may great jupiter ever be with you!" "adieu, friend schwelm!" said schiller, extending his hand and gazing sadly at his kind, open countenance. "you assume to be gay, in order to hide your anxiety; but i see through the veil which friendship and the goodness of your heart have prompted you to assume, and behind it i detect a careworn, anxious look. oh, my friends, i am a poor man, and am only worthy of commiseration; and it is all in vain that i endeavor to arm myself against a knowledge of this fact." "no, you are a great and enviable man," exclaimed streicher, with enthusiasm. "of that we are all assured, and you also shall become convinced of it. you are ascending the mountain which leads to renown, and, although now enveloped in a cloud, you will at last attain the heights above, and be surrounded with a halo of sunshine and glory." "i wish, my friend," said schiller, pointing with a sad smile to the ashes in the stove, "i wish we had some of this sunshine now, and were not compelled to warm the room with such expensive coals. but patience, patience! you are right, andrew, i am ascending a mountain, and am now in a cloud, and therefore it is not surprising that i feel chilly and uncomfortable. but better times are coming, and my health will improve, and this bad cough and fever will no longer retard my footsteps, and i will be able to mount aloft to the abode of the gods with more rapid strides. farewell, my friends! my writing-table seems to regard me with astonishment, as if asking why i have not brought it my customary ovation." "let it look and inquire," said streicher. "you must make no reply, but must first break your fast, as any other honest man would do. come and breakfast with us at the inn, frederick. a man must eat, and, although i unfortunately have not enough money to satisfy this cerberus of a creditor, i have at least enough to pay for a breakfast and a glass of wine for us three. come, frederick, get yourself ready quickly, and let us tread the earth with manly footsteps, and compel it to recognize us as its lords." "no, you good, thoughtless man of the world," said schiller, smiling; "no, i must remain here! i must work on at 'don carlos,' who gives my mind no rest by day or night, and insists on being completed!" "but promise me, at least, fritz, that you will breakfast before you go to work?" "i promise you! now go, andrew, for the good schwelm is already holding the door open, and waiting for you." chapter iii. henrietta von wolzogen. "breakfast," murmured schiller, after his two friends had taken leave of him. "oh, yes, it were certainly no bad idea to indulge in a hot cup of coffee and fresh sweet rolls. but it costs too much, and one must be contented if one can only have a cup of fresh water and a piece of bread." he stood up and returned to the chamber, to complete the toilet so hastily made before, to adjust his hair, and put on the sober, well-worn suit which constituted alike his work-day and holiday attire. after having finished his toilet, schiller took the pitcher, which stood on a tin waiter by the side of a glass, and bounded gayly down the stairway into the large courtyard and to the fountain, to fill his pitcher at the mouth of the tragic mask from which a stream of water constantly gushed. this was schiller's first morning errand. every morning the people in the house could see the pale, thin young man go to the fountain with his pitcher; and it amused them to watch him as he walked up and down the yard with long strides, looking heavenward, his head thrown back, and his chest expanded with the fresh morning air, which he inhaled in long draughts. then, when he had stretched and exercised his limbs, breathed the air, and looked at the heavens, he returned to the fountain, took up his pitcher, running over with water, ran into the house, up the stairway, and re-entered his dingy little room. but he brought the heavens and the fresh morning air with him, and his soul was gladdened and strengthened for his poetic labors. to-day the fresh air had done him much good; and, after he had drunk his first glass of water, and eaten his bread and butter, which he took from a closet in the wall, he looked pleased and comfortable; a smile glided over his features, and his eyes brightened. "how rich is he who has few wants," he said softly to himself, "and how freely the spirit soars when its wings are unencumbered with the vanities of life! come, ye muses and graces, keep a loving watch around my table, and guide my hand that i may write nothing that does not please you!" he threw himself on the chair before the table, took up his pen, rapidly read what he had last written, and with a few strokes finished the last great scene of the third act of his new tragedy, "don carlos." "und jetzt verlaszt mich!"[ ] recited schiller, as his pen flew over the paper; and then he continued, in a changed voice: "kann ich es mit einer erfüllten hoffnung,--dann ist dieser tag der schönste meines lebens!" and then he added, in the first voice: "er ist kein verlorener in dem meinigem!" "yes," exclaimed schiller, in a loud voice, as he threw his pen aside, "and it is not a lost one in mine. at some future day i will think of this hour with joy and satisfaction--of the hour in which i wrote the closing scene of the third act of a tragedy, a dramatist's greatest and most difficult task. oh, ye muses and graces, whom i invoked, were you near me, blessing my labors? i laid my human sacrifice of pain and suffering on your altar this morning, and my poor head once more received the baptism of tears. bless me with your favor, ye muses and graces, and let me hope that the tears of the man were the baptism of the poet! yes, my soul persuades me that i am a poet; and this new work will attest it before the world and mankind, and--" a cry of surprise and dismay escaped his lips, and he stared toward the door which had just been opened, and in which a lady appeared who was completely wrapped up in furs, and whose face was entirely shaded by a hood. "madame von wolzogen," he exclaimed, rising quickly. "is it possible? can it be you?" he rushed forward and seized her hand, and when he encountered her mournful gaze he sank on his knees and wept bitterly. "oh, my friend, my mother, that we should meet under such circumstances! that i should be compelled to throw myself at your feet in shame and penitence!" "and why, schiller?" asked madame von wolzogen, in her soft, kindly voice. "why must you throw yourself at my feet, and why this penitence? be still. do not reply yet, my poor child. first, hear me! my only reason in coming here was to see you. it seemed impossible, unnatural, that i should pass through mannheim without seeing my friend, my son, my frederick schiller! my sister, who lives in meiningen, has suddenly fallen ill, and has called me to her bedside. well, i am answering her call; for no one has ever appealed to henrietta von wolzogen in vain. i have ridden all night, and will soon resume my journey. the carriage is waiting for me at the corner. i inquired my way to schiller's dwelling; and here i am, and i wish to know, frederick schiller, what this silence means, and why you have not written to me for so long a time? that i must know; and i am only here for the purpose of putting this one question: schiller, have you forgotten your friends in bauerbach? have you forgotten me, who was your friend and your mother?" "no, no," he cried, rising and throwing his arms tenderly around madame von wolzogen's neck, and pressing her to his heart. "no, how could i forget your goodness, your generosity, and friendship? but can you not comprehend, my friend, why your arrival could have a terrible effect on me--could bring me to the verge of despair?" "only see how the poetic flame bursts forth when we prosaic people ask a practical question--when we have to remind poets that, unfortunately, we are not fed upon ambrosia falling from heaven! but i imagined that my wild boy would be once more tearing his own flesh, and terribly dissatisfied with his destiny. and i am here, schiller, to tell you that you must think better of me and better of yourself, and not confound noble friendship with ignoble gold, which shrewd people call the mainspring of life, but which is, fortunately, not the mainspring of friendship, and--" "oh, my friend, if you knew--" "silence! the philippic which i had time to prepare at my leisure during my night ride, and which i am determined to inflict upon the capricious and wayward boy, if not upon the man, is not yet ended. is it possible that your heart could be forgetful of and untrue to the past? and why? because his poor motherly friend has written him in confidence that she would be glad if he would return at least a part of the sum of money she had loaned him. and what is his reply? nothing, nothing at all! he throws his friend's letter into the fire, and--" "into the fire of his anguish, of his reproaching conscience," interrupted schiller, passionately. "he was silent, because it wrung his heart to stand even for a moment in the category of those who had defrauded you. oh, my dear friend, toward whom i feel drawn as a loving, obedient son, consider in your sensitive woman's heart if the thought of breaking my faith and becoming a traitor to you was not calculated to drive me to desperation! confiding in my honesty, you loaned me a considerable sum of money, the more considerable as you were not rich, and were yourself compelled to borrow the money from a jew. i solemnly promised to return the borrowed sum within the course of a year. the year has expired, the jew urges payment; and now, when you gently remind me of my promise, i feel with shame and rage that i have broken my word, and acted dishonorably toward you; and, therefore--oh, out upon contemptible, cowardly human nature, which dares not look its own weakness in the face!--and therefore i was silent. how often did my heart prompt me, in my distress of mind, to fly to your friendship for relief! but the painful consciousness of my inability to comply with your request and pay my debt, held me back. my powerlessness to meet your just demand made the thought of you, which had ever been a source of joy, a positive torment. whenever your image appeared, the picture of my misery rose up before me. i feared to write to you, because i had nothing to write but the eternal: 'have patience with me!'"[ ] he laid his head on madame von wolzogen's lap and sobbed; but with gentle force she compelled him to rise. "stand up, schiller; hold your head erect. it does not beseem you to despair and complain like other poor, suffering children of humanity. you, who are marching upward to parnassus, should tread under foot the vermin of earthly cares." "but this vermin does not lie at my feet, but is in my brain, and will drive me mad if this goes on! but i must tell you, you must know the truth: it is impossible for me to pay you any part of my debt. oh, it is hard to say these words; nevertheless, i must not be ashamed, for it is destiny. one is not to be deemed culpable because one is unfortunate."[ ] "and one is not unhappy because one has no money," said madame von wolzogen, smiling. "one is only retarded and checked, like the fiery young steed, impatient to bound madly over the plain and dash up the mountain, but prevented by the tightly-drawn reins. but, my friend, this need cause you no unhappiness. with the strength of brave determination, and the energy of creative power, you will break the reins, liberate yourself, and soar aloft. even the winged pegasus bears restraint, and must suffer it; but the poet, who holds and guides the reins, is free--free to mount aloft on his winged steed. and as he soars higher and higher, the earth, with its want and distress, grows less and less distinct. then look upward, friend schiller, upward to parnassus, where golden renown and immortality await you!" "words, beautiful words!" exclaimed schiller. "oh, there was a time when the hope of renown was a source of as intense delight to me as an article of jewelry is to a young girl. now, i am indifferent to every thing. i am willing to serve up my laurels in the next 'boeuf à la mode,' and to resign my tragic muse to your dairy-maid, if you keep cows.[ ] how pitiable is a poet's renown, compared with a happy life! and i am so unhappy that i would willingly exchange all my expectations of future renown for a valid check for one hundred thousand florins, and--" "be silent!" exclaimed madame von wolzogen, imperiously. "you slander yourself. thank god, these utterances do not come from your heart, but from your lips; and that the blasphemies which anger provokes are in a language known and understood only by your fantasy, and not by your mind! i told you before, that it did not beseem you to grovel in the dust. but now i say: down on your knees, frederick schiller, on your knees, and pray to your own genius for forgiveness for the words which you have just spoken." "forgiveness," groaned schiller, falling on his knees. "i beg forgiveness of you, my friend, my mother. i am a criminal--am like peter, who in the hour of trial denied his lord and saviour--and reviled that which is greatest and holiest on earth. be indulgent, have patience with me! better times will come! the foaming and fomenting juice of the grape will clear, and become the rich, fiery wine which refreshes and makes glad. no, i do not despair of my future, and you who love me shall not do so either, and--" "we do not," said madame von wolzogen, smiling. "you are a wonderful man! you are like the changing skies in storm and sunshine--first threatening clouds, then celestial blue; before anger and despair, now joy and hope. and this, my dear young friend, is the best evidence that you are truly a poet; and if you had not known it already, this hour should assure you of the fact. i, however, frederick schiller, have never doubted either your genius or yourself; and i have come to tell you this, and dissipate the dark cloud that was forming between two friends.--no, frederick, we will not permit the sun of our friendship to be darkened. we must be honest, true, and sincere to one another; but we must not be silent and withhold a word of sympathy whenever one of us cannot grant what the other requires. i know that you are embarrassed and in want; and notwithstanding all my friendship, i cannot aid you. you know that the jew israel demands the sum which i borrowed of him; and it is not in your power to return it, although it is very inconvenient for me, and very painful to you. but shall we, because we are needy, make ourselves poor also? shall we, because we have no money, have no friendship either?" "no, my dear, my great, my good lady," exclaimed schiller, his countenance radiant with joy. "no, we will strengthen and console ourselves with friendship, and it must compensate us for all else. oh, how poor and needy one would be in the possession of millions, without love and friendship! i, however, am rich, for i have dear friends--" "and have, perhaps, besides friends, the precious treasure of a sweetheart? oh, schiller, how very prettily you blush, and how conscious you look. in love--once more in love! but in love with whom, my poet, with one or with two? and is the dear one's name margaret, or charlotte, or laura, or--" "enough, enough," cried schiller, laughing, "the dear one's name is love, and i seek her everywhere, and think i find her in every noble and beautiful female face that wears the smile of innocence and the dignity of beauty, that meets my gaze. my heart is thrown open to permit love to enter as a victorious queen, and take possession of the throne of beauty which i have erected in its sanctuary at the side of the altar of friendship, on which you reign supreme, my dear madame wolzogen, my second mother! ah, how i thank you for having come! your loving hand has removed from my soul the load of shame and humiliation, and i once more feel light and free; and i can now speak to you about these disagreeable money matters with calmness. no, no, do not forbid me, my dear lady, but let me speak on. listen! i have been sick throughout almost the entire past year. gnawing disquiet and uncertainty in regard to my prospects have retarded my recovery. this alone is the reason why so many of my plans have miscarried, and i have not been able to work and earn as much as i hoped. but i have now marked out my future course after mature consideration. and, if i am not disturbed on my way, my future is secured. i am putting my affairs in order and will soon be in a condition to pay all my debts. i only require a little time, until my plans begin to work. if i am hampered now, i am hampered forever. this week i will commence editing a journal, the _rhenish thalia_. it will be published by subscription; and a helping hand has been extended to me from many places. the journal will be a success, and i shall derive from it a certain income which will be sufficient for my support. from the proceeds of my theatrical pieces i shall be able to pay off my debts by degrees, and above all, my debt to you, my friend. i solemnly promise to pay you the entire amount, in instalments, by the end of next year, and i will make out three drafts which shall certainly be honored when due. do not smile incredulously, my dear lady, but depend upon my assurances. i am certain that god will give me health to attain this noble aim."[ ] "my friend," said madame wolzogen, with emotion, "may god give you health and strength, not to enable you to pay this little debt, but to enable you to pay the great debt you owe the world! for the world requires of you that you use the great capital of poetry and mind with which god has intrusted you, as the talent which shall bear interest to the joy of mankind and your own honor and renown. it is a high and difficult calling for which god has chosen you. you must march in advance of humanity as its poet and priest, proclaiming and sympathizing with its sorrows and sufferings, and awakening that enthusiasm which leads to action and promotes happiness. ever keep your noble ends in view, my friend, and when the little cares of life annoy you, disregard them, as the lion does the insects that fly around his head, and which he could destroy with a single blow of his paw, did he deem it worth the trouble. and now that we have come to an understanding, and know what we are and intend to remain to each other, and as my time has expired, i must leave you, for my sister is awaiting me. farewell, frederick! give me your hand once more, and now, hand in hand, let us vow true friendship, that friendship which is never dumb, but imparts to the sister soul its joys and sorrows." "so let it be," said schiller, earnestly. "in joy and in sorrow i will ever turn to you, my friend, and second mother; and i now beg you never to doubt me. you were, are now, and always will be, equally dear to my heart. i can never be faithless to you, although circumstances and fate might make me appear so outwardly. never withdraw your love from me. you must and will learn to know me well, and you will then, perhaps, love me a little better. let nothing impair a friendship so pure, sealed under the eye of god.[ ] and be assured i will always love you with the tenderness of a son, although you would not permit me to become your son. i do not reproach you, because i knew you were right. i am at the starting-point of my career, and dare not yet stretch out my hand after the woman i love!" henrietta von wolzogen laid her hand on schiller's shoulder and looked smilingly into his large blue eyes. "after the woman you love?" she whispered. "you, dear boy, admit that the woman you love has not yet been found, and that for the present your heart is playing blind-man's-buff with all the pretty young women? for instance, my daughter charlotte is almost forgotten, because the beautiful madame vischerin has such lovely eyes and converses so agreeably. then we have margaret schwan, who schiller would now certainly love to the exclusion of all others, if, fortunately or unfortunately, madame charlotte von kalb had not been sojourning in mannheim for the last few weeks. she is certainly not exactly beautiful, but then she has such eyes; eyes that glow like a crater of passion, and her words are flaming rockets of enthusiasm. this, of course, charms the young poet; he stands hesitating between margaret and charlotte; and will at last, because he does not know whether to turn to the right or to the left, walk straight on, and look farther for the lady of his love. farewell, schiller, you faithful friend, you faithful lover! farewell!" and waving her hand as a last adieu, madame von wolzogen left the room. schiller cast a confused and troubled look after her. "can she be right?" he murmured. "have i really a heart that only seizes upon an object to relax its hold again? where is the solution of this enigma? have i ever loved, and is my heart so fickle that it can hold fast to nothing?" he walked to and fro in his little room with great strides, his brow clouded and his eyes looking inward, endeavoring to unravel the mysteries of his heart. "no," he said, after a pause. "no, i am not fickle. to her who loved me i would hold firmly in love for ever and ever. but here is the difficulty! i have never found a woman who could or would love me. my heart longs for this sweet interchange of thought; and new sources of happiness and enthusiasm would be opened to me if this ardently-wished-for woman would but appear! it seems the poor, ugly, and awkward frederick schiller is not worthy of such happiness, and must be contented with having had a modest view of love in the distance, like moses of the promised land, without ever having entered its holy temple." with a sigh, schiller threw himself in the chair before the table and covered his quivering face with his hands. but he soon let them fall, and shook his head with an energetic movement. "away with sensitiveness!" said he, almost angrily, "i must accustom myself to be happy on earth without happiness. and if i have no sweetheart, i have friends who love me, and the friendship of a noble soul can well console me for the denied love of a perhaps fickle heart. for he who can call but one soul on earth his friend is blessed, and sits at the round-table of the gods. my poor posa, i will learn from you, and will infuse into you my own feelings. you had but one friend on earth, and the love you could give to no woman you bestowed upon humanity, upon your people. i also will open my heart to humanity, and one woman i will love above all others, and her name shall be germania! i will serve her, and belong to her, and love her as long as i live. hear my vow, ye muses and gods! germania is my love. i will be her poet and her servant; on bended knees i will worship her; i will raise her to the skies, and never falter in my devotion, for to her belong the holiest impulses of heart and soul alike. and now, frederick schiller, be resolute, be strong and joyful. you are germania's lover and her son. determine to do what is good and great, throughout your lifetime, to her honor and renown! take up the pen, frederick schiller! the pen is the sword with which you must fight and conquer!" he took the pen and held it aloft; his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and on his smiling lips a silent prayer trembled. the deep silence was again unbroken, save by the rustling of the pen as it glided over the paper. the muses gathered round the poet and smiled on his labors. chapter iv. joy and sorrow. how long he had sat there and written he knew not, he only knew that these had been happy moments of action and creation; that his heart had been full of bliss and his soul overflowing with enthusiasm, and that this high thought had found expression in words. he felt that, like a god, he was creating human beings who lived, moved, and suffered before him. but alas! he was doomed to descend from the serene heights of poetry to the dusty earth; the cares of life were about to recall him from the bright sphere of poetical visions. his door was violently thrown open, and oswald schwelm rushed in, pale and breathless. "help me, for god's sake, schiller! hide me! i have recognized him! he has just turned into this street, followed by two constables." "who? of whom do you speak? who pursues you?" exclaimed schiller, bounding from his seat. "the hard-hearted creditor from stuttgart. some one has advised him that i have come to mannheim, and he has followed me with his warrant, determined to arrest me here. of this i felt assured when i saw him accompanied by the two constables: but, hoping that i had not been perceived, i ran hastily to your room, and now, schiller, i implore you to rescue me from my pursuers, from my unmerciful creditor; to preserve my freedom and protect me from arrest." "that i will do," said schiller, with an air of determination and defiance: and he stood erect and held up his hand as if threatening the invisible enemy. "you shall suffer no more on my account; you shall not be robbed of your freedom." "be still, my friend! i think i hear steps and whispering voices outside the door. hide me! for god's sake, hide me, or--" too late! too late! the door is opened and the cruel creditor enters, accompanied by two constables. schiller uttered a cry of rage, sprang like a chafed lion at the intruder, caught hold of him, shook him, and pressed him back to the door. "what brings you here, sir? how can you justify this intrusion? how dare you cross this threshold without my permission?" to the stormy questions addressed to him by schiller, with a threatening look and knitted brow, the man replied by a mute gesture toward the two constables, who, with a grave official air, were walking toward oswald schwelm, who had retired to the farthest corner of the room. "mr. oswald schwelm, we arrest you in the name of the superior court of mannheim, by virtue of this warrant, made out by the judicial authorities in stuttgart; and transferred, at the request of mr. richard, to the jurisdiction of the authorities in mannheim. by virtue of the laws of this city we command you to follow us without offering any resistance whatsoever." "you have heard it, mr. schiller," said the printer richard, emphatically. "i have a perfect right to enter this room to arrest my debtor." "no, bloodsucker!" cried schiller, stamping the floor with his foot. "no, you have not the right. you are a barbarian, for you desire to deprive a man of his liberty of whom you know that he owes you nothing!" "he made himself responsible for the payment of a sum of three hundred florins; the sum is due, and mr. schwelm must either pay or go to prison." "god help me!" cried schiller, trembling with anger, and deathly pale with agitation. "give me patience that i may not crush this monster in my righteous indignation. i will be calm and humble, i will beg and implore, for something high and noble is at stake, the liberty of a man! be tranquil, friend schwelm; this man shall not carry out his base intention, he shall not arrest you here in my room. this room is my house, my castle, and no one shall violate its sanctity. out with you, you cruel creditor, ye minions of the law! you can stand before my door and await your prey like blood-hounds, but you shall not lay hands on this noble game until it leaves this sanctuary and crosses this threshold. out with you, i say! if you love life, leave quickly. do you not see that i am filled with the holy wrath of outraged humanity? do you not feel that my hands will destroy you if you do not go, and go instantly?" he threw up his arms, and clinched his fists; and, his eyes flaming, and his angry countenance beautiful with inward agitation, he was about to rush upon the men who had taken hold of oswald schwelm, and now looked on in confusion and terror. but oswald schwelm had, in the mean while, liberated himself from their grasp, and now seized schiller's arm and held him back, gently entreating him to let the law take its course and leave him to his fate. he then turned to the officers and begged them to forget mr. schiller's offensive words, uttered in anger; he admitted that they were perfectly in the right, and he was ready to yield to stern necessity and accompany them. as oswald schwelm approached the door, schiller thrust him back, exclaiming in loud and threatening tones: "i will permit no one to pass this threshold. if you will not leave without him, you shall all remain here; and my room, the room of a german poet, shall be the prison of the noble german man, who is guilty of nothing but--" "but not having paid the money he owes me," interposed mr. richard, "the money which he should have paid a year ago. since then he has been continually putting me off with empty promises and evasions. i am tired of all this, will put up with it no longer, and am determined to resort to extreme measures. officers of the law, do your duty, arrest this man, and pay no attention to the boastful words of mr. schiller. he is a poet, and poets are not so particular in their words. one must just let them talk on without heeding what they say! forward now, forward!" "no, no, oswald," cried schiller, trembling with anger. "come to me, oswald, hold fast to me. they shall never tear you from my side. no, never!--no, never!" "what is going on here, who uttered that cry?" asked a loud, manly voice, and the broad, well-conditioned body of a man who was plainly dressed, and whose face wore an expression of good-nature and kindliness, appeared in the doorway. "herr hölzel," exclaimed schiller, with relief. "my landlord, god sends you to our aid!" "what's the matter? what can i do?" asked hölzel. "i came down from the floor above, and in passing your door i heard a noise and disturbance, and my mr. schiller cry out. 'well,' thinks i, 'i must go in and see what's going on.'" "and i will reply--i will tell you what is going on, my dear hölzel," said schiller, with flashing eyes. "we have here an unmerciful creditor and rude minions of the law, who dare to enter my room in pursuit of a friend who has fled to me from stuttgart for help; to me who am the miserable cause of all his misfortunes. good oswald schwelm pledged himself to make good the payment of three hundred florins to the printer who printed my first work, 'the robbers.' at that time we anticipated brilliant success; we dreamed that 'the robbers' was a golden seed from which a rich harvest would be gathered. we have erred, and my poor friend here is now called upon to pay for his error with his freedom." "but he shall not," said mr. hölzel, with vivacity, as he laid his broad hand on schiller's shoulder. "i will not suffer it; your good friend shall have made no miscalculations. now, mr. schiller, you know very well how fond i am of 'the robbers,' and that i see the piece whenever it is given here in mannheim, and cry my eyes out over iffland, when he does charles moor so beautifully; and i so much admire those fine fellows the robbers, and spiegelberg, who loves his captain dearly enough to die for him a thousand times. i will show you, schiller, that i have learned something from the noble spiegelberg, and that the high-minded robber captain is my model. i am not rich, certainly, and cannot do as he did when his money gave out, and take it forcibly from the rich on the public highways, but i can scrape together funds enough to help a good man out of trouble, and do a service to the author of 'the robbers!'" "what do you say, my friend? what is it you will do?" asked schiller, joyfully. "with your permission, i will lend mr. schwelm, with whose family in stuttgart i am well acquainted, and who, i know, will repay me, the sum of three hundred florins for two years, at the usual rate of interest--that is, if he will accept it." "i will accept it with pleasure," said oswald schwelm, heartily grasping hölzel's proffered hand. "yes, i accept the money with joy, and i give you my word of honor that i will return it at the expiration of that time." "i believe you," said hölzel, cordially, "for he who promoted the publication of 'the robbers' by giving his money for that purpose, is surely too good and too noble to defraud his fellow-man. come down into my office with me. business should be done in an orderly manner," said he, as he laughingly surveyed the room, in which nothing was in its proper place, but every thing thrown around in the greatest disorder. "things are not exactly orderly here; and i don't believe there would be room enough on that table to count out the three hundred florins." "very true," said schiller, smiling. "but you must also consider, hölzel, that the table has never had occasion to prepare itself for the reception of three hundred florins." "i, unfortunately, know very well that the managers of the theatres do not pay the poet as they should," said hölzel, contemptuously. "they pay him but a paltry sum for his magnificent works. tell me, schiller, is what mr. schwan told me yesterday true; did the manager von thalberg really give you but eight louis d'ors for your tragedy, 'fiesco?'" "yes, it is true, hölzel, and i can assure you that this table, for my three tragedies, has not yet groaned under the weight of three hundred florins. and this may in some measure excuse me in your eyes for what has occurred." "no excuse is necessary," said hölzel, good-humoredly. "come, gentlemen, let us go down and attend to our business. above all things, mr. printer-of-the-robbers, send your constables away. they have nothing more to do here, and only offend the eye with their presence. and now we will count out the money, and satisfy the warrant." "and make out a note of indebtedness to you, you worthy helper in time of trouble," said oswald schwelm, as he followed the printer and constables out of the room. schiller was also about to follow, but hölzel gently pushed him back. "it is not necessary for you to accompany us, mr. schiller. what has the poet to do with such matters, and why should you waste your precious time? we can attend to our money matters without you; and i am not willing that this harpy of a printer should any longer remain in your presence." "my dear friend," exclaimed schiller, with emotion, "what a kind, noble fellow you are, and how well it becomes you to do good and generous actions in this simple, unostentatious manner! you have freed me from a heavy burden to-day, and relieved my soul of much care; and if my next drama succeeds well, you can say to yourself that you are the cause, and that you have helped me in my work!" "great help, indeed," laughed the architect. "i can build a pretty good house, but of your theatrical pieces i know nothing at all; and no one would believe me if i should say i had helped frederick schiller in his tragedies. nor is it necessary that they should. only keep a kind remembrance of me in your heart, that is renown enough for me, although men should hear nothing about the poor architect, hölzel." "my friend," said schiller, in an earnest, solemn voice, "if i am really a poet, and the german nation at some future day recognizes, loves, and honors me as such, you also will not be forgotten, and men will keep your name in good remembrance; for what a good man does in love and kindness to a poet, is not lost. children and grandchildren will praise his good action, as if he had done it to themselves, and will call him the nation's benefactor, because he was the poet's benefactor. may this be your reward, my friend! i wish this for your sake and for my own. and now go, for my heart is filled with tears, and i feel them rushing to my eyes!" hölzel had already passed out, and gently closed the door, and did not hear these last words. no one saw schiller's gushing tears; no one heard the sobs which escaped his breast; no one witnessed the struggle with himself, with the humiliations, sorrows, and distress of life; no ear heard him complain sadly of want and poverty, the only inheritance of the german poet! but frederick schiller's soul of fire soon rose above such considerations. his glance, which had before been tearfully directed to the present, now pierced the future; and he saw on the distant heights, on the temple of renown, inscribed in golden letters, the name /frederick schiller/. "i am a poet," he cried, exultingly, "and more 'by the grace of god' than kings or princes are. if earth belongs to them, heaven is mine. while they are regaled at golden tables, i am feasted at the table of the gods with ambrosia and nectar! what matter, if poets are beggars on earth--if they are not possessed of riches? they should not complain. have they not the god-given capital of mind and poetry intrusted to them, that it may bear interest in their works? and, though the man must sometimes hunger, a bountiful repast awaits the poet on the heights of olympus! with this thought i will console myself," he added, in a loud voice, "and will proclaim it to others for their consolation. i will write a poem on this subject, and its name shall be, 'the partition of the earth!'" he walked to the table, and noted this title in his diary with a few hasty strokes of the pen. he now wished to return to his tragedy. but the muses had been driven from this consecrated ground by discordant earthly sounds, and were now not disposed to return at his bidding, and the poet's thoughts lacked buoyancy and enthusiasm. "it is useless," exclaimed schiller, throwing his pen aside. "the tears wrung from my heart by earthly sorrow have extinguished the heavenly fire, and all is cold within me! where shall i find the holy, soul-kindling spark?" "in her," responded a voice in his heart. "in charlotte von kalb! yes, this fair young woman, this impassioned soul will again enliven and inspire me. she understands poetry; and all that is truly beautiful and great finds an echo in her heart. i will go to charlotte! i will read her the first two acts of my 'carlos,' and her delight will kindle anew the fire of enthusiasm." he hastily rolled up his manuscript, and took down his hat. he cast no look at the dusty, dingy little mirror fastened to the window-frame. no brush touched his dishevelled hair, or removed the dust and stains from his dress. it never occurred to the poet to think of his outward appearance. what cared he for outward appearances--he who occupied himself exclusively with the mind? he rushed out of the house, and through the streets of the little city. the people he met greeted him with reverence, and stood still to look after the tall, thin figure of the poet. he neither saw nor heeded them. his eyes were upturned, and his thoughts flew on in advance of him to charlotte--to the impassioned, enthusiastic young woman. does her heart forebode the poet's coming? does the secret sympathy which links souls together, whisper: "charlotte von kalb, frederick schiller approaches?" chapter v. charlotte von kalb. she was sitting at the window of the handsomely-furnished room which she used as a parlor. she had just completed her elegant and tasteful toilet; and when the mirror reflected the image of a young woman of twenty, with light hair, slightly powdered, a high, thoughtful forehead, and remarkably large and luminous black eyes, and the tall, graceful figure, attired in a rich and heavy woollen dress of light blue, charlotte von kalb turned from the beautiful vision with a sigh. "i am well worthy of being loved, and yet no one loves me! no one! neither the husband, forced upon me by my family, nor my sister, who only thinks of the unhappiness of her own married life, nor any other relative. i am alone. the husband who should be at my side, is far away at the court of the beautiful queen of france. the sister lives with her unloved husband on her estates. i am alone, entirely alone! ah, this solitude of the heart is cheerless, for my heart is filled with enthusiasm, and longing for love!" she shuddered as she uttered these words, and turned her eyes with a startled, anxious look to the little picture which, together with several others, hung on the window-frame. she slowly walked forward and gazed at it long and thoughtfully. it was only a plain black silhouette of a head taken in profile. but how expressive was this profile, how magnificent the high, thoughtful forehead, how proud the sharply-defined nose, how eloquent the swelling lips, and how powerful the massive chin! it would have been evident to any observer, that this picture represented the head of a man of great intellect, although he had not seen, written underneath, the name frederick schiller! "frederick schiller,"--whispered charlotte, with a sigh,--"frederick schiller!" her lips said nothing more, but an anxious voice kept on whispering and lamenting in her heart; and she listened to this whispering, and gazed vacantly out into the street! the door-bell rang and roused charlotte von kalb from her dreams. some one has entered the house! she hopes he is not coming to see her! she does not wish to see any one, for no one will come whom she cares to see! some one knocks loudly at the door; a crimson glow suffuses itself over charlotte's cheeks, for she knows this knock, and it echoes so loudly in her heart, that she is incapable of answering it. the knocking is heard for the second time, and a sudden unaccountable terror takes possession of charlotte's heart; she flies through the room and into her boudoir, closing the door softly behind her. but she remains standing near it, and hears the door open, and the footsteps of a man entering; and then she hears his voice as he calls to the servant: "madame von kalb is not here! go and say that i beg to be permitted to see her." oh, she recognizes this voice!--the voice of frederick schiller; and it pierces her soul like lightning, and makes her heart quake. it may not be! no, charlotte; by all that is holy, it may not be! think of your duty, do not forget it for a moment! steel your heart, make it strong and firm! cover your face with a mask, an impenetrable mask! no one must dream of what is going on in your breast--he least of all! a knock is heard at the door leading to her bedchamber. it is her maid coming to announce that mr. schiller awaits her in the reception-room. "tell him to be kind enough to wait a few minutes. i will come directly." after a few minutes had expired, charlotte von kalb entered the reception-room with a clear brow and smiling countenance. schiller had advanced to meet her, and, taking the tapering little hand which she extended, he pressed it fervently to his lips. "charlotte, my friend, i come to you because my heart is agitated with stormy thoughts, for i know that my fair friend understands the emotions of the heart." "emotions of the heart, schiller?" she asked, laughing loudly. "have we come to that pass again? already another passion besides the beautiful margaret schwan and the little charlotte von wolzogen?" he looked up wonderingly, and their eyes met; charlotte's cheeks grew paler in spite of her efforts to retain the laughing expression she had assumed. "how strangely you speak to-day, charlotte, and how changed your voice sounds!" "i have taken cold, my friend," said she, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "you know very well that i cannot stand the cold; it kills me! but it was not to hear this you came to see me?" "no, that is very true," replied schiller, in confusion. "i did not come for that purpose. i--why are your hands so cold, charlotte, and why have you given me no word of welcome?" "because you have not yet given me an opportunity to do so," she said, smiling. "it really looks as if you had come to-day rather in your capacity of regimental surgeon, to call on a patient, than as a poet, to visit an intimate acquaintance." "an intimate acquaintance!" exclaimed schiller, throwing her hand ungently from him. "charlotte, will you then be nothing more to me than an intimate acquaintance?" "well, then, a good friend," she said quietly. "but let us not quarrel about terms, schiller. we very well know what we are to each other. you should at least know that my heart sympathizes with all that concerns you. and now tell me, my dear friend, what brings you here at this unusual hour? it must be something extraordinary that induces the poet schiller to leave his study at this hour. well, have i guessed right? is it something extraordinary?" "i don't know," replied schiller, in some confusion. "you don't know!" exclaimed charlotte, with a peal of laughter, which seemed to grate on schiller's ear, for he recoiled sensitively, and his brow darkened. "i cannot account for the sudden change that has come over me," said schiller, thoughtfully. "i came with a full, confiding heart, charlotte, longing to see you, and now, all at once i feel that a barrier of ice has arisen around my heart; your strangely cold and indifferent manner has frozen me to the core." "you are a child; that is to say, you are a poet. come, my poet, let us not quarrel about words and appearance; whatever my outward manner may be, you know that i am sound and true at heart. and now i see why you came. that roll of paper is a manuscript! frederick schiller has come, as he promised to do a few days ago, to read his latest poem to the admirer of his muse. you made a mystery of it, and would not even tell me whether your new work was a tragedy or a poem. and now you have come to impart this secret. is it not so, schiller?" "yes, that was my intention," he replied, sadly. "i wished to read, to a sympathizing and loved friend, the beginning of a new tragedy, but--" "no 'but' whatever," she exclaimed, interrupting him. "let me see the manuscript at once!" and she tripped lightly to the chair on which he had deposited his hat and the roll of paper on entering the room. "may i open it, schiller?"--and when he bowed assentingly, she tore off the cover with trembling hands and read, "don carlos, infanta of spain; a tragedy."--"oh, my dear schiller, a new tragedy! oh, my poet, my dear poet, what a pleasure! how delightful!" "oh," cried schiller, exultingly; "this is once more the beautiful voice, once more the enthusiastic glance! welcome, charlotte, a thousand welcomes!" he rushed forward, seized her hand, and pressed it to his lips. she did not look at him, but gazed fixedly at the manuscript which she still held in her hand, and repeated, in a low voice, "don carlos, infanta of spain." "yes, and i will now read this infanta, that is, if you wish to hear it, charlotte?" "how can you ask, schiller? quick, seat yourself opposite me, and let us begin." she seated herself on the little sofa, and, when schiller turned to go after a chair, she hastily and noiselessly pressed a kiss on the manuscript, which she held in her hand. when schiller returned with the chair, the manuscript lay on the table, and charlotte sat before him in perfect composure. schiller began to read the first act of "don carlos" to his "friend," in an elevated voice, with pathos and with fiery emotion, and entirely carried away by the power of his own composition! but his friend and auditor did not seem to participate in this rapture! her large black eyes regarded the reader intently. at first her looks expressed lively sympathy, but by degrees this expression faded away; she became restless, and at times, when schiller declaimed in an entirely too loud and grandiloquent manner, a stealthy smile played about her lips. schiller had finished reading, and laid his manuscript on the table; he now turned to his friend, his eyes radiant with enthusiasm. "and now, my dear, my only friend, give me your opinion, honestly and sincerely! what do you think of my work?" "honestly and sincerely?" she inquired, her lips twitching with the same smile. "yes, my friend, i beg you to do so." "well, then, my dear friend," she exclaimed, with a loud and continuous peal of laughter; "well, then, my dear schiller, i must tell you, honestly and sincerely, that 'don carlos' is the very worst you have ever written!" schiller sprang up from his chair, horror depicted in his countenance. "your sincere opinion?" "yes, my sincere opinion!" said charlotte von kalb, still laughing. "no," cried schiller, angrily, "this is too bad!" schiller seized his hat, and, without taking the slightest notice of charlotte, left the room, slamming the door behind him.[ ] with great strides, he hurried through the streets, chagrin and resentment in his heart; and yet so dejected, so full of sadness, that he could have cried out with pain and anguish against himself and against the whole world. when he saw acquaintances approaching, he turned into a side street to avoid them. he wished to see no one; he was not in a condition to speak on indifferent subjects. he reached his dwelling, passed up the stairway, and into the room, which he had left in so lofty a frame of mind, dispirited and cast down. "it is all in vain, all in vain," he cried, dashing his hat to the floor. "the gold i believed i had found, proves to be nothing but glimmering coals that have now died out. oh, frederick schiller, what is to become of you--what can you do with this unreal enthusiasm burning in your soul?" he rushed excitedly to and fro in his little room, striking the books, which lay around on the floor in genial disorder, so violently with his foot, that they flew to the farthest corners of the chamber. he thrust his hands wildly into his disordered hair, tearing off the ribbon which confined his queue, and struck with his clinched fist the miserable little table which he honored with the name of his writing-desk. these paroxysms of fury, of glowing anger--eruptions of internal desolation and despair--were not of rare occurrence in the life of the poor, tormented poet. "my father was right," he cried, in his rage. "i am an inflated fool, who over-estimates himself, and boasts of great prospects and expectations which are never to be realized! why did i not listen to his wise counsel? why did i not remain the regimental surgeon, and crouch submissively at the feet of my tyrant? why was i such a simpleton as to desire to do any thing better than apply plasters! i imagined myself invited to the table of the gods, whereas i am only worthy to stand as a lackey at the table of my duke, and eat the hard crust of duty and subserviency! she laughed! laughed at my poem! all these words, these thoughts that had blossomed up from the depths of my heart; all these forms to whom i had given spirit of my spirit, life of my life: all this had no other effect than to excite laughter--laughter over my tragedy! oh, charlotte, charlotte, why have you done this?" and he again thrust his hands violently into his hair, and sank groaning into his chair. "i am unhappy, very unhappy! i believed i could conquer a world, and have not yet conquered a single human heart! i hoped to acquire honor, renown, and a competency by the creative power of my talents, and am but a poor, nameless man, tormented by creditors, by misery, and want, who must at last admit that he placed a false estimate on his abilities. truly i am unhappy, very unhappy! entirely alone; none who loves or understands me!" deep sighs escaped his breast, and tears stood in the eyes that looked up reproachfully toward heaven. as he lowered his eyes, he looked toward the writing-table--the writing-table at which he had spent so many hours of the night in hard work; at which he had written, thought, and suffered so much. "in vain, all in vain! nothing but illusion and disappointment! if what i have written with my heart's blood excites laughter, i am no poet, am not one of the anointed! it were better i had copied deeds and written recipes, instead of tragedies, for a living, and--" he ceased speaking as he observed a letter and package, which the carrier had brought and deposited on his table during his absence. a simple letter would have excited no pleasure or curiosity; yes, would even have filled him with consternation, for the letters he was in the habit of receiving only caused humiliation and pain. they were either from dunning creditors, from his angry father, or from theatre-managers, rejecting his "fiesco," as useless, and not adapted to the stage. but beside this letter lay a package; and the letter which schiller now took from the table bore the postmark leipsic. from leipsic! who could write to him? who could send him a package from that city? who had ever sent him any thing but rejected manuscripts and theatrical pieces? "ah, that was it!" he had also sent his "fiesco" to the director of the theatre at leipsic, and this gentleman had now returned it with a polite letter of refusal. of course, it could be nothing else! he wrathfully broke the seal, unfolded the letter, and looked first at the signature, to assure himself that he had not been deceived. but no! this was not the name of the director in leipsic; and what did these four signatures in different handwritings mean? there were: "c. g. körner," and, beside it, "minna stock;" and under these names two others, "l. f. huber," and "dora stock." schiller shook his head wonderingly, and began to read the letter; at first with composure, but, as he read on, became agitated, and his pale cheek colored with pleasure. from the far-off leipsic four impassioned beings wafted a greeting to the distant, unknown poet. they wished to thank frederick schiller, they wrote, for the many delightful hours for which they were indebted to him; to thank him for the sublime poetry which had awakened the noblest feelings in their bosoms and filled their hearts with enthusiasm. they, two bridal couples, were deeply imbued with love for each other, and the high thought and feeling of frederick schiller's poems had excited emotions in them which tended to make them better and happier. they wrote further, that nothing was wanting to complete their happiness but the presence of the poet at the consummation of their union. together they had read his "robbers," his "louise müllerin," and his "fiesco;" and while so engaged love had taken root in their hearts, grown and blossomed, and for all this they were indebted to frederick schiller. they therefore implored him to come to leipsic on the wedding-day. and then in touching, cordial words, they told him that they never spoke of him but as their dearest friend and benefactor. and further, they begged permission to send the accompanying package as a token of their gratitude in the ardent admiration which they entertained for him in common with every feeling heart and thinking head in germany. he laid the letter aside, and hastily opened the package, for he longed to see the persons who so ardently admired him. and there they were, these dear persons, in beautiful miniatures, on each of which the name of the painter, huber, was inscribed. how charming and beautiful were the two girlish faces which seemed to smile upon schiller from the two medallions; how grave and thoughtful the head of the young man designated as körner; how genial and bold the face of the painter huber! but there was something else in the package besides the four portraits. there was a song neatly written on gilt-edged paper, a song from "the robbers," and körner's name was given as the composer. moreover, the package contained a magnificent pocket-book, worked in gold and silk, and embroidered in pearls; in the inside he found a little note in which dora and minna had written that they had worked this pocket-book while their fiancés read his tragedies to them. schiller regarded these tokens of love and esteem with astonishment. it seemed to him that he was dreaming; that all this was an illusion, and could not be reality. how could he, who, but a few hours before had experienced such mortification and humiliation, he who had been ridiculed, scolded, and laughed at; how could he be the happy recipient of such appreciation and recognition? how was it possible that people with whom he was not even acquainted, who knew nothing of him, could send him a greeting, presents, and words of thanks? no, no, it was all a dream, an illusion! but there lay the letter, yes, there lay the eloquent witness of truth and reality! schiller seized the letter with trembling hands, and continued reading. "we must tell you, you great and noble poet, that we are indebted to you for the brightest and best hours of our life. what was good in us you made better, what was dark in us you made light; our inmost being has been elevated by your poems. your sublime words are constantly on our lips when we are together. accept our thanks, frederick schiller, accept the thanks of two german youths and two german maidens! let them speak to you in the name of the german nation, in the name of the thousands of german maidens and youths who sing your songs with enthusiasm, and whose eyes fill with tears of devotion and delight when they see your tragedies!" tears of devotion and delight! schiller's eyes are now filled with such tears. he sinks down upon his knees almost unconsciously, and his soul rises in inspiration to god. he raises his arms and folds his hands as if in prayer, and the tearful eye seeks and finds heaven. "i thank thee, god, that thou hast blessed me with such happiness. i thank you, my absent friends, to whom my heart longs to fly. i thank you for this hour! i thank you, because it is the happiest of my life. your loving greeting sounds on my ear like a voice in the desert, cheering and consoling. and i, who was crushed in pain and despair, once more arise in renewed hope and happiness. o god! when i think that there are, perhaps, others in this world besides you, the two happy couples who love me, who would be glad to know me; that, perhaps, in a hundred years or more, when my dust is long since scattered to the winds, people will still bless my memory, and pay it a tribute of tears and admiration when my body is slumbering in the grave; then, my beloved unknown friends, then i am proud of my mission, and am reconciled to my god and my sometimes cruel fate.[ ] "now i know that i am a poet," he exclaimed, rising from his knees and walking to and fro with rapid strides. "it was not a dream, a vain illusion! i am a poet! these noble souls and loving hearts could not have been enkindled by my works if they had not been deeply imbued with the fire of poetry! i am a poet, although she laughed at and ridiculed me! she of all others; she who i thought would certainly understand me!" schiller opened the door to admit some one who knocked loudly. a liveried servant entered and handed him a little note. these few words were written on the sheet of paper in almost illegible characters: "i conjure you to come to me, my friend! i have something of importance to communicate! be magnanimous, and come at once! /charlotte/!" she had appealed to his magnanimity at a favorable moment! she had irritated and mortified him greatly, but balm had been applied to the wound, and it no longer smarted. "go, charles, and tell madame von kalb that i will come at once!" charles leaves the room, followed by schiller, whose thoughts are not occupied with charlotte on the way this time, but with the four friends in leipsic, who love him and who did not laugh at his "don carlos." these thoughts illumine his countenance with serenity and noble self-consciousness. he carries himself more proudly and his face is brighter and clearer than ever before, for the recognition of his fellow-man has fallen upon and elevated him like the blessing of god. he enters charlotte's dwelling and passes through the hall to the door of her room. charlotte awaits him, standing at the open door, her eyes red with weeping, and yet a heavenly smile resting on her countenance. she beckons to him to enter; and when he had done so and closed the door, charlotte falls on her knees before him; she, the beautiful, high-born lady, before the poor young poet--but yet the poet "by the grace of god." "oh, schiller, dear schiller, can you forgive me? i appeal to you, the genius, the noblest of german poets, for forgiveness!" he stooped down to her in dismay. "for god's sake, my lady, what are you doing? how can you so debase yourself? stand up. i conjure you, stand up!" "schiller, not until you have forgiven my error; not until you swear that that horrible scene no longer excites your anger!" "i swear to you, charlotte, that i feel no trace of displeasure. good angels have wafted from me all irritation and anger with the breath of love. and now arise, charlotte! let me assist you with my hand." she took hold of the large hand which he extended, with her two little hands, and raised herself up. "oh, my dear schiller, how i have suffered, and yet how much delight i have experienced since your departure! how fortunate it was that you had forgotten your manuscript in your displeasure! i read it once more, to strengthen my opinion as to its want of merit. but how completely had i been deceived, how sublime a poem is this tragedy, how melodious is the flow of words, how poetic is the heavenward flight of thought! hail to you, my friend, hail to your future, for your latest poem, your 'don carlos,' is the most beautiful you have yet written!" "oh, charlotte," exclaimed schiller, joyfully, "is it true, are you in earnest? but no, only your goodness of heart prompted you to utter these words. in your generosity you wish to soothe the pain your condemnation inflicted." "no, schiller, i swear by all that is high and beautiful, by yourself, by your poetic genius, that your 'don carlos' will adorn your brow with a laurel-wreath of immortality. after the lapse of centuries this tragedy will be still praised and esteemed as a masterpiece; and the entire german nation will say with pride, 'frederick schiller was our own! the poems which excited enthusiasm and delight throughout all europe were written in the german language, and frederick schiller was a german poet!' oh, could my spirit wing its flight earthward to hear posterity proclaim these words, and to sing the song of rejoicing on the immortal grave of him whom my spirit recognized and revered while he still trod the earth in the flesh! schiller, something seems to tell me that i am the muse destined to consecrate the poet with the kiss of love and of pain. what can a woman give the man she honors above all others, and for whom she entertains the purest affection, what more noble gift can she bestow upon him than the kiss of consecration from her lips? take it, frederick schiller, poet of 'don carlos,' take from my lips the kiss of consecration, the kiss of gratitude." "oh, charlotte, my muse, my friend, and let me say the grand, the divine word, my beloved! i thank you!" he entwined her slender figure with his arms; pressed her to his heart, and imprinted a long and ardent kiss upon her lips, then looked at her with sparkling eyes, and, enraptured with her blushing countenance, his lips were about to seek hers for the second time. with a quick movement, charlotte withdrew from his embrace, and stepped back. "the sublime moment has passed," she said, with earnestness and dignity. "we again belong to the world, to reality; now, that we have done homage to the gods and muses, we must again accommodate ourselves to the rules and customs of the world." "and why, charlotte, why should we do so? are not those rules changeable and fleeting? what men denounce as crimes to-day, they proclaim as heroic deeds at some other time; and what they to-day brand as vice, they will perhaps praise as virtue at some future day. oh, charlotte, i love you, my soul calls for you, my heart yearns for you. when i look upon you, all is feeling and blissful enjoyment! let us unite the souls which arise above earthly feeling to divine sublimity; let us unite in the godlike love in which heart responds to heart, and soul to soul. oh, do not look wonderingly at me with those profound and glowing eyes! charlotte, have you not long since known and divined that i loved you, and you only?" "me only," she cried, sadly. "no, it is not so, not me only! it is love that you love in me, and not myself. oh, schiller, beware, i pray you; for your own sake, beware! take back your avowal. i will not have heard it, it shall have died away inaudibly--have been erased from my fantasy. take it back--but no, rather say nothing more about it. let this moment be forgotten, as the last golden ray of the setting sun is forgotten. let us speak to each other as we have been accustomed to do, as friends!" "friends!" exclaimed schiller, angrily. "i say to you, with aristotle: 'oh, my friends, there are no friends!' at least what i feel for you, charlotte, is not friendship! it is ardent, passionate love! but this you cannot comprehend. you do not know what love is; your heart is cold!" "my heart cold?" she repeated, with sparkling eyes. "i not know what love is! and frederick schiller tells me this! the poet's eyes are clouded! he does not look behind the veil, which the usage of the world has thrown over my countenance. i know what love is, frederick schiller! but ought i, the married woman, the wife of an unloved and unloving husband, ought i to know love? must i not wipe the tear of delight from my eye, suppress the longing cry on my lips, and erect a barrier of ice around the heart, that burns and glows with the flames which animate my whole being, giving warmth and light, like the fires in the bosom of the earth? if i were free, if the will of my relations had not forced me to the altar, where i fainted after my lips pronounced the fatal word of assent;[ ] if i could name the man i love, i would say to him: 'beloved, you are the life of my life, the heart of my heart, and the thought of my thought. from you i receive all being, and breathe all inspiration from your glances! take me to yourself as the sea receives the drop of rain, absorbing it in its bosom! let me be a part of your life! let me feel that my own being merges its identity in yours! i have lost myself that i may find myself in you. my sun sets, to rise again with you to the serene heights of bliss, of knowledge, and of poetry. for us there is no more parting on earth or in heaven; for we are one, and by murder only can you make of this union two distinct beings capable of going in different directions. but i would not wander on, for separation from you, my beloved, with whom i had been made one, would only be accomplished by shedding my heart's blood. but my lips would not accuse you; they would receive the kiss of death in silence! therefore, if you do not wish to kill me, be true, as i shall be unto death.'" "charlotte, heavenly being," cried schiller, gazing at her radiant countenance with astonishment and delight, "you stand before me as in a halo! you are a titaness; you storm the ramparts of heaven!" a smile flitted over her features, and she lowered the eyes, which had been gazing upward, again to earth, and regarded schiller earnestly and intently. "i have told you how i would speak to the man i loved, if i dared. duty forbids it, however, and i must be dumb. but i can speak to you as a friend and as a sympathizing acquaintance, and rejoice with you over your magnificent work. seat yourself at my side, schiller, and let us talk about your 'don carlos.'" "no, charlotte, not until you have first honestly and openly acknowledged why this sudden change took place, and how it is you are now pleased with what only excited your laughter a few hours ago?" "shall i tell you, honestly and openly?" "yes, my friend, henceforth everything must be open and honest between us!" "well, then, my friend, you yourself bear the blame." "myself? how so, charlotte?" "i acknowledge it out of friendship, your tragedy was spoiled in the reading. you are a poet, but not an orator. in the heat of delivery, my friend forgets that don carlos did not speak suabian german, and that king philip 'halt nit aus stuckart ist.'[ ] and now, that i have told you, give me your hand, schiller, and swear that you will forget my laughter!" "no, i will forget nothing that you say or do, charlotte; for all that you do is good, and beautiful, and amiable! i kiss the loved hand that struck me, and would like to demand as an atonement a kiss from the cruel lips which laughed at me." "no jesting, schiller; let us be grave, and discuss the future of your 'don carlos.' something great, something extraordinary, must be done for this great and extraordinary work! it must shoot like a blazing meteor over the earth, and engrave its name in characters of flame on huts and palaces alike. the poet who makes kings and princes speak so beautifully, must himself speak with kings and princes--must obtain a princely patron. and i have already formed a plan to effect this. schiller, you must become acquainted with the duke charles august of weimar, or rather he must become acquainted with you, and be your patron. do you desire this?" "and if i do," sighed schiller, shrugging his shoulders, "he will not! he, the genial duke, who has his great and celebrated goethe, and his wieland, and herder, he will not trouble himself much about the poor young schiller. at the best, he will anathematize the author of 'the robbers,' like all the other noblemen and rulers, and be entirely satisfied if his mad poetry is shipwrecked on the rock of public indifference." "you do the noble duke charles and yourself wrong," cried charlotte, with vivacity. "charles august of weimar is no ordinary prince, and you are no ordinary poet. you should know each other, because you are both extraordinary men. may i make you acquainted with each other? the duke charles august is coming to darmstadt to visit his relations. are you willing to go there and be introduced to him?" "yes; i will gladly do so," exclaimed schiller, with eagerness. "the poet needs a princely protector! who knows whether tasso would ever have written his 'jerusalem delivered,' if the duke of este had not been his friend--if he had not found an asylum at the court of this prince? if you can, charlotte, and if you consider me worthy of the honor procure me this introduction, and the patronage of the duke charles august. may he, who lets the sun of his friendship shine upon goethe, send down one little ray of his grace to warm my cold and solitary chamber! i will crave but little, if the duke would only interest himself in the interdicted 'robbers.' this alone would be of great service to me." "he will, i hope, do more for you, schiller. i know the duke, and also the landgravine of hesse! i will give you letters to both of them, and mr. von dalberg, toward whom the duke is graciously inclined, will also do so. oh, it will succeed, it must succeed! we will draw you forcibly out of the shade and into the light! not only the german people, but also the german princes, shall love and honor the poet frederick schiller; and my hand shall lead him to the throne of a prince." "and let me kiss this fair hand," said schiller, passionately. "believe me, charlotte, all your words have fallen like stars into my heart, and illumined it with celestial splendor!" "may these stars never grow pale!" sighed charlotte. "may we never be encompassed with the dark night! but now, my friend, go!" "you send me away, charlotte?" "yes, i send you away, schiller. we must deal economically with the beautiful moments of life. now go!" on the evening of this day of so many varied emotions, schiller wrote letters, in which he warmly thanked his unknown friends in leipsic. in writing, he opened his heart in an unreserved history of his life--so poor in joys, and so rich in deprivations and disappointed hopes. he imparted to them all that he had achieved; all his intentions and desires. he told them of his poverty and want; for false shame was foreign to schiller's nature. in his eyes the want of money was not a want of honor and dignity. he acknowledged every thing to the distant, unknown friends--his homeless feeling, and his longing to be in some other sphere, with other men who might perhaps love and understand him. as he wrote this he hesitated, and it seemed to him that he could see the sorrowful, reproachful look of charlotte's large, glowing eyes; and it seemed to him that she whispered, "is this your love, schiller? you wish to leave me, and yet you know that you will be my murderer if you go!" he shuddered, and laid aside his pen, and arose and walked with rapid strides up and down his room. the glowing words which charlotte had spoken to him that morning again resounded in his ear, but now, in the stillness of the night, they were no longer the same heavenly music. "i believe it is dangerous to love her," he murmured. "she claims my whole heart, and would tyrannize over me with her passion. but i must be free, for he only who is free can conquer the world and achieve honor; and the love which refreshes my heart must never aspire to become my tyrant!" he returned to his writing-table and finished the letter which he had commenced to körner. he wrote: "i would that a happy destiny led me away from here, for i feel that my stay in this place should come to an end. i wish i could visit you in leipsic, to thank you for the hour of delight for which i am indebted to you! aristotle was wrong when he said: 'oh, my friends, there are no friends!' i think of you and yours; i think of you four, and cry joyously: 'there are friends, nevertheless! blessed is he to whom it is vouchsafed by the gods to find friends without having sought them!'" chapter vi. the title. charlotte von kalb had kept her word. she had equipped schiller with letters of introduction to the duke charles august and members of his family; she had also induced mr. von dalberg to furnish him with letters to influential friends at the court of darmstadt. provided with these recommendations, and in his modesty and humility attaching greater importance to them than to his own reputation and dignity, schiller journeyed to darmstadt, in the beginning of the year , for the purpose of endeavoring to obtain a friend and protector in the duke charles august of weimar. dalberg's and charlotte's letters accomplished more than schiller's name and worth could possibly have done. the author of "the robbers" and "fiesco," poems which lauded freedom and popular government, and of "louise müllerin," which branded aristocracy as opposed to the rights of the human heart; a poet who had dared to defy a prince and a ruler could not have entered the golden gates of a princely palace without the golden key of dalberg's and charlotte's letters. frederick schiller was received at the court of the landgrave in darmstadt. the young and joyous duke charles august of weimar welcomed the poet cordially, and, prompted by the enthusiastic praises of madame von kalb, requested schiller to read him a portion of the new tragedy. schiller offered to read the first act of "don carlos," and his offer was graciously accepted. the reading took place on the afternoon of the same day. a brilliant array of noblemen in embroidered court dress, and adorned with decorations, and of magnificently attired ladies, sparkling with jewels, had assembled in the reception-room of the landgravine. she, the lover of art, the intellectual landgravine of hesse, had seated herself at the side of the duke charles august on the sofa in the middle of the saloon, behind which the ladies and gentlemen of the court were standing in groups. not far off, and completely isolated, stood a plain cane-bottomed chair, and a little round table, on which a glass of water had been placed. this was the poet's throne, and this was the nectar he was to drink at the table of the gods. he felt embarrassed and almost awe-stricken as he entered the brilliant court circle in his homely garb; he felt the blood first rush to his cheeks and then back to his heart again, leaving his countenance deathly pale. "rouse yourself, schiller, and be a man! shame upon you for being blinded by the trumpery and outward glitter of nobility and princely rank!" he said this to himself as he walked to the place set apart for him, feeling that the eyes of all rested on him with a cold, examining glance. "what do i care for this pack of courtiers, this court-marshal von kalb and his associates?" said he to himself, defiantly. "it was not on their account i came here, and what they may think of me is a matter of complete indifference. i aspire only to the good opinion of the duke, of the friend of the great goethe." he looked over toward the sofa, and his glance encountered the eyes of the young duke, whose countenance was turned to him with a smile and an expression of good-natured sympathy. schiller felt encouraged, and a smile flitted over his features. he opened his manuscript and began to read the first act of "don carlos" in a clear and loud voice. his voice was full and sonorous, and his delivery, thanks to charlotte's admonitions, was purer and more moderate; and, as he read on, his embarrassment disappeared, and the clouds lifted from his high brow. the courtiers, who had first regarded the young poet contemptuously, now began to show some sympathy; the head, covered with light-yellow locks, with its sharply-chiselled features and large roman nose, was, now that it was illumined with earnest thought, no longer so homely and uninteresting. the countenance of the landgravine was expressive of the closest attention, and the reading of "don carlos" affected her so profoundly, that she had recourse to her handkerchief to wipe the tears of emotion from her eyes. at times charles august could not repress an exclamation of delight, a loud bravo; and when schiller arose from his seat, after finishing the first act, charles august walked forward to thank the poet with a warm pressure of the hand, and to conduct him to the landgravine, that she might also express her thanks and sympathy. the duke then took the poet's arm, and walked with him through the saloon, to the disgust of the courtiers, who, notwithstanding their devotion, found it somewhat strange that the duke could so demean himself as to walk arm-in-arm with a man without birth or name. but of course this was a natural consequence of the mania after geniuses which reigned in weimar; such abnormities should no longer excite surprise. was there not at the court in weimar so variegated an admixture of well-born and ill-born, that one ran the risk of encountering at any moment a person who was not entitled to be there? had not the duke carried his disregard of etiquette so far, that he had made wolfgang goethe, the son of a citizen of frankfort, his privy-councillor, and an intimate associate? and was it not well known that his mother, the duchess amelia, as well as himself, never made a journey without picking up some genius on the road for their establishment at weimar? this time frederick schiller was the genius whom the duke desired to recruit. that was quite evident, for the duke had been standing with the poet for more than a quarter of an hour in a window-niche, and they were conversing with vivacity. it was offensive and annoying to see this mr. schiller standing before the duke, with a proud bearing and perfect composure; and conversing with him without the slightest embarrassment. but the duke seemed to be greatly interested, and his countenance expressed lively sympathy and kindliness. "i believe that destiny has intrusted you with a great mission, mr. schiller," said the duke, when the poet had given him a brief and terse account of the continuation and contents of his "don carlos." "i believe that you are destined to be the poet-preacher of the people; and to refresh the hearts and enliven the imagination of the degenerate germans; and i prophesy a great future for you! your aim is a noble one. you desire not only to assign to the purely human, but also to the ideal, its proper sphere in this world; and your 'don carlos' is an open combat between the purely human and ideal, against materialism and custom. through it you will make many enemies among the higher classes, and acquire many friends among the masses; and, although you will not be the favorite of princes, you will certainly be beloved by the people. for the judgment of the people is good and sound, and it will always give its sympathies to the champion of the purely human, as opposed to the ridiculous assumptions of etiquette and prejudice. but i tell you beforehand, that, in so-called noble society, you will, with great difficulty, have to fight your way step by step." "i have been accustomed to such warfare since my earliest youth," said schiller, smiling. "fate has not given me a bed of roses, and care has as yet been the only friend who stood faithfully at my side." "you forget the muses," cried the duke, with vivacity. "it seems to me that you have no right to complain of a want of attention on the part of these ladies!" "true, your highness," responded schiller earnestly; "they have at times been graciously inclined, and i am indebted to them for some of the most delightful hours of my life." "nor has the favor of earthly goddesses and muses been wanting to the inspired poet's happiness," said the duke, and he laughed loudly when he saw schiller blush and cast his eyes down. "oh, i see," he cried gayly, "you have earthly muses also, your ideal has become reality! could there be any connection between this and the songs of praise which madame von kalb wrote me concerning you?" "your highness, i really do not understand your meaning." "or rather, will not understand it! but we will not examine the affair any closer. madame von kalb has certainly made it my duty to interest myself for her poet, and i thank her for having made me acquainted with you. and now i should like to give a proof of my gratitude, and it would afford me pleasure to have you tell me in what manner i can be useful to you." "your kind and gracious words have already been of great benefit to me," said schiller, heartily; "your goodness has shed a ray of sunshine into my sometimes cold and cheerless heart." "your heart is never cold, schiller, for the fire of poetry burns there. but in your little chamber it may sometimes be cold and cheerless. that i can well believe, for when the gods rain down blessings upon the poet they generally forget but one thing, but that is the one thing needful, money! the gods generally lay but one sort of capital in the cradle of mortal man, either a capital in mind or one of more material value; and truly he must be a great favorite to whom they give both." "yes, a very great favorite," murmured schiller, in a low voice; and he read in the prince's countenance that he was thinking of his favorite, wolfgang goethe, who had arisen like a meteor before schiller's gaze at the time he visited the charles school in stuttgart, in company with the duke, to witness the distribution of prizes to the scholars of this institution. while the scholar, frederick schiller, was receiving a prize which had been awarded him, the gaze of goethe's large eyes was fixed upon him, but only with the composed expression of a great man who wished him well and condescended to evince sympathy. this look had sunk deep into schiller's heart, and he thought of it now as he stood before the duke in the palace of darmstadt--the duke, who could be a friend to goethe, but to him only a patron and an almsgiver. "i desire to be of service to you if i can," said the duke, who, for some time, had been silently regarding schiller, whose eyes were cast down thoughtfully. "have you any wish, my dear mr. schiller, that i can perhaps gratify? i am certainly not a mighty prince, and unfortunately not a rich one, but if i can help you in any way, i will gladly do so." schiller raised his head quickly, and his eye met the inquiring look of the duke with a proud gaze. not for all the world would he have told the prince of his distress and want, would he have stood on the floor of that palace as an humble beggar, soliciting alms for the journey through life! "your highness, i repeat it, your friendly reception and your sympathy have already been a great assistance to me." the duke's countenance brightened, and he breathed freer, as if a burden had fallen from his soul. "and this assistance shall never be wanting, of that you may be assured. every one shall learn that charles august, of weimar, is happy to know the german poet, frederick schiller, and that he counts him among those who are dear to him. a german duke was your tyrant; a german prince drove you out into the world, therefore it is just and right that another german duke should show you friendship, and endeavor to make your path in life a little smoother. i will be ready to do so at all times, and to testify to my high opinion of yourself and your talents before the whole world, your tyrannical prince included. and a proof of it shall be given you before you leave darmstadt! for the present, farewell, and if you should come to weimar at any time, do not forget to pay your good friend, charles august, a visit! you will not leave until to-morrow morning, i suppose?" "no, your highness, not until to-morrow morning." "well, then, my dear mr. schiller, you will hear from me this evening." schiller returned to his hotel in a thoughtful mood. what could the duke's words mean? what token of esteem would charles august give him? perhaps even an appointment. ah, and if ever so unimportant a one, it would still be an alleviation of relief. perhaps the duke only intended to offer him the use of one of his unoccupied castles, in order that he might finish his "don carlos" in peaceful seclusion. well, that also would be a blessing, a benefit! the homeless one would then have a resting-place from which he could not be driven, where he would not be assailed by the cares and vexations of life. the hours dragged on sluggishly in the bare, uncomfortable little room at the hotel, and the poet tormented himself with suppositions and questions, while he listened attentively to hear the footstep of the expected messenger of the duke. at last, after hours of waiting, a knock was heard at the door, and a ducal lackey handed schiller a large sealed document. it seemed to regard him with a right official and solemn look with its great seal of state bearing the inscription, "ducal private cabinet," and the poet's feelings were of the same nature when he opened it after the lackey's departure. what could it be that the duke offered him, an appointment or a retreat? an expression of astonishment and surprise was depicted on schiller's countenance as he read the document; his brow darkened, and he let the paper fall to the table. the duke offered him neither an appointment nor a retreat. he gave him a title, the title of a ducal counsellor. the secretary of the cabinet made known the generous determination of his master, and informed him that the document appointing him to this office would be made out in official form and forwarded to him on the duke's return to weimar. frederick schiller should, however, be enabled to wear the title so graciously conferred, and call himself "ducal counsellor" from that hour. while reading it for the second time, the poet laughed derisively. this was the solution of the riddle. he who had scarcely known how to counsel himself, was now the counsellor of a prince who would probably never desire his counsel. he who was tormented with cares, who had no home, had nothing he could call his own besides his manuscripts--he was now the possessor of a title. how strange the contrast! the tragedy which waged war against princely prerogatives, etiquette, and ceremony, in favor of humanity, equality before the law, and nobility of soul--this tragedy was to bear, as its first fruit, the favor of a prince. it was strange--it looked almost like irony, and yet!--he thought of charlotte von kalb--she would rejoice to see him thus honored by a german prince. he thought of his old parents, to whom it would undoubtedly be a great satisfaction to know that the former regimental-surgeon of the duke of wurtemberg had become so distinguished. it would prove to them that their fritz, of whom the severe father had often despaired, had nevertheless attained honor and respectability in the eyes of the world. well, then, let it be so! a little appointment would certainly have been better, and some hunting-castle as a retreat would probably have furthered the completion of "don carlos." but one must be contented, nevertheless. the little was not to be despised, for it was an honor and a public acknowledgment, and would, perhaps, have the effect of infusing into the directors a little more respect for the poet, whose dramas they often maltreated and injured by poor and careless representation. with a smile, schiller folded the document and laid it aside. "well," said he to himself, in a low voice, "i entertain the proud hope that i am a poet 'by the grace of god!' moreover, i have now become a counsellor by the grace of a duke. all that i now wish is, that i may at last become a poet and a counsellor, by the grace of the people, and that they may approve my works, and hold me worthy of the title to their love and honor. to be the people's counsellor, is truly an honor above all honors. my soul longs for this holy and beautiful title. with all that i possess in mind and talent, in strength and energy, i will endeavor to deserve it, and to become that which is the poet's greatest and noblest recompense--the teacher and counsellor of the people!" chapter vii. adieu to mannheim! schiller had returned to mannheim as ducal counsellor of weimar. charlotte von kalb received this intelligence with so much joy, that schiller could not help feeling pleased himself. he threw his arms around her, and demanded a kiss as a condition of his retention of the title. charlotte blushingly hid her face on his bosom, but he gently raised her head, and pressed an ardent kiss on the lips which uttered no refusal. but charlotte now demanded that schiller should leave her; and when he refused, and begged and implored that he might be permitted to remain, her eyes glistened, and a glowing color suffused itself over her cheeks. "oh, schiller, you know not what you are doing and what you demand! do you not see that an abyss lies between us?" "i see it, charlotte; but the arm of love is strong and mighty, and he who truly loves, carries the loved woman over all abysses, or else precipitates himself with her into the yawning chasm." "there is another alternative, schiller, and a terrible one. the abyss is crossed, and they are joined; and then afterward his illusion vanishes--he is undeceived. the ideal has been transformed into a very ordinary woman, whom he scorns, because her love was dearer and holier to her than her virtue. she feels his scorn, and the abyss over which he had borne her becomes the grave in which she voluntarily precipitates herself, in order to escape from him she had loved. oh, schiller, if the eye which has heretofore regarded me lovingly should ever cast upon me a glance of contempt! it would crush me, and i should die! yet, in dying, my lips would denounce him who had known how to love, but had not kept faith; and would arraign him as a traitor and murderer before the judgment-seat of god! oh, schiller, i warn you once more not to enkindle a fire in my breast which can never be extinguished or repressed when once in flames, but will blaze upward grandly and proudly, setting aside all thought of the world and its rules and prejudices. we are now walking on the verge of the abyss; you on the one side, i on the other. but our voices reach each other; we can see each other's faces, and our glances can meet in loving friendship. you are free to go where you will; and if your path in life should lead you aside from the road on which i am journeying, i will look after you and weep, but i will make you no reproaches! think of this, schiller, and be contented that charlotte should call you by the name of friend! do not demand that she should give you another name, which you would now bless, but hereafter curse! flee now, while it is yet time; and we shall still have the happy remembrance of the beautiful days of our friendship. let us await the future in quiet resignation, and sustain ourselves with recollections of the past!" "you are in a strange humor to-day, charlotte," said schiller, sadly. "your eyes are so threatening, that i would almost be afraid of you, if i did not know that my titaness is still a gentle, loving woman in spite of her fiery enthusiasm. no, charlotte, you accuse yourself unjustly. no, you would never curse the man you had loved; in death you would bless him for the love he had once given you. you would not denounce, but pity and excuse him whom stern necessity compelled to separate from you--from what is dearest to him on earth. you would know that his path was bleak and lonely, and that, like the faces in dante's 'inferno,' he could only look back at the past with a tearful glance while wandering into the dreary future. this you would do, charlotte. i know you better than you know yourself. the woman never curses the man she has truly loved; she pardons and still loves him when the stream of life surges in between, and forces him to leave her." "for those who truly love, who have plighted troth, there is no such compulsion," cried charlotte, her countenance flushed with indignation. "if you say so, schiller, you do not know what love is. you make light of the holiest feelings when you believe that it could ever be extinguished--that the necessities of life could ever separate two hearts eternally and indissolubly united in love." "how strangely moved you are to-day, charlotte!" answered schiller, his countenance darkening. "i came here with a heart full of joy, and had so much to impart to you! i came as to a happy and peaceful retreat. but i now see that the time was badly chosen, and that charlotte will not understand me to-day. oh, why is it, my dear, that we human beings are all like erostratus, who hurled the firebrand into the holy temple of the gods, and why do we all desire to unveil the mysterious picture in the temple of isis!" "because we wish to look at the truth," she cried, passionately. "the truth is death," sighed schiller, "error is life; and woe to us if we are not satisfied with the beautiful illusion that adorns and disguises life, and casts a veil over death! i am going, charlotte. it is better that i should, for you have saddened me, and awakened painful thoughts in my breast. farewell for the present; and when i come again to-morrow, be kind and gracious to me, charlotte, as you always are at heart!" he took his hat, greeted her with a mournful smile, and left the room. charlotte's eyes followed him with a glance of dismay. "he does not love me," she cried in despair. "he does not love me! if he loved me, he would not have left me without plighting his eternal faith. all that i wished to hear was, that he desired an eternity of love; but he drew back in dismay and left me. he does not love me, and i, o my god, i love him!" she sank down on her knees, covered her face with her hands, and cried bitterly. and schiller's thoughts were also of a bitter, and, at the same time, somewhat disquieting nature. he avoided seeing any one, and remained in his lonely room the entire day. he walked to and fro restlessly; from time to time, he seated himself at the table and wrote a few lines, and then arose, and, resuming his walking, either talked to himself or was lost in thought. charlotte also kept her chamber, and avoided all intercourse with others. late in the evening, a knock was heard at her door, and her maid announced that a letter had arrived from the counsellor schiller. charlotte opened the door, took the letter, and ordered lights to be brought in. she then tore the cover from schiller's letter; in it she found a little note on which the few words had been hastily written: "dear charlotte!--i have written down the thoughts which our conversation of to-day awakened in my bosom; and send them to you, for they belong to you. may we never share the fate of the poor youth in the temple of sais! to seek the truth is to kill love, and yet love is the most beautiful truth; and true it is also that i love you, charlotte! believe this, and let us leave the great isis veiled! /frederick schiller/." after reading this, charlotte unfolded the large sheet which was also contained in the cover. it was a poem, and bore the title, "the veiled picture at sais." charlotte read it again and again, and her soul grew sadder and sadder. "he does not love me," she repeated, softly. "if he loved me he would not have written, but would have come to weep at my feet! that would have been a living poem! oh, schiller, i am the unhappy youth; i have seen the truth! my happiness is forever gone, and, like him, i will go to the grave in despair. i exclaim, with your youth, 'woe to him who commits a crime in order to find the truth! it can never give him joy!'" when schiller returned on the following morning, charlotte gave him a warm welcome, extended both hands, and regarded him with a tender smile, repeating the words from his letter, "let us leave the great isis veiled." schiller uttered a cry of joy, fell on his knees at charlotte's feet, kissed her hands, and swore that he loved her and her only, and that he would remain true to her in spite of all abysses and chasms! but the vows of mankind are swept away like the leaves of the forest; what to-day was green and blooming, to-morrow fades and dies! charlotte may have been right when she said that schiller could love, but could not keep faith, for, after scarcely two months had elapsed since his return from darmstadt, and the date of this interview with charlotte, schiller wrote to his new friend körner, in leipsic, as follows: "i can no longer remain in mannheim. i write to you in unspeakable distress of heart. i can no longer remain here. i have carried this thought about with me for the past twelve days, like a determination to leave the world. mankind, circumstances, heaven, and earth, are against me; and i am separated here from what might be dearer to me than all by the proprieties and observances of the world. leipsic appears to me in my dreams like the rosy morning beyond the wooded mountain-range; and in my life i have entertained no thought with such prophetic distinctness as the one that i should be happy in leipsic. hitherto fate has obstructed my plans. my heart and muse were alike compelled to succumb to necessity. just such a revolution of destiny is necessary to make me a new man, to make me begin to become a poet." and his distant friend in leipsic responded to his cry of distress with a deed of true friendship. he invited schiller to visit himself and his friends in leipsic; and, in order that no moneyed embarrassments should delay schiller's departure, körner forwarded him a draft for a sum sufficient to defray his travelling-expenses and pay off his most pressing debts. chapter viii. plans for the future. the preparations for his departure were soon made. schiller had completely severed his connection with the theatre at mannheim several weeks before. the actors were all inimical to him, because he had dared to take them to task in his journal, _the thalia_, for having, as he said, "so badly maltreated his tragedy, 'intrigues and love.'" the director, mr. von dalberg, had long since considered himself insulted and injured by the free and independent behavior of him who dared array his dignity and pride as a poet against the dignity of the director's office and the pride of aristocracy. this gentleman made no attempt whatever to retain schiller in mannheim. schiller had to say farewell to but few acquaintances and friends, and it was soon over. he packed his little trunk, and was now ready to leave on the following morning. there were only two persons to whom he still wished to bid adieu, and these were charlotte von kalb and andrew streicher. he had agreed to spend the last hours of his stay with streicher at his home, and as every thing was now in order, schiller hurried to charlotte's dwelling as evening approached. she was sitting alone in her room when he entered; the noise of the closing door aroused her from her reverie, and she turned her head, but did not arise to meet him; she gave him no word of welcome, and gazed at him sadly. schiller also said nothing, but walked slowly across the wide room to the sofa on which she was seated, and stood regarding her mournfully. neither of them spoke; deep silence reigned in the gloomy chamber, and yet their souls were communing, and one and the same wail was in both hearts, the wail ever approaching separation and parting. "schiller, you stand before me like the future," said charlotte, after a long pause. "yes, like the future--grand, gloomy, and cold--your countenance clouded." "clouded like my soul," sighed schiller, as he slowly sank on his knees before charlotte. she permitted him to do so, and offered no resistance when he took her hand and held it firmly within his own. "charlotte, my beloved, my dear charlotte, i have come to take leave of you. i must leave mannheim." "why?" "my position here has become untenable. i am at enmity with the authorities of the theatre, and i no longer desire to waste my time and talents on such ungrateful showmen. mr. von dalberg's short-lived courtesy is long since ended, and he does not take my side in the difficulty with the presuming actors. i am tired of this petty warfare, and i am going." "why?" she repeated. "you still ask, charlotte; have i not just told you?" "i have heard pretences, schiller, but not the truth. i wish to know the truth, and i am entitled to demand the truth. the time has arrived to tear the veil from the statue of isis! we must look the truth in the face, even if death should follow in its train! schiller, why are you leaving mannheim? why are you leaving the place where i live?" "ah, charlotte, this is a bitter necessity, but i must bear it. a mysterious power compels me to leave here. who knows where the star of his destiny will lead him? we must follow its guiding light, although all is dark within and around us! true, i had thought that it would be the greatest delight of life to be ever at your side, to share with you all thought and feeling, our lives flowing together like two brooks united in one, and running its course through the bright sunshine with a gentle murmur! but these brooks have become rivers, and their waves, lashed into fury by passion, brook no control, and break through all restraints and barriers. charlotte, i go, because i dare not stay! i will tell you all; you demand the truth, and you shall hear it! charlotte, i go for your sake and for mine! you are married. i go! your pure light has set fire to my soul; have i not reason to dread a future based on falsehood and deception? your presence infused into my bosom an enthusiasm before unknown, but to this enthusiasm, peace was wanting." "oh, remain, schiller, and, if we desire it, we can both find this peace--the peace of friendship!" "no, charlotte, our heart-strings are familiar with a greater harmony!" "well, if it be so, let the strings resound with the harmony of united souls! oh, my friend, if we separate, we will no longer be to each other what we now are. i will not complain, and will not unveil the anguish of my soul before you; and yet, schiller, remain, i implore you! when my candle is brought in, i will no longer enjoy its light; all will still be dark around me, for the evening will no longer bring you, my friend!" "i can, and will be, your friend no longer, charlotte, and therefore i am going! i will be all, or nothing! this suspension midway betwixt heaven and earth is destroying me! my soul glows with passion, and you inhale it with every breath of life. you have not the courage to face the truth!" "i say, with you, i will be all, or nothing," she exclaimed, passionately. "truth and falsehood cannot exist together; and it would be acting a falsehood if i gave my heart unlimited freedom, while my hands are in chains! all, or nothing! only no hypocrisy! i will freely acknowledge my love to the whole world, or i will cover it with the veil of duty and resignation. but i will not sin under cover of this veil! oh, schiller, our life until now was a bond of truth, and you wish to sever it. fate sent you to me; moments of the purest delight were vouchsafed us; and is the cup of happiness to be dashed from our lips now?" schiller did not reply at once, but bowed down over charlotte's hand, and pressed it to his burning brow. "above all," he said, in a low voice, "above all, i know that it is in the bloom of youth only that we truly live and feel. in youth, the soul is illumined with light and glory; and my heart tells me that thou canst never dim its longing." "'thou,' you say," she whispered softly, "then i will also say 'thou!' truthfulness knows no 'you!' the blessed are called 'thou!'[ ] it is a seal which unites closely, and therefore we will impress it upon our holy and eternal union!" she threw her arms around schiller's neck--he was still kneeling at her feet--and pressed a kiss on his forehead. he embraced her yet more tenderly, and pressed impassioned kisses upon her brow, her cheeks, and her trembling lips. "farewell, thou only one, farewell!" "oh, frederick," she sobbed, "was this thy parting kiss?" "yes, charlotte, i must go! but you will be present with me in my every thought." "and yet you go, frederick?" "destiny so ordains, and i must obey! the world demands of me the use of my talent--i demand of the world its favor." "and when you have achieved this favor," she said, plaintively, "then you will no longer care for love, or me!" "you should not say so, charlotte, for you do not believe it," said schiller, angrily. "why these painful words? i lose all in you, but you lose nothing in me! you are so wayward--ah, not like the woman i pictured to myself in the days of my youth." "oh, frederick," she murmured, "do you not know that i love you, and you only?" "i have hoped so in many moments of torment when you treated me coldly; but only for the last few days have i felt assured of it, and, on that account, loved, adored woman, the words must be spoken, therefore i flee from you!" "you know that i love you," she cried, plaintively; "you know it, and yet you flee!" "yes, charlotte, i do, because the waves of passion are surging high in my breast, and will destroy me if i remain. peaceful love is the only atmosphere suited to the poet. stormy passion distracts his thoughts and casts a shade on the mirror of his soul." he arose and walked restlessly to and fro. it had grown dark in the mean while, and the figure of her friend flitted before charlotte's vision like a shadow, but her eyes were fixed intently on the shadow which was nevertheless the only light of her being. the figure now stopped before her, and when he laid his hand on her shoulder she felt the electric touch thrill her whole being. they could not see each other's faces on account of the darkness. "charlotte," said schiller, deeply moved, "i owe you a great deal, and i can never forget it. my youth was dreary; i became familiar with error and sorrow at an early day, and this clouded my understanding and embittered my heart! and then my genius found your voice to utter my thoughts. you were my inspired muse, and i loved you, and would be yours forever if i had the courage requisite for such a love!--the courage to permit myself to be absorbed in this passion; to desire nothing more, to be nothing more, than your creature, charlotte; the vase only in which the boundless stream of your love empties itself. but this cannot remain so! my soul must be peaceful and independent of this power which terrifies and delights me at the same time. he only is free who elevates himself above passion, and the man who aspires to bend nature to his will must be free." "you are governed by pride," sighed charlotte, "and pride has no confidence, no repose. you are not familiar with the sorrow and coldness of the world, or you would remain here with her who feels and sympathizes with you! nothing is more terrible in its self-inflicted revenge than the determination to disregard the promptings of the heart in life." "i do not disregard them, charlotte, but the heart must not be the only axis on which my life revolves, and it would be, if i remained near you, you divine woman, to whom my heart and soul will ever lovingly incline, forgetting all else, and yet--i desire your friendship only!" as he said this he threw his arms around her, raised her up from the sofa, and covered her face with kisses. "oh, frederick, you are crying! i feel your tears falling on my forehead!" "be still, charlotte, be still, and--love me! for a single blissful moment love me, and let yourself be loved!" "i love you, frederick," she cried, passionately. "you fill my soul with anguish and delight, alternately. you love as i do! only love alarms you; you will not accord to a mortal that which is divinely beautiful! oh, schiller, the essence of divinity is within us; then wherefore should our love not be divinely beautiful, joyfully renouncing hope and desire in humility and resignation?" he did not reply, but only drew her closer to his heart, bowed down his head on her shoulder, and sobbed. the silence which now reigned in the dark room was unbroken save by the sobs of the weeping lovers. after a long and painful pause, schiller raised her head and withdrew his arms from charlotte's figure. "let us have light," said he, and his voice now had a harsh sound--"light, that i may once more see your beloved countenance before i leave!" "no, frederick, when you leave, i will no longer require light; a cheerless life is more endurable in the dark. no light! let us part in darkness, for in darkness i am doomed to grope my way hereafter, but the light of your countenance will always be reflected in my soul. good-night, frederick! you take with you all that is dear to me, even my beautiful dreams. the most lovely visions have heretofore surrounded my bed at night; but now they will follow you, for they came from you, and were the thoughts of your soul. your thoughts fly from me, and my dreams follow them. you rob my day of its sun, and my night of its dream. let us therefore separate in darkness!" "charlotte," said he, deeply agitated, "your words sound like tones from a spirit-world, and the past seems already to be leaving me! oh, do not go; stay with me, sweet past, happy present! stay with me, soul of my soul, beloved being! where are you, charlotte--where are you?" she did not reply. longingly he stretched out his arms toward her, but did not find her; he found empty space only. "charlotte, come for the last time to my heart! come!--let me inhale from your lips the atmosphere of paradise!" no reply. he seemed to see a shadow flit through the darkness, and then the words, "good-night, schiller!" struck his ear like the low, vibrating tones of an Æolian harp. the noise of an opening and closing door could be heard, and then all was still. a groan escaped schiller's breast; he felt that charlotte had left him--that he was alone. for a moment he stood still and listened, hoping she would return; but the silence remained unbroken. "ah," murmured schiller, "parting is like death! ah, charlotte, i have loved you dearly! i--be still, my heart, no more complaints! it must be so!" he turned slowly and walked toward the door. "farewell, charlotte, farewell!" no reply. it seemed to be only the echo which responded from out the dark space, "farewell!" schiller opened the door and rushed out into the still night, and through the lonely streets, unconscious that he was bareheaded, oblivious of having left his hat in charlotte's room. he rushed on, heedless of the raw night air and cutting wind. at length he was aroused by the heavy drops of rain which were falling on his forehead. the cold rain awakened him from a last painful struggle with his passion, and cooled his head and heart at the same time. "o god, i thank thee for sending down the waters of heaven to cleanse my heart from passion and slavish love, and making me free again! and now i am free!--am once more myself! am free!" schiller entered streicher's apartment with a cheerful countenance, and greeted his friend heartily; but andrew regarded his wet clothing and dripping hair with dismay. "where in the world do you come from, fritz? you look as if you had been paying the maid of the rhine a visit, and had just escaped from her moist embrace!" "you are, perhaps, right, andrew! i have just taken leave of the fair maid who had bewitched me." "but what have you done with your hat, fritz? did you leave it with the maid as a souvenir?" "you are, perhaps, right again, andrew. i left my hat with the maid as a souvenir, and only succeeded in slipping my head out of the noose." "be kind enough to speak sensibly," said streicher, "and tell me where your hat is." "i have told you already i left it with the maid of the rhine as a souvenir." "i wish you had not done so," said andrew, in grumbling tones. "you had better have left her a lock of your yellow hair; that would have been cheaper, for hair grows again, but hats must be bought. well, fortunately i happened to buy a new hat to-day, and that you must take, of course." he handed schiller a brand-new beaver hat, telling him to dry his disordered locks and try it on. "andrew," said schiller, after having tried the hat on, and found that it fitted him perfectly. "andrew, you bought this hat for yourself to-day?" "yes, for myself, of course, but you, wild fellow, come running here bareheaded, and no resource is left but to put my beaver on your head." "come here, andrew," said schiller, smiling, and when he came up, schiller placed the hat on the little bald head and pressed it down over his friend's eyes, making streicher a very ludicrous object. schiller, however, did not laugh, but slowly lifted the hat up, and looked lovingly into the abashed and mortified countenance of his friend. "andrew, i would never have believed that you knew how to tell an untruth!" "and you see i acquitted myself badly enough," growled streicher. "and bad enough it is that you should compel an honest man to tamper with the truth. your hat had seen much service and well deserved a substitute, but if i had had the presumption to offer you a new one what a scene there would have been! so i thought i would exchange hats with you at the last moment, after you had entered the stage-coach. and i would have done so, had you not burst in upon me without a hat, and given me what i considered a fine opportunity to make you my trifling present." "it is no trifling present, andrew, but a magnificent one. i accept your hat, and i thank you. i will wear it for the present instead of the laurel-wreath which the german nation is on the point of twining for my brow, but which will probably not be quite ready until my head has long since been laid under the sod; for the manufacture of laurel-wreaths progresses but slowly in germany; and i sometimes think my life is progressing very rapidly, andrew, and that i have but little time left to work for immortality. but we must not make ourselves sad by such reflections. i thank you for your present, my friend, and am contented that you should adorn my head with a hat. yes, when i consider the matter, andrew, a hat is a far better and more respectable covering for a german head than a laurel-wreath. in our bleak, northern climate, laurels are only good to season carps with, and a sensible german had far better wish for a good hat than a laurel-wreath. yes, far better, and we will drink a toast to this sentiment, andrew. you invited me to a bowl of punch; out with your punch, you good, jolly fellow! we will raise our glasses and drink to a future crowned with beaver hats! your punch, andrew!" andrew hurried to bring from the warm stove the little, covered bowl of punch, carefully prepared according to all the rules of the art. the two friends seated themselves at the little table on which the steaming bowl had been placed, and filled their glasses. "raise your glass, andrew; 'long live the beaver! destruction to the laurel!'" "no, fritz, i will not drink such a toast with you," said streicher, slowly setting his glass down. "it would be a sin and a crime for frederick schiller to drink so unworthy, so miserable a toast. you are in your desperate humor again to-day, fritz, and would like to invoke the very lightning from heaven, and concoct with its aid a little tornado in your own heaven." "yes, of course, you droll fellow!" cried schiller, emptying his glass at one draught. "lightning purifies the atmosphere and brings the sun out again. and you see my departure is a mighty tornado, with showers of rain, with thunder and lightning, intended, no doubt, to cleanse and purify my life, that it may afterward flow on through the sunshine, clear and limpid. andrew, i go from here to seek happiness and peace." "and, above all, renown," added streicher, emptying his glass. "no," cried schiller, vehemently, "no renown for me! translated into good german, renown means thorns, hunger, want! i intend to have my portion of the viands with which the table of life is richly provided. and do you know what my purpose is?" "no, but i should like to learn it." "i intend to become a jurist," cried schiller, emptying his second glass. "yes, that is it. i will begin a new life and make a jurist of myself. my old life is ended, and when i enter the stage-coach to-night to go to leipsic, it will not contain the poet schiller, the author of 'the robbers,' and other absurdities, but the student, frederick schiller, on his way to leipsic to study jurisprudence at the university. don't shake your wise head and look so horrified, andrew. i tell you i will become a jurist; i am tired of journeying on the thorny path of the poet, with bleeding feet and a hungry stomach. all my illusions are vanished. my vision of a golden meteor sparkling in the sun, proves to have been only a soap-bubble; and this bubble called renown has now bursted." "you are again talking wildly and romantically, like charles moor, in 'the robbers,'" cried streicher; "and yet you are not in earnest!" "but i am in earnest, my friend! the sad experience of my past life has made me wise and practical. i will not discard poetry altogether, but will indulge in it at times only, as one indulges in oysters and champagne on great and festive occasions. my ordinary life will be that of a jurist. i have given the matter much thought and consideration. fortunately, i have a clear head and quick comprehension, i will, therefore, with a firm will and untiring diligence, study and learn as much in one year as others do in three. the university in leipsic is rich in resources, and i will know how to avail myself of them. if an ordinary head, by ordinary application, can acquire in three years sufficient knowledge to enable a man to earn a comfortable living in the practice of his profession, i can certainly attain the same end in a shorter time. my attention has been directed to the study of systems since my earliest youth; and in our charles school, of blessed memory, i have at least learned to express myself as fluently in latin as in german. study, thought, and reflection, is a delight to me, and the explication of difficult subjects a pleasure; and, therefore, i am convinced that i can become a good jurist, and, with bold strides, swiftly overtake the snail-moving pace of others, and in a brief time attain that which the most sanguine would scarcely imagine could be achieved in years." "then you, at least, admit that you are no ordinary man," said andrew streicher, shrugging his shoulders. "and, nevertheless, you propose to confine this extraordinary man in the strait-jacket of practical science. truly, i lose my appetite, and even this punch seems sour, when i reflect that the poet of 'the robbers' is to become an advocate!" "you had rather he hungered, and wrote dramas, than he should lead a happy and comfortable life, and write deeds. ah, my friend, the career of a poet is full of bitterness and humiliation. the wise and sensible shrug their shoulders when mention is made of him, as though he were a crazy fool; the so-called gentlefolk do not recognize him as their equal, and even the players on the stage act as though they conferred a favor on the poet when they render his dramas, and, as they say, give life to inanimate forms by their sublime impersonations. no, no, my mind is made up, i will write no more stage pieces, at least until i have achieved a respectable position in the world as a jurist. man must always push on and possess the ambition which leads higher and higher. are not you, too, ambitious, andrew?" "of course, i am, and will strive with all my might to obtain my ideal, and become the leader of an orchestra." "and i, andrew, i will become a minister," cried schiller, with enthusiasm. "yes, that is my ideal!--minister of a little state--to devote my whole life, my thought, and being, to the happiness of mankind, to be a benefactor to the poor and oppressed, to advance men of talent and science, to promote the good and useful, to cultivate the beautiful. this, andrew, is my ideal; and this is attained if i succeed in becoming a good jurist and a minister at one of our dear little saxon courts. yes, my friend, thus it shall be! you, an orchestra-leader--i, a minister! let us arise with our foaming glasses, and shake hands over it. let this be our last toast, and our final compact: 'we will neither write to, nor visit each other, until andrew streicher is the orchestra-leader, and frederick schiller the minister.'"[ ] "so let it be," cried andrew, laughing. "hurrah, the orchestra-leader! hurrah, the minister!" they raised their glasses exultingly, and emptied them. they then gave each other one last embrace. the hour of departure and parting had come. andrew accompanied his friend in silence through the deserted streets of the slumbering city, to the post-office, where the coach stood awaiting the passengers. a last pressure of the hand, a last loving look, and the coach rolled on, and carried into the world the "new cæsar and his fortunes!" chapter ix. the last ride. years, when we look back at them in the past, are but as fleeting moments; when we look forward to them in the future, they are eternities! how long was the year from the spring of to the spring of to be for young frederick schiller, who looked forward to it with so much hope and so many beautiful dreams! how long was the same year to be for old frederick, for the old philosopher of sans-souci, who grew day by day more hopeless, in whose ear was daily whispered the awful tidings, "you must die!" he did not close his ear to these mutterings of age and decrepitude, nor did he fear death. for him life had been a great battle--a continuous conflict. he had ever faced death bravely, and had fought gallantly against all sorts of enemies; and truly the worst and most dangerous among them were not those who opposed him with visible weapons, and on the real battle-field. it had been far more difficult to contend with folly, malice, envy, and prejudices--to pursue his conquering course regardless of the cries of the foolish and the calumnies of the ungrateful. it is easier to conquer on the field of battle than to combat prejudices, than to extirpate abuses. and, after the days of real battles were over, frederick was compelled to wage incessant war against these evils. the one great and holy aim of his life was to make his people happy and respected, rich and powerful; and with all the energy and strength of which he was capable he strove to accomplish these ends, never permitting himself to be confounded or dismayed by malice and ingratitude. commerce flourished under his rule--the fruits of prussian industry found a market in the most distant lands. barren lands had been made fertile. the soldiers of war had become the soldiers of peace, who were now warring for the prosperity of the people. this warfare was certainly at times a little severe, and the good and useful had to be introduced by force. but what of that? were potatoes less nutritious, because the peasants of silesia were driven into the field by armed soldiers, and compelled to plant this vegetable? did it not become a great favorite with the people, notwithstanding their resistance to its introduction in the beginning? were not vast sums of money retained in the land by the cultivation of this vegetable, which would otherwise have been used to purchase rice and other grains in foreign countries? had not the king succeeded in introducing the silkworm into his dominions? had not the manufacture of woollen goods been greatly promoted by the adoption of a better system of raising sheep? but frederick had not only fostered agriculture and industry, he had also evinced the liveliest sympathy for the arts and sciences. scholars and artists were called to his court, and every assistance was rendered them. universities and academies were endowed. but, while looking to the internal welfare of his kingdom, his gaze was ever fastened on austria, the hereditary enemy of prussia. he did not permit the house of hapsburg to stretch out its rapacious hands after german lands. looking to the future, and contemplating his death, he endeavored to secure his kingdom against the hapsburgs beyond the time when he should be no more. this was evinced by frederick's last political act--the formation of the "union of princes"--the prussian king's last defiance to austria. this "union of princes" was a confederation of german princes against rapacious, grasping austria. it united all against one, and made the one the enemy of all. the intention and object of this union was to assist and protect each state against the common enemy, to tolerate no trespass on the rights of any one of them, to revenge a wrong done to the smallest member of the union, as if it had been perpetrated on the greatest. moreover, the welfare of the german people was to be duly considered and promoted, the constitution maintained, and no violation of its requirements to be tolerated. this "union of princes" was determined upon, and carried into effect, between prussia and all the other german states, except austria, and other states whose sovereigns were related to the hapsburgs. this union was frederick's last political act! against austria he had first drawn his sword as a young king, and against austria this, his last blow, was directed in uniting germany, and making it strong in unity, and free in strength! he had sown the seed destined to bear rich fruit, but he was not to be permitted to reap the harvest. his life was drawing to a close; and the poor, decrepit body reminded the strong and active mind that it would soon leave its prison, and soar to heaven, or into illimitable space! but frederick wished to serve his people to the last moment. as long as he could still move his hands, they should work for the welfare of his kingdom. as long as his intellect remained clear and active, he would continue to work. at times, however, bodily pain clouded his understanding, and made him peevish and irritable. to have occupied himself with matters of state at such times would have been dangerous, as his physical condition might have affected the decisions he was called upon to make. in his paternal solicitude for the welfare of his people, frederick gave this subject due consideration, and endeavored to render his bodily afflictions harmless. there were several hours in which he suffered but little from the gout and the asthma, and these were in the early morning, when he felt refreshed after having slept for one or two hours. one or two hours' sleep! this was all nature accorded the royal invalid, who had watched over prussia's honor for half a century, and whose eyes were now weary, and longed for slumber and repose. but the king bore this affliction with the patience of a sage--he could even jest about it. "my dear duke," said he to the duke of courland, who paid him a visit in june, , "if, on your return to courland, you should hear of a vacancy among the night-watchmen, i beg of you to reserve the place for me, for, i assure you, i have learned the art of watching at night thoroughly." but he wished to employ his hours of wakefulness in the night for the good of his people, and ordered that the members of his cabinet, who had been in the habit of coming to his room with their reports at seven o'clock in the morning, should now assemble there at four. "my condition," said the king, when he acquainted the three members of his cabinet with his desire, "my condition necessitates my giving you this trouble, but it will be of short duration. my life is on the decline, and i must make the most of the time which is still allotted me. it does not belong to me, but to the state."[ ] yes, his life was on the decline; but for a long time his heroic mind found strength to overcome the weakness of the body. at times, when the physicians supposed his strength was entirely exhausted, and that the poor, worn-out figure sitting out on the terrace under the burning july sun, and yet trembling with cold, would soon be nothing more than the empty tenement of the departed soul, he would gather the energies of his strong and fiery mind together, and contend successfully with the weakness of the body. thus it was in the month of april, when his physicians believed him to be at the point of death. he suddenly recovered one morning, after a refreshing slumber, arose from his bed, dressed himself, and walked with a firm step down the stairway to the carriage, which he had ordered to be held in readiness to drive him out; he entered the carriage, but not with the intention of returning to the palace of potsdam, but to drive to his dear sans-souci, to take up his residence there for the summer. and thus it was to-day, on the fourth of july, when the king, who had passed the day before in great pain and distress, felt wonderfully refreshed and restored on awaking. he sent for the members of his cabinet at four o'clock in the morning, and worked with them until eight, dictating dispatches and lengthy administrative documents, which bore witness to the vigor of his mind. at eight o'clock he desired that his friends should pay him a visit, and conversed with them as gayly and wittily as in the long-gone-by days of unbroken health. he laughed and jested about his own weakness and decrepitude so amiably, that count lucchesini could not refrain from giving utterance to his delight, and hailing the king as a convalescent. "my dear count," said frederick, shrugging his shoulders, "you are right; i will soon be well, but in another sense than the one you mean. you take the last flare of the lamp for a steady flame. my dear count, darkness will soon convince you that you are wrong. but i will profit by this transient light, and will persuade myself that i am well. gentlemen, with your leave i will avail myself of the bright sunshine and take a ride. order condé to be saddled." "but, sire!" cried lucchesini, in dismay. a glance from frederick silenced the count. "sir," said he, severely, "while i still live, i must be addressed with no 'buts.'" the count bowed in silence, and followed the other two gentlemen who were leaving the room. frederick followed his favorite with a look of lively sympathy, and, as lucchesini was about to cross the threshold, called him back. the count turned quickly, and walked back to the king. frederick raised his hand and pointed to the window through which the sunshine and green foliage of the trees could be seen. "look how beautiful that is, lucchesini! do you not consider this a fine summer day?" "yes, sire, a very fine summer day; but it is to be hoped we shall have many more such; and if your majesty would be quiet for the next few days, you would, with increased strength, be better able to enjoy them." "and yet i will carry out my intention, you obstinate fellow," exclaimed the king, smiling. "but i tell you i will never recover, and i have a question to ask. if you had lived together with intimate friends for long years, and were compelled to take your departure and leave them, would you not desire to bid them adieu, and say to them, 'farewell! i thank you!' or would you leave your friends like a thief in the night, without a word of greeting?" "no, sire, that i would certainly not do," replied lucchesini. "i would throw my arms around my friend's neck, and take leave of him with tears and kisses." "now, you see," said frederick, gently, "the trees of my garden are also my friends, and i wish to take leave of them. be still, not a word! i am old, and the young must yield to the old. i have no fear of death. in order to understand life rightly, one must see men entering and leaving the world.[ ] it is all only a change, and the sun shines at the same time on many cradles and many graves. do not look at me so sadly, but believe me when i say that i am perfectly willing to leave the stage of life." and, raising his head, the king declaimed in a loud, firm voice: "oui, finissons sans trouble et mourons sans regrets, en laissant l'univers comblé de nos bienfaits. ainsi l'astre du jour au bout de sa carrière, repand sur l'horizon une douce lumière, et ses derniers rayons qu'il darde dans les airs sont ses derniers soupirs qu'il donne à l'univers." he extended his hand to the count with a smile, and, when the latter bowed down to kiss it, a tear fell from his eyes on frederick's cold, bony hand. the king felt this warm tear, and shook his head gently. "you are a strange man, and a very extravagant one. the idea of throwing away brilliants on an old man's hand! it would be far better to keep them for handsome young people. now you may go, and i hope to find you well when i return from my ride." having intimated to the count, by a gesture of the hand, that he might withdraw, he turned slowly to his greyhound, alkmene, which lay on a chair near the sofa, regarding the king with sleepy eyes. "you are also growing old and weak, alkmene," said the king, in a low voice; "and your days will not be much longer in the land. we must both be up and doing if we wish to enjoy another ray of sunshine. come, alkmene, let us go and take an airing! come!" the greyhound sprang down from the chair and followed the king, who walked slowly to his chamber to prepare himself for the ride. a quarter of an hour later the king, assisted by his two valets, walked slowly through his apartments to the door which opened on the so-called green stairway, and at which his favorite horse, condé, stood awaiting him. the equerry and the chamberlain of the day stood on either side of the door, and at a short distance two servants held the horses of these gentlemen. the king's quick glance took in this scene at once, and he shook his head with displeasure. "no foolishness, no pomp!" said he, imperiously. "my servants alone will accompany me." the two gentlemen looked sadly at each other, but they dared make no opposition, and extended their hands to assist the king in mounting. but it was a difficult and sorrowful task to seat the king on his horse. deference prevented them from lifting him up, and the king's feebleness prevented him from mounting unaided. at last chairs and cushions were brought and piled up, until they formed a gradual ascent to the saddle-back, up which the two servants led the king, and succeeded in placing him on his horse. condé, as if conscious that perfect quiet was necessary to the successful carrying out of this experiment, remained immovable. but now that he was seated on the back of his favorite horse, condé threw his head high in the air and neighed loudly, as if to proclaim his joy at being once more together with the king. alkmene did not seem to relish being behind condé in manifesting joy, for she barked loudly and sprang gayly around the horse and rider, who had now taken the reins in his hand and started the sagacious animal by a slight pressure of the thigh. the king rode slowly down the green stairway, that is, a succession of green terraces forming a gentle declivity in the direction of sans-souci. as the grooms were on the point of following him the chamberlain stepped up to them. "take care to keep as near the king as possible, in order that you may be at hand if any thing should happen to his majesty." "his majesty's carriage shall be held in readiness at the obelisk," said the equerry, in a low voice. "if any thing should happen to the king, bring him there, and one of you must ride in full gallop to the physician sello!" the two grooms now hurried on after the king, who had put spurs to his horse and was galloping down the avenue. it was a beautiful day; a shower which had fallen the night before had made the air pure and fragrant, and washed the grass till it looked as soft and smooth as velvet. the king slackened his speed. he looked sadly around at the natural beauties which surrounded him, at the foliage of the trees, and up at the blue sky, which seemed to smile down upon him in cloudless serenity. "i will soon soar up to thee, and view thy glories and wonders! but i will first take leave of the glories of earth!" he slowly lowered his eyes and looked again at the earth, and inhaled its delicious atmosphere in deep draughts, feasted his eyes on nature, and listened to the music of the murmuring springs and plashing cascades, and of the birds singing in the dense foliage. he rode on through the solitary park, a solitary king, no one near him; the two lackeys behind in the distance, the greyhound bounding before him; but above him his god and his renown, and within him the recollections of the long years which had been! the friends who had wandered with him through these avenues, where were they? all dead and gone, and he would soon follow them! he had often longed for death; had often said to himself that it would be a great relief to lie down and sleep the eternal sleep of the grave. and yet he was now saddened to his inmost being. it seemed to him that the skies had never before been so bright, the trees so fresh and green, or the flowers so fragrant! why long for the peace of the grave! how delicious and refreshing was the peace of nature! with what rapture did the soul drink in the sunshine and the fragrance of flowers! "from the afflictions of the world i fly to thee, thou holy virgin, pure, chaste nature," said he, softly to himself. "men are but weak, miserable beings, and not worth living for; but, for thy sake, nature, i would still desire to live. thou hast been my only beloved on earth, and it is very painful to thy old lover to leave thee." yes, it was very painful. nature seemed to have put on festive garments to-day, in order to show herself to the departing king in all her magnificence and beauty. the king rode on slowly through the avenues of sans-souci, bidding adieu to each familiar scene. at times, when an opening in the trees offered a particularly fine view, he halted, and feasted his eyes on the lovely landscape, and then he would lower his gaze quickly again, because something hot had darkened his vision--it was perhaps a grain of sand thrown up by the wind, but certainly not a tear! no, certainly not! how could he weep, he who was so weary and sick of life? "yes, weary and sick of life," he said, in a loud voice. "men are such miserable beings, and i am weary of ruling over slaves!--weary of playing the tyrant, when i would so gladly see freemen around me! no, no, i do not regret that i must die, i leave willingly, and my countenance will wear a smile when i am carried to the grave."[ ] it may be easy to take leave of men, but nature is so beautiful, it smiles so sweetly on us! it is very hard to have to say to the sky, the earth, and to the trees and flowers: "farewell! i will never see you more! farewell!" the trees and bushes rustle in the wind and seem to sigh, "farewell!" the falling waters seem to murmur, "nevermore!" ah, there is yet a little corner in the king's and hero's heart, which is merely human; a little nook to which wisdom and experience have not penetrated, where natural feeling reigns supreme. yes, man tears himself from beautiful nature reluctantly and sadly. he would like to gaze longer on the flowers, and trees, and shrubbery; to continue to breathe the fragrant air. but this man is also a hero and philosopher; and the hero whispers in his ear: "courage, be strong! you have often looked death in the face without flinching--do so now!" the philosopher whispers, "reconcile yourself to that which is inevitable. a town-clock is made of steel and iron, and yet it will not run more than twenty years. is it surprising that your body should be worn out after seventy years? rather rejoice that you are soon to read the great mysteries of creation, to know whether there is life beyond the grave, and whether we are again to be united with those who have gone before." "these mysteries i will solve," cried the king, in a loud voice. "i greet you, o dead with whom i have wandered in these shady groves. we shall soon meet again in the elysian fields, and i will bring you intelligence of this miserable earth and its miserable inhabitants. my mother, my sister, i greet you, and you cicero, cæsar, voltaire! i am coming to join the immortals." he raised his head and breathed freely, as if a heavy burden had fallen from his soul. his countenance was illumined with enthusiasm. he looked over toward sans-souci, which had just become visible through an opening in the trees; its windows shone lustrously in the bright sunshine, and the whole building glittered in the glorious light. "it is my tomb," he said, smiling, "and yet the cradle of my renown. if i knew that i could escape death by not returning to my house, i would still do so. i am willing to yield my body to death, and am now going home to die!" as he said this he slowly raised his arm and lifted his old three-cornered hat slightly, and bowed in every direction, as a king does when taking leave of his court. he then slowly replaced the hat on his thin white hair, and pressed condé so firmly with his knees, and drew in the reins so closely, that the animal galloped off rapidly. alkmene could only manage to keep up with great difficulty. the terrified lackeys urged their horses to a greater speed. this rapid ride did the king good, the keen wind seemed to strengthen his breast and dispel the clouds of melancholy from his soul. he had bidden his last adieu to nature. death was now vanquished, and the last painful sacrifice made. when the king, after a two hours' ride through the park of sans-souci, galloped up the green stairway on his return, the chamberlain and equerry were astonished and delighted to find that he had met with no accident, and was positively looking better and stronger than he had done for a long time. the king halted with a sudden jerk of the reins, and the lackeys rushed forward with chairs and cushions, to form a stairway for his easy descent, as before. but with a quick movement frederick waved them back. "nothing of the kind," said he. "i can dismount with the aid of your arm. i will, however, first rest a moment." he stroked condé's smooth, tapering neck, and the intelligent animal turned his head around, as if to look at his master and thank him for the caress. "yes, you know the hand that strokes you," said the king, smiling. "we two have taken many a ride, and gone through rain and sunshine together. farewell, my faithful condé." he had bowed down over the animal's neck to stroke its mane. when he raised his head, his quick, piercing eye observed a young officer coming over the terrace with an air of embarrassment; he hesitated and stood still, as if doubting whether he might be permitted to come nearer. "who can that be?" asked the king, gayly. "what young officer have we here?--come up, sir, and report." the young man hurried forward, stepped close up to the king's horse, and saluted him by raising his right hand to his cap. "i have the honor to report to your majesty," said he, in clear, joyous tones. "i have been ordered here at this hour, and punctuality is the first duty of the soldier." "well replied, sir," said the king. "give me your arm and assist me to dismount." the young officer hastened to obey the command, laid his hands on condé's neck, and stretched his arms out as firmly as if they had been made of iron and were capable of standing any pressure. the king grasped these living supports and slowly lowered himself from the horse's back to the ground. "well done, my nephew, you have a strong arm, and, for your fifteen years, are quite powerful." "sixteen years, your majesty," cried the young man, eagerly; "in four weeks i shall be sixteen years old." "ah, sixteen already!" replied frederick, smiling. "then you are almost a man, and must be treated with due consideration. mon prince, voulez-vous avoir la bonté de me donner votre bras?"[ ] "sire, et mon roi," replied the prince, quickly, "vous me daignez d'un grand honneur, et je vous suis très reconnaissant!"[ ] and after bowing deeply he offered his arm to the king. "just see how well he speaks french already!" said the king. "we will remain out here on the terrace for a few moments. the warm sunshine does an old man good! lead me, my prince." he pointed with his crutch to the arm-chair which stood near the open door of the saloon, and walked slowly across the terrace, supported by frederick william's arm. "here," said he, as he sank slowly into the chair, breathing heavily, "here i will repose once more in the warm, bright sunshine before i enter the dark house." he looked slowly around at the terraces and trees, and then his gaze fastened on the young prince, who stood near him with a stiff and formal military bearing. "lieutenant, forget for a few moments that you are before the king. you are at liberty to dispense with military etiquette. and now give me your hand, my son, and let your old uncle offer you a right hearty welcome." the prince pressed the hand which he extended respectfully to his lips. "seat yourself," said the king, pointing to a stool which stood near his chair. and, when the prince had done as he bade him, he looked long and earnestly into his fresh, open face. "i sent for you, my child," said frederick, in a soft and tender tone, "because i wished to see you once more before i set out on my journey." "your majesty is then about to travel," said the prince naïvely. "yes, i am about to travel," replied frederick, bowing his head gently. "but, your majesty, i thought the grand man[oe]uvres were to be held at potsdam this time." "yes, the grand man[oe]uvres will be held in potsdam; and, at the grand review, i will have to report to him who is the king of kings. why do you look so awe-struck, my son? perhaps it has never occurred to you that men are compelled to leave this paradise to die!" "your majesty, i had never thought seriously of death!" "and you were perfectly right in not doing so, my child," said frederick, and his voice had now regained its firmness. "your attention must be firmly and immovably directed to life, for a great deal will be required of you on earth, and with your whole mind and strength you must endeavor to respond to these demands. you must study very diligently and make yourself familiar with the sciences. which is your favorite study?" "history, sire." "that is well, fritz. impress upon your mind the great events of history, and learn, by studying the heroic deeds of kings, to be a hero yourself. above all, your aims must be great, and you must struggle to attain them throughout your entire life. who is your favorite hero in history?" "sire," replied the prince, after a little reflection, "my favorite hero is cosmo de medici." the king looked at him in astonishment. "what do you know of him?" said he. "who was this cosmo de medici?" "he was a great general," replied the prince, "and a great lawgiver, and his sole endeavor was to make the people happy." "then you believe the chief aim of a great man, of a prince, should always be to make his people happy?" "yes, sire, his chief aim. professor behnisch once told me, in the history lesson of the great cosmo de medici, called by the people of florence the 'benefactor of the people.' when he felt that his end was approaching, he commanded that he should be carried out in his chair to the largest square in florence, 'for,' said he, 'i desire to die like a tender and happy father in the midst of his children.' but the children he spoke of were his subjects, who now poured into the square from all sides, and filled it so closely that it looked like a vast sea of humanity. when no more room could be found on the square, the people pressed into the houses, the doors of which had all been thrown open; and from the edifices which surrounded the square, thousands upon thousands looked down from the windows. tens of thousands stood on the square, in the centre of which, and on an elevation, the chair, with the dying prince, had been placed. yet, although so many inhabitants had assembled there, profound silence reigned. no one moved, and the eyes of all were fixed on the countenance of the dying prince. but he smiled, looked around at the vast concourse, and cried in a loud voice. 'as my last hour has come, i wish to make peace with god and men. therefore, if there be any one among you to whom i have done injustice, or any one who can complain of any injustice done him under my rule, i beg that he will now step forward and call me to account, in order that i may mete out justice to him before i die! speak, therefore, in the name of god. i command you to speak.' but no one came forward, and nothing was heard but the low sobs of the people. for the second time the prince asked: 'if there be any one among you to whom i have done injustice, let him come forward quickly, for death approaches!' and a loud voice from among the people cried: 'you have done nothing but good, you have been our benefactor and our father. you will cause us a pang, for the first time, when you leave us; we therefore implore, o father, do not leave your children!' and from the vast square and the windows of the circle of houses, resounded the imploring cry of thousands upon thousands: 'o father, do not leave your children!' the countenance of the prince was radiant with joy, as he listened to the imploring cry and the sobs of his people. 'this is a prince's sublimest requiem,' said he. 'happy is that prince who can die in the midst of the tears and blessings of his people!' and when he had said this, he arose and extended his arms, as if to give them his benediction. the whole multitude sank, sobbing, on their knees. and cosmo fell back into his chair. he had died in the midst of the tears and blessings of his people." the prince's voice had faltered, and his eyes filled with tears, while concluding his narrative, and he now looked timidly at his uncle, who had regarded him intently throughout. the eyes of the venerable old man and the youth met, and their hearts seemed to commune with each other also, for they both smiled. "and you would like to die such a death, my son?" asked frederick in a soft voice. "die like cosmo de medici, in the midst of the tears and blessings of his people?" "yes, sire, may such a death be mine!" replied the prince, earnestly; "and i swear to your majesty that if i should ever become king, my sole aim shall be the happiness of my people. i will always think of you, and remember your deeds and your words. yesterday my new instructor, mr. leuchsenring, also told me something very beautiful. he told me that your majesty worked day and night for the welfare of your people, and that you had said: 'a king is only the first office-holder of his people!' and that pleased me so well that i have determined to make it the motto of my life." "very good," said the king, shaking his head, "keep this motto in your heart, but do not speak of it while you are not yet king, or it might cause you some inconvenience. be careful how you speak of me when i am gone, and impress this lesson on your memory. a prince royal must never criticise the actions of the ruling king. he must be modest and silent, and give the people an example of an obedient and loyal subject, even if the king should do many things that do not please him. i repeat it,--a prince royal must observe and learn in silence. never forget this, my son, and adopt this as another rule for your entire life. a good king must never devote too much of his attention to women and favorites, or allow them to influence him, for when he does, it is always to the prejudice of his people's interests, and to his own discredit. i desire to say nothing more on this subject, but remember my words." "i will do so, sire," replied the prince, earnestly. "i will repeat these beautiful lessons daily, morning and evening, but noiselessly, that none may hear them." "well said, my nephew; but let us see how you stand in other respects. put your hand in my coat-pocket, and take out a little book. i brought it with me in order that you might read something out of it for my benefit. have you found it?" "yes, sire, i have. it is the 'fables of la fontaine.'" "that is it! now open the book at random. at what fable did you chance to open it?" "le renard et le corbeau."[ ] "now first read the fable in french, and then let me hear you translate it." the prince first read the fable with fluency and a correct pronunciation in the original language, and then rendered it with the same fluency and correctness in the german. the king listened attentively, often inclining his head in commendation, and murmuring, at times, "bravo, superb!" he extended his hand to the prince when he had finished, and looked at him tenderly. "i am proud of you, fritz," he cried, "and you shall be rewarded for your diligence. report to my chamberlain before you go, and he will give you ten fredericks d'or. that is your reward for your impromptu translation." "no, i thank you," said the prince; "i do not deserve this reward, and consequently cannot accept it." "what! you do not deserve it? and why not?" "because it was not an impromptu translation; if it had been, it would not have been any thing like as good. by accident i opened the book at the same fable i had been translating yesterday and the day before with my instructor, and of course it was easily done the second time." the king gazed long and thoughtfully at frederick william's handsome and innocent young face, his countenance brightening and his eye glistening with pleasure. he bowed down and stroked his cheek fondly with his trembling hand. "bravely said, my son; that pleases me. you have an honest and sincere heart. that is right. never appear to be more than you are, but always be more than you seem to be.[ ] the reward i promised you you shall have, nevertheless, for a king must always keep his promise. a king may never recall a favor once granted, however undeserving the recipient. but this is not the case with you, for you have really made great progress in your french. continue to do so, and be very diligent, for you must speak the french language as readily as your own, and for this reason you should always speak french with your associates." "and i do," cried the prince with alacrity. "my instructors always speak french with me, and are very angry when they hear my brother and myself speaking a word of german together. i often pass whole days without speaking a single word of german, and our valet speaks french only."[ ] "i am glad to hear it, fritz! the french language is the language of diplomacy throughout the world, and it is also best adapted to it on account of its flexibility. i love the french language, but not the french people. i think matters are taking a dangerous course in france, and that there will be trouble there before long. i will not live to see it, but the crater will open and cast its abominable streams of lava over all europe. prepare yourself for this time, my son. arm and equip yourself! be firm, and think of me. guard our honor and renown! perpetrate no wrongs, and tolerate none. be just and mild with all your subjects, and severe with yourself only." "i will be as severe with myself as professor behnisch is with me now," said the prince, earnestly. "i will give myself no immunity; but when i have done something wrong, i will prescribe a punishment for the offence." "is your professor so severe?" asked the king, smiling. "ah, yes, your majesty, very severe. a punishment follows in the train of every offence, and if i have only been the least bit rude or angry i must suffer for it at once." "that is as it should be," said the king. "your professor is entirely right. above all things, a prince must be polite, and have control over himself. but in what do the punishments he inflicts consist?" "always in just such things as are most disagreeable: either, instead of taking a walk, i must stay at home and work, or my brother is left at home, and i am compelled to walk with the professor alone, and then we have nothing but learned conversations. or, when i have not been diligent during the week, i am not permitted to visit my mother on sunday and dine with her in the palace. your majesty knows that we, my brother and myself, do not live in the palace, but with professor behnisch and mr. leuchsenring in broad street. our table is, however, very bad, and for that reason i always look forward to the coming sunday with pleasure, for then i eat, as it were, for the whole week. during the week, however, our fare is horrible; and when i dare to complain, the invariable rejoinder is, 'we have no money to keep a better table.'" "and that is the truth," said frederick, severely. "we should learn to stretch ourselves according to our cover at an early day, and to be economical with money. moreover, that you do not suffer hunger is quite evident from your fresh, rosy cheeks, and vigorous body. you must eat your daily bread with a merry face, my son, and make no complaints. young people should be entirely indifferent as to the quality of their food; the indulgences of the table are a solace of old age; youth should despise them; and a good apple ought to be as great a feast for a young man as a pineapple for an old fellow. in later years, when seated at a richly-laden table, you will certainly look back with pleasure to the time when you rejoiced in an approaching sunday because you fared better on that day than on any other. my son, by suffering want, we first learn how to enjoy; and he only is wise who can find enjoyment in poverty. i hope that at some future day you will be a great, a wise, and an economical king, and for this reason i have instructed those who have charge of you to bring you up plainly, and to teach you, above all things, economy in money matters. for you must know that you have nothing of your own, and that the people are now supporting you; and, for the present, not on account of your services, but solely because you are a scion of your house." "sire," cried the prince, with vivacity, "sire, i am very young, and, of course, have not been able to do any service as yet; but i promise your majesty that i will become a useful man, and, above all, a fine soldier, and will make myself worthy of being the nephew of frederick the great." "do that, my son, make yourself worthy to be the king of your people; and bear in mind the beautiful history of the death of cosmo de medici, which you have just narrated. and now, my son, we must part. the sun is setting, and i feel a little tired, and will go to my apartments." "ah, every thing is so beautiful and magnificent here, and your majesty has made me so happy by permitting me to see you!" "yes," murmured the king, "the world is very beautiful." he looked longingly around over the terraces and trees, and his gaze was arrested by the peak of the obelisk, which stood at the entrance of the garden, and towered high above the trees. he raised his hand, and pointed to the peak. "see, my son, how this peak overtops every thing else. although high and slender, it stands firm in storm and tempest. this pyramid says to you, 'ma force est ma droiture.' the culminating point of the pyramid overlooks and crowns the whole. it does not support, but is supported by all that lies under it, and chiefly by the invisible foundation, built far beneath. my son, thus it is also with the state. the supporting foundation is the people, and the peak of the obelisk is the king. acquire the love and confidence of the people, this only will enable you to become powerful and happy. and now, my son, come to my heart and receive a parting kiss from your old king. be good, and do only what is right! make your people happy, in order that you may be happy yourself." he drew the prince, who had knelt down before him, to his heart, pressed a kiss on his lips, and laid his cold, trembling hand on frederick william's head for a moment, as if to bless him. "and now arise, my child," said he lovingly. "do not forget this hour." "sire it shall never be forgotten," whispered the prince, sobbing loudly, and covering the king's hand with tears and kisses. "call the lackeys," murmured the king, as he fell back in his chair, exhausted. "let them carry me in." the prince hurriedly summoned the servants; and they raised the chair in which frederick lay with closed eyes. for a moment only he opened his eyes to look at the prince, and to wave him a last greeting with his hand. his eyelids closed again, and the king was carried into his "dark house" and into the library. after setting the chair down, the lackeys stepped noiselessly out of the room, believing the king to be asleep. frederick opened his eyes, and looking around at the busts of his great ancestors, saluted them with a motion of the hand. "all is finished," he said, loudly. "i have seen my garden for the last time, and have taken leave of nature. when my body leaves this house again, it will be borne to eternal rest, but my spirit will fly to you, my friends, and roam with you in endless light and knowledge. i am coming soon. but," he continued, elevating his voice, and speaking in firmer tones, "my sun has not yet set, and as long as it is still day i must and will work!" he rang the bell, and told the servant to send minister von herzberg (who, at the king's request, had been sojourning at sans-souci for the last few weeks,) to his presence at once. frederick received the minister with a cordial smile, and worked with him, in erect composure of mind and clearness of intellect, for several hours, listened to his report, gave his decisions, and dictated in a firm voice several dispatches to the ambassadors of france and russia. "herzberg, have these papers drawn up at once," said he, as he dismissed the minister. "the members of the cabinet must present them for my signature to-day, in order that they may be forwarded at the earliest moment. i must deal sparingly with my time, and employ each moment, for the next may not be mine." "oh, sire, it is to be hoped that you will still have years to devote to the happiness of your people, and--" "do you suppose i desire it?" exclaimed frederick, interrupting him. "no, i am weary, and long to rest from the troubles and cares of life. you think i do not feel them, because i do not complain. but you must know that some things are only endurable when not complained of. my account with life is balanced, and, although it gave me some laurels, yet the thorns predominated, and there was scarcely a single rose among them. be still! no complaints! but listen! i believe my end is approaching--already perhaps death lies in wait at my door--and i have something to say to you. madness and misrule will be the order of the day when i am gone, mistresses and favorites will reign, and hypocrites and impostors will practise iniquity under guise of piety. well, this you cannot prevent; and if the lord should see fit to let it come to pass, you must bear it as you best can. but when the spendthrifts attack the treasury, when they begin to squander the money i have saved with so much trouble, for the amelioration of the country, on their mistresses and favorites, you must not tolerate it. you must speak to the king's conscience in my name, and endeavor to persuade him, with good and bad words, to consult his people's interests, and not lavish on his favorites what belongs to the state. will you promise to do this?" "yes. i promise your majesty that i will do so," replied herzberg, solemnly. "i swear that i will faithfully and fearlessly obey the commands of my great and beloved king; that i will repeat to your successor the words your majesty has just spoken, if occasion should require; and that i will do all that lies in my power to prevent the expenditure of the state treasure for any other purpose than that of the welfare of the people and country." "i thank you," said the king; "you have relieved my mind of a great burden. give me your hand, herzberg, and let me thank you once more. you have been a faithful servant to your king, and you will continue to serve him when he has long since passed away. and now, farewell for the present, herzberg; i desire to sleep a little. a cabinet meeting will be held here at eight o'clock this evening." "but, sire, would it not be better if your majesty rested to-day, or else called the meeting at once, in order that you might retire to your repose earlier?" the king shrugged his shoulders. "there is no repose, except in the grave; and sleep is for the healthy only." and, even after they had left him, the king remained sitting at his writing-desk, and arranged his papers, and wrote a letter to his sister, the duchess of braunschweig. the two lackeys stood in the antechamber, awaiting the summons of the king's bell, and whispering to each other that his majesty was again sitting up, and working at a very late hour, although his physician had expressly forbidden him to do so. and yet neither of them dared to enter and disturb him in his labors; they stood hesitating and casting anxious glances at the door. but, behind this door, in the king's room, two eyes were regarding him intently; these were the eyes of his greyhound, alkmene. twice had the animal already jumped up from its bed, ran to the king, and nestled caressingly at his side, and had then, when frederick took no notice of it, hung its head and gone mournfully back to its cushion. it now raised its tapering head, and looked intelligently at the king, who sat writing at the table, his back turned toward the little dog. suddenly it bounded across the room, sprang upon the king's chair, laid its slender forefeet on its master's shoulder, bent its graceful neck downward, snatched the king's pen from his hand, and jumped down to the floor with it. "be quiet, alkmene," cried the king, without looking up from his work, in which he was entirely absorbed. "no nonsense, mademoiselle!" and the king took another pen from the stand. alkmene let the pen fall, and looked up at the king intently. when she saw that he continued writing, she uttered a low, plaintive whine. with one bound she was again on the back of the king's chair. supporting her feet on his shoulder, she snatched the pen from his hand a second time, and jumped down with it. this time she did not let the pen fall, but held it in her mouth, and remained near the king's chair, looking up to him with her sparkling eyes. frederick looked down from his work at the little animal, and a smile flitted over his features. "really," said he, in a low voice, "i believe alkmene wishes to remind me that it is time to go to bed. well, come here, mademoiselle, i will grant your desire!" as if understanding her master's words, alkmene barked joyously, and jumped into the king's lap. the king pressed the little greyhound to his breast, and caressed it tenderly. "my friends have not all deserted me," he murmured. "i shall probably have a smiling heir, but, when my body is carried to the grave, my dog at least will remain there to weep over me." he pressed the greyhound closer to his breast; deep silence reigned in the room. the wind howled dismally through the trees in the garden; a sudden blast dashed some fallen twigs against the low window, in front of which frederick worked, and it sounded as if ghostly hands were knocking there. the wind whispered and murmured as if the voices of the night and the spirits of the flowers and the trees wished to bring the king a greeting. suddenly alkmene uttered a long, distressful howl, and ran to the door, and scratched and whined until the servants took heart and entered the room. the king lay groaning in his arm-chair, his eyes glazed, and blood flowing from his pale lips. his physician and a surgeon were summoned at once, and the king was bled and his forehead rubbed with strengthening salts. he awoke once more to life and its torments; and for a few weeks the heroic mind conquered death and bodily decrepitude. but the ride on condé on the fourth of july was nevertheless his last. after that day frederick never left his "dark house." when the king of the desert, when the lion feels that his end is approaching, he goes to the forest, seeks the densest jungle and profoundest solitude, and lies down to die. nature has ordained that no one shall desecrate by his presence the last death-agony of the king of the desert. his sans-souci was the great king's holy and solitary retreat; and there it was that the hero and king breathed his last sigh on earth, without murmur or complaint. he died on the morning of the th august, in the year . a great man had ceased to live. there lay the inanimate form of him who had been called king frederick the second. but a star arose in the heavens, and wise men gave it the name frederick's honor. the same star still shines in the firmament, and seems to greet us and prussia: frederick's honor! book ii. chapter i. after the king's death. "the king is dead! frederick the second is no more! i come, your majesty, to bring you this sad intelligence!" these were the words with which the minister herzberg, accompanied by the valet rietz, walked up to the bed of the prince royal, frederick william, on the night of the seventeenth of august, and aroused him from his slumber. "what is it? who speaks to me?" asked the prince royal, rising in bed, and staring at the two men who stood before him--the one with a sad, the other with a joyful expression of countenance. "i ventured to speak to your majesty," answered herzberg; "i, the former minister of king frederick the second. his majesty departed this life half an hour since, and i have come to bring the sad tidings in person. king frederick the second is dead!" "long live king frederick william the second!" cried the valet rietz, as he busily assisted the king in dressing himself and finishing his toilet. frederick william remained silent. no words, either of sorrow or of joy, escaped his lips. lost in thought, or perhaps painfully alive to the sublimity of the moment, or embarrassed as to what he should say, in order to satisfy two men so differently constituted, he silently submitted himself to his valet's attentions, while von herzberg had withdrawn to the alcove of the farthest window, and stood sadly awaiting the commands of the new king. "your majesty is attired," said rietz, in low, submissive tones. "is the carriage in readiness?" demanded frederick william, starting as if aroused from deep thought. "yes, your majesty, i ordered it to be ready at once." "come, then, herzberg, let us go; rietz, you will accompany us." "but kings should not venture into the night air, without first breaking fast. the chocolate is already prepared. will your majesty permit me to serve it up?" "no, rietz, every thing in its proper place," said the king. "my knees tremble; give me the support of your arm, herzberg, and lead me." he laid his hand heavily upon herzberg's proffered arm, and walked out, leaning upon him. rietz, who followed them, fastened his small gray eyes on the minister, and shook his fist at him behind his back. "you will not be the support of my king much longer," he muttered between his clinched teeth. "you and your whole pack shall soon be dismissed! we have stood in the background and looked on while you governed, long enough. our time has at last come, and we will make the most of it." his manner had been threatening and hostile while muttering these words; but, as he now hurried forward to open the carriage door, he quickly changed it, and he not only assisted the king in entering, but also extended a helping hand to the minister. he then jumped up and took his seat beside the coachman, and the carriage rolled down the broad avenue that led to the palace of sans-souci. the drive was of short duration, the horses pushing forward as if aware that they were carrying a new king to his future. not a word was spoken in the carriage; its occupants, the valet included, were lost in meditation. he also was fully aware that he was entering upon a new future, and he swore that it should not only be a brilliant but also a profitable one. he smiled complacently when he considered the pleasures and happiness life had in store for him. did not the king love him, and, still better, did not the king love his wife, the soi-disant madame rietz? "a plain madame she will not remain much longer," said he to himself. "she is ambitious; i will place her at the head of the department of titles and orders, but i will superintend the department of finance and material profits. when such a good-natured couple as we are harness ourselves to a wagon, it will be strange indeed if we do not manage to pull it through the mire of life, and if it does not ultimately become transformed into a right regal equipage." at this moment the carriage turned the corner of the avenue, and there lay sans-souci, illumined by the first rays of the rising sun, bright and beautiful to look upon, although the corpse of a king lay within--the corpse of one, who but yesterday was the master and ruler of millions, to-day inanimate clay, a handful of dust from the dust of humanity. the carriage halted, and, as no one came forward to open the door, rietz reluctantly opened it himself. the king's house was the scene of confusion and sorrow, and could no longer be called the house sans-souci, "the house without care," since its royal occupant had closed his eyes. the king entered the antechamber, and greeted with a kindly smile the two valets who stood near the door. tears rushed to their eyes, and disregarding etiquette in their grief, they neglected to open the door that led to the inner apartments. rietz hastened forward and opened it, and then followed the king and minister into the reception-room, which was still empty, as the princes and princesses, and the courtiers, had not yet been informed of the king's death. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" they will soon come with one weeping and one laughing eye; with a reluctant tear for the departed, and a fascinating smile for the living king, who had awakened this morning to find a crown on his brow, and a kingdom at his feet! "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" how desolate is the antechamber of the departed king to-day! not a sound is heard! the portrait of the marquise de pompadour, which she had given frederick as a mark of her favor, hangs on the wall, and smiles down upon this scene with its coquettish beauty. the king and the minister do not observe it, but rietz, who follows close behind, looks up at the picture with a complacent smile, and thinks to himself that his wife will certainly become quite as celebrated and honored as the french king's flame. why should not an empress also write to her some day--to her, the adored of the king of prussia, and call her "ma cousine?" why not? it is only with the greatest difficulty that the valet can suppress his inclination to burst into laughter, when this thought occurs to him. as he follows his master into the king's study, he covers his face with his hand, and assumes an air of deep dejection. there are people in this room, and there might be observant eyes there also. but no, there are no observant eyes in the king's study to-day. the men who are present are thinking only of their trouble and grief. there are no tears of etiquette and no sighs of assumed sorrow there. the king's four cabinet counsellors alone are present. in accordance with his request of the day before, they had come to his study at four o'clock in the morning, the accustomed hour. on the preceding day they had been admitted to his presence, and he had given them his instructions in a weak voice, and had even steadied his trembling hand sufficiently to affix his signature to a state document. to-day they had come, as usual, with the rising sun, but they now saw that their sun had set--nothing remained for them but to weep. the king did not see them, or did not seem to see them, but walked rapidly toward the open door, and the mourning group who had assembled in the adjoining apartment. on a blood-stained pillow in an arm-chair lay the countenance which was yesterday that of a king. a day had transformed it into a marble bust; it lay there with closed eyes, in peaceful serenity--a smile on the lips that had yesterday cried out to the sun, "soon i will be with you!" the great king was with the sun; that which lay in the chair was only the worthless casket of the flown soul. beside the body stood the physician sello, in deep dejection. behind the chair were the two lackeys, who had faithfully watched at the king's bedside during the preceding night; they were weeping bitterly, weeping because he had gone from them. deep silence reigned; and there was something in this silence which inspired even the valet rietz with awe. he held his breath, and approached noiselessly to look at the corpse of king frederick, whom he had never had an opportunity of viewing in such close proximity during his lifetime. as the king approached the body, the servants sobbed audibly. the physician bowed his head deeper, to salute the rising star. the greyhound, which had remained quiet and motionless at the king's feet until now, jumped up, raised its slender head, and howled piteously, and then returned to its former position. deeply moved, his eyes filled with tears, the king stooped over the dead body, raised the cold hand to his lips, and kissed it; and then he laid his warm hand on the brow that had worn a crown, and had so often been entwined with laurel-wreaths. "give me, o god, thy blessing, that i may be a worthy successor of this great king," said frederick william, in a low voice, while tears trickled down his cheeks.--"you, my predecessor, made prussia great; god grant that it may never be made weak through my instrumentality! farewell, my king and uncle, and peace be with us all!" "amen!" said herzberg, in a firm voice. "last evening, when the shades of death were already gathering on his brow, his majesty king frederick sent for me, and whispered these words, in faltering tones: 'on the morrow you will present my salutations to my successor beside my body.' your majesty, king frederick greets you through me!" frederick william inclined his head in response. "you were with the king when he died, were you not, my dear sello?" "yes, sire, i was." "at what hour did the king die?" sello raised his hand, and pointed solemnly to the large clock which stood against the wall on a marble stand. "your majesty, the hands of that clock stopped the moment the king breathed his last sigh. sire, behold the first monument erected to the memory of our great king!" frederick william looked both astonished and pleased. "this is truly wonderful," he observed, in an undertone. "they were then right! we are surrounded by wonders. the hand of a mysterious agency is visible in all things!" he walked up to the clock, and a feeling of awe crept over him as he regarded the dial. to him the hands were ghostly fingers pointing to the moment at which the king had died. "twenty minutes past two," said the king, softly. "strange, passing strange!" he turned and beckoned to his valet to approach. "rietz, at what time did i call you last night, when i was awakened by some fearful anxiety?" "it was exactly twenty minutes past two, your majesty! i am certain of it, because you commanded me to consult your watch at the time." "yes, that was the exact time," murmured the king to himself. "the spirits woke me, that i might greet the new day that was dawning for me." "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" the king, who gave enlightenment and freedom of thought to his people, is dead! king frederick is dead! a shadow darkens the sun of this first morning of the new era. this shadow will soon become a lowering cloud, and night and darkness will sink down over prussia. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" [illustration: the dead king.] frederick william had been gazing thoughtfully at the clock. with an effort he suddenly aroused himself. the hands of that clock proclaimed the cessation of the old and the beginning of the new era--of his era. he must be prepared to meet its requirements. for the second time he approached the corpse. "where are the king's decorations?" he demanded of strützki, the attendant, in whose arms the king had breathed his last. hastily drying his eyes, strützki stepped softly to the little cabinet, and opened it. "leave the others," commanded the king, "and bring me only the ribbon of the order of the black eagle." strützki speedily returned with the designated order. holding the broad orange ribbon in his hand, the king now turned to the minister von herzberg. "count," said he, "bow your head, and receive, at my hands, the last souvenir of the great king who has cast off his mortal frame, in order that he may sojourn with us as an immortal spirit. the ribbon worn by frederick the great shall now adorn your breast, in order that the respect and esteem which i entertain for you be made manifest to the world. you will be as true and zealous a friend to me as you were to my great uncle. you will serve me, as you served him, in the capacity of minister of state; and you will be often called on for advice and counsel, count herzberg." "your majesty," murmured herzberg, his voice tremulous with emotion, "your majesty rewards me beyond my deserts. i have done nothing but my duty, and--" "happy is that king," exclaimed frederick william, interrupting him, "happy is that king who is surrounded by servants who take no credit to themselves for the good and great which they accomplish, considering that they have done no more than their duty. the obligation to acknowledge their services and show his gratitude, is on this account all the more incumbent upon him; there are very few people on earth who can say of themselves, in this exalted sense, that they have done their duty. but i am a very happy king; i have two such friends at my side on the very threshold of my career. you, my dear count, i have already rewarded for your services. your patent as count shall be made out, and the insignia of the highest order of the black eagle presented you. you will still continue to administer the affairs of your foreign bureau. and now, you need rest, my dear count; i know that you have watched a great deal in the last few nights. _au revoir!_" after taking a last lingering look at the royal corpse, herzberg retired; and king frederick william turned to the valet, rietz, who had stood, with his head bowed down, in order to hide the curiosity, and the indifference to the solemnity of the occasion, which were depicted in his countenance. "and now, my dear rietz," said the king, extending his hand to the valet, "now the time has at last come when i can reward you for your faithful services! i appoint you treasurer of my household, and keeper of my strong-box!"[ ] "ah, your majesty, my beloved king," sobbed rietz, as he pressed frederick william's hand to his thick, swollen lips, "such grace, such favor, i have not deserved. i thank your majesty, however, from the bottom of my heart, and you shall always find in me a true and faithful servant! oh, what will my wife say, and how happy she will be, over the new honor you have conferred upon me!" the king withdrew his hand with a slight shudder, and looked almost timidly in the direction of the corpse, which lay there so grand and still. he did not see the quiet, stealthy glance which the treasurer fastened on his countenance. if the corpse of the great frederick had suddenly come to life again--if those closed eyes had opened once more--how withering a glance would they have bestowed upon the wanton valet! but even the corpse of a king hears no more, and the closed eyes open not again! "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" the king stepped slowly back, but his gaze still rested on the countenance of the dead. though closed, those eyes seemed to see into his heart. "rietz, send for the sculptor, in potsdam, in order that a cast of the king's face may be taken." "your majesty, it shall be attended to immediately." he hurried toward the door, but a gesture of his royal master recalled him. frederick william dreaded being left alone with the great dead and the weeping lackeys! for he well knew that the bodies of the departed were always watched over by the spirits of their ancestors. he knew that the spirits of those who had been dear to the departed in love and friendship, and the spirits of those who were his enemies while they trod the earth in the flesh, were now hovering over the body, and struggling for the possession of king frederick's soul, even as they struggled for the soul of moses. but a short time had elapsed since this had been communicated to him by the spirit of the great philosopher leibnitz, whom the two believers, bischofswerder and wöllner, had conjured up to confirm the statements they had made to the unbelieving prince royal! yes, these hostile spirits are struggling over the body for the possession of the soul, and to remain, with this knowledge, alone with the dead and the contending spirits, inspires awe and terror. "rietz, my faithful follower, remain," said the king, almost anxiously. "but no! call lieutenant-colonel bischofswerder." "your majesty, he has ridden into the city to carry this sad intelligence to the present prince royal, and conduct him here to sans-souci." "and the councillor wöllner?" "your majesty, i have dispatched a courier to berlin to inform him of the king's death, and he will probably soon be here." "ah, rietz, you are a faithful and considerate servant. go before and open the doors. i will repair to the audience-chamber; the court will probably have assembled by this time!" he waved the royal corpse a final adieu, bowed and walked backward to the door, as if retiring from an audience accorded him by the great frederick. profound silence reigned in the chamber for a moment, until alkmene crept out from under the chair and again howled piteously. chapter ii. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" while only two poor servants and a faithful dog remained with the dead king, the new king was receiving the congratulations of his court in the audience-chamber. the court officials and ministers had already assembled; and now the princes of the royal family were coming in. rietz, who had remained in the antechamber, now entered and approached the king. "your majesty, his royal highness the prince royal and prince louis have this moment arrived, and beg permission to tender their congratulations." "conduct the prince to the concert-hall," said the king, "i will join him there directly.--and lieutenant-colonel bischofswerder?" "your majesty, he accompanied the prince royal." the king bowed graciously. the word "majesty" sounded like sweet music in his ear, and drowned the wail of grief for the departed. bestowing a kindly smile upon the assembled court, the king left the audience-chamber in order to repair to the concert-hall, where the two princes awaited him. rietz went in advance, and, as he threw open the door of the concert-hall, cried in a loud voice, "his majesty the king!" the two princes hastened forward, and pressed their father's extended hand to their lips. "i take the liberty of tendering to my royal father my most humble congratulations." the prince uttered these words in a stiff and declamatory manner, merely repeating them as they had been taught him by his tutor, professor behnisch. "i beg that your majesty will accord me your favor, and i assure my royal father that he will always find in me an affectionate son and his most obedient subject." the king's countenance darkened as he gazed upon the prince, who would one day be his successor. prince royal! an unpleasant word, truly; a gloomy and constant reminder of approaching death!--the prince royal, who is only waiting to be king, who, like the shadow of death, is ever at the monarch's side, reminding him of approaching dissolution. to love one's successor is certainly a hard task; but his existence may, at least, be forgiven, when he is the son of a loved wife, when the father loves his child. but when the prince royal is the fruit of a marriage of convenience, the son of an unloved wife--when the king has another and a cherished son, whose mother he has passionately loved!--ah, how differently would this son have received his father! he would have thrown himself into his father's arms, and would have hugged and kissed him. "oh, my dear son alexander, why are you not my successor? why must you remain at a distance? why are you not permitted to stand at my side in this great hour? but all this shall be changed! my alexander shall no longer remain in obscurity--no, he shall not!" with his two sons the king had only exchanged a few words of ceremony. he responded but coldly to the formal congratulation of the prince royal; and replied with a mute gesture only to the embarrassed and stammering words of prince louis. "and now go, my princes," said he; "go and look at the body of your great uncle, and impress the solemn scene upon your minds, that you may never forget it!" "i shall never forget the great king," said the prince royal, his countenance expressive of great tenderness and emotion. "no, your majesty, i shall never forget the great frederick. he was always so gentle and gracious to me; and but a few days ago he spoke to me like a kind father, and that made me feel so proud and happy that i can never forget it, and never cease to be grateful while life lasts." the long-repressed tears now rushed from the prince royal's eyes, and prince louis began to weep, too, when he saw his brother's tears, and murmured: "the great frederick was also very gracious to me." the king turned aside. his sons' tears were offensive. who knows whether they will weep when their father also dies? "go, my sons, and pay a last tribute of tears to the past, and then turn your thoughts to the joyful realities of the present!" the two princes bowed ceremoniously, and then left the room, retiring backward, as if in military drill. the king's eyes followed them as they left the room, and his countenance darkened. "they are as stiff and awkward as puppets. and yet they have hearts, but not for their father!--rietz!" the chamberlain immediately appeared in the doorway, and stood awaiting his master's commands, his countenance beaming with humility. "rietz, go at once and inform my son alexander of what has taken place! he must go to charlottenburg with his tutor and await me there! let him tell his mother that i will take tea with her this evening, and that she may expect me at six o'clock." "will your majesty pass the night in charlottenburg?" asked the chamberlain, with his eyes cast down and the most innocent expression of countenance. "i cannot say," replied the king; "i may go to berlin, and--" "your majesty, perhaps, considers it necessary to pay a visit of condolence to the widowed queen at schönhausen?" rietz had said this in an almost inaudible voice, but the king's attentive ear caught the words nevertheless, and his countenance beamed with joy. "yes, my friend and heart's interpreter, i will visit the widowed queen at schönhausen. take the fastest horse from my stable and ride there to announce my coming." "to the widowed queen only, your majesty? to no one else?" "you ask as if you did not know what my reply would be," said the king, smiling. "no, you may also present my compliments to the queen's beautiful maid of honor, julie von voss. request her, in my name, to hold herself in readiness to receive me. i wish to speak with her on matters of great importance. go, my friend!" "to speak with her on matters of great importance," muttered rietz, after he had left the room. "as if we did not all very well know what he has to say to this beautiful young lady; as if his love for her were not a public secret, well known to the queen, his wife, to the entire court, and to dear madame rietz, my wife! very well, i will first ride to young alexander, then i will speed to schönhausen, and finally i will hie me to madame rietz in charlottenburg, to make my report. my dear wife is so generous, and i can dispose of so much money! life is so pleasant when one has money. and it is all the same who a man is and what he is! if he always has money, a goodly supply in his purse, he is a distinguished man, and is respected by all. therefore the main thing is to become rich, for the world belongs to the rich; and i am quite willing that the world should belong to me. oh, i will make the best use of my time; and those who suppose they can fool me by their flattery, and that i can be induced to intercede for them with the king, out of pure goodness of heart, will discover that they have calculated without their host. money is the word, gentlemen! pay up, and the influence of the mighty chamberlain shall be exerted in your behalf; but nothing gratis! death only is gratis! no, i am wrong," said he, laughing derisively, as he gazed at a company of grenadiers, who were marching up the avenue toward the palace, where they were to be stationed as a guard of honor to the royal corpse. "the funeral costs a great deal of money." the grenadiers passed on; and the subdued roll of the drums, which were draped in mourning, died away in the distance, while the winds wafted over from potsdam the sounds of the tolling bells which proclaimed the king's death to the awakening city. rietz hurried off to send the son of the king to his mother in charlottenburg, and then to ride to schönhausen and deliver a loving greeting to frederick william's new flame. it was still silent and desolate in the chamber of the dead at sans-souci. strützki had once stepped softly out of the room to get some twigs from the elder-tree which stood on the terrace, to keep the flies from the face of the dead king. and now the two lackeys were standing on either side of the chair, fanning away the miserable insects that had dared to light on this countenance since the hand of the artist death had chiselled it into marble. nothing was heard but the rustle of the twigs and the humming of the flies, ever returning, as if to mock man's vain efforts to drive them from what was justly their own. the doors were softly opened, and the two princes glided in, and noiselessly approached the arm-chair in which frederick lay, as if fearful of awakening him. the prince royal looked at the body long and silently, and his countenance was expressive of deep and earnest feeling. "stand aside, lackeys," said he, haughtily, "and you, too, my brother, i wish to be alone. i wish to commune awhile with his majesty!" the lackeys and prince louis retired; the former to the door, the latter to the distant window; and now the lad of sixteen was alone with the immortal frederick. he knelt down before the body, grasped the cold hand, and gazed on the marble features of the great dead with an expression of intense earnestness and determination. "my great uncle and king," murmured he, "i swear to you that i will endeavor to do all that you recently enjoined upon me; and that i will ever strive to do honor to your great name. i swear to you that i will one day be a good and useful king, and endeavor to deserve the affection of the people. my dear uncle, i have a secret in my heart, and i must disclose it before you descend into the grave. it seems to me your sleep will be more peaceful when you learn it: i hate madame rietz and her husband. and if she is still living when i become king, i will punish her for her crimes, and will repay her for all the tears which she has caused my dear mother. no one knows of my determination except my mother, who recently told me what sorrow madame rietz had occasioned her, and then i was so angry that i wished to go immediately and kill her. but my mother exhorted me to silence and patience, and i promised that i would obey her. but when i am king, i will be no longer silent; then shall come the day of arraignment and punishment. this i swear to you, my dear, my great uncle and king; and this is the secret i longed to disclose. yes, i will some day avenge my mother. farewell, my king--sleep in peace! and--" a hand was laid upon his shoulder; he looked up and saw his young cousin prince louis, whose approach he had not noticed, standing beside him. "i congratulate you, cousin," said prince louis, impressively, "and crave the continuance of your favor, prince royal of prussia. his majesty the king sent me here to pay my respects to the royal corpse and the prince royal, but i propose to pay my respects to the latter first." "no," said frederick william, who had slowly arisen from his knees, "that you must not do, cousin louis. i am not changed, and am no better because of our great king's death." "but more powerful," said the prince; "you are now prince royal, and the greatest deference should be shown you. oh, do not look at me so earnestly and angrily, cousin. you think i am cold and indifferent; but no, i have only determined not to weep over the body of our dear uncle. my mother tells me we shall also soon die, if we let fall a tear on the countenance of the dead. and yet, frederick, when i reflect that the good uncle is dead who was always so kind to me, and who was our pride and glory, i cannot help shedding tears in spite of my mother's injunction. oh, great frederick, that you could have remained a few years longer on earth, till that proud eye might have rested on a gallant prince and brave soldier, instead of a foolish lad!" "but, cousin, how can you speak so disparagingly of yourself, and so far forget your dignity as a prince?" "ah, a prince is no better than any one else," said prince louis, shrugging his shoulders, "and while i have the greatest respect for your exalted rank, mr. prince royal, i have none whatever for my own little title; particularly at this moment, when i see that the great frederick, the hero and king, was only a mortal. oh, my dear uncle, why did you leave us so soon! you were not yet so old--scarcely seventy-four years, and there are so many who are older. a short time since, as i was coming here to inquire after your health, i saw an old man at the entrance of the park, warming himself in the sun; he sat with folded hands, and prayed aloud. i approached and offered him a piece of money, which he rejected. i then asked him why he prayed and begged, if he did not desire money. 'i am praying for the sick king,' said he; 'i am entreating the sunbeams to warm and invigorate the king's suffering body, and restore him to new life. the king is so young! he should live much longer. i was a soldier when the king was baptized, and stood near by as a sentinel; and now they say that he must die. that makes me anxious. if so young a man must already die, my turn will soon come; and i so much desire to live a little longer and warm myself in the bright sunshine!' and the old man of ninety is still sitting in the sunshine; while you, great frederick, were compelled to die! you have gone to the sun, while we are still groping in darkness, and lamenting your loss, and--" "be still, cousin!" murmured the prince royal; "some one is coming! it is the sculptor who is to take a cast of the king's face. come, let us go! come!" he extended his hand to prince louis, to lead him out of the room, but the prince drew back. he knelt down before the body, and kissed the cold hand which had recently stroked his cheeks affectionately. frederick had always loved prince louis, the son of his brother ferdinand, and had often prophesied that he would live to accomplish something great and useful. the young prince thought of this, as he pressed the cold hand to his lips in a last farewell. "i swear to you, my great uncle and king, that i will faithfully strive to fulfil your prophecy, and accomplish something good and useful, and to do honor to the name i bear. let the kiss which i now press on your hand be the seal of my vow, and my last greeting!" he arose, and his large dark eyes rested on the body with a lingering, tender look. "oh," sighed he, "why am i not a painter or an artist, that i might sketch this scene!" "a happy suggestion," said the prince royal, eagerly. "i am certainly no artist, but i can draw a little nevertheless; and i intend to make for myself a memento of this day.--mr. eckstein, i beg you to wait a quarter of an hour, in order that i may make a sketch of this scene." the sculptor, who had already approached the body with his apparatus, bowed respectfully, and stepped back. prince louis took a pencil and a sheet of paper from the king's writing-desk, and handed it to his brother the prince royal. the latter commenced to sketch the scene with hurried strokes.[ ] his brother stood at his side, looking on; behind the chair were the two lackeys, and the greyhound's head protruded from beneath the chair. the sculptor eckstein had withdrawn to the farthest end of the room. prince louis had, however, noiselessly glided into the adjoining concert-room, where the instruments were kept. there were the flutes and violins in their cases, and there stood the magnificent piano, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, which the king's hands had so often touched. the silence of the death-chamber was once more unbroken. the body lay there, so great and sublime in the two-fold majesty of death and renown, and the prince royal was absorbed in his work, when the silence was suddenly broken by subdued tones of plaintive music. these tones came from the concert-room, and filled the chamber of the dead with low and harmonious sighs and lamentations. alkmene crept out from under the arm-chair, and trotted slowly into the adjoining chamber, as if to see if her master, whose voice she had not heard since yesterday, had not called to her to come to him at the piano. the greyhound, however, returned to her former position, when she saw that it was another who sat at the piano. no, it was not the king, but his nephew louis, who was playing this requiem for the great departed, and tears were trickling down over his handsome and manly young face. perhaps it was improper to break in upon the stillness of the sacred chamber in this manner. but what cared the young prince for that. he thought only of bringing the great dead a last love-offering, and none was there to prevent him. etiquette had nothing more to do with the dead king. it had taken up its abode in the neighboring audience-chamber, with the living king. there, all was formality and ceremony. there, decorated excellencies and gold-embroidered uniforms were making profound obeisances. there, respectful congratulations were being made, and gracious smiles accorded by royal lips. "le roi est mort! vive le roi!" chapter iii. the favorites. king frederick william stepped back into the little audience-chamber, and beckoned to his two friends bischofswerder and wöllner to follow him. he embraced bischofswerder, and pressed a kiss on his forehead. "my friend, you must never leave me, but always remain at my side." "i will follow my royal master," said bischofswerder, bowing profoundly, "as a faithful dog follows his master's footsteps, satisfied if he shall from time to time vouchsafe me a gracious look." "i know you, my friend," said the king. "i know that you are disinterested, that you are not ambitious, and that the things of this world are of but little importance to your noble mind." "let it be my task to provide for your earthly as you have undertaken to provide for my spiritual welfare. my dear bischofswerder, i appoint you colonel, and this shall be only the step from which you will be rapidly promoted to the rank of general; for you not only war bravely and daringly against visible men, but also against invisible spirits, and it is my holy duty and privilege to reward the brave." "your majesty," said bischofswerder, gently, "the only reward i crave is your favor. i desire and solicit nothing more. the honors and dignities which you shower upon me, and of which i am so undeserving, only awaken anxiety by illumining my small merit, and making my unworthiness all the more conspicuous before the world. nevertheless, i accept with thanks the promotion accorded me by the grace of my king, although i would rather decline the honor, and remain in obscurity in the shadow of your throne. but i dare not, for a higher one has commanded me to submit to your behests, and i must obey." "a higher one?" asked the king. "who is he? who commands here besides myself?" "your majesty, the spirits of the great dead--the invisible, whose power is greater than that of all the visible, however great and mighty they may be!" the king had asked this question with a proud and haughty glance; suddenly his manner altered, his countenance assumed an humble, penitent look, his head sank down upon his breast, and he folded his hands as if in prayer. "i am a sinner and a criminal," he murmured. "in the pride of my new dignity i forgot my superiors; and the little visible creature dared to consider himself the equal of the invisible! i now repent, beg for mercy, and am ready to yield obedience to my superiors.--they have then spoken to you again, these superior beings? they have imparted to you their wishes?" "your majesty," said bischofswerder, in a mysterious whisper, "while sleeping last night, i was suddenly awakened by a wondrous radiance, and i sprang from my bed, believing that fire had broken out and enveloped my room in flames; but i felt that a gentle hand forced me back, and i now saw that the light which had terrified me came from a luminous countenance, which stood out in bold relief amid the surrounding darkness. the eyes of this countenance shone like two heavenly stars, shedding a soft light upon me. with a celestial smile on its lips, the spirit spoke to me: 'your heart is humble and guileless. you have no craving after earthly honors, and are not attracted by grandeur and riches; but i command you to arise from your humility, and no longer to withdraw yourself from earthly honors, for those whom the invisible love must also be recognized and elevated by the visible, that their favor be made manifest before men. you will be advanced to-morrow, and on the ensuing day you will receive a second advancement; and what your king offers you must accept. this is the will of the invisible.' and after this wonderful spirit had spoken it vanished, and all was again enveloped in darkness. i, however, lit a candle, in order that i might have tangible proof, on arising the next morning, that this had been no dream; i wrote down on a sheet of paper the last words the spirit had spoken, and the hour at which it appeared. your majesty, i have brought this paper with me to show it to my king. here it is!" the king took the writing, and read in a low voice: "you will be advanced to-morrow, and on the ensuing day you will receive a second advancement; and what the king offers you must accept. this is the will of the invisible. command of the radiant spirit, given in the night between the sixteenth and seventeenth of august, at twenty minutes past two." "the hour at which the king died," exclaimed frederick william, with astonishment, "and the hour at which i also suddenly awoke! wonderful, wonderful indeed!" "your majesty, for those endowed with intuition there are no wonders," said bischofswerder, quietly, "and your majesty belongs to this number." "but only in a very slight degree," sighed the king. "i am still groping in the twilight; my eyes are yet dazzled by the splendor of the invisible." "but your majesty will advance steadily toward the source of light; and if the invisible will permit me to conduct you into the holy temple of infinite knowledge, i will esteem it the greatest earthly blessing!" "yes," cried the king, in ecstasy; "yes, my friend, you shall conduct me; and, at the side of him upon whom this light has been shed, i will walk in safety over the slippery paths of life. nothing can astonish me in the future, for the paper i hold in my hand is a miracle, and an evidence that the invisible is omnipresent and omniscient. at the same moment in which king frederick died i awoke with a cry, and at the same time the spirit announced to you that you would be advanced by your king--by me, who at that moment became king! my friend, i beg you to give me this paper, this evidence of the presence of the invisible." bischofswerder bowed profoundly. "all that the king's consecrating hand touches becomes his property, as i am his with all that is mine!" "i thank you, colonel, i thank you. ascend the step to honor which this day offers, and let it be my care that the prophecy for the ensuing day be also fulfilled. and now," continued the king, turning to wöllner, who had stood with folded hands, his head bowed down, during this conversation; "and now, as to you, councillor wöllner, you are also deserving of thanks and reward." "far more deserving than i, poor unworthy man," exclaimed bischofswerder; "for chrysophorus, the effulgent, belongs to the chosen, and is the favorite of the invisible. if your majesty empties the plenteous horn of your favor on the head of chrysophorus, no drop will be lost, but all will fall on good and fertile soil." the king greeted the noble, disinterested friend with a kindly smile, and then laid his hand gently on wöllner's shoulder. "thus i will sustain myself on you, wöllner, and as i now lay my right hand on you, so will i make you my right hand, as i make bischofswerder my head, to think for me. you too shall be my head and my hand." "but your heart, sire?" asked wöllner, in his earnest and solemn voice. "your heart you must be yourself, and no other human being must be your heart but the king himself." frederick william smiled. "my heart, that am i--i the king, but also i the man; and the head and hand which act for me, must also permit the heart to act, as it will and can! councillor wöllner, has the invisible announced nothing to you? have you alone passed the night in quiet slumber?" "your majesty," replied wöllner, with an air of self-reproach, "i have received no message from the invisible; i must honor the truth, and acknowledge that i have rarely enjoyed such peaceful and unbroken slumber as in the past night." "he slept the sleep of the just," said bischofswerder, "and the spirits kept watch at the door of our chrysophorus." "well, then, i will announce to you what the spirits did not announce," exclaimed the king, with vivacity, "wöllner, i appoint you privy councillor of the finances, and, at the same time, intendant of the royal bureau of construction." "oh, your majesty," cried wöllner, his little gray eyes sparkling with joy, "that is more than i deserve, almost more than i can accept. i do not consider myself worthy of such high distinction; and this favor far exceeds my merit. and yet, notwithstanding the high honor my king has conferred upon me, i still dare prefer a request; one, however, which does not spring from any bold desire of my own, but one which the command of the invisible compels me to utter. i am not actuated by earthly motives, but i must obey the behests of the spirits." "what is this request, my dear privy councillor of the finances?" asked the king, with a smile. "i give you my royal word that your first request shall be granted." "your majesty, my request is only this: give me your favor, your confidence, and your esteem, as long as i live." "this i promise you, but as a matter of course i should have been compelled to do so, although you had not asked me. this, therefore, we cannot consider a compliance with your request. speak, wöllner, and prefer your other request." "well, then, your majesty, i beg to be permitted to arrange king frederick's papers, and prepare this literary legacy for the press." "i commission you not only to do so," said the king, "but, in order to remove all impediments and facilitate your labors, i make you a present of these papers, to have and to hold as your own property. you may print or suppress portions of them, as seems best to you. i make this one condition, however, that you do not destroy the king's writings, manuscripts, and papers, after you have examined and had then printed as your insight and judgment shall direct; but that you deposit them in the royal archives, set apart for the preservation of such documents." "your commands shall be obeyed in every particular," said wöllner, respectfully, "and that no doubts may arise on this subject, i beg this favor of your majesty, that you make out a written order to the effect that all the papers of the deceased king (whom i unhappily cannot call the blessed, because he lived in unbelief and darkness) be transferred to me by the two privy cabinet councillors of the late king; they taking a receipt for the exact number of sheets counted out to me, and my written obligation to return each and every one of them. and i will certainly make haste to accomplish my task, for the invisible has commanded me to complete the great work with which i have been intrusted without delay." "and are you permitted to acquaint me with the object of this great work, my friend?" asked the king. "yes your majesty, i am not only permitted, but am commanded to do so! i am to impart to you the reasons why i solicit the papers of the deceased king, and why i desire to have them printed. the object is, that the eyes of your majesty's subjects may be opened, and they be brought to the knowledge that he, whom freethinkers and unbelievers called a shining light, was a mocker at all religion, and an atheist who scoffed at all that was holy, and did homage to himself, the idol of renown and heathenish poetry, only. the invisible has commanded me to unveil the scoffing mind of the unbelieving king, and make manifest to the world that such a one may never hope to enter heaven and participate in bliss. listen, my dear king and master," continued wöllner, in an elevated voice, as the roll of drums announced the approach of a body of troops; "listen to those drums proclaiming the dawn of a new day! hail the day which gives to millions of misguided men a leader and a guide, destined to lead them back to the right path; and to rear aloft the holy cross which his predecessor trod under foot! hail to your people, frederick william, for you have come to rebuild the church of god! hail to thee, thou favorite of the invisible! hail, frederick william!" and with a cry of enthusiasm, bischofswerder repeated the words, "hail to thee, thou favorite of the invisible! hail, frederick william!" the king had listened to wöllner with downcast eyes, and the joyful acclamations of his two friends seemed only to have given him disquiet and anxiety. "i am an unworthy sinner," murmured the king, in a penitent voice, "and if you do not take pity on me and intercede for me with the invisible, i am a lost man. i implore you both to sustain me with a helping hand, that i may not fall to the ground." "the invisible has commanded us to stay at your side and devote our lives to your welfare," said wöllner, solemnly. "and even if he had not," cried bischofswerder, feelingly, "my own heart would have prompted me to do so, for i am my king's alone, and am ready to shed my blood for him. tell us, therefore, what we are to do, and what is required to restore peace to your soul." "say, to my heart, my faithful friend," cried the king, "for it is my heart that needs peace. i love, love with glowing passion. and yet i have sworn in the holy lodge of the invisible to dedicate my life to virtue. oh, tell me, tell me, my friends, how can i keep my vow without giving my heart the death-blow! do not let me sink in despair, but take pity on me. i feel sick and miserable; the torment of love and the conflict with duty rob me of all strength and courage. oh, help me, help me! you, my friend bischofswerder, let me drink once more of the elixir of life, which the great magician, cagliostro, intrusted you with; give me once more life, health, and happiness!" "your majesty knows," replied bischofswerder, "that i gave you the last drop of the precious elixir, given me by the great magician, to infuse new life and health into my veins, when the hour of death should draw near. i joyfully delivered myself over to death in order that my king might have new life; and i now learn, with the greatest sorrow, that it was not sufficient to accomplish its object. but what i would never do for myself, i will now do for my king. i will entreat the invisible to impart to me the secret of the preparation of this elixir of life; i will address my thoughts to this magician with all the strength of my soul, and conjure him to appear and instruct me how to concoct the elixir of life for my king and master." "ah," sighed the king, sadly, "if it is necessary that the magician should appear here, personally, in order to impart to you this wonderful secret, my wish will probably never be gratified, for cagliostro is at present, as my ambassador yesterday informed me, in london; and the believers are pouring into that city, from all parts of europe, to see the sublime martyr, who languished in a french prison, on account of the unhappy necklace affair, until his innocence was proved, when he was restored to liberty, on condition that he should leave france at once and never recross its boundaries. cagliostro then went to london, where he is now receiving the homage of his admirers; and there he expects to remain, as he informed our ambassador. how can your prayers and entreaties have sufficient power to call the magician here from so great a distance? his sublime spirit is united with the body, and is subject to finite laws." "no, my king," replied bischofswerder, quietly, "the sublime magician, cagliostro is uncontrolled by these laws. the miraculous power of his spirit governs the body, and it must obey his behests. i read in your soul that you are in doubt, my king, and that you do not believe in the dominion of the spirit. but your majesty must learn to do so, for in this belief only are safety and eternal health to be found for you and for us all. i will invoke the invisible in the coming night; and, if my prayer be heard, the magician of the north will appear in our midst this very night, to give ear to my entreaties." "if this should occur," cried the king, "i am forever converted to this belief, and nothing can hereafter make me waver in my trust and confidence in you, my bischofswerder!" "it will occur," said bischofswerder, quietly. "i beg that your majesty will call chrysophorus and myself to your chamber at the next midnight hour, in order that we may invoke the invisible in your presence." "at the next midnight hour?" repeated the king, in confusion. bischofswerder's quick, piercing glance seemed to read the king's inmost thoughts in his embarrassed manner. "i know," said he, after a pause, "that your majesty intended to pass this night in charlottenburg with your children and their mother; and if your majesty commands, we will meet there at the midnight hour." "do so, my friends," said the king, hastily, "i will await you in charlottenburg, at the appointed time, although i scarcely believe you will come; and doubt, very much, whether bischofswerder's incantations will have power to call the great magician to my assistance. oh, i am greatly in need of help. if you are really my friends, and if the invisible has anointed your eyes with the rays of knowledge, you also must know what torments my soul is undergoing!" "and we do know," said bischofswerder. "it has been announced to us." "and we do know," repeated wöllner, "the invisible has commanded me to implore his dearest son, king frederick william, not to burden his conscience with new sin, but to renounce the passion which is burning in his heart." "i cannot, no, i cannot!" exclaimed frederick william; and with a cry of anguish he buried his face in his hands. his two confidants exchanged a rapid glance; and bischofswerder, as if answering an unspoken but well-understood question of wöllner's, shook his head dissentingly. he then stooped down to the lamenting, moaning king. "your majesty," whispered he, "to-night we will also ask the invisible if he will not have indulgence with the king's love; and permit the beautiful fräulein von voss to become the wife of the man she loves?" "oh, if this could be brought about!" cried the king, throwing his arms around his friend's neck, "i could be the happiest of mortals, and would gladly resign to you my whole kingdom to dispose of it as you see fit. give me the woman i love, and i will give you my royal authority!" again the two confidants exchanged rapid glances, and wöllner bowed his head in assent. "we will entreat the invisible to-night," said bischofswerder--"and i hope that he will grant what your majesty desires." "but, if so, certain conditions will be exacted, and penance enjoined," said wöllner. "i am ready to consent to all his demands, and to do all he enjoins, if he will only give me this heavenly woman." chapter iv. the maid of honor. no intelligence of the demise of the great king had as yet arrived at the palace of schönhausen, the residence of queen elizabeth christine, frederick's wife. it was still early in the morning, and the queen, who was in the habit of sending a special courier to potsdam every day, to inquire after the king's health, was now writing the customary morning letter to her husband. she had just finished the letter, and was folding the sheet, when the door of the adjoining chamber was opened, and a tall and remarkably beautiful young lady appeared on the threshold. her rich, light, and unpowdered hair fell in a profusion of little locks around her high-arched brow. her large, almond-shaped eyes were of a clear, luminous blue, her delicately-curved nose gave her countenance an aristocratic expression; and from her slightly-pouting crimson lips, when she smiled, all the little cupids of love and youth seemed to send their arrows into the hearts of the admirers of the lovely maid of honor, julie von voss. her tall and slender figure showed the delicate outline and the rich fulness which we admire in the statues of venus, and there was, at the same time, something of the dignified, severe, and chaste juno in her whole appearance--something unapproachable, that demanded deference, and kept her worshippers at a distance, after they had been attracted by her alluring beauty. the queen greeted her maid of honor, who bowed profoundly, with a gentle smile. "you have come for my letter, have you not, my child? the courier is waiting?" "no, your majesty," replied the maid of honor, in a somewhat solemn voice. "no, it is not a question of dispatching a courier, but of receiving one who begs to be permitted to see you. the valet of your royal nephew frederick william is in the antechamber, and desires to be admitted to your presence." the queen arose from her sofa with a vivacity unusual in one of her age. "the valet of my nephew?" said elizabeth christine, with quivering lips--"and do you know what brings him here?" "he will impart his mission to your majesty only," replied the maid of honor; and when the queen sank back on the sofa, and told her in faltering tones to admit the courier, she threw the door open, and summoned the valet with a proud wave of the hand. and straightway the broad, colossal figure of the royal privy chamberlain rietz appeared on the threshold. with a smile on his thick lips, and his little gray eyes fixed intently on the pale old lady, who stared at him with an expression of breathless anxiety, the chamberlain entered, and walked across the wide room to the queen's sofa with the greatest composure, although she had expressed no desire that he should do so. "your majesty," said he, without waiting permission to speak, "i have been sent by his majesty king frederick william--" the queen interrupted him with a cry of anguish. "by king frederick william!" she repeated, in faltering tones. "he is then dead?" "yes," replied rietz, inclining his head slightly. "yes, king frederick died last night; and he who was heretofore prince of prussia is now king of prussia. his majesty sends the widowed queen his most gracious and devoted greeting; and orders me to inform her majesty that he will arrive here during the day to pay her a visit of condolence." the queen paid no attention to the chamberlain's words; of all that he had spoken, she heard but this, that her husband, that frederick the great, was dead, that the man she had loved with such fidelity and resignation for the last fifty years was no longer among the living. "he is dead! oh, my god, he is dead!" she cried, in piercing accents. "how can life continue, how can the world exist, now that frederick is no more! what is to become of unhappy prussia, when the great king no longer reigns; what can it be without his wisdom and strength, and his enlightened mind?" "your majesty forgets that the king has a glorious successor," remarked rietz, with cynical indifference. a dark frown gathered on the brow of the maid of honor, julie von voss, when the chamberlain uttered these impertinent words; and she glanced haughtily at his broad, self-complacent countenance. "leave the room," said she, waving her hand imperiously toward the door; "wait in the antechamber till you are called to receive her majesty's reply and commands." the chamberlain's countenance flushed with anger, but he quickly suppressed all outward manifestation of feeling, and assumed an humble and respectful manner. "your grace commands," said he, "and i am her zealous and obedient servant, ever ready to do her bidding. and herein i know that i am only fulfilling the desire of my royal master, who--" "leave the room at once!" cried the maid of honor, her cheeks flushing with anger. "no," said the queen, awakening from her sad reverie; "no, let good rietz remain, dear julie. he must tell me of the great dead. i must know how he died, and how his last hours passed.--speak, rietz, tell me." the chamberlain described the king's last hours in so ready and adroit a manner, managing to introduce the person of the new king so cleverly into his narrative, and accompanying his remarks with such intelligent and significant looks at the maid of honor, that she blushingly avoided his glances, and pressed her lips firmly together, as if to suppress the angry and resentful words her rosy lips longed to utter. "i left his majesty king frederick william in the death-chamber," said rietz, as he finished his narrative. "but, even in the depth of his grief for his royal uncle, he thought of the living whom he loves so dearly, and commanded me to hasten to schönhausen, to announce that he intended to gratify the longings of his heart by coming here, and that--" "will not your majesty dismiss the messenger?" interrupted the maid of honor in an angry voice. "yes, he may go," murmured elizabeth christine. "tell the king my nephew that i await him, and feel highly honored by the consideration shown me." "your majesty, love and admiration draw him to schönhausen," observed rietz. "i can assure you of this, for the king confides every thing to me, and often calls me his--" "figaro," added the maid of honor, with a contemptuous curl of her proud lips. "his friend," continued rietz, without, as it seemed, having heard this cutting word. "i have the honor to know all my master's heart-secrets, and--" "to be the husband of wilhelmine enke," exclaimed the maid of honor, passionately. "your majesty, will you not dismiss the messenger?" "you may go, rietz," said the queen, gently. but rietz still hesitated, and fastened his gaze upon the young lady, with a smiling expression. "your majesty," said she, "i believe he is waiting for a gratuity; and we will not be rid of him until he receives it." rietz broke out into loud laughter, regardless of the presence of the mourning and weeping queen. "this is comical," he cried. "this i will relate to his majesty; it will amuse him to learn that this young lady offers his privy chamberlain and treasurer a gratuity. he will consider it quite bewitching on her part, for his majesty finds every thing she does bewitching. but i am not waiting for a gratuity, but for permission to deliver to mademoiselle von voss the messages which his majesty intrusted to me for her grace, and i therefore beg the young lady--" "go out of the room, and wait in the antechamber until i send for you!" said the maid of honor, imperiously. "and will you soon do so?" asked rietz, with unruffled composure. "i take the liberty to remark, that i have other commissions to execute for his majesty, and therefore i ask whether you will soon call me?" "you have nothing to ask, but only to obey," said the young lady, proudly. rietz shrugged his shoulders; bowed profoundly to the queen, who was wholly occupied with her grief, and had heard nothing of this conversation, and then left the room with a firm step. "she is very proud, very haughty," growled rietz in a low voice, as he threw himself into a chair in the antechamber with such violence, that it cracked beneath him. "that she is, and it will require much trouble to tame her. but she shall be tamed nevertheless; and the day will come when i can repay her abuse with interest. figaro she called me. i know very well what that means; my french education has not been thrown away. yes, yes, figaro! i understand! the ever-complaisant servant of count almaviva, and the negotiator in the affair with the beautiful rosine. oh, my young lady, take care! i am the figaro, to-day, helping to capture the fair rosine, in order to deliver her over to count almaviva. but i, too, have my beautiful susanna; and some day, when almaviva wearies of his divine rosine, he will turn again to my susanna; and you will then be thrown in the background. figaro! ah, my lovely maid of honor, i will give you cause to remember having called me this name! i will speak to my wife about this matter before the day is over!" chapter v. figaro. while rietz was sitting in the antechamber, in an angry and resentful frame of mind, the maid of honor was still at the queen's side, endeavoring to console her with tender words and entreaties. "after all, your majesty is but suffering an imaginary loss," said the maid of honor finally, after she had exhausted all other grounds of consolation. "for you, all will be just as it was before, as it has been for many years; and it should be all the same to your majesty whether the king has died, or is still remaining in sans-souci, for you were widely separated in either case." "but i was always with him in thought," lamented elizabeth christine. "i knew that he lived, that we breathed the same air, that the ray of sunshine which warmed me, fell also on his dear, noble head. i knew that the eyes of the country were directed toward sans-souci; and that the great king's every word found an echo throughout all europe. it did me good, and was my consolation for all other wants, that this great hero and king, who was worshipped and admired by the world, sometimes thought of his poor wife, in his infinite goodness, and sometimes shed a ray of light on her dark and solitary life. i was permitted to be at his side on every new-year's-day, and hold with him the grand court-reception. and i always looked forward to this event with rejoicing throughout the entire year, for he was ever the first to congratulate me, although in silence; and then he looked at me so kindly and mildly with his wondrous eyes, that my heart overflowed with happiness and bliss." "but he never spoke to your majesty, the cruel, unfeeling king!" said the maid of honor, shrugging her shoulders. "do not abuse him," said the queen, warmly. "he was not cruel, not unfeeling. for if he had been so, he would have sundered the tie which bound him to the unloved woman who had been forced upon him when he became king. but he was mild and gentle; he tolerated me, and i was permitted to love him and call myself his, although he was never mine. instead of banishing me, as he might have done, he endured me, and accorded me the royal honors due his wife. true, i have not often seen him, and have very rarely spoken to him; but yet i heard and knew of him, and he never permitted my birthday to pass without writing me a letter of congratulation. once, however--once he went so far in his goodness as to hold the new-year's reception here in schönhausen, because an accident which happened to my foot prevented my coming to berlin. oh, i shall never forget that day, for it was the only time the king visited me here; and since then it seems to me that the sun has never set, but still gilds the apartments through which frederick had wandered. on that day," continued the queen, with a sad smile, absorbed in her recollections of the past, "on that day, something occurred which astonished the court, and was talked of in all berlin. the king, who, on similar occasions in the city, had only looked at and saluted me from a distance, walked up to my side, extended his hand, and inquired after my health in the most kind and feeling manner. i was so confused and bewildered by this unexpected happiness, that i almost fainted. my heart beat wildly, and i found no strength to utter a single word in reply, that is, if my tears were not an answer.[ ] but since that day the king has never spoken to me. the words, however, which he then uttered have always resounded in my ear like sweet music, and will lull me to sleep in the hour of death." "oh," exclaimed the maid of honor, in astonishment and indignation, "how can it be possible to love in such a manner?" the queen, who had entirely forgotten that she was not speaking to herself, and that another listened to her plaintive wail, raised her head quickly, her blue eyes sparkling as if she had been but seventeen instead of seventy years old. "how could it be possible not to love in such a manner, when one loved frederick the great?" said she, proudly. "i had made this love my life, my religion, my hope of immortality. i gave to this love my whole soul, my every thought and feeling; and it gave me, in return, joyful resignation and the strength to endure. without this, my great, my beautiful love, i would have perished in the solitude and desolation of my being; but from it my life derived its support, its enthusiasm, and its perpetual youth. years have whitened my hair and wrinkled my countenance, but in the poor, miserable body, in the breast of this old woman, throbs the heart of a young girl; and it bears me on with its youthful love, through and beyond all time and trouble, to those heights where i will once more behold him, and where he will, perhaps, requite the love he here despised. love never grows old; when the heart is filled with it, years vanish like fleeting dreams, and it encircles mortality with the halo of undying youth! therefore it must not surprise you, julie, that the old woman you see before you can speak of her love. it was the love of my youth, and still makes me young. and now go, my child, and leave me alone with my recollections, and the great dead! i have much to say to him that god only may hear! go, my child, and if, at some future day, you should love and suffer, think of this hour!" she greeted the young lady with a gentle wave of the hand, and as the maid of honor left the room she saw the queen fall on her knees. slowly, and with her head bowed down, julie von voss walked through the adjoining rooms to her own apartments. "i will never love like this, and consequently never suffer like this," said she to herself. "i cannot comprehend how one can lose and forget one's self so completely in another, particularly when this other person does not love as ardently--as ardently as i am loved by--" she stopped and blushed, and a slight tremor ran through her being. "i should like to know whether he loves me as passionately as this woman has loved her husband, whether--but," exclaimed she, interrupting her train of thought, "i had entirely forgotten that his valet is waiting to deliver a message." immediately on entering her parlor, she rang the bell, and ordered her chambermaid to show the valet, rietz, who was waiting in the queen's antechamber, up to her apartments at once. she then walked slowly to and fro; she sighed profoundly, and her lips whispered in low tones, "i do not love him! no, i do not love him; and yet i will no longer be able to resist him, for they are all against me; even my own relatives are ready to sacrifice me. that they may become great, i am to be trodden in the dust; and that they may live in honor, i am to live in shame! but i will not!" she cried, in a loud voice; and she stood proudly erect, and held up her beautiful head. "no, i will not live in shame; every respectable woman shall not have the right to point the finger of scorn at me, and place me in the same category with the brazen-faced wife of the abominable rietz! they shall not have the right to call julie von voss the king's mistress! no, they shall not, and--" "the king's privy chamberlain," announced the maid, and behind her rietz walked into the parlor. "poor figaro has been compelled to wait a long time, my lady," said he, with a mocking smile. "you have treated figaro's master, who longs for an answer, very cruelly." "i did not ask your opinion of my conduct," said the maid of honor, haughtily. "you are the king's messenger; speak, therefore, and execute his majesty's commands." "ah, this is not a question of commands, but of entreaties only--the king's entreaties. his majesty begs that he may be permitted to see you after he has paid his visit of condolence to the widowed queen." "etiquette requires that i shall be present when her majesty, the widowed queen, receives his visit. and if his majesty desires to speak with me, i beg that he will graciously avail himself of that opportunity." "ah, but that will not answer," said rietz, with a smile. "when his majesty expresses a desire to visit my lady here in her own apartments, he probably has something to say, not intended for the ears of other ladies. perhaps his majesty wishes to speak with my lady about the widowed queen and her condition, and to ask your advice as to the proper arrangement of her household. i believe the king intends to place it on a far better footing, for he spoke a few days since with real indignation of the paltry salary received by queen elizabeth christine's maids of honor--hardly sufficient to give them a decent support. the king will consider himself in duty bound to raise the salaries of these ladies; and you would certainly confer a great pleasure on his majesty by making known to him the amount you desire, and command for yourself. and you must not hesitate to mention a very considerable sum, for his majesty is generous, and will be happy to fulfil your wishes. it would, perhaps, be well for my lady to give me some hints in advance, in order that i may prepare his majesty. i shall be inexpressibly happy if my lady will permit me to be her most devoted servant, and it might also be of great advantage to her, for all berlin and potsdam--yes, all prussia, knows that i am the king's factotum." "did his majesty commission you to utter all these impertinences?" asked julie, coldly. "how so,--impertinences?" asked rietz, bewildered by the proud and inconsiderate manner of the lady, who regarded him, the almighty factotum, so contemptuously. "i have not, i certainly did not--" "silence! i listened to you out of respect for the king. and now, out of respect for myself, i command you to leave the room immediately. i will ask his majesty if he authorized his valet to tell me any thing else than that the king intended to honor me with a visit. go!" she proudly turned her back on the chamberlain, and walked through the room. she felt that she was suddenly held back. it was rietz, who had caught hold of her dress, and he now sank on his knees, and looked up to her imploringly. "forgiveness, my lady, forgiveness! i have surely expressed myself badly, for otherwise my lady could not desire to leave the most devoted of her servants in anger. i only intended to say, that--" "that you are the wedded husband of wilhelmine enke," cried the young lady with a mocking peal of laughter; and she withdrew her garment as violently as if a venomous serpent had touched it. she then left the room, still laughing, and without even once looking at the kneeling chamberlain. rietz arose from his knees; and his countenance, before all smiles, now assumed a dark and malignant expression. he shook his fist threateningly toward the door through which she had left the room, and his lips muttered imprecations. and now he smiled grimly. "yes," said he, "i am wilhelmine enke's husband, and that will be your ruin at some future day! threaten and mock me as you please; you are, nevertheless, nothing better than the bird that flies into the net to eat the alluring red berries placed there to entice it to inevitable destruction. the net is set, the red berries are scattered around; and you will not resist the temptation, my charming bird; you will be caught, and will perish!" and, laughing maliciously, he turned and left the room. the maid of honor, julie von voss, had not heard his malignant words, and yet her heart was filled with anxiety and tormenting disquiet; and when the door opened, and her brother, the royal chamberlain, charles von voss, entered, she cried out in terror, and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands. "but, julie," said her brother, angrily, "what does this childishness mean--what is the matter? why does my presence terrify you?" "i do not know," said she, "but when you appeared in the doorway, just now, it seemed to me that i saw the tempter coming to allure me to sin and shame!" "very flattering, indeed," observed her brother, "but there may be something in it. only you forget to add that the tempter intends to offer you a world. what did satan say to christ when he had led him up a mountain and showed him the world at his feet? 'this will i give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' julie, i also come to offer you a part of the world; to lay a kingdom, a crown, and a king at your feet." "have you seen the king? has he spoken with you?" asked julie, breathlessly. "he sends me in advance, as _postillon d'amour_, and will soon be here himself." "i will not see him," cried the maid of honor, stretching out both hands as if to ward off his approach. "no, never! he shall not visit me; i will lock my door, and not open it until he has gone, until he ceases to pursue and torment me!" "my dear," said he, quietly, "i have come to speak with you seriously. you must now come to some decision; or rather, you must decide to do that which your family, which reason, policy, ambition, and pride counsel. you have bound the king in your toils with admirable ingenuity, and i congratulate you. no lion-tamer can tame the king of the desert more skilfully, and with greater success, than you have tamed your royal lion, who follows your footsteps like a lamb. this taming has been going on for three years, and your cruelty has only had the effect of making him more tender and affectionate. but there are limits to every thing, my discreet sister; and if the rope is drawn too tightly, it breaks." "if it would only do so!" cried julie, despairingly. "that is exactly my desire, my object. oh, my brother, you and all my cruel relatives deceive yourselves about me; and what you consider the finesse of coquetry, is only the true and open expression of my feelings! for three years the king has pursued me with his love, and for three years i have met his advances with coldness and indifference. in every manner, by word, look, and gesture, have i given him to understand that his love was annoying, and his attentions offensive. oh, that i could fly from this unendurable, fearful love, to the uttermost ends of the world! but i cannot go, for i am poor, and have not the means to live elsewhere, and free myself from the terrible fetters in which you are all endeavoring to bind me!" "and besides, my dear sister, acknowledge that your own heart persuades you to remain. you love the king?" "no," she cried, passionately, "no, i do not love him, although i must admit that i have seen no man i liked better. but i do not love him; my heart beats no quicker when he approaches, my soul does not long for him when he is at a distance; and at times, when the king is at my side, a terrible feeling of anxiety creeps over me, and i wish to flee, and cry out to the whole world--'rescue me, rescue me from the king!' no, i do not love the king; and if i meet his advances coldly, it is not from policy, but because my heart prompts me to do so. therefore, renounce all thought of winning me over to your plans. i will not become the associate of wilhelmine enke!" "and truly you shall not," said her brother, earnestly. "on the contrary, my beautiful and discreet sister, you shall displace this unworthy person; you shall become the benefactress of prussia, and, through you, virtue and morality shall once more stand in good repute at the court of our young and amiable king." the eyes of the beautiful maid of honor sparkled, and a soft color suffused itself over her cheeks. "if that were possible," she cried, in joyous tones--"yes, if i could succeed in delivering the king from this unworthy bondage, if i could make this hateful person harmless, this indeed were an object for which much could be endured." "you hate her, then, this wilhelmine rietz?" "and who should not hate her?" asked julie, passionately. "she is the disgrace of her sex; she heaps dishonor on the head of our noble and genial king; she has caused his wife so many tears, and--" "and you, too, is it not so?" asked her brother, smiling. "my beautiful julie, you have betrayed yourself, you are jealous. but one is jealous only when one loves. do not longer deny it--you love the king." "no, no, i do not, i will not love him," she cried, "for shame would kill me. oh, my brother, i conjure you, do not demand of me that i deliver myself over to shame! take pity on me, do not force me to abandon my quiet and peaceful life. i will be contented to remain here in this solitude at the side of the unhappy queen, to pass my days in _ennui_ and loneliness. i am not ambitious, and do not crave splendor; permit me therefore to live in seclusion." "no, my dear sister, we cannot permit you to do so," said the chamberlain, shrugging his shoulders. "if it concerned you alone, you could dispose of yourself as you thought fit. but behind you stands your family--your family, which has been brought down in the world by all sorts of misfortunes, and is far from occupying the position to which it is entitled, and to which i, above all things, wish to see it restored, for i acknowledge that i am ambitious, my dear sister, and i desire to achieve eminence. i am now on the highway to success, and i do not intend that you shall arrest, but rather that you shall promote, my progress. if you reject the king's addresses, of course the whole family will fall into disfavor, and that would not be agreeable, either to myself or to my dear uncle, the master of ceremonies of the widowed queen. he wishes to become the king's master of ceremonies, and i wish to become a cabinet minister. apart from this, the family coffers are sadly in need of replenishment. our ancestral castle is in a crumbling condition, the forests have been cut down, the land is badly cultivated, and the farmhouses and stables must be rebuilt, for they are only miserable ruins, in which the half-starved cattle find no protection from the weather; and it is your mission to restore the old family von voss to its former splendor." "by my dishonor, by my criminality!" sighed julia von voss. "oh, my mother, my dear mother, why did you leave me, and fly to heaven from all this degradation! if you were here, you would protect me, and not suffer me to be so cruelly tempted." "you remind me of our dear mother at the right time, julie. do you remember what she told you on her deathbed?" "yes, my brother, i do," she replied, in a low voice. "she said: 'you will not be an orphan, for you have your brother to take care of and protect you. i transfer all my rights to him; for the future, he will be the head of the family, and you must love, honor, and obey him as such.'" "'i transfer all my rights to him; for the future, he will be the head of the family, and you must love, honor, and obey him as such,'" repeated her brother, in an elevated voice. "do not forget this, my sister. i, as the head of the family, demand of you that you become the benefactress of your family, of your queen, and of your whole country. a grand and holy task devolves upon you. you are to liberate the land, the queen, and the king himself, from the domination of sin and indecorum. in a word, you are to displace this rietz and her abominable husband, and inaugurate the reign of virtue and morality in this court. truly, this is a noble mission, and one well worthy of my beautiful sister." "it will not succeed," said the maid of honor. "the king will never consent to banish this hateful rietz." "the greater would be the honor, if you succeeded in liberating the king from this scandalous woman, the queen from this serpent, and the country from these vampires. ah, the whole royal family, yes, all prussia, would bless you, if you could overthrow this rietz and her self-styled husband!" "yes," said julie, in a low voice, "it would be a sublime consummation; but i should have to purchase it with my own degradation. and that i will not--cannot do. brother, my dear brother, be merciful, and do not demand of me what is impossible and horrible. the daughter of my mother can never become a king's mistress!" "and who said that you should? truly, i would be the last to require that of you. no, not the mistress, but the wife of the king. you shall become his wedded wife; and your rightful marriage shall be blessed by a minister of the reformed church!" "but that is impossible!" exclaimed the maid of honor, whose eyes sparkled with joy, against her will, "that cannot be. the queen lives, and she is the king's wedded wife." "yes, the wedded wife of the right hand," said her brother, quietly; "but the king, like every other mortal, has two hands; and he has a privilege which other mortals have not--the privilege of wedding a wife on the left hand." "impossible, quite impossible, as long as the wife of the right hand lives!" exclaimed julie. "of that, the consistory of church matters is alone competent to decide," replied her brother, with composure; "or rather, i expressed myself badly, the consistory has only a deliberative voice; and the decision rests with the king alone, who, in our country, represents the church, and is its head--the evangelical pope. it is his province to say whether such a marriage of the left hand is possible, notwithstanding a marriage of the right hand. demand it of him; make it a condition. remember the words which the beautiful gabrielle said to henry the fourth, when he inspected her dwelling, and asked the lady he adored, 'which is the way to your chamber?' 'sire,' she replied, 'the way to my chamber goes through the church.' remember this when you speak to the king." "be assured, i will remember it," cried julie, with glowing cheeks, and a proud, joyous smile. "i will make my conditions; and only when the king fulfils them will i be his, and--" "and, why do you pause, and why is your face crimsoned with blushes all at once? ah! you hear an equipage rolling up the avenue, and your tender heart says the king, your future husband, is approaching. yes, my beautiful sister," continued her brother, as he stepped to the window and looked out; "yes, it is the king. now prepare yourself, my wise and discreet julie; prepare to give your royal lover a worthy reception. for, of course, you will receive him? and i may tell--i may tell his majesty that you welcome his visit joyfully?" "no, oh no," murmured the maid of honor, with trembling lips. "i am not prepared; i am not composed; i cannot receive the king now!" "no childishness," said her brother, severely. "you will have sufficient time to compose yourself. the king must first pay his respects to the widowed queen, and the visit of condolence will last at least a quarter of an hour. i must now leave you; but remember that the fortunes of your family, and of the whole country, are in your hands, and act accordingly!" he left the room hastily, without awaiting a reply, and went down to the grand audience-chamber, where the courtiers and cavaliers were assembled. the king had already retired with the widowed queen to her library. on entering the chamber, he immediately walked up to his intimate acquaintance, bischofswerder, the newly-created colonel, who had accompanied the king to schönhausen. "it will succeed," said he, in a low voice, "our great ends will be attained; we will conquer our enemies, and secure dominion for ourselves and the invisible fathers. my sister loves the king, but she has been virtuously reared, and would rather renounce the king and her love, than sacrifice her moral principles." "she is, therefore, the more worthy of the high mission to which she has been called by the will of the invisible," said bischofswerder, emphatically. "she shall rescue our loved master and king from the arms of sin, and lead him back to the path of virtue with the hand of love, sanctified and consecrated by these noble ends." "but she demands another consecration. the consecration of a lawful marriage. if this can be procured, my sister will always be our obedient and devoted friend, and, through her instrumentality, we--that is, the invisible--will establish our rule." "her desire is certainly a bold one," said bischofswerder. "but we must endeavor to fulfil it. we will speak with our wise friend wöllner on this subject; and will also lay the noble young lady's request at the feet of the sublime grand-kophta, and master of the invisible lodge." "is he here, the great grand-kophta?" asked charles von voss, eagerly. "then what the circle-director announced yesterday in the assembly was really true, and the grand-kophta is in our midst." "he was with us in that assembly, we were all enveloped in the atmosphere of his glory, but it is only given to the initiated of the first rank, to know when the invisible is near. oh, my friend, i pitied you yesterday, while in the assembly; lamented that you should still stand in the antechamber of the temple, and not yet have been permitted to enter the inner sanctuary." "but what must i do before i am permitted to enter?" asked charles von voss, in imploring tones. "oh, tell me, my dear, my enviable, my illustrious friend, what must i do to advance myself and become a participant of the inestimable privilege of being permitted to enter the inner sanctuary, and belong to the band of the initiated?" "you must belong to the band of the believing, the hopeful, and the obedient. you must prove to the invisible, by unconditional submission, that you are an obedient instrument; and then you will be called!" "and by what token will i know that such is the case?" "you will receive a visible sign of the satisfaction of the invisible. when you and we succeed, with his assistance, in establishing the dominion of the invisible so firmly that he will rule prussia; when rietz and her whole faction of the unbelieving are made harmless and destroyed; when, through your sister's instrumentality, virtue and propriety once more regulate and sanctify the king's private life--then, my friend, the invisible will give you a visible token of his satisfaction, and will make the chamberlain von voss, the minister of state von voss." "oh, my dear, my mighty friend!" cried the chamberlain joyfully; "i will do all that the superiors desire. i will have no will of my own. i will be an instrument in their hands in order that i may finally--" "the king!" cried the chamberlain of the day, as he threw open the folding doors of the antechamber. "the king!" and amid the profound silence of his courtiers, who bowed their proud heads respectfully, king frederick william entered the audience chamber, on his return from the visit of condolence paid to the mourning widow of frederick. he cast a quick glance around the chamber, and, observing the chamberlain von voss, beckoned him to approach. in obedience to the king's command, the chamberlain walked forward. "well," said the king in a low voice, "what does your sister say?" "your majesty, she said but little to me, but she will have a great deal to say to your majesty." "she is then ready to receive me?" said the king, his countenance radiant with joy. "your majesty, my sister is awaiting you, and i will conduct you to her, if your majesty will graciously follow." "come," replied the king, and, without honoring his courtiers with a glance, the king followed the chamberlain von voss out of the audience-chamber. chapter vi. the alliance. wilhelmine rietz had passed the whole day in a state of great excitement. king frederick was dead! public rumor had communicated this intelligence; it had flown on the wings of the wind from sans-souci to potsdam, from potsdam to charlottenburg and berlin, and thence to all the towns and villages of the prussian monarchy. king frederick the great was dead! this report was uttered in wailing accents all over the country; and filled the eyes of millions of faithful subjects and admirers of frederick with tears. this report also conveyed the tidings to the beloved of the prince royal, that she was now the beloved of a king. but wilhelmine would have much preferred to hear it from himself; to receive a visible proof that her image still filled the king's heart, and that the clouds of incense rising around the new monarchy had not dimmed the recollections of the past. long hours of anxious expectation passed, and when the clock struck the hour of noon and no messenger had arrived, she was seized with unutterable fear. at last at about two o'clock, her son alexander arrived at charlottenburg, with his tutor mr. von chapuis, "at the king's command," as the tutor announced. nor could he give her any further information, for he had not seen the king himself but had received this command from the mouth of the valet, rietz. "that is a bad sign, a very bad sign!" murmured wilhelmine to herself when she was again alone. "he sends my son to a distance, in order to give no offence to his new court at potsdam. he does not love me; if he did, he would have the courage to defy the prejudices of the world. ah! he loves me no longer, and henceforth i will be nothing more than the despised, discarded mistress, to be greeted with derisive laughter by every passer-by, and to have cause for congratulation if she can hide her shame in some obscure corner of the earth, where she might escape the scornful looks and stinging words of mankind. but this shall never be; no, i will not be discarded--will not be trodden in the dust. and now, wilhelmine," she continued, with sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, "now prove that you are no weak, no ordinary creature; prove that you possess wisdom, courage and energy. fight for your existence, for your future, for your love! for i do love him, and i cannot live without him. and i will not live without him!" she cried loudly and emphatically. "he is the father of my children; he is my hope and my future. without him i am a despised creature; with him i am a lady of distinction, who is flattered and courted in the most devoted manner; and only abused and ridiculed behind her back. but continue to abuse and ridicule me, my triumph will be all the greater, when you must nevertheless bend the knee and do homage to the hated person. i have borne and endured a great deal for the poor prince-royal frederick william, and now i demand compensation and reward at the hands of the rich king frederick william. no, i will not be put aside! as long as i live, i will fight for my existence, and fight with the weapons of strategy and force, of intrigue and flattery. ah, i rejoice in the prospect. yes, i really rejoice in it! at all events, it will lend an additional charm to life, and be a change and a diversion!" "the privy-chamberlain and treasurer of the king!" announced the servant, entering the room. "who is that?" asked wilhelmine in astonishment. "i know no such gentleman." "i am the gentleman, my dear wife, my adored wilhelmine," said rietz, laughing loudly, as he followed the servant into the room. "in me, my dear wife, you see the privy-chamberlain and treasurer, fresh as a newly-baked loaf from the oven of royal favor." "leave the room, jean," said wilhelmine, who, impelled perhaps by curiosity, gave himself the appearance of being busily occupied in arranging the room. "no, my dear wife," said rietz, beckoning to the servant, "have the goodness to permit jean to remain a moment until i have given him my orders.--jean, i am hungry, and feel an irresistible inclination to eat. bring me something enjoyable, right away--for instance, a goose-liver pie, or a pheasant, or both. you can also bring some caviar and a piece of venison. and then have a bottle of champagne brought up and placed on ice; it is abominably warm to-day, and i need something cooling. be quick, jean." the servant made no reply, but looked inquiringly at his mistress. rietz caught this look, and laughed loudly. "i really believe this simpleton entertains the daring idea of not obeying me, his master!" "excuse me, sir," murmured the servant, timidly, "but my services were engaged by this lady." "yes, certainly; but you well know, you rascal, that i am the master, and that this lady is my wife, and--" "enough," interrupted wilhelmine, gravely. "set the table in the dining-room, jean, and be quick!" "well spoken, wilhelmine; let me kiss you for it, my treasure!" cried rietz, walking with extended arms toward his wife, while the servant was opening the door. but the door had scarcely closed when he let his arms fall, and recoiled timidly from wilhelmine, who stood before him with flashing eyes. "sir," said she, her voice trembling with anger; "sir, i forbid you to take such liberties, and use such familiar language in the presence of my servant." "but, madame," replied rietz, smiling, "it is only in the presence of your servant that i can use such language; and it seems to me that it suits my rôle very well. i have the honor to figure before the world as your husband, consequently i should play my rôle respectably before men, and prove that we are a happy and contented pair. the wickedness and malice of mankind are great; and if men should observe that i spoke to you with less tenderness, your enemies would certainly spread the report, that we were living together unhappily." "i must inform you, sir, that i have no desire whatever to jest," cried wilhelmine, impatiently. "have the goodness to be serious. now, that we are alone, i beg that you will not attempt to keep up the absurd farce of our so-called marriage." "and bad enough it is for me that it is only a farce," sighed rietz, impressively. "i would--" the angry look which wilhelmine bestowed upon him, repressed his words, and he quickly assumed a melancholy, submissive manner. "i am silent, madame, i am silent," said he, bowing profoundly, and with an air of deep pathos. "i am your most submissive servant, nothing else; and, having now paid my homage to the sun, i will retire, as its splendor has dazzled my eyes." he crossed his arms before his breast, bowed to the earth before his mistress, as the slaves do in the east, and then arose and walked rapidly toward the door. "where are you going, sir?" asked wilhelmine. "why do you not remain here?" "i cannot, mistress," said he, humbly. "the moor has done his duty! the moor can go! so it reads at least in frederick schiller's new piece, the one given at the theatre a short time ago." "but you have not yet done your duty," said wilhelmine, smiling involuntarily. "you have not yet delivered your message." "what message?" asked rietz, with a pretence of astonishment. "his majesty's message. for he it was, undoubtedly, who sent you here." "you are right," said rietz, with an air of indifference. "yes, that is true. i had forgotten it. good heavens! i have received so many commissions to-day, and been sent to so many ladies, that i forget the one in the other. i am now playing a very important rôle. i am the figaro of my master almaviva--the figaro who has to help his master in carrying off his beautiful cousin. you know the piece, of course, the delightfully good-for-nothing piece, that created such a furor in france, and consequently here with us also?" "yes, i do, rietz; and i beg you not to stretch me on the rack with your drollery! what did the king say? what messages did he entrust to you?" "oh, madame! you cannot require of me that i should betray count almaviva's confidence, and impart to you the messages entrusted to me?" cried figaro rietz, with noble indignation. "i have only to impart that which concerns my beautiful susanna; and that is, his majesty is coming here this evening, and his rooms are to be held in readiness. he will first take tea, and then adjourn to the little laboratory to do some little cooking and brewing." wilhelmine's countenance, before bright and animated, darkened as the privy-chamberlain uttered these last words. "the king intends to work in the laboratory? then he is not coming alone?" "he is coming alone, but i expect his assistants and teachers, the two great heroes of the invisible lodge, will follow at a later hour, in order to make a little 'hocus pocus' for his majesty--that is, i expressed myself badly--i wished to say, in order to work with his majesty in the secret sciences. yes, the two great luminaries are coming, and if i could be permitted to give you my advice--but no, so wise and enlightened a lady as yourself can have no need of the advice of so foolish and ridiculous a fellow as i am. i am therefore silent, and will now retire, in order to strengthen my body at least, as my mind is of so hopelessly weak a constitution, that all endeavors in that direction would be thrown away. my gracious queen, i beg that you will now kindly dismiss me!" he made a ceremonious bow, and then retired towards the door, walking backwards. "rietz, remain!" commanded wilhelmine, imperiously. "impossible, my queen. my message is delivered; and the moor not only can, but will go." "remain, rietz; i beg you to do so," said wilhelmine, advancing a step nearer. "when the stomach commands," said rietz, shrugging his shoulders, "the entreaties of the most beautiful of women are of no avail." "well, then go and eat," cried wilhelmine, impatiently. "and when you have done eating, come back to my room!" "nor can i do that, my queen. i must then ride to potsdam, where, by the king's command, i am to hold a secret and important conference with her majesty, the queen, that is, with her majesty of the right hand. i must, therefore, hoist anchor and sail again as soon as i have eaten, and--" "well then," said wilhelmine, with determination, "i will accompany you to the dining-room, and we will converse while you are eating." "bravo! bravo! that was what i desired!" cried rietz, laughing. "the servants shall see in how heavenly an understanding we live together; and how careful my wife is not to lose her husband's society for a moment. give me your arm, madam, and lead me to the dining-room." with a forced smile she took his arm, and permitted him to conduct her through the parlor to the dining-room. jean had served up all manner of delicacies on a little table, and was now occupied, at the sideboard, in breaking ice for the champagne. "put a bottle of rhine wine on the ice, too, jean," cried rietz, imperiously, as he seated himself comfortably in the chair, leaving his "wife" to find one for herself and bring it up to the table, at which he had already made an assault on a truffle-pie. "magnificent!" said he, after eating a few morsels, "i must tell you, my dearest wilhelmine, there is nothing better than a truffle-pie!" wilhelmine turned impatiently to the servant, who was turning the wine in the freezer: "you can now go, jean, the gentleman will wait on himself." "and my champagne!" exclaimed rietz. but, with an imperious gesture, wilhelmine dismissed the servant. "now we are alone," said wilhelmine. "now you can speak. you wished to give me your advice." "madam," rejoined rietz, as he carried a savory morsel to his mouth; "madam, at this moment i can advise you to do but one thing, and that is, to try this truffle-pie, it is truly magnificent!" "you are cruel," cried wilhelmine, "you torture me!" "say rather, madam, that you are cruel," said rietz, rising from the table to go after the champagne. "it is truly cruel to compel a man to arise, in the midst of the delights of the table, and wait on himself! champagne loses its flavor when one has to pour it out himself!" "i will wait on you, sir!" cried wilhelmine, rising with vivacity, and taking the bottle in her hands. rietz nodded complacently. "that is right. that is piquant, and will season my repast. the almighty queen of the left hand waits on her submissive husband of the left hand. the mistress becomes the slave, the slave the master! this is a charming riddle, is it not? but i tell you, madame, it is not the last riddle we will propound! oh, very many riddles will now be propounded; and some people would be very happy if they could find the right solution." "you wished to give me good advice concerning the two favorites," said wilhelmine, with a smile, that cost her proud heart much humiliation. "speak, therefore, my dear rietz! give me your advice!" rietz held his glass up to the light, and gazed smilingly at the rising bubbles. "that reminds me of my old friend, the burgomaster of stargard, the dear place of my nativity. the good burgomaster funk, was a true child of pomerania, who despised high-german, and would have spoken low-german, even with the king. speaking low-german, and eating dinner was his passion. and i have often thought, when i saw him sitting at the dinner-table, with so reverent and pious a countenance, that the old gentleman fancied himself in church, administering the sacrament as a priest. he applied himself with such heavenly tranquillity to the delights of the table, permitting nothing in the world to disturb him while so engaged." "but i cannot comprehend what the recollections of your happy youth have to do with the advice you desired to give." "you will soon do so, my queen," said rietz, slowly emptying his glass. "and yet permit me to dwell a little longer on the recollections of my dear old master. for you must know that this good old gentleman was my master; under him i learned the arts of a valet, writer, and confidant, and all the little artifices and stratagems by which a valet makes himself his master's factotum. truly the king is greatly indebted to the burgomaster; without him he would never have been the possessor of so excellent a factotum as the privy-chamberlain and treasurer rietz. at the same time, i learned from my master how to become a gourmand; learned what precious knowledge, and how much practical study, were necessary to educate a man up to this sublime standard, and entitle him to the proud appellation of gourmand. my old master, who deservedly bore this title, inculcated in me the most beautiful and strict principles. in the midst of our conversation, and while the old gentleman was digesting, slowly imbibing his delicious mocha, and blowing clouds of smoke from his long pipe, it sometimes occurred that some one of the burghers of the little city would come, in his necessity, to his burgomaster to obtain advice or assistance. then you should have seen his anger and rage. he would strike the table with his fist, and cry furiously: 'vat, i give advice! after dinner, and for noting!'" "ah," exclaimed wilhelmine, "now i begin to understand!" "that is fortunate, indeed," said rietz, laughing; and he held out his empty glass to wilhelmine that she might fill it. "then you begin to understand that the phrase 'after dinner, and for nothing,' is very beautiful and appropriate?" "yes, and i will give you a proof of it at once! sir, what do you ask for your good advice?" "bravo, bravo!" cried rietz. "well sung, my prima donna! now we shall understand each other; and with your permission we will proceed to talk seriously. madame, will you form an offensive and defensive alliance with me? do not reply yet! i have no desire whatever that you should buy the cat in the bag; first hear what i have to say, and then make up your mind. we are now at the beginning of a new era; and to most men the future is as a book written in mysterious and illegible characters. but i think i can decipher it, and i will tell you what it contains. i read in this book that prussia is now governed by a king who can do anything but govern himself, and who is like soft wax in the hands of those who know how to manage him." "how dare you speak so disrespectfully of your king?" cried wilhelmine. "madame," said rietz, shrugging his shoulders, "give yourself no trouble! to his valet and to his mistress--pardon me for this word, my queen--the greatest king is but an ordinary man; and when we two are alone, we need stand on no ceremony. the king, i say, will be ruled over. and the only question is, by whom? the question is, shall the valet and the mistress rule over the happy and prosperous kingdom of prussia, or shall they leave this difficult but remunerative business to the rosicrucians, to the invisible fathers, and to their visible sons, bischofswerder and wöllner." "if they do that," cried wilhelmine, with vivacity, "the mistress and the valet will be lost, they will be banished." "that is also my opinion," said rietz. "these dear rosicrucians dread our influence. they know that we are both too wise to believe in the hocus pocus, and that it sometimes affords us pleasure to enlighten the king's mind on the subject of these mysterious fellows and their jugglery. i, for my part, hate these pious hypocrites, these wise fools. it is as impossible for me to live together with them in friendship, as it is for the honest dog and sneaking cat to sojourn harmoniously in one kennel. and i account it one of my greatest pleasures when i can sometimes give them a good blow, and tear out a piece of their sheepskin, in order to show the king that a wolf is disguised in sheep's clothing." "i feel exactly as you do on this subject," cried wilhelmine, laughing. "i find it impossible to accept their offers of friendship. they have frequently attempted to make me their ally, but i wish to have nothing to do with the invisible fathers of the inner temple; i prefer the visible sons in the outer halls, for we, at least, know what they are!" "you are a divine woman," cried the chamberlain, in delight. "if you were not my wife i should certainly fall in love with you. it is fortunate, however, that you are my wife, for lovers are blind, and it behooves us both to keep our eyes open to avoid being caught in the snares which will be laid for us in great plenty by our pious fowlers. 'they or we;' this will be the watchword throughout the glorious reign of our king. the pharisees and rosicrucians, or--may i pronounce the word, my enchantress?" "yes, my friend, pronounce the word!" "well, then! the watchword is: 'the pharisees and rosicrucians, or the libertines and mistresses!' i cast my lot with the latter party, for with them good dinners and brilliant fêtes are the order of the day. with them pleasure reigns, and joy is queen." "i am with you, my friend. death and destruction to the pharisees and rosicrucians!" "long live the libertines and mistresses! they shall rule over prussia! they shall guide the ship of state; and we, wilhelmine enke, we two will be the leaders and masters of this merry band! we will fight with each other and for each other; and the pharisees and rosicrucians are, and shall ever be, our common enemies! give me your hand on this, my queen!" "here is my hand. yes, the pharisees and rosicrucians are, and shall ever be, our common enemies!" "you will aid me, and i you! we will protect and watch over each other. our interests are identical, what furthers yours furthers mine. you, my beautiful wilhelmine, are ambitious, and are not contented with my well-sounding name. you aim higher, and i do not blame you, for a crown would become you well, although it were only the crown of a countess." "that would suffice," said wilhelmine, smiling. "and you, my friend, what do you aspire to?" "i am a very modest man, and decorations and titles have no charms for me. i do not wish ever to become more than i now am; but that, my queen, i would like to remain. i have no desire to be dispossessed of my situation; on the contrary, i desire to make of it a right warm and comfortable nest." "and i will procure you the necessary down," cried wilhelmine, laughing. "very well, but it must be eider-down, my love, for that is the softest. i love the exquisite and the excellent; i am a gourmand in all things. if there is one thing i could wish for, it would be that my whole life might consist of one long dinner, and i remain sitting at the savory, richly-laden table, until compelled to leave it for the grave. i am not ambitious, nor am i miserly; but money i must have, much money. in order to lead a comfortable and agreeable life one must have money, a great deal of money, an immense quantity of money. my motto is, therefore, 'my whole life one good dinner, and--after dinner, no advice for nothing!'" "i consider this a wise motto, and, although i cannot make it my own, i will always respect it as yours, and act in accordance with it in your interest." "that will be very agreeable," said rietz. "i will then be able to realize my ideal." "and in what does your ideal consist, if i may ask the question?" "my ideal is a house of my own, elegantly and luxuriously furnished, attentive and deferential servants, an exquisite cook, and the most choice dinners, with four covers always ready for agreeable, gay, and influential guests, who must be selected each day. do you know, my queen, what is essential to the realization of my ideal? in the first place, the king must give me a house just large enough to make me a comfortable dwelling. i know of such a house. it stands at the entrance of the park of sans-souci. it has only five chambers, a parlor, a cellar, a kitchen, and several servants' rooms. that is just the house for a modest man like myself; and i wish to have it. and then rich clients are required, petitioners for decorations and titles, who come to me for counsel, supposing the king's confidential chamberlain can gratify their longings, if they only cajole him and show him some attentions. for instance, if this nice new house were mine, i would furnish one room only, and that sparingly, letting all the others stand empty. i would then show my visitors my dear little house, and it would be strange, indeed, if it were not soon handsomely furnished. to accomplish this, nothing is wanted but your assistance, my gracious wife and queen." "and in what manner shall i assist you, my dear philosopher?" "in this manner, my adored: by sending the suitors who come to you, to me--that is, those suitors who desire decorations, titles, or a noble coat-of-arms; for with politics i will have nothing to do. i only speculate on the foolishness of mankind. therefore, let it be well understood, you are to send the foolish to me with their petitions--to tell them that decorations and titles are my specialty, and that i alone can effect anything with the king in such matters. in doing this, you not only send me clients who furnish my house, but you also enhance my respectability. you make an important person of me, to whom great deference must be shown, and who must be courted and flattered. the natural consequence will be, that i will have humble and devoted servants, and be able to secure agreeable and influential guests for my dinners. for i need scarcely inform you, that it would afford me no entertainment whatever simply to fill empty stomachs at my table. on the contrary, i desire to have guests to whom eating is a science, and who do not regard a good pasty merely as an article of food, but rather as a superior enjoyment. will you help me to attain all this?" "yes, i will, my friend. but now tell me what services you propose to render in return!" "i will be your obedient servant, your sincere and discreet friend, and your ally in life and death. when diplomatists and politicians apply to me for my good offices, i will refer them to you. i will always have your interests at heart. if bischofswerder and wöllner should ever succeed in poisoning the king's mind against you, or in depriving you of his favor, i will lend a helping hand in thrusting these pious lights into the shade, where they belong. you can depend on me in all things. i will represent your interests, as if they were my own, and as if i had the honor to be in reality what i, unfortunately, only appear to be, the husband of the beautiful and amiable wilhelmine rietz. but truly, the name sounds bad, and i will assist you in exchanging it for a longer and more harmonious one. the name rietz is just long and good enough for me. it fits me snugly, like a comfortable, well-worn dressing-gown; and i prefer it to a court-dress. but for you, my fair one, we must certainly procure the title of a baroness or countess. moreover, as your disinterestedness and improvidence in money matters is well known to me, i will also consider it my sacred duty to look after your interests in this particular, and call the king's attention to your necessities from time to time. for instance, you might require a handsome palace in berlin, or a larger villa here in charlottenburg, or a magnificent set of jewelry, or an increase of income." "ah, my friend, i will be very thankful for all this," said wilhelmine, with a bewitching smile. "but what is of paramount importance is, that the king should continue to love me, or at least that he should never reject my love or discard me. i love him. he is the father of my children; he was the lover of my youth; and i can swear that i have never loved another besides him. even my worst enemies cannot say of me that i was ever untrue to the love of my youth, or that i ever had any liaison, except the one with the poor prince royal, for whom i suffered want, rather than listen to the addresses of rich and influential admirers." "that is true," said rietz, with an air of perfect gravity; "they can make you no reproaches. your life has been altogether irreproachable; and the _chronique scandaleuse_ has had nothing to report concerning you." "you are mocking me," sighed wilhelmine. "your words are well understood. you wish to say that my whole life has been one impropriety, and that i am the legitimate prey of the _chronique scandaleuse_. oh, do not deny it, you are perfectly right. i am an outcast from society; and yet it cannot be said of me, that i, like so many highly-respectable ladies, have sold my heart and hand for an advantageous marriage settlement. i only followed the dictates of my heart and my love; and the world punishes me by erecting a barrier between me and good society. but i have no intention of submitting to this any longer. why should the king's beloved stand without the barrier, while many a countess, who has sold herself, and married an unloved man for his title and his wealth, and to whom faith is but an empty fancy, stands within on consecrated ground. this barrier shall crumble before me, and i will be received within the circle of this so-called good and exclusive society. to their hatred and contempt, i am quite indifferent, but they shall at least seem to esteem and respect me. they shall not leave me in perfect solitude in the midst of the world, as if i lived on a desert island, like robinson crusoe, and had great reason to be thankful when the king sometimes took the rôle of friday and kept me company. i will be received in society; i will be the head of society; i will have parlors, where not only artists and men of intellect assemble, but to which the ladies of the best society must also come. this is my ambition; this is my dream of happiness. i will have a social position in defiance of all these so-called exclusive circles. whenever i meet these people, and see them turn aside to avoid me with a contemptuous smile, i say to myself: 'only wait, ye proud, ye virtuous! you shall yet fill wilhelmine rietz's parlors, and form the background of the brilliant picture of her power and magnificence. only wait, ye noble gentlemen, you shall yet dance attendance in wilhelmine rietz's antechamber! only wait, ye heroines of virtue, you shall one day walk arm in arm with wilhelmine rietz, and accord her the place of honor on your right hand!' you see i have consoled myself with these thoughts of the future for many years. but the future has now become the present, and the longed-for time has at last arrived when wilhelmine rietz will compel society to unbolt its portals and permit her to enter. will you assist me in this matter?" "i shall be delighted to do so," said rietz, laughing. "i will be the locksmith, who furnishes the keys to open these doors with, and if keys will not suffice, he will provide picklocks and crowbars. but, enter you shall. it will be a difficult undertaking, to be sure, but it will amuse me all the more, on that account, to assist you, and help to pull down the pride of these arrogant people. ah, i hate these people, and it will afford me immense satisfaction to see them compelled to humble themselves before you, and fawn and flatter in spite of their reluctance! yes, i will help you to ascend this mountain, but i do not desire to rise with you, i prefer to remain below in the valley, and earn an honest livelihood, as the good old proverb says." "and will become a rich man in the valley, while i will, perhaps, be struggling with debts and creditors on the heights above!" "yes," said rietz, "there will certainly be struggles, and struggles of every variety. as for your debts, i will undertake to have them all paid; and in the future your income will be so considerably increased that you will no longer be under the necessity of making debts. but what i cannot take upon myself, unaided, is the struggle with your beautiful and high-born rival. that is woman's work; there, fists are of no avail, and delicate fingers can manipulate needles with far greater efficiency." "you speak of my rival, the beautiful julie von voss." "yes, my adorable, i speak of her, and i will now prove to you that i am your friend. and i will tell what i have no right to tell. the privy-chamberlain breaks the inviolable seal of office. but what can i do? are you not my wife? and in the end, the most discreet man in the world can keep no secret from his wife! now, listen!" and in a low, suppressed voice, as if fearing the walls might hear, he told her of his mission to schönhausen, of the king's messages, and of his conversation with the beautiful maid of honor. wilhelmine listened with pallid cheeks and quivering lips, only interrupting him from time to time with a brief question, or an angry or threatening cry. chapter vii. the conditions. while this was occurring in the dining-room, jean sat in the antechamber, holding himself in readiness to answer his mistress's bell, if it should ring. but no bell rang, and all was so still, the air so warm and sultry in the little chamber, and the soft twilight had so tranquillizing an effect, that jean could no longer resist the temptation to close his eyes, and indulge in his dreams of the future. and perhaps he was dreaming, when a tall figure, completely enveloped in a black mantle, stood before him, laid his hand on his shoulder, and pronounced his name in a low voice. perhaps it was only a dream when he saw this, and heard the veiled figure utter these words in a low voice: "you belong to the third circle of the invisible lodge?" and he replied--whether in a dream or in reality, he was himself not perfectly satisfied--"yes, i belong to that circle." furthermore, the veiled figure said: "you were sent here with orders to make an exact report of all that occurs, to the circle director, and to submit to his will, in all things. do you bear this in mind?" "i am the obedient servant of the invisible," replied jean, respectfully. "i will never forget my oath; if i did, punishment would overtake, and the just anger of the invisible destroy me." "did the circle-director show you the symbol of the brotherhood?" "yes, he did." "behold the symbol," said the veiled figure, and for a moment a little triangular plate of metal shone in his open hand. "i see it," replied jean, rising, "and i know by this triangle that a brother of the higher degrees stands before me; i therefore salute you with reverence, brother superior." he bowed profoundly, but the veiled figure merely nodded in return. "do you know the sign by which the master of the order, the grand kophta is recognized?" said he, in low and piercing tones. "i do," replied jean, his voice almost inaudible, from inward agitation. the veiled figure thrust forth his hand from under the concealing mantle, and a large solitaire sparkled on his finger. "see, this is the sign," said he. jean uttered a cry of astonishment, and sank on his knees. "command me, almighty one," he murmured, "your slave has no will but yours." "arise, and be my guide," commanded the veiled figure, and jean stood up immediately. "where shall i lead, my exalted master?" "conduct me to the little room adjoining the laboratory of the present king, but by such a way that no human eye shall see, and no human ear hear me." "then, i must first beg permission," said jean, hurrying towards the door, "to assure myself that no one is in the hall." but the veiled figure followed, and held him back. "why go that way?" he asked. "why through the hall, when we can go through the door in the wall into the little passage that leads to the secret staircase?" "that is true; i had forgotten that," said jean, trembling, and looking with surprise and terror at his superior, who was so well acquainted with this strange house that he knew the secret doors and staircases. "as my master pleases; here is the door." he pressed a small, almost imperceptible knob in the wall, and a little door sprang open. "go before, and lead me," said the veiled figure, pushing jean through the entrance. "we must walk softly, and without uttering a word; the passage runs by the dining-room, where your mistress is conversing with the king's privy-chamberlain, and we might be heard. i will, therefore, give you my command here. you will lead me through the passage and down the staircase. with the key which you carry, you will then open the door and let me into the laboratory. you will then lock the door again, take the key from the lock, and hurry back to the antechamber. you will observe the most profound silence in regard to what has occurred; and, if life and your eternal welfare are dear to you, you will betray having seen me by neither word, look, nor gesture." "exalted master," whispered jean, "i am nothing more than your slave and creature, and i know that my life is but dust in your hands. i fear the invisible, and i adore you in your sublimity. graciously permit me to embrace your feet, that the touch may impart to me eternal health and strength." and he knelt down and kissed the feet of the veiled figure with impassioned tenderness. the veiled figure bowed down to him and said: "grace will be shed upon you; you are a good and obedient servant. at the next assembly you will learn that you have been elevated a degree, and have come a step nearer to the inner halls of the temple. be silent, no word of thanks, but arise and conduct me!" jean arose and stepped forward, the veiled figure following him, and conducted him, as he had been directed, to the laboratory; he let him in, closed and locked the door again, and returned hastily to the antechamber. had this all really happened, or had jean only been dreaming? he asked himself this question, and looked inquiringly and anxiously around in the little chamber. he was entirely alone; the secret door was closed. no one was with him, all was still around him, and profound silence seemed to reign in the dining-room also. jean stepped softly to the door and listened. he could now hear a subdued murmur, and could even distinguish the voices of his mistress and the privy-chamberlain. they seemed to be conversing eagerly; but they spoke in such low tones that it was impossible for jean to understand a single word. and they were really engaged in a very earnest conversation; in a conversation which absorbed wilhelmine's attention wholly. rietz had not only related his interview with the maid of honor, but had also given her a faithful account of the king's visit to schönhausen, and of the conversation between charles von voss and his sister, in which he persuaded her to receive the king. "how do you know this?" asked wilhelmine, with a shrug of her shoulders. "i imagine it could have needed no persuasion, that this young lady would have done so willingly enough." "there you are in error, my beautiful countess; i know better, because i listened to the whole conversation between the maid of honor and her brother." "how? you were present?" "not exactly present, but i heard it, nevertheless. the doors of the dilapidated old castle in schönhausen are full of cracks and crannies, and if you get near enough you can see and hear very readily." "and you were near the door of the maid of honor's chamber?" "so near that a sheet of paper could hardly have been slipped in between us." "and there was no one there to order the bold eavesdropper to leave?" "yes, there was a human being in the little dressing-room in which i stood, but this human being made no opposition whatever to my listening at the door, for the simple reason that i had paid well for the privilege. the young lady's chambermaid loves money, and is of a speculative disposition. she wishes to open a millinery establishment, and for that money is necessary; and she takes it whenever she can get it. i pay her in my gracious master's name for singing the king's praise in her mistress's ear; and i pay her in my own name for reporting to me the result of this singing, and permitting me to listen at the door when there is anything to be heard. to be sure, it cost me a considerable sum yesterday. this shrewd little kitten made me pay her twice: once for the conversation between the maid of honor and her brother, and the second time for the conversation between the king and the maid of honor." wilhelmine sprang up, and an exclamation of astonishment escaped her lips. "you have listened to the conversation between the king and the maid of honor, and now tell me of it for the first time. i conjure you, rietz, my dear rietz, my best friend, tell me of it. speak--what did the king say, and what did she reply?" "after dinner, and for nothing?" asked rietz, as he stretched himself comfortably, poured the last few drops of champagne into his glass and carried it slowly to his lips. "speak, my dear rietz. say what i shall do. what will you have?" "the little love of a house at the entrance of the park of sans-souci. it was built on speculation; that is to say, i had it built, hoping that the old king would be dead, and our frederick william seated on the throne by the time of its completion. my hope is now realized, and i ask you, my adorable wife, will you use your influence to persuade the king to give me this house as a reward for my long and faithful services?" "i will do so; i will storm the king with entreaties to give you this house." "then it is as good as mine already, and i thank my noble patroness. and now that i am paid in advance, i will impart to you the substance of that important conversation--that is, you will certainly not require me to repeat the king's protestations of love and vows of eternal fidelity." "no, i do not require that of you," sighed wilhelmine, with trembling lips; "that i can readily imagine. it can only have been a repetition of what he told me. out upon men! they are a perfidious and faithless race!" "yes, they imbibe these qualities with their mother's milk; and king frederick william also is only the son of his mother. therefore, nothing of the king's protestations of love, and the noble indignation and conflict between love and virtue on the part of the young lady. to the king's intense gratification the young lady finally admitted, with many tears and sighs, that she would love him if he were not, unfortunately, already married, and if madame rietz were not in existence. if the king were no better than a poor nobleman, the young lady would esteem it perfect bliss to become his. she would joyfully undergo hardships and suffer want at his side; but she was not willing to occupy a position that would expose her to scorn and contempt. she could not cause the noble queen additional sorrow and pain; and finally, it would be quite impossible to tolerate a despised and hated rival like wilhelmine rietz at her side. but--good heavens! what is the matter with you? you turn pale, and wail and moan fearfully! poor woman, if you are so sensitive, i must of course be silent." "it is nothing--nothing at all," murmured wilhelmine. "it was only a momentary pang, and it is now past. speak on, i am quite composed. speak! what did the king reply?" "he begged her to name the conditions on which she could consent to be his; and the beautiful and wise maid of honor stated her conditions, assuring him that they were irrevocable--her ultimatum, as the diplomatists say. and truly these conditions were ridiculous. i almost burst out laughing when i heard them." "and what were they? i pray you tell me," murmured wilhelmine, clasping her hands tightly together to keep them from trembling. "there were three conditions, and the maid of honor swore by the memory of her mother, who had died of grief caused by her love for the king's father, prince august william, that she would neither see his majesty nor speak with him until he had promised to fulfil her conditions; and, that if he could or would not fulfil them, the young lady would leave the court forever, and retire into the deepest seclusion." "she is cunning; oh, she is very cunning," murmured wilhelmine, clasping her hands yet more firmly together. "and her three conditions?" "are as follows: firstly, the young lady exacts of the king that she be married formally and rightfully to his left hand, by a protestant minister; secondly, she demands that, above all things, the consent of the queen, the wife of the right hand, be first obtained; and thirdly, and finally, she demands that wilhelmine rietz, together with her two children, be banished, and that an estate be given her in lithuania, and she be compelled to remain there and never return to berlin or potsdam." "and the king?" cried wilhelmine, in piercing accents. "the king stipulated for four weeks' time in which to consider the matter, kissed the proud lady's hand, and retired. now, my queen, you know all, and it is also time for me to retire. i must ride to potsdam at the king's command, and confer with the queen as to the conditions on which she would give her consent to this absurd marriage. but i cannot comprehend you, my beauty! you look as mournful as if you were on the point of starting for lithuania already, and as if it were another than you who sways the king's heart and soul. i, for my part, place implicit confidence in your power, and am satisfied that the king will never give you up or desert you. would i otherwise have courted your alliance? would i have based my hopes of obtaining the little house at sans-souci on your intercession? no, my beauty; you are, and will remain, queen, in spite of all the wives of the right and the left hand. only you must not be discouraged, and must not look so sad. for you well know that our good master cannot abide mournful faces, and invariably runs away from weeping women." "it is true; you are right," said wilhelmine. "i will wreathe my face in smiles. i will laugh." and she burst out into a loud and vibrating peal of laughter, in which rietz heartily joined. "that is right," he cried; "now i admire you! you look like a lioness defending her young. that is right, my beauty! 'he who trusts in god, and strikes out boldly around him, will never come to grief,' my good old burgomaster herr funk used to say. strike boldly, my queen, deal out heavy blows, and we shall never come to grief, and all will yet be well. and now, my charming wife, i must take leave of you, as i hear a carriage driving up that i wager brings no other than his majesty. it is not necessary that he should still find me here. i will, therefore, slip out of the back door and beat a retreat through the garden. addio, carissima, addio!" he bowed respectfully, threw her a kiss with the tips of his fingers, opened a window, and sprang out upon the terrace, from which a small stairway led down into the garden. wilhelmine frowned, and cast an angry look in the direction he had taken. "how degraded a soul! how base a character!" she murmured; "but yet i must cling to him, and be very friendly with him. he is my only support, my only friend; for without him i would be lost! and i will not be lost! i will maintain my position; while i live, i will bravely battle for it!" "the king!" cried jean, throwing the door open. "his majesty has arrived, and awaits my lady in her parlor." "i am coming," said wilhelmine, calmly. "hurry down into the park, and tell my son and daughter that their father is here. they are down on the river; they must come at once to greet his majesty." chapter viii. new love. the king advanced to meet wilhelmine with a gentle smile; and when, after a formal obeisance, she congratulated him in cold and ceremonious terms, frederick william burst out into laughter, caught her in his arms, and pressed a kiss on her brow. wilhelmine trembled, and tears rushed to her eyes. she felt like clasping him in her arms and conjuring him, with tender reproaches and passionate words of love, not to abandon her, and not to drive herself and his children out into the cold world. but she repressed her emotion--she knew the king could not endure sad faces, and always fled from a woman in tears. she had the courage to smile, and seem to be gay; and her countenance bore no trace of disquiet or anxiety. she conversed with perfect composure and indifference, as if no change had taken or ever could take place in their relations to each other. frederick william's joyousness had at first been assumed, to hide his embarrassment; and he felt greatly relieved by wilhelmine's manner. he abandoned himself wholly to the charming society of the beautiful and agreeable friend, who had always so well understood how to enliven him and banish all care from his breast. and when the two children entered the parlor, and his favorite alexander, a boy of ten years of age, ran forward, looked wonderingly at his papa king, and then threw his arms tenderly around his neck, and kissed and hugged him, regardless of his royalty; when the lovely daughter, in the bloom of sixteen summers, the charming image of her young mother, walked forward, and seated herself on one of his knees opposite her brother, who sat on the other; and when the still beautiful mother stepped up to this group, her eyes beaming and her face wreathed in smiles, and clasped father and children in one embrace, a feeling of infinite comfort filled frederick william's breast, and tears rushed to his eyes. he gently pushed the two children from his knees, and arose. "go down into the garden, my pets, and wait for me in the rose-pavilion, when we will watch the sun set. but now go, as i have something to say to your mother." "but nothing unpleasant, i hope, papa?" said alexander, anxiously. "you have nothing to say to my mamma that will make her sad?" "and if i had," asked frederick william, smiling, "what would you do to prevent it?" "if you had," replied the boy, with a bold and defiant expression, "i know very well what i would do. i would not go away. i would remain here, even if my papa ordered me to go. but for this once i could not be obedient, although i should be scolded for it." "and what effect would your remaining here have, alexander?" asked the king. "it would have this effect, your majesty," replied the boy, gravely. "my dear mamma would then hear nothing that would make her feel sad, or perhaps even make her cry." "but if i should tell her something in your presence that would make her feel sad?" "that you will not do, papa!" cried alexander, erecting himself proudly. "no, while i am here you will certainly not make my mamma sad; for you know that i would cry too, if my mamma cried, and you certainly could not bear to see your poor little son and his mamma weeping bitterly." "you love your mamma very much, i suppose?" "yes," exclaimed the boy, throwing his arms around his mother's neck, and laying his curly head on her bosom; "yes, i love my mamma very dearly; and my heart almost breaks when i see her cry. and she cries very often now, and--" "go, alexander," said his mother, interrupting him. "you see your sister is an obedient daughter, and has already obeyed her father's command. follow her now, my son; learn from your sister to obey your father without murmuring." "yes, my son, follow your sister," said the king, gently. "fear nothing, my boy, i have no intention of making your mother feel sad." "then i will go, papa," cried alexander, as he pressed his father's hand tenderly to his lips. he then skipped joyfully out of the room. the king followed the handsome boy, with an affectionate look, until the door closed behind him. he then turned to wilhelmine, who met his gaze with a gentle smile. "wilhelmine, i have entered on a new life to-day. the poor prince royal, who was harassed with debt, has become a rich and mighty king. a young king's first and most sacred duty is to prove his gratitude to those who were his loving and faithful friends, while he was yet prince royal. and therefore, wilhelmine, you were my first thought; therefore am i come to you to prove that i have a grateful heart, and can never forget the past. you have undergone hardships, and suffered want for me; the hour of reward has now come. impart to me all your wishes freely, and without reservation, and i swear to you that they shall be fulfilled. will you have a name, a proud title? will you have jewelry or treasures? will you have a magnificent landed estate? speak out, tell me what you desire, for i have come to reward you, and i am king." she looked at him proudly, with sparkling eyes. "you have come to reward me," said she, "and you are king. what care i for your royalty! the king has not the power to grant my wishes!" "what is it, then, that you wish?" he asked, in embarrassment. "i wish what the king cannot, what only the man can grant. i wish you to love me as dearly as the prince royal loved me. i crave no riches and no treasures, no titles and no estates. when we swore that we would love and be true to each other until death, you did not dare to think that you would some day reward me for my love. when we exchanged our vows of love and fidelity, written with our blood, this was the marriage contract of our hearts, and this contract consisted of but one paragraph. it only secured to each of us the love and fidelity of the other as a dower. let me retain this dower, frederick william; keep your treasures, titles, and estates, for your favorites and flatterers. such things are good enough for them, but not for me--not for the mother of your children! leave me in possession of my dower of your love and fidelity!" frederick lowered his eyes in confusion, and did not seem to see her stretch out her arms imploringly. he turned away and walked slowly to and fro. wilhelmine's arms sank down, and a deep sigh escaped her lips. "the decisive hour has come," said she to herself. "it shall find me armed and prepared for the struggle!" suddenly the king stopped in front of her, and a ray of determination beamed in his genial, handsome countenance. "wilhelmine," said he, "i stand on the threshold of a great and sublime future. i will not act a lie at such a time. between us there must be perfect and entire truth. are you ready to hear it?" "i am ready," said she, gravely. "truth and death are preferable to life and falsehood." "come, wilhelmine," continued the king, extending his hand. "let us seat ourselves on the sofa, where we have so often conversed in earnestness and sincerity. let us converse in the same spirit to-day, and open our hearts to each other in honest sincerity." he conducted her to the sofa, and seated himself at her side. she laid her head on his shoulder, and subdued sobs escaped her breast. "do not speak yet," she whispered. "let me rest a moment, and think of the beautiful past, now that your future looks so bright. i have not the courage to look at the future. it seems to me that i am like those unhappy beings, of whom dante narrates, that they walk onward with their faces turned backward, and that they cannot see what is coming, but only that which has been and which lies behind them. ah, like them i see only what has been. i see us two, young, happy, and joyous, for the star of our youthful love shone over us. i see you at my side as my teacher, instructing me, and endeavoring to cultivate my mind.--frederick, do you remember the italian lessons you gave me? with you i read dante, you explained to me this awful picture of the reversed faces. shall i now experience through you the dreadful reality of what you then explained in the poem? shall i shudder at the aspect of the future, and only live on that which is past and gone? tell me, frederick, can it be true, can it be possible? does love, with all its happiness and bliss, then really lie only behind us, and no longer before us? but no, no, do say so!" she cried, imploringly, as she saw that he was about to speak; "let us be still and dream on for a moment, as we are now on the threshold of a new era, as you say." she ceased speaking, and buried her head in frederick william's bosom. he laid his hand on her neck and pressed her to his heart. a long pause ensued. a last ray of the setting sun shone in through the window, and illumined with its golden light the head of the poor woman who clung trembling to her lover's bosom. the last ray of the setting sun! the spirits of the past danced and trembled in its luminous course; the days which had been, sparkled and glittered in its last ray, and then expired. "ah," sighed the king, after an interval of silence, "why is the human heart so weak? why does it not retain like the precious stone its brilliant tints and fiery lustre? why do the rainbow hues and fire of love vanish? why has fate ordained that all things should be subject to change, even love?" wilhelmine raised her head--the hour of bitterness was past; she now had courage to face the future, to pass the threshold of the new era. what has the future in store for her? will it be gloomy? has the sun set for her whole life, as its last ray has set in the chamber where she now sits, in night and darkness, at the side of the man she once called the sun of her life? "you no longer love me, frederick william!" "i do love you, wilhelmine; certainly i do, right cordially and sincerely." she uttered a loud cry and pressed her hand to her heart. how different was this tame assurance of love to the passionate protestations of former days! "speak on, frederick william, speak on! i am prepared to hear all! you love me right cordially and sincerely, you say?" "yes, wilhelmine, and god is my witness that this is the truth. i desire to do everything to contribute to your happiness?" "everything! everything, but love me as heretofore!" "ah, wilhelmine, man is but man after all, and no god! nothing in his nature is eternal and imperishable, not even love; not that ardent, passionate love which is only crowned by the possession of the loved and adored object. but possession it is, this longed-for possession, that kills love. we are only charmed with that for which we long; when once attained we become accustomed to it, and custom begets indifference. it is heart-rending that it should be so, but it is so! we cannot change human nature, and human we all are!" "words, words," she murmured. "why not say it all at once. you do not love me? you love another? answer these two questions; i conjure you, answer them!" "i will, wilhelmine. i no longer love you, you say. it is true, i no longer love you as i once loved you, but perhaps more, perhaps better, more purely! i no longer love you, but i entertain for you the dearest and most enduring friendship. love is like the sun: it shines brightly in the morning, but sets when evening comes. friendship is like the evening star, ever present, and only obscured at times by the greater brilliancy of the sun. wilhelmine our sun has at last set after gladdening us with its rays for many long years. and you cannot justly complain of its departure; it was necessary that night should ultimately come. but the evening-star still shines in the heavens, and will ever shine there! i pray you, wilhelmine, be no weak, no ordinary woman! do not make useless complaints, but look at matters as they are. be strong, and overcome the petty vanity of the woman who feels herself insulted when her lover's passion cools. i do not love you; and, as i am a man, and as the human heart is always susceptible to a new love, i am also ready to make this admission: i love another! be composed, do not interrupt me with reproaches. this is unalterable, and we must have the courage to look the truth in the face! yes, i love another, and love her as ardently as i once loved you, but--i now no longer believe in an eternity of passion; i know that it will decline, and i therefore no longer tell my new love as i once told you. i will love you as long as i live; but i only say, i will love you as long as my heart will permit! i know that a day will come when i will also weary of this love; but never, never will the day come, wilhelmine, when the friendship i feel for you could grow cold, when i could become indifferent to her i once so passionately loved, and to whom i owe the happiest years of my life! some day my heart will be callous to all love and all women, but it will ever beat warmly for you; the days of my youth will be reflected from your brow, and the recollections of happy years will bind me more firmly to you, than all the vows of love could bind me to other women. be as strong, brave, and wise, as you have always been; forgive me this human weakness. renounce my love, and accept my friendship--my true, lasting, and imperishable friendship." "friendship!" she repeated, with mocking laughter. "the word has a freezing sound. you promised me glowing wine, and now you offer to quench the thirst of my heart with cold water." "of wine we grow weary, wilhelmine. heavenly intoxication is followed by highly terrestrial headache; but pure water refreshes and revives without intoxicating; it gives health and tranquillizes the heart." "or turns it to ice," rejoined wilhelmine. "not so, it gives new warmth! and thus it is with friendship also, wilhelmine." "and all this means," said she, sobbing, "that you intend to drive me from your side, to banish me? i am to be compelled to yield to a rival?" "no, that you shall not do!" he cried with vivacity. "no, you are only to consent to be my friend, to elevate yourself above all petty jealousy, and to wisely and discreetly adapt yourself to the unavoidable. if you should not be able to do this, wilhelmine, if you should attempt to play the _rôle_ of the jealous orsina, instead of that of the discreet friend, then only would i, to my own great sorrow, be compelled to separate from you, to renounce the pleasure of associating with my dear friend, and--" "no," she cried in dismay, as she threw her arms around him; "no, i cannot live without you, i will not go into exile with my poor, dear children!" "with your children!" repeated the king. "who thinks of sending these children into exile?" "do you not consider it possible that you will send me into exile? and where i am, there my children will also be, of course!" "where you are, wilhelmine, there your daughter will be; that is lawful and natural. but the son belongs to the father; and, whatever may divide and separate us, my son alexander shall not leave me; my bright, handsome boy, remains with his father." it had grown dark, and he could not see the light of the bold resolution wilhelmine had formed, sparkling in her eyes. she laid her hand on frederick william's shoulder. "we are standing on the threshold of a new era," said she, "my son shall now decide between you and me. i lay my fate in his hands, and will accept it as if it came from god. we will have him called, and he shall choose between his father and his mother. if he decides to leave me and remain with you, i will bow my head in humility, and will remain, and content myself with your friendship. i will stand in darkness, and view from afar my happy rival sunning herself in your love. but if my son should decide to go with his mother, then, like hagar, i will wander forth into the desert. but i will not complain, and will not feel unhappy; i will have at my side, my son, the image of his father; the son in whom i love the father!" "so let it be," cried the king. "our son shall decide. go, and bring him in." "no, i will only see him in your presence; you might otherwise suppose i had influenced his decision. permit me to have him called." she rang the bell, and ordered the servant to bring lights, and request his young master to come at once to his majesty's presence. "we will soon learn the decision of fate," said wilhelmine, when the servant had closed the door. "for fate will speak to me through the mouth of my son!" chapter ix. the decision. a few minutes had hardly elapsed before the door of the parlor was opened, and wilhelmine's son entered. with flushed cheeks and a displeased expression on his handsome face, the boy walked up to the king, who was gazing at him tenderly. "my gracious father," said he, "you promised to join us in the rose-pavilion, down at the river side; and we waited and waited, but all in vain! the sunset was splendid; it was a beautiful sight to see the sun fall into the water all at once; but you would not come to tell the dear sun 'good-night.' why not? i think a king should always keep his word, and you certainly promised to come!" "well, my severe young gentleman," said the king, smiling, "i beg your pardon. but i had to speak with your mother on matters of importance, and you must have the goodness to excuse me." the boy turned and looked inquiringly at the face of his mother. "was it necessary, mamma?" the king burst into laughter. "really," he cried, "you are a grand inquisitor, my little alexander. i am almost afraid of you. but you have not yet answered his severity, mamma. excuse me to this young gentleman by assuring him that we had matters of the gravest importance to discuss." "alexander knows that what the king says and does is above all blame," replied wilhelmine, gravely; "and i beg that he may be excused for losing sight of the king and thinking only of the indulgent father. but now hear why your father sent for you, my son; and answer his questions as your little head and heart shall prompt." "shall i state the question?" asked the king, in some embarrassment. "i had rather you did it, wilhelmine. however," he continued, as she shook her head in dissent, "it shall be as you desire. listen, my little alexander. your mother thinks of going on a journey, and of leaving here for a few years. i intend to give your mother several estates in prussia as a remembrance of this day, and she may conclude to make them her home for some years. although such a life may be pleasant for ladies, it is very quiet and lonely, and not at all suitable for a young man who still has a great deal to learn, and who is ambitious of becoming a soldier, which he could not well accomplish in the country. i therefore, very naturally, desire that you should separate yourself from your mother for a few years, and remain with me, your father, who certainly loves you as much as she does. but we have determined to leave the decision to you, although you are still so young, and i now ask you, my son, will you go with your mother, or will you remain with your father? do not reply at once, my child, but take time for consideration." "oh, my dear papa," said the boy, quickly, "there is nothing to consider, i know at once what i ought to do. my dear mamma has always remained with me, she has never deserted me. and when i had the measles, a short time ago, she sat at my bedside, day and night, and played with me, and told me such beautiful stories. and i would never have got well if my mamma had not nursed me. whenever she left my bed, if only for a few minutes, i grew worse and suffered much more, and when she returned i always felt relieved at once. and how could i now desert the dear mamma, who never deserted me?" "oh, my child, my darling child," cried wilhelmine, her eyes filling with tears, "god bless you for these words! but yet this shall not be a decision. you must take some time for consideration, my son. i am going to live on my estates, as your father told you. it will be very quiet and lonely in the country; there will be no soldiers, no beautiful houses, no amusements, and no boys to play with. but if you remain here with your father, you will have all this, and be honored and respected as a prince. you will live with your tutor, in a splendid house, in the beautiful city of berlin, you will take delightful rides and drives, and see the soldier's drill every day. your father will give you all you desire." "then let him give me my mamma," cried the boy eagerly. "yes, my papa, if i can live with my dear mamma in a fine house in berlin, and if you will come right often to see us, i will have all i desire." "but your mother will not remain in berlin, alexander, and, therefore, you must decide whether you will go with her, or stay here with your father." "well, then," said alexander, gravely, "if i must choose between you, i will go with mamma, of course. to be sure, i am very sorry to leave my papa, but i cannot live without my mamma; she is so good to me and loves me so dearly, i am always afraid when she is not with me." speechless with emotion, wilhelmine sank on her knees, her countenance radiant with delight, and extended her arms toward her son, who threw himself on her breast with a loving cry. the king turned away, his heart filled with unutterable sadness. he covered his eyes with his hands, and stood in the middle of the chamber, isolated and deserted in his grief, while he could hear the kisses, sobs, and whispered words of tenderness of the mother and her son. suddenly he felt a light touch on his shoulder and heard a mournful, trembling voice murmur his name. the king withdrew his hands from his countenance, and his eyes met wilhelmine's. she stood before the king, her right hand resting on the boy's shoulder, who had thrown his arm around her waist and nestled closely to her side. "farewell, frederick william!" said she in a loud and solemn voice. "hagar is going forth into the desert of life! the estates and treasures which you offer me, i reject; my children must not suffer want, however, and the little that has heretofore been mine, i will retain. as soon as i find a place where i wish to remain, you will be informed of it, and i desire that the furniture of this house be sent to me there. the house shall be sold, and the proceeds will constitute my fortune and the inheritance of my children. i leave here with my children to-night. my thoughts and blessings will, however, remain with the father of my children. farewell, your majesty, and may your happiness be complete! farewell!" she bowed her head in a last greeting, and then turned and walked slowly through the room, supported by her son. the king looked after her in breathless suspense; with every step she took his anxiety increased. and when she opened the door, and mother and son were about to pass the threshold, without even once turning to look at him, whose eyes were filled with tears, and who was regarding them with such fondness and such agony, he uttered a cry of dismay, rushed after them, seized wilhelmine's arm, and thrust her back into the room with such violence that she fell helplessly to the floor, and her son burst into tears. his sobs seemed to arouse wilhelmine from her insensibility. she arose, and turned with proud composure to the king, who stood before her almost breathless with passion. "send him out of the room," she murmured. "he should not see your majesty in this condition." the king made no reply, but took the boy by the hand, kissed him tenderly, and then led him to the door, and locked it behind him. he then returned to wilhelmine, who awaited him with pallid cheeks, although her manner was perfectly composed. "wilhelmine," said he, uttering each word with difficulty, "wilhelmine, it is not possible. you cannot leave me. if you go, my youth, my happiness, my good star go with you! have pity on me! see how i suffer! be great, be good, be merciful! stay with me!" "thou hearest him, o god," cried wilhelmine, raising her arms toward heaven. "thou hearest him, and thou seest what i suffer! i have loved him from my youth. i have been true to him in every thought, with every breath of life. i have borne for his sake shame and disgrace, and the contempt of the world. i have bestowed upon him all the treasures of my soul and heart; and yet my sacrifices have not been great enough, i have not yet been sufficiently humiliated. he demands of the mother of his children a still greater sacrifice: that i renounce his love, and stand by and see him give to another the love he swore should be mine! o thou great, thou almighty god, have pity on me! send down a flash of lightning to kill and save me! i cannot live without him, and i may not live with him." "wilhelmine," said the king, in a hollow voice, "you will not make this sacrifice? you will not remain with me as my best and dearest friend--the friend to whom i will give my whole confidence, who shall share my thoughts as my sister soul, and from whom i will conceal no secrets?" she slowly shook her head. what did cleopatra determine to do, rather than grace the triumph of her faithless lover and her hated rival, and pass under the yoke? she determined to die; she let loose the serpent which had been gnawing at her heart, that it might take her life. "i prefer to die like cleopatra, rather than live like the marquise de pompadour." "well, then," said frederick william, his voice trembling with emotion, and looking tenderly at wilhelmine, "i will prove to you that the friendship i entertain for you is stronger than the love i have given to another. i sacrifice to you, the beloved of my youth and the friend of my soul, all the wishes and hopes of my heart. i will renounce my love for the maid of honor, julie von voss, and will see her no more. she shall leave the court, and i will never seek to recall her. are you now contented, wilhelmine? will you remain with me, and not deprive me of my dear son, who was about to leave me on your account? wilhelmine, will you try to forget, and--" the king's voice faltered, and tears rushed to his eyes, but with an effort he steadied his voice and continued: "and will you sincerely endeavor to compensate me for what i sacrifice?" with a cry of joy, wilhelmine threw her arms around the king's neck, and pressed a long and fervent kiss on his quivering lips. "i thank you, frederick william, i thank you! you promised me when you came that you would to-day reward me for my love and fidelity during the long years which have been. you have kept your promise, my beloved; you have rewarded me. you have made the greatest sacrifice one human being can make for another. you have sacrificed the passion of your heart, and are ready to keep the faith which you sealed with your blood. see here, frederick william, see this scar on my hand! this wound i gave myself, in order that i might write for you in my own blood my vow of love and fidelity. you kissed the wound and drank of my blood, swearing that you would always love, and never desert me. you have kept your oath, frederick william. you have conquered yourself; you have now sealed your faith with the greatest human sacrifice." the king suppressed the sigh which trembled on his lips, and pressed wilhelmine's head to his bosom. "now you will remain, wilhelmine? now you will not go?" she raised her head quickly, and looked at him with beaming eyes. "i will remain with you, frederick william; i will remain. and, stronger in my love than cleopatra was, i will pass under the yoke, and march quietly in the triumphal procession of my rival. sacrifice for sacrifice! you were ready to sacrifice your passion, i will sacrifice to you my woman's pride and vanity! i, the discarded woman, will walk without murmuring behind your new love and be her trainbearer. go, frederick william, and woo this beautiful young lady; wed her, if your priests will permit; be happy with her, and love her as long as you can, and then return to your friend, who can never cease to love you--whose affection for you is the breath of her life." "oh, wilhelmine, my dear, my generous wilhelmine," cried the king, pressing her to his heart, "i can never forget this noble-hearted generosity; i can never cease to be grateful! i have told you already, and i now repeat it: the human heart is inconstant, and every love must at last die; but friendship lives forever. no earthly desires dim the pure flame of its holy affection. oh, wilhelmine, i will never desert you; never shall your enemies and rivals succeed in estranging my heart from you, my friend." "swear that they shall not!" cried wilhelmine, raising her right hand. "lay your fingers on this scar on my hand, and swear that you will be my dear friend throughout my whole life, that nothing shall separate us, and that nothing shall induce you to drive me from your side, but that i shall live where you live, and ever be your friend, your confidante, and your sister soul." the king laid the fingers of his right hand on the scar, repeated the words she had spoken, and swore that he would be her true and devoted friend until death, that he would never drive her from his side, but that she should live where he lived, and remain with him as his friend and confidante for all time.[ ] "and now that we have come to an understanding," said he with a joyous smile, "i may perhaps be permitted to reward my dear friend, and shed a ray of my newly-acquired royalty on this humble dwelling! you said some time ago that you desired to sell this house and live on the proceeds of its sale. i approve of your plan. i will purchase this house of you for five hundred thousand dollars. you will endeavor to live on the interest of this sum; if there should be a hitch now and then, and debts should arise, you need only inform me of the fact and they shall be paid." "oh, my dear, my generous friend," cried wilhelmine, "how can i thank you, how--" "be still," said the king, interrupting her, "i have not yet quite finished. the house is now mine; and the price agreed upon shall be paid you to-morrow out of the royal fund. as i can do what i please with my own property, i intend to make a present of it to the mother of the count and countess von der mark. and it will be my first care to have it enlarged and elegantly furnished, in order that it may be a suitable dwelling for the count and countess von der mark, and particularly for their noble and beautiful mother!" "the count and countess von der mark?" repeated wilhelmine with astonishment. "who are they? who is their mother? i never heard of them!" "you shall soon become acquainted with them, only wait," said the king smiling; and he went to the door, unlocked it, and gave the bell-rope which hung beside it a violent pull. "where are the children?" asked the king, of the servant who rushed forward to answer his summons. "your majesty, my young master and mistress are in the dining-room." "send them to me immediately," said the king; and he remained standing at the door awaiting them. when they came running into the parlor with anxious, inquiring looks, the king took them by the hand and conducted them to their mother. "madame," said he, gravely, "i have the honor to introduce to you countess mariane and count alexander von der mark." "count alexander von der mark?" repeated the boy, looking up wonderingly at his father. "who is that?" "that you are, my son," said the king, as he stooped down and raised the boy up in his arms. "you are the count von der mark, and your sister is the countess; and you shall have the prussian eagle in your coat of arms, and shall be honored at my court as my dear, handsome son. all the proud courtiers shall bow their heads before you and your sister. the count and countess von der mark shall have the precedence at my court over all the noble families; and their place shall immediately be behind the royal princesses." "and that will be my dear mamma's place, too?" said alexander. "she will always be where we are?" "yes," said the king hastily, "she will always remain with her dear children. yes, and (as the young count once remarked that, if he could live in a splendid house 'under the linden-trees'[ ] with his mother, and if i would go to see them right often, he would have all he desired), i will make him a present of the most magnificent house 'under the linden-trees' in berlin, and the young count shall live there, and i will visit him right often in his new home." "that will be splendid," cried the boy clapping his hands. "you are delighted, too, are you not, mariane?" "certainly i am," replied his sister, smiling, "and i thank his majesty for the great honor he confers in giving us such grand titles." "i am glad to hear that you are pleased with your title, my dear daughter; but, as names and titles do not sustain life, a sufficient amount will be set apart for your use as pin-money. and when a suitable and agreeable gentleman demands your hand in marriage, you shall have a dowry of two hundred thousand dollars. when this becomes known you will certainly not fail to have a vast number of admirers from which to make your selection. no more thanks, if you please! we will now go to dinner. count von der mark, give your mother your arm, i will escort the young countess." "your majesty," announced the servant, who entered at this moment, "colonel von bischofswerder and privy-chamberlain von wöllner have just arrived, and beg to be admitted to your majesty's presence!" "true, indeed," murmured the king, "i had altogether forgotten them. madame, you will please excuse me for withdrawing from your society. i must not keep these gentlemen waiting, as i directed them to meet me here on important business. when this business is transacted i must however return to potsdam. farewell, and await me at breakfast to-morrow morning." chapter x. the invocation. "you have then really come, my friends," said the king. "you have really determined to attempt to invoke the invisible?" "god is mighty in the weak," said wöllner, folding his hands piously; "and we men are merely the vessels into which he pours his anger and his love, and in which he makes himself manifest. by fasting and prayer i have made myself worthy to commune with spirits." "the longing after the invisible fathers throbs in my heart and brain; and, if in the heat of this longing i invoke them, they will lend an ear to my entreaties, and approach to answer the questions of your majesty, their best-beloved son." "nor have i a doubt on the subject," said bischofswerder, complacently. "i will entreat the spirit of the grand-kophta with the whole strength of my soul, and with all the means which the holy secret sciences place at my disposal. the hour has come in which will be determined whether the immortal spirit controls the mortal body, compelling it to obey its behests in spite of time and space." "then you really consider it possible, my friend? you are yet of the opinion that the grand-kophta will appear in answer to your invocations?" "yes, sire, i am of that opinion!" "that is to say, his spirit will come amongst us in some intangible shape. you cannot be in earnest when you assert that he will answer your call in the body, as i have already told you that the grand-kophta is in london. our ambassador not only saw him there, but spoke with him the very day he dispatched the courier, who arrived here yesterday." "your majesty, the secret sciences teach me that the spirit controls the body; and we will now test the truth of this lesson. if the grand-kophta does not appear in flesh and blood, and give to your majesty, with his own hand, the elixir of life for which your soul thirsts, science lies, and the sublime spirits consider me unworthy of their confidence! in that event, i will renounce my right to enter the inner temple; it will be evident that i am not one of the enlightened. i will bow submissively to the anger and contempt of the invisible, and return voluntarily to the outer temple to begin my apprenticeship anew." the king shook his head thoughtfully. "your faith is heroic; and i only hope you are not doomed to be disappointed. and now, let us begin our work!" "his majesty's will be done," replied the two rosicrucians, respectfully. "will your majesty permit us to go to the laboratory in order to make our preparations?" "i will accompany you, and render assistance as an inferior brother. you know that no one besides us three is permitted to enter this laboratory; and i therefore keep the key in a secret drawer of my writing-desk, which i alone can open!" "permit us to withdraw, in order that we may not see from what place your majesty takes the key." the two rosicrucians walked toward the door, and turned their faces so that they could not see what was done behind them. "i have the key," said the king, after a short interval. "come, my brothers. i am now ready!" he walked rapidly to the door, unlocked it, and entered the laboratory, followed by bischofswerder and wöllner. but hardly had the king stepped into the room before he uttered a cry of terror, and staggered back, pale with fright. "the invisibles! the invisibles!" he murmured. "see! see! they knew we were coming, and have made all the preparations!" "all hail, the invisible fathers," cried wöllner, with enthusiasm. "they have prepared the altar." "the invisibles are awaiting us; they approve of our purpose," shouted bischofswerder, exultingly. "oh, behold, my king! oh, see, my brother!" he drew the king eagerly to the large furnace which occupied one entire side of the laboratory; and it really looked as if invisible hands had been at work in this chamber. a bright fire was burning in the furnace, jets of flame darted forth through the openings, and licked the pans and retorts in which liquids and mixtures of various colors boiled and simmered. "all is prepared," said bischofswerder, who had been examining the retorts closely. "it seems the invisibles are concocting a secret mixture. but my eyes are blinded, and my brain is still in darkness; these substances and elixirs are unknown to me; i only feel that their fragrance fills me with wondrous delight. oh, come, your majesty, and inhale this blessed aroma--this atmosphere of invisible worlds!" the king timidly stepped up close to the furnace, and inclined his head over the retort pointed out by bischofswerder. dense vapors arose from the bubbling mass and enveloped the king's head. "it is true," said the king, inhaling deep draughts of the vapor. "it creates a wondrous sensation of delight and ecstasy!" "it is the fragrance of the spirit-world," said wöllner, impressively.--"oh, i feel, i know that my prayers have been heard. they are coming! lo, the invisibles are approaching! look, my king, look up there!" the king turned eagerly to wöllner, whose right arm was raised, and pointed to the opposite wall. "see, see these heavenly forms waving their hands and greeting us!" "i see nothing," murmured the king, sadly. "the visions which bless the eye of the anointed are invisible to me. i see nothing!" no, the king saw nothing! to him the chamber was empty. he saw no spirits, nor did he see bischofswerder throw a handful of white powder into the large retort at this moment. but he saw the white clouds which now ascended from the furnace; he saw the flames which burst forth from the retorts, and, in the explosions and detonations which ensued, he heard the roar of invisible musketry. "the invisibles are contending fiercely," exclaimed wöllner. "the good and bad spirits are warring with each other, and struggling for the possession of our noble king. the holy ones and the rosicrucians are battling with the freethinkers and scoffers, and the so-called enlightened. give the former the victory, almighty god! incline thyself to the believers and rosicrucians, and deal out destruction to the unbelievers and scoffers! on my knees i entreat thee, thou ruler of all things! have pity on the king, have pity on us, and--" a loud and fearful detonation--a whistling, howling roar--drowned his voice. dense white clouds, through which tongues of flame darted in every direction, ascended from the furnace and gradually filled the room. the king had staggered back, and would have fallen to the ground, but for bischofswerder, who had supported him and conducted him to an arm-chair, into which he sank back helplessly. his eyes closed, and for a few moments he was in an unconscious condition. suddenly the king's name resounded in his ear and aroused him from this trance. "awake, frederick william, awake! ours is the victory! the holy cross of love and of roses is victorious! the evil spirits have flown! awake, frederick william, awake! the invisibles are ready to answer your questions!" the king opened his eyes and looked around. he saw nothing at first but the clouds which encircled him. but suddenly a face seemed to arise in their midst--a face of deathly pallor? long brown hair fell down on either side of the broad, but low forehead. its widely-opened glassy eyes seemed to stare at the king, who shuddered, and would have turned away had not some invisible power compelled him to continue gazing at this death-like countenance. by degrees the vision grew more distinct, and stood out from the surrounding vapor in bolder relief. the neck and shoulders now appeared, and gradually the entire body of a man of a powerful build was disclosed. he wore a tightly-fitting jerkin of leather; his neck was encircled with a broad, double lace collar. a golden star glittered on his breast, and a richly-embroidered velvet mantle, bordered with ermine, hung down over his broad shoulders. this mighty, princely figure stood immovable in the midst of the white clouds, which enveloped it like a winding-sheet. but its large, proud eyes seemed fixed on frederick william with a cold, hard look. the king shuddered, and uttered low entreaties for mercy. "fear nothing, frederick william," said the vision, which spoke without opening its lips. these tones struck on the king's ear like a voice from the grave. "fear nothing, frederick william; i have not come to alarm, but to console you. the invisibles have sent me to soothe your heart, and give peace and consolation to your soul. do you not know who i am, frederick william?" "no," replied the king, in a low voice, "i do not." "i am philip of hesse," rejoined the closed lips. "philip of hesse, called, by foolish and short-sighted men, 'the magnanimous.'" "ah, now i know who you are, my prince," cried the king. "you, it was, who overthrew the rebellious peasants in battle, who overcame franz von sickingen, and introduced the reformation into germany. you were the prince who submitted to the emperor charles the fifth, after the unfortunate battle of mühlberg; were taken prisoner by him, and held in captivity until released by the treaty of passau. tell me, sublime spirit, are you not the spirit of that noble prince, of philip the magnanimous?" "i am! my whole life was a struggle, and i had many enemies to contend with. but my most formidable enemy was my own heart. this enemy was love, passionate love. wedded since my sixteenth year with christina of saxony, selected as my wife for state reasons; my heart became inflamed with love for the beautiful margaret von saale, and my one great desire was to win her and call her my wife. but her virtue withstood my entreaties; and, although she loved me, she was nevertheless determined to fly from me unless our union could be consummated by the blessing of a priest. it was in vain that i besought her to become mine. these were days of agony, and this struggle was harder than any i had maintained on the field of battle. i then suffered and wept as though i were a puling boy, and not a warrior and prince." "you are recounting the history of my own sufferings," murmured the king, in a low voice. "you are describing my own struggles!" "i know it," replied the apparition. "my eye sees your heart, and your sufferings, and therefore have i come to console you, to tell you that i have suffered as you suffer, and that your wounds shall be healed as mine were. the maiden you love is as virtuous as margaret von saale was. like margaret von saale she demands that she be made your wedded wife. in my distress and misery i addressed myself to the great reformer, whom i had patronized with pious zeal. i asked luther if the church could bless a marriage of the left hand, when a marriage of the right hand already existed; and luther, the man of justice and of truth, replied: 'it stands in the bible that the left hand shall not know what the right does; and, consequently, it is not necessary that the right hand should know what the left does. the wife of the left hand has nothing to do with the wife of the right, forced upon you for reasons of state. the former is the wife of the prince, the latter will be the wife of the man. and, as two persons are united in you, the prince and the man, these persons can contract two marriages, the one for the prince and the other for the man, and the blessing of the church is admissible for both.' but the sensitive conscience of my beautiful margaret was not yet satisfied. i now turned to philip melanchthon, the great scholar, the strictly moral and virtuous man, and demanded his opinion, telling him that the decision should rest in his hands. but philip melanchthon decided as luther had done, and proved by holy writ that such a marriage was possible and admissible. he, however, added the condition that the consent of the wife of the right hand must be obtained before the marriage of the left hand could be consummated. my generous wife gave her consent. margaret von saale became my wedded wife, and the mother of seven children, who were the joy and pride of their parents. to tell you this, i left the peaceful grave. such were the commands of the sublime spirits, who are greater than i, and who rule over the living and the dead. learn by my example how virtue can be reconciled to love. put away from you the unchaste woman with whom you live; turn your countenance from her forever--and seek and find your happiness at the side of the noble young woman to whom you shall be united by priestly blessings. farewell! my time has expired, i must go." the apparition seemed to melt away; it grew darker and fainter. for a while its dim and uncertain outlines could be seen when the clouds lifted, and then it disappeared entirely. the clouds also slowly vanished; and now they were gone, the fire could once more be seen burning brightly in the furnace. the king looked around, and observed his two friends kneeling and praying on either side of his chair. "have you been listening, my friends? did you hear the utterances of the blessed spirits?" "we have heard nothing but mutterings and shrieks, and therefore we have been entreating the sublime spirits to mitigate their anger," said wöllner, shaking his head. "but i saw a vision, a heavenly vision," cried bischofswerder. "i saw my beloved king and master, standing between two noblewomen. they both regarded him tenderly. they stood, the one on the right, the other on the left hand; on the extended right hand of both glittered a golden ring, the precious symbol of marriage. the countenance of my royal master was radiant with delight; and above him shone the star of pure and chaste love. and it seemed to me that i heard a heavenly voice cry: 'find your happiness at the side of the noble young woman to whom you will be joined by priestly blessings.'" "these were the last words of the sublime spirit that appeared to me," said the king, joyfully. "you heard them, my faithful friend, while wrestling in prayer at my side. oh, i thank you both; and while i live, i will reward your fidelity. but, alas," continued the king, with a deep-drawn sigh, "i only fear that my life will be of short duration! i feel weak and exhausted, and upon you and your influence, my friend, i depend for the life-restoring elixir." "i will procure it, you shall have it," cried bischofswerder, rising from his knees with youthful vivacity, in spite of his corpulence. "the invocation shall now begin. i will command my spirit to leave the body, and fly through time and space to the grand-kophta, to entreat him to give to the doubting, unbelieving king a visible sign of his heavenly power, to convince him that the mind rules over the body." "do not attempt it, my dear friend; do not, i solemnly conjure you," implored wöllner. "it is tempting god, to seek to set at naught the laws of nature. it is possible that your mighty spirit has power to tear itself from the body, and transport itself from place to place with the rapidity of thought; but consider the difficulty of returning, consider whether the cold, dead body can be a fitting receptacle and abode for the spirit on its return." "i know that this is the great danger to which i shall be exposed," replied bischofswerder. "but i will dare all for my king, and no danger shall terrify me when his health and happiness are at stake.--be still, my king! no thanks whatever! i love you! that suffices, that explains all! and now let me take my departure! now let me invoke the grand-kophta, the dispenser of life and health!--but listen, wöllner, listen to these last words! if the invisibles assist me, and enable my spirit to leave its earthly tenement, my body will grow cold and assume a death-like appearance. but this must not lead you to suppose that i am dead. only when this condition shall have lasted more than half an hour, i beg that you will kneel down beside my body and entreat the invisibles to command my spirit to return to its earthly abode. truly i would not wish to remain in a bodiless state, when the king needs my services. and now, my king and master, permit me to kiss your hand before i go." "no, my true, my generous friend, come to my heart!" cried the king, as he embraced bischofswerder, and pressed a kiss on his forehead. "and now, hear me, ye invisibles! lend an ear to my prayer! give wings to my spirit that it may fly through time and space!--here, wöllner! hold my body!" wöllner rushed forward in answer to this call, and caught bischofswerder in his arms as he was on the point of falling to the floor. he rested the head on his breast, covered the face with his hand, and gently stroked his cheeks and brow. the king, who stood behind him in breathless suspense, did not comprehend what was going on, and did not see the little bottle which wöllner held under his friend's nose, nor did he see him slip it adroitly into his coat-sleeve when he arose. but when wöllner stepped back, and pointed solemnly to the tranquil body, the king saw that bischofswerder's spirit had flown. he saw that the pallid, inanimate object, which lay in the chair, was nothing more than the empty tenement, once the abode of bischofswerder's spirit. of this, the widely-extended, glassy eyes, and the stiffened features, were sufficient evidence. the king shuddered, and turned away. "it is fearful to look upon the lifeless body of a friend who dies in an endeavor to save and prolong our life. how fearful, if death should be the stronger, and prevent the spirit from returning to its dwelling! not only would we mourn the loss of a friend, but his death would have been in vain, and the elixir of life unattained! we must observe the time closely and count the minutes, in order that the prayers may begin when the half-hour has elapsed." with trembling hands the king drew his richly-jewelled watch from his pocket, and watched the creeping hands in breathless anxiety. his alarm increased as time progressed, and now, when only five minutes were wanting to complete the half-hour, the king turned pale and trembled with terror. "only one minute more, then--" "he moves," whispered wöllner. "see, your majesty! oh, see! there is life in his eye, his month closes, the hue of life returns to his cheek. a miracle, a miracle has taken place! the spirit has returned to the earthly tabernacle!" bischofswerder is once more among the living; he arises. his eyes seek the king and find him. with unsteady gait, a smile on his lips, he approached the king. "sire, my spirit greets you, my heart shouts for joy. i bring you glad tidings! the grand-kophta has yielded to my entreaties. he approaches to give my king life and health, and above all things to remove his unbelief!" "he is then really coming? he approaches?" cried the king, joyfully. "call him, your majesty! call the grand-kophta, but do so with a believing and confident heart." "grand-kophta! sublimest of the sublime! lend an ear to my entreaties! appear divo cagliostro! appear, my lord and master!" a flash, a detonation, proceeding from the furnace, near which wöllner stands, and all is once more concealed by the clouds of vapor which fill the room. when they at last rise and pass away, a tall figure, enveloped in a long black mantle, is seen standing in the middle of the room. the head only is uncovered, and this head is surrounded with waving black hair, in the midst of which a precious stone shines and sparkles with the lustre of a star. and the large black eyes, which are fastened on the king's countenance, with a mild and tender look, also shine like stars. carried away with rapture and enthusiasm, the king falls on his knees, and raises his hands in adoration. but the grand-kophta advanced noiselessly to the kneeling king, begged him to rise, and helped him to do so with his own hand. "yes, you are really my sublime master," cried the enraptured king. "i feel the warm, living body, the loving pressure of the blessing-dispensing hand. hail, master! hail cagliostro!" "you appealed to me for assistance," said cagliostro, in solemn tones. "i heard the call of the noble messenger you sent me as i was about to enter the st. james's palace in london. king george of england had received another visitation from the demons who confuse his brain and darken his intellect. i was sent for and urged to come at once and drive out the demons from the head of the sick king. but it is of more importance that the healthy should not become sick, than that the sick man's condition should be somewhat improved. the spirit althotas cried out to me, saying: 'hasten to king frederick william of prussia; without your assistance he must languish and die. hasten to preserve his health and strengthen his noble soul with the breath of immortality.' at first i was uncertain of whom althotas spoke, for i had not yet heard of king frederick's death. but before my eyes there suddenly arose the vision of an old man reclining in an arm-chair. he was on the threshold of the grave; his lips quivered and his eye grew dim, and the blood refused to flow from the open vein. two weeping servants stood at his side; a greyhound lay at his feet. above him in the air i saw the demons of unbelief struggling for the soul which had just left the body; but the good angels turned away in anger. and i interpreted this vision aright; i now knew that the unbelieving king was dead, and that frederick william, the favorite of the invisible fathers, was now king of prussia. althotas then cried out, for the second time: 'hasten, frederick william needs you sorely. hasten, that he may not die. i impart to the mortal the strength of immortality!' i turned my back on st. james's palace, and immediately repaired to the holy laboratory of the spirits, to procure the necessary remedies. i then arose and flew to my suffering king on the wings of the invisible." "it is then true, it is really possible!" cried the enraptured king. "you are really the great cagliostro! you have accomplished this miracle, have compelled the body to subject itself to the will of the spirit, and fly through time and space at its command! oh, let me fall down and embrace your knees! infuse the heavenly breath of thy lips into my enfeebled body!" and he sank on his knees before the grand-kophta, and looked up to him in supplication. "arise, frederick william; favorite of the invisible, arise from your knees! i have not come to humble you, but to raise you up. the king who rules over millions of human beings, must not bend the knee to mortal man, and worship that which is visible and perishable. humble your immortal spirit before the immortal, and lift up your soul in adoration to the unseen and imperishable. be the ruler of men, and the humble subject of the invisible. arise, frederick william, and listen to what i have to say, for my time is short, and althotas awaits me on the threshold of st james's palace, in london." in obedience to this command the king arose from his knees, and stood before the magician, whose luminous eyes were still fixed intently on his countenance. "you are not ill, frederick william," said he, "nor are you well; your spirit lacks buoyancy, its wings are drooping, and your pulse is feeble. death is slowly but surely approaching, and you would languish and die, if there were no means of driving off this grim monster." "oh, have pity on me! give me the life-preserving elixir! save me! i swear that my gratitude shall be unbounded, and that i am ready to bestow any reward that the invisible fathers may demand." "they, indeed, demand no sacrifice and accept no reward, as men do. their actions are influenced by higher laws. love, honor, and obedience, are the rewards they exact." "and from the depths of my heart, i promise them love, honor, and obedience." "the invisibles know you to be an obedient servant, and therefore am i here to restore health and strength to your body. but hear me, frederick william, and lay my words to heart! in order that death may obtain no power over you, your heart must regain its joyousness, and your soul its buoyancy. a passionate love, which you are too weak to overcome, has filled your heart, and therefore its joyousness is dimmed. then, gratify this passion, frederick william! the invisibles give their consent! let your whole being be imbued with this pure, this noble love; renounce all ignoble passions and desires. make the fair maiden you love your wife, and peace, joy, and tranquillity, will once more abide in your heart, and your spirit will regain its buoyancy, and bear you aloft to the heights of enthusiasm. but your body shall also be restored to health; we will drive from it all weakness and disease. i bring you the elixir of life, of health, and of strength!" "oh, thanks, unspeakable thanks!" cried frederick william, seizing the little bottle which cagliostro held in his hand, and carrying it eagerly to his lips. "let me drink, sublime master! let me drink of this heavenly elixir at once!" "no! save this precious medicine for a time when you will need it, when i will no longer be with you. for the present i am here, and i will infuse strength and health into your body! receive these blessings, frederick william! in the name of the invisible, i anoint you king of the world and of life!" as he uttered these words, he poured a few drops of some fluid on the king's head from a bottle which he held in his hand. a delicious fragrance instantly filled the room. the king raised his head with an exclamation of delight, and inhaled, in long draughts, the fragrant atmosphere. "a wondrous sensation thrills my being; i feel so happy, so buoyant! i am leaving earth; and now i seem to see the portals of paradise!" "take this, and these portals will open to your view," said cagliostro, handing the king a little pill of some grayish substance. "eat this, and all the bliss of paradise will be yours!" the king took the pill from cagliostro's extended hand, carried it to his lips, and slowly swallowed it. instantly a tremor seized his whole body, his cheeks turned deathly pale; he tottered and sank back into the chair which wöllner had noiselessly rolled forward. cagliostro stooped down over him, and regarded the shadows which passed across and darkened the king's countenance. by degrees these shadows disappeared. his features brightened, and at last his countenance shone with joy and happiness, and was radiant with smiles. "he is in paradise," said cagliostro, stepping back from the chair. "his spirit revels in heavenly delights. an hour will elapse before he returns from paradise to this earth, and the remembrance of what he has seen and enjoyed in this hour will be a sunbeam in his existence for a long time to come. he will long for a renewal of this bliss, and you must console him with the promise, that i will either appear to him in person, or else send him, by a messenger, at the expiration of each year, one of these wonderful pills, which condenses the delights of a whole life into one hour, provided he is an humble and obedient servant, and does the will of the invisible in all things. his soul is lost in rapture, and his ear is closed to all earthly sounds!--and now, my friends, come nearer, and listen to my words." the two rosicrucians, wöllner and bischofswerder, approached, in obedience to his command; and when cagliostro laid his hands on their shoulders, their countenances beamed with delight. "speak to us, sublime master! your utterances fall on our souls like heavenly dew. speak, and command your servants to do your will!" "you must continue the course marked out for you by the fathers through me. you must aid in building up the kingdom of the church and the invisible on this earth. the invisible church, and her visible priests and representatives, shall alone rule on earth in the future, and, therefore, thrones must be overturned, crowns trodden in the dust, and the names of the kings and princes of earth uprooted like weeds and cast in the oven. an era of terror is drawing nigh when the sword and firebrand will go hand in hand through the land, and rapine and slaughter be the order of the day. the demons of insurrection and rebellion are already at work, threatening princes, and greeting the people with these words of promise: liberty and fraternity. we, the invisible, the sacred fathers of the holy church, have sent them out to carry terror to the hearts of princes. the king who has just died devoted his whole life to the enfranchisement of the spirit of the people; our chief endeavor must be to fetter this spirit, and restore the people and their rulers to their former humility and submission. they must do penance in sackcloth and ashes, and be made aware that the priests of the holy church and the pious brothers of the order, can alone save them, and reduce their rebellious subjects to obedience and submission. the knife and burning fire are sometimes necessary to heal wounds and diseases. and these remedies we will apply. the revolution can be made a mighty and sublime weapon in the hands of the invisible, and the bloodiest paths may lead to the greatest good! alas, that we should be compelled to tread such paths!" "alas! alas!" cried the two rosicrucians, pale with terror. the countenance of the slumbering king, however, still wore the same enraptured expression. "but," continued cagliostro, "of these evils, good will come. the proud flesh shall be cut out with the knife, and the wound burned with fire, in order that it may heal the more rapidly. the storm of the revolution will shake the earth. thrones will tremble, and princes fall down in the dust. the people will be lashed to fury, like the waves of the storm-tossed sea. but the holy church will be the little vessel that bids the sea be still, and stems the tide of the people's wrath by leading them back to humility and belief. anger makes blind, and in their blindness they can the more readily be fettered. we, the invisible fathers, use the people to terrify the rulers. in all parts of europe, the fathers and brothers of our order are preparing this work of destruction and overthrow, in order that the noble and sublime may be built up anew out of the débris. oh, my brothers, perform diligently your allotted task! in the name of the invisible fathers, i deliver over to you this kingdom and this king! govern him, and make him serviceable to the holy order and the holy church. you shall rule in prussia. build up the good, destroy the evil! but the greatest good is, belief; the greatest evil, unbelief! root out the king's unbelief! you will be justified in using any means, for the end sanctifies the means; and even that which is in itself vile, becomes a holy weapon in the hands of the chosen!--and now, my brothers, i bid you a final adieu; my time has expired, i must go!" "oh, master, do not leave us!" cried bischofswerder. "stay with us, and promote our holy ends." "stay with us, and assist us in leading the king back to the right path," exclaimed wöllner. "you can accomplish it without my assistance. your will is strong, and his resistance will be but feeble! you shall be the kings of prussia; you shall reign in the land! but do not forget that as rulers you will still be servants!" "that we will never forget! we will ever obey the commands of the invisibles, and faithfully execute their will as announced to us by your sublime lips!" "who knows that my lips will never speak to you again," said cagliostro, in a sad voice. "i wander through the world on the verge of an abyss, and the storm and revolution are my companions. from the murder and bloodshed of the revolution, the church will blossom afresh. remember these words, ye brothers of the cross and of the roses! remember them, and farewell forever!" chapter xi. the will. the solemn ceremony was over. the body of the great king had been borne forth from the apartments in which he had governed prussia for so many years; from the house which had been his chief delight on earth, and which was thenceforth to stand as a monument of his life. but the deceased king's commands and wishes were disregarded in the very beginning. and it was made manifest to the world that his successor did not intend to walk in his footsteps, and did not share his independent views on religious subjects, and his freedom from all prejudices. frederick had caused a burial vault to be built for himself on the terraces. he desired that his body should find a last resting-place in the garden which he had made, and near the house in which he had lived with his friends, and in which he had been so happy! but his successor considered such a resting-place, in the temple of nature, and under the dome erected by the hand of the almighty, an unfit abode for the remains of a king. he considered the temple of brick and mortar erected by the hand of man a far more worthy receptacle for the dead monarch. the philosopher of sans-souci had not attended church for many years; and now, as if to proclaim to the world that a revolution had taken place in prussia, the king's body was deposited in the church. to the garrison church in potsdam, where the plain and unadorned coffin of king frederick william the first had been placed in the vault under the altar, the gloomy funeral procession of the dead ruler wended its way on the evening of the eighteenth of august. his generals and officers, the magistrate of potsdam, and the members of his household, followed the funeral car. but his successor, king frederick william, and the princes and princesses, were not present. in solitude, as he had lived, king frederick descended into the dark vault in which the coffin of his father awaited him. in life, they had kept at a distance from each other; death now brought them together, and their mortal remains lay side by side in peace and tranquillity. death reconciles all things; in his hands even kings are but as the dust of the earth. on the morning after frederick's interment, king frederick william repaired to sans-souci, where the opening and reading of the monarch's will was to take place. the royal princes, who had not accompanied the king's body to its last resting-place, were by no means absent on this momentous occasion, and princes henry and ferdinand, and even the princess amelia, frederick's sister, who was decrepit from age, and deformed by the mental and bodily anguish she had undergone, had come to sans-souci to be present at the reading of the will. these three were standing in an alcove, conversing eagerly, but in an undertone. their manner was expressive of resentment and anger, and the glances which they from time to time cast toward the door through which the king was expected to enter, were full of hatred and derision. "bischofswerder has been made colonel; and wöllner, privy-councillor," murmured prince henry, bitterly; "even that abominable fellow, rietz, has received a title. but he never thought of his family; for us there are no favors." "and how could there be?" rejoined princess amelia, in her sharp, scornful voice. "the favorites stand where the golden shower falls, and you do not desire that we should do likewise, i hope? i, for my part, shall certainly decline the honor of standing at wilhelmine enke's side; nor have i any desire to share the royal favor with the king's new flame, the maid of honor, von voss." "she will soon hold an important position," whispered prince ferdinand. "the king intends to make her his wife." "impossible!" exclaimed the hoarse voice of the princess. "that is, unless our dear nephew first manages to put his legitimate wife out of the way with the aid of his sorcerers." "perhaps he intends to take king solomon as his model," said prince henry, derisively. "he also was an arch-profligate, although he was accounted a most holy and worthy king." "let him pronounce a solomon's judgment on himself," screeched the princess; "let him cut himself in three pieces: one for the queen, a second for wilhelmine enke, and the third for the new favorite." "the last must, however, be spoken of with the greatest deference," whispered prince ferdinand. "the king will have it so. the maid of honor, von voss, is exceedingly virtuous, and insists on a marriage. the king had an interview with the young lady on the day of frederick's death; and she then imposed three conditions: she demands that the queen's consent be first obtained, then a church marriage, and finally the king's separation from madame rietz." "the queen will not give her consent," said princess amelia. "she has already done so! the privy-chamberlain rietz accomplished this masterpiece of diplomacy. the king pays his wife's debts, and doubles her pin-money; and for this consideration she consents to the marriage of the left hand."[ ] "they are all mercenary creatures, these women," muttered prince henry. "they are like dissembling cats, that are always ready to scratch and betray their best friends. in this respect a queen is no better than a beggar-woman! for money, a queen compromises her honor and her rights; and permits a virtuous mantle to be thrown over vice. but this time it will be of no avail, since no priest can be found to consummate this unlawful marriage." "you are mistaken, my dear brother," said prince ferdinand, smiling. "one has already been found. the king asked advice of his newly-appointed privy-councillor wöllner. this fellow was formerly a preacher, as you well know, and is therefore well acquainted with priestly stratagems. he proved to the king, by historical references, that such double marriages were possible, and that even luther had permitted the landgrave philip to contract a marriage of this kind. moreover, he called the king's attention to the fact, that he was an ordained preacher himself, and, as such, entitled to exercise the functions of that calling, and offered to perform the ceremony himself." "they are all mercenary creatures, these men," said princess amelia, with a malicious side glance at her brother, prince henry. "i am surprised to hear that, my dear sister," remarked prince henry. "it seems you have changed your opinion of men very materially." "no," she rejoined, angrily, "no, i have always known that men were miserable creatures. there were only two exceptions: the one was my brother frederick, and the other was the man whom even the great king frederick could not keep in fetters--he who broke the heaviest bars and strongest chains with the strength of his invincible spirit, and liberated himself in defiance of all kings and jailers. i thank you, henry, for reminding me of him! my heart has been envenomed by mankind, and is old and withered, but it grows warm and young again when i think of him for whom i suffered so much, and who made of me the old hag i now am.--but here comes the king, our dear nephew." and amelia, whose countenance had been illumined for a moment with a ray of youth, resumed her spiteful and gloomy look, and hobbled toward her dear nephew, who was just entering the chamber, followed by count von herzberg and the newly-appointed minister of state, von voss. "how handsome your majesty looks!" cried princess amelia, in her hoarse voice; "how young and handsome! if it were not for the thin hair, the embonpoint, and the dear wife, one might take your majesty for a youthful adonis, going a wooing, and--" "and who has the misfortune to meet a bad fairy[ ] on the road. but it makes no difference, custom has robbed your evil glance of its terrors, and we will never cease to love and esteem you. i beg leave to assure my dear aunt amelia, as well as my two uncles, that i will always remain their affectionate and devoted nephew, and that it will afford me the greatest pleasure to gratify their wishes. however, we will speak of this hereafter, but now let us consider the grave purpose for which we have come together. count von herzberg, i beg you to conduct the ambassador of the duke of brunswick to our presence." the king seated himself on the sofa which stood in the middle of the room. princess amelia and the two princes seated themselves in chairs, in his immediate vicinity. in front of them, and near the window, stood a table covered with green cloth, and beside it three elegantly carved chairs. this was frederick the great's writing-desk, the desk at which he had thought and labored so much for the welfare and honor of his kingdom and subjects. "baron von hardenberg, minister, and extraordinary ambassador of his highness, the duke of brunswick," cried count herzberg as he entered and presented this gentleman to the king. baron von hardenberg bowed with the grace of a courtier and an elegant man of the world, and then looked up at the king, expectantly, with an air of perfect ease and composure. "speak, baron von hardenberg," said the king, with some little embarrassment, after a short pause. "my uncle, the duke of brunswick, sends you. what message does the baron bring?" "sir, i bring, at the command of my gracious master, the duke, the last will and testament of king frederick the second, of blessed memory--with unbroken seals, and in exactly the same condition as when years ago delivered by his deceased majesty to the duke, and by him deposited in the state archives at brunswick, where it has remained until now." the baron handed the sealed document to the king, and begged him, and the princes, and ministers, to examine the seals, to assure themselves that they had not been tampered with, and requested his majesty to break them, and open the will, after having satisfied himself of that fact. after this had been done, and after herzberg had testified to frederick's handwriting, the king returned the document to baron von hardenberg. "you brought us these last greetings and injunctions of the great king, and it is therefore but just and proper that you, as the representative of the duke, should make us acquainted with the contents of the will. i authorize you to read it aloud. seat yourself at that table between my two ministers. and now read." count von hardenberg spread the document out on the table, and commenced to read in a loud and sonorous voice, as follows: "life is but a fleeting transition from birth to death. man's destiny is to labor for the welfare of society, of which he is a member, during this brief period. since the duty of managing the affairs of state first devolved upon me, i have endeavored, with all the powers given me by nature, to make the state which i had the honor to govern happy and prosperous. i have caused justice to be administered, i have brought order and exactitude into the finances, and i have introduced that discipline into the army, which makes it superior to the other troops of europe. after having done my duty to the state, in this manner, it would be a subject of unceasing self-reproach, if i neglected that which concerns my family. therefore, in order to avoid the dissensions which might arise among the members of my family in regard to the inheritance, i herewith declare to them this my last will and testament: "( .) i willingly, and without regret, return the breath of life which animates me to beneficent nature, which honored me with its bestowal, and this body to the elements of which it is composed. i have lived a philosopher, and i desire to be buried as such, without pomp, show, or splendor. i desire neither to be dissected nor embalmed. i desire to be buried in sans-souci, on the terrace and in the vault which i have had prepared for the reception of my body. in this manner the prince of nassau was laid to rest in a wood near cleve. should i die in time of war, or on a journey, my body must be conveyed to the most convenient place, and afterwards to sans-souci in the winter, and deposited as above directed. "( .) i bequeath to my dear nephew, frederick william, my successor to the crown, the kingdom of prussia, provinces, states, castles, fortifications, places, munitions, and arsenals, lands which are mine by right of conquest or inheritance, all the crown jewels which are in the hands of the queen, my wife, the gold and silver plate in berlin, my villas, libraries, collections of medals, picture galleries, gardens, etc., etc. moreover, i leave him the state treasure as he may find it at my death, in trust. it belongs to the state, and must only be used in defending or assisting the people. "( .) if death compels me to leave unpaid some small debts, my nephew shall pay them. such is my will. "( .) i bequeath to the queen, my wife, the revenue she now draws, with the addition of ten thousand dollars per annum, two tuns of wine each year, free wood, and game for her table. under this condition, the queen has consented to make my nephew her heir. moreover, as there is no suitable dwelling that can be set apart as her residence, i content myself with mentioning, for form's sake, stettin as an appropriate place. at the same time, i request of my nephew that he hold suitable lodgings in readiness for her in the palace in berlin, and that he show a proper consideration for the widow of his uncle, and for a princess whose virtue is above all reproach. "( .) and now, we come to the allodial estate. i have never been either miserly or rich, nor have i ever had much to dispose of. i have considered the state revenues as the ark of the covenant, which none but consecrated hands might touch. i have never appropriated the public revenues to my own use. my own expenses have never exceeded the sum of two hundred thousand dollars; and my administration leaves me in perfect quietude of conscience, and i do not fear to give the public a strict account of it. "( .) i appoint my nephew frederick william residuary legatee of my allodial estate, after having paid out the following legacies." after the king, in twenty-four additional clauses, had named a legacy for all of his relatives, either in money, jewels, or something else, and after he had determined the pensions for the invalid officers and soldiers of his army, and for his servants, the testament continued: "i recommend to my successor that he honor and esteem his blood, in the persons of his uncles, aunts, and all other relatives. accident, which determines the destiny of man, also regulates the succession. but the one, because he becomes king, is no better than the others. i, therefore, recommend to all my relatives that they live in a good understanding with each other; and that they, if it be necessary, sacrifice their personal interests to the welfare of the fatherland and the advantage of the state. "my last wishes when i die will be for the happiness of this kingdom. may it ever be governed with justice, wisdom, and strength! may it be the happiest of states, through the mildness of its laws; may its administration in respect to finance ever be good and just; may it ever be most gallantly defended by an army that breathes only for honor and fair renown; and may it last and flourish to the end of all centuries!" "amen! amen!" exclaimed the king, folding his hands piously, when baron von hardenberg had concluded. "amen! the intentions of my great and exalted uncle shall be carried out in all things! god bless prussia, and give me strength to govern it and make it happy! i thank you, baron, and promise myself the pleasure of a confidential interview with you to-morrow morning before you take your departure." his ministers having retired with the ambassador, in compliance with an intimation from the king that they might do so, frederick william now turned with a gracious and genial smile to princess amelia and her two brothers, who, like the king, had arisen from their seats. "my exalted uncle particularly recommended that i should consider the welfare of my uncles and aunts," said frederick. "i assure you, however, that this recommendation was unnecessary; without it, i would have been only too happy to contribute to your happiness and welfare, to the extent of my ability. i beg each of you, therefore, to prefer some request, the gratification of which will serve as a remembrance of this solemn occasion.--speak, prince henry; speak, my dear uncle; name some favor that i can grant." the prince started, and a glowing color flitted over the countenance that was an exact copy of the deceased king's. the word "favor," which frederick's smiling lips had uttered, pierced the prince's heart like a poisoned arrow. "sire," said he, sharply, "i crave no favor whatever at your hands, unless it might be considered a favor that my rights be protected, and justice be shown me, in the matter of my claims to a certain succession." "to exercise justice is no favor, but a duty," replied the king, mildly; "and my dear uncle henry will certainly be protected in all his rightful claims." "in my claims to the succession in the margraviate schwedt?" inquired prince henry, hurriedly; and his eyes, which were large, luminous, and keen, like frederick's, fastened a piercing glance on his nephew's countenance. frederick william shrugged his shoulders. "that is a political question, which must be decided in a ministerial council, and not in a family conference." "that is to say, in other words," screeched amelia, with mocking laughter, "prince henry will always belong to the dear family, but never to the number of the king's ministers and councillors." the king, actuated perhaps by a desire to turn the conversation, now addressed prince ferdinand: "and you, my dear uncle, have you no particular wish to impart?" the prince smiled. "i am not ambitious, and my finances are fortunately in good order. i recommend myself and family to the king's good-will. i should be particularly pleased if my oldest son louis could be honored with the protection of his royal uncle." "he shall stand on the same footing with my son," said the king. "i desire him to be the friend and companion of my son frederick william; and i trust that he will infuse some of his spirit and fire into the latter. the young princes are made to complete each other, and i shall be glad to see them become close friends.--and now, my dear aunt and princess," continued the king, as he turned to amelia, "will you be kind enough to name your wishes." the princess shrugged her shoulders. "i am not ambitious, like brother henry, and i have no children to care for, like brother ferdinand. my own wants are few, and i am not fond enough of mankind to desire to collect riches in order that i may fill empty pockets and feast those who are in want. life has not been a bed of roses for me, why should i make it pleasant for others? there is but one i desire to make happy; he, like myself, has lived through long years of misery, and can sing a mournful song of the hard-heartedness and cruelty of mankind. sire, i crave nothing for myself, but i crave a ray of sunshine for him who was buried in the darkness of a prison, who was robbed of his sun for so many long years. i crave for an old man the ray of happiness of which his youth and manhood were wickedly deprived. sire, in my opinion, there is but one shadow on the memory of my exalted brother. this shadow is frederick trenck.[ ] let justice prevail. restore to von trenck the estates of which he was unjustly deprived; restore the title and military rank of which he was robbed. sire, do this, and i, whom misery has made a bad fairy, will hereafter be nothing more than a good-natured and withered old mummy, who will fold her hands and pray with her last breath for the good and generous king who made frederick von trenck happy." "it shall be as my dear aunt desires," said the king, with emotion. "frederick von trenck shall be put in possession of his estates, and restored to his military and civic honors. we will also invite him to our court, and he shall not have to fear being again thrown into the gloomy dungeons of magdeburg, although princess amelia should smile graciously upon him." the princess distorted the poor old face, which was so completely disfigured with scars, in an attempt at a smile, which was only a grimace; and she was herself unaware that the veil which had suddenly dimmed her eyes was a tear. for long years she had neither wept nor smiled, and shed tears to-day for the first time again. for the first time in many years she thanked god, on retiring, for having been permitted to see the light of this day. she no longer desired to die, but prayed that she might live until she had seen frederick von trenck--until she had received his forgiveness for the misery she had caused him! to-day, for the first time, the embittered mind of the princess was touched with a feeling of thankfulness and joy. and it came from the bottom of her heart, when she said to frederick william, on taking leave of him after the reading of the will: "i wish i were not a bad, but rather a good fairy, for i could then give you the receipt for making your people and yourself happy!" the king smiled at this. he had that receipt already! he had received it in the elixir of life which cagliostro had given him. these drops were the receipt for his personal happiness; and, as for making the people happy, bischofswerder and wöllner must know the receipts necessary to effect that object. in their hands the king will confidently place the helm of state. they are the favorites of the invisible fathers; the chosen, the powerful. and they shall rule prussia, they, the rosicrucians! this thought filled the king's heart with joy, but it filled the hearts of the opponents of the pious brotherhood, of the enemies of bischofswerder and wöllner, with dismay and anxiety. and the number of their enemies was great, and many of them were men of high rank and standing. there was also at the court a party which entertained bitter but secret enmity to the rosicrucians. chapter xii. leuchsenring. at the head of the opposition party at court stood franz michael leuchsenring, the prince royal's instructor, goethe's friend, and a member of the former hain association. he had been called to berlin by frederick the great to assume the position of french tutor to the future king of prussia, and impart to him a thorough knowledge of french literature. baron von hardenberg sought out the tutor, whom he had known and loved for many years, on the morning after the reading of the will. the meeting of these long-separated friends was hearty and cordial, and yet the keen glance of the ambassador did not fail to detect the cloud which rested on leuchsenring's countenance. after they had shaken hands, and exchanged a few questions and remarks relative to each other's health and circumstances, the baron raised his delicate white hand and pointed to leuchsenring's brow. "i see a shadow there," said he, smiling; "a shadow which i never before observed on my friend's forehead. is the handsome leuchsenring no longer the favorite of the ladies, and consequently of the muses also? or have we again some detestable rival, who dares to contend with you for a fair maid's favor? i know what that is; i saw you in the rôle of orlando furioso more than once, when we were together in the elysian fields of naples, where we first met and joined hands in friendship. my friend, why did we not remain in bella italia! why has the prose of life sobered us down, and made of you the teacher, and of me the servant of a prince!--but enough of this; and now answer this question: who is the rival? am i to be your second here in berlin, as i was on three occasions in naples?" leuchsenring smiled: "i observe, with pleasure, my dear baron, that your ministerial rank has not changed you. you are still the same merry, thoughtless cavalier; while i, really, i can no longer deny it, have become a misanthrope. with me gayety and love are things of the past; and, unfortunately, women have nothing to do with the shadow which your keen glance detected." "and more unfortunately still, you have become a politician," exclaimed the baron, smiling. "what i have heard is then true; you no longer write love-letters, but occupy yourself with learned treatises. you have joined a political party?" "it is true," said leuchsenring, emphatically. "i am filled with anger and hatred when i see these advocates of darkness, that is, these rosicrucians, or, in other words, these jesuits, attempting to cast their vast tissue of falsehood over mankind. i feel it to be my duty to tear asunder its meshes and lay bare the toils in which they hoped to involve mankind." "bravo, bravo!" cried hardenberg. "i am delighted to hear you declare your views in this manner. i now perceive that you are in earnest. and i will give you a proof of my confidence by asking your advice in my personal affairs. king frederick william has honored me with an audience, and i have just left his presence. it seems his majesty has taken a fancy to me; some effeminate feature in my countenance has found the highest appreciation. to be brief, the king has graciously proposed to me to enter his service; he offers me a ministerial position." "and what reply did you make to this proposition?" asked leuchsenring, eagerly. "i begged some little time for consideration. i was not sufficiently acquainted with the political phase, and i desired to discuss the matter with you, my friend, before coming to a decision. and now, give me your opinion. shall i accept?" "first tell me what you are, and then i will reply. tell me whether you are a rosicrucian, that is, a jesuit, or whether you have remained a faithful brother of our society? give me your hand, let me touch it with the secret sign; and now tell me if you are still a brother." "i am," said hardenberg, his jovial face assuming an earnest expression, and he touched leuchsenring's extended hand in a peculiar manner. "the grasp of this hand proclaims to you that i have remained true to the society; and that i am still a brother of the order and a zealous freemason." "thanks be to god that you are my friend!" cried leuchsenring. "then you are with me, with those who are preparing for the future, and erecting a barrier in the minds of mankind to the present tide of evil. and now i will answer your question. do not accept the offer which has been made you, but save yourself for the future, for the coming generation. gloomy days are in store for prussia, and the good genius of the german fatherland must veil its head and weep over the impending horrors. the demons of darkness are at work in the land. superstition, hypocrisy, jesuitism, and lasciviousness, have combined to fetter the understanding and the hearts of men. a period of darkness such as usually precedes the great convulsions and epochs of history will soon come for prussia. believe me, we are standing on a crater. the royal favorites are covering it with flowers and garlands; the royal rosicrucians are administering elixirs and wonder-working potions, to obscure the eye and shut out the fearful vision. they are, however, not arresting the progress of the chariot of fate, but are urging it on in its destructive career. as good springs from evil, so will freedom spring from slavery. the oppression which rulers have been exercising on their subjects for centuries, will now bear its avenging fruits. the slaves will break their fetters, and make freemen of themselves." "ah, my friend," exclaimed hardenberg, shrugging his shoulders; "you see the realization of unattainable ideals; unfortunately, i cannot believe in it. tell me, by what means are these poor, enslaved nations to break their fetters and make freemen of themselves?" "i will tell you, and make your soul shudder. the slaves, the down-trodden nations, will free themselves by the fearful means of revolution. it already agitates every soul, and throbs in every heart. the time of peace and tranquillity is at end; the storm no longer rages in the heads and hearts of poets only, but in every human heart. the thoughts and songs of the poets have pierced the heart of nations, and fermented a storm that will soon burst forth; as it sweeps along it will destroy the old and build up the new. with his 'robbers,' schiller hurled the firebrand into the mind of youth, and princes and rulers are feeding and nourishing the enkindled flame with the trumpery of their gold-glittering rags, and their vices. this flame will blaze up until it becomes a mighty conflagration. the vices of princes are the scourges chosen by god, to chastise the nations, in order that they may rise up from the dust, and that slaves may become men! louis the fifteenth of france, with all his crimes and vices, was an instrument in the hands of the almighty. and marie antoinette, with her love of pleasure, her frivolity, and her extravagance, is such an instrument, as is also frederick william of prussia, with all his thoughtlessness, his good-nature, and his indolence. even this hypocritical generation of vipers, this lying, deceiving brotherhood, these rosicrucians and jesuits, must serve god's purposes. falsehood exists only to make truth manifest; and bondage, only to promote liberty. therefore i will not complain, although vice should be triumphant for a while. the greater the success of evil now, the greater the triumph of good hereafter. the greater the number of jesuits who execute their dark deeds now, the greater the number who will be destroyed." "they exist only in your imagination, my exalted friend," said hardenberg, smiling. "there are not any jesuits in prussia." "they are everywhere," said leuchsenring, interrupting him, and grasping his friend's arm in his earnestness. "yes, there are jesuits. they go about with us, they sit with us at table, they grasp our hands as friends, they flatter us as our admirers, they smile on us in the persons of the women we love, they leave no means untried to fetter our hearts and understanding. the rosicrucians, what are they, one and all, but disguised jesuits! they wish to impose catholicism on us, and drive out protestantism. they wish to mystify the mind, and make the soul grovel in sin and vice, from which condition the victims around whom they have woven their toils will only be permitted to escape by flying to the bosom of the catholic church. to the bosom of that church which offers an asylum to all restless consciences, and dispenses blessings and forgiveness for all vices and crimes. for this reason, these rosicrucians tempt the good-natured, thoughtless king to luxury and debauchery; for this reason they terrify his mind with apparitions and ghosts! in his terror he is to seek and find safety in the catholic church! i see through their disguise; and they know it. for this reason, they hate me; and they cry out against me because i have exposed their wiles and stratagems, and proclaimed that these vile rosicrucians are jesuits in disguise, whose object is the expansion of catholicism over the earth. this i proclaimed in a treatise, which aroused the sleeping, and convinced the doubting, and excited the wrath of the rosicrucians against me." "i have heard of it," said hardenberg, thoughtfully. "i heard of your having hurled a defiant article at the secret societies, through the medium of the 'berlin monthly magazine;'[ ] but, unfortunately, i could never obtain a copy." "that i can readily believe," said leuchsenring, laughing; "the dear rosicrucians bought up the whole edition of the monthly magazine. when the new one is published, they will buy that up, too, in order to suppress the truth. but they will not succeed. truth is mighty, and will prevail; and we freemasons and brothers of the order of the illuminati, will help to make truth victorious. we freemasons are the champions of freedom and enlightenment. many of the most influential and distinguished men of berlin have joined our order, and are battling with us against the advocates of darkness and ignorance--against the jesuits and rosicrucians. we call ourselves illuminati, because we intend to illumine the darkness of the rosicrucians, and manifest truth, in annihilating falsehood! my friend, the struggle for which we are preparing will be a hard one, for the number of rosicrucians and jesuits is vast, and a king is their protector. the number of the illuminati is comparatively small; and only the kings of intellect and science, not, however, of power and wealth, belong to our brotherhood. but we shall overthrow the jesuits, nevertheless. we stand on the watch-tower of prussia, and our protestant watchword is luther's word, 'the word they shall not touch.'" "well said, my gallant friend," cried hardenberg. "your ardor inspires me, your enthusiasm is contagious. i will take part in this great and noble struggle. admit me into your order!" "you shall become one of us! a meeting of our brotherhood takes place this evening at the house of our chieftain nicolai. you must accompany me, and i will see that you are admitted." "and then, when i have become a member of your order, and am enrolled among the number of the enemies of the jesuits and rosicrucians, you will no doubt consider it advisable for me to accept the king's proposition?" "no, my friend, i cannot approve of it; i cannot advise you to do so." "how? you do not desire me to remain and fight at your side? you despise my assistance?" "i do not despise your assistance; i only wish to spare you for better times. i have a high opinion of your capacities, and it would be a pity if your usefulness should be prematurely destroyed. but this would be the case if you remained here at present. the rosicrucians are not only mighty, but are also cunning. they would soon recognize an enemy in the minister of state, and would not be slow in relieving him of his office and power. they would pursue the same course with you that they have pursued with me." "what course have they pursued with you? in what can the instructor of the prince royal have offended--the instructor appointed by frederick the great? what harm can the rosicrucians do him?" leuchsenring took up an open letter which lay on the writing-desk, and smiled as he handed it to hardenberg. "read this," said he, "it will answer your question." hardenberg glanced quickly over the few lines which the letter contained, and then let it fall on the table again with an air of dejection. "dismissed!" he murmured. "the body of the late king is hardly under ground, and they already dare to disregard his will, and send you your dismissal." "they go further," said leuchsenring, angrily. "they not only dismiss me, but what is still worse, they have appointed a rosicrucian to fill my position. general count brühl has been selected to give the finishing touch to the education of the young prince." "and you will now leave berlin, i suppose?" said hardenberg. "well, then, my friend, i make you a proposition. you do not desire me to remain here; i now propose to you to accompany me to brunswick. save yourself and your ability for better times, save yourself for the future!" "no, i will remain," cried leuchsenring, with determination. "i will not afford the rosicrucians the pleasure of seeing me desert my post; i will defend it to the last drop of my blood. i will remain, and the jesuits and rosicrucians shall ever find in me a watchful and relentless enemy. all those brave men to whom god has given the sword of intellect, will battle at my side. the rosicrucians will bring gloom and darkness over prussia, but we, the illuminati, will dissipate this darkness. the vicious and the weak belong to the former, but the virtuous and strong, and the youth of the nation, will join the ranks of the illuminati. oh, my friend, this will be a spirit-warfare, protracted beyond death, like the struggles of the grim huns. the spirits of falsehood must, however, eventually succumb to the heavenly might of truth; and darkness must, at last, yield to light! this is my hope, this is my banner of faith; and therefore do i remain here in defiance of my enemies, the rosicrucians. this struggle, this spirit-warfare, is my delight--it excites, elevates, and refreshes me. but when the victory is ours, when the new era begins, when the old has been torn down, and the new prussia is to be built up, then your time will come, my friend; you shall be the architect selected to erect this stately edifice. for the dark days of the rosicrucians and king frederick william, your services are not available. but after these will come the bright days of the young king, and at his side you shall stand as friend and councillor! for, believe me, king frederick william the second will only pass over the horizon of prussia, and darken the existence of the people, like a storm-cloud, with its thunder and lightning. but cloud and darkness will be dissipated, and after this, day will dawn again, and the sun will once more shine. you have come to berlin to see prussia's unhappiness, but you shall now see something else. i will show you prussia's hope, and prussia's future!--come!" he took his friend's arm and led him to the window, which commanded a fine view of the adjoining garden. it was only a plain garden, with walks of yellow sand, and beds of ordinary flowers. a bench stood under an apple-tree, covered with fruit, on the main walk, and between two flower-beds. on this bench, two boys, or rather two youths, were sitting, attired in plain, civil dress. the one was very handsome, and well-made; his large, bright eyes were turned upward, the loud tones of his voice could be heard at the window, and his animated gestures seemed to indicate that he was reciting some poem, and was carried away with enthusiasm. the other, a tall youth of sixteen, with the soft, blue eyes, the mild countenance, and good-natured expression, was listening attentively to his companion's declamation. it was the latter whom leuchsenring pointed out to his friend. "see," said he, "that is the future king of prussia, king frederick william the third, that is to be. at his side you are to stand as councillor; and he will need your advice and assistance. he will reap the bitter harvest which will spring from the seed the jesuits and rosicrucians are now sowing. save yourself for frederick william the third, baron hardenberg, and do not waste your talents and energies in the unfruitful service of frederick william the second." "the one you point out, the one with the fair hair, and the mild, diffident expression, is then the prince royal of prussia. i wish you had shown me the other, that handsome lad, that youthful apollo, with the proud smile and piercing eye. i wish he were the future king of prussia." "that is prince louis, the present king's nephew. you are right, he looks like a youthful apollo. if he were the future king, he would either lift prussia up to the skies, or else hurl it into an abyss, for he is a genius, and he will not tread the beaten track of life. no, it is better that his gentle young friend should some day wear the crown of prussia. they have increased his natural timidity by severe treatment. he has no confidence in himself, but he has good, strong sense and an honest heart, and these qualities are of more importance for a king than genius and enthusiasm. i do not know why it is, my friend, but i love this poor, reserved boy, who has suffered and endured so much in his youth. i love this prince, who has so warm a heart, but can never find words to express his feelings. i pity him, for i know that his youthful heart is burdened with a secret sorrow. i have divined the cause, in an occasional word which escapes his lips unawares, and in his manner at times. it is the sorrow of an affectionate and tender-hearted son, who wishes to love and esteem his father, but dares not look at him, for fear of seeing the spots and shadows which darken that father's countenance." "poor, poor lad!" said hardenberg, moved with sympathy. "so young, and yet such bitter experience! but, perhaps, it is well that such should be the case; if he has received the baptism of tears, and has been anointed with affliction, he may become a king by the grace of god! i will do as you say, leuchsenring; i will save myself for the future, and, if such be the will of god, i will one day serve your young king of the future." "and something tells me that god will permit you to do so," cried leuchsenring, joyously. "it may be that i will not live to see the day. my enemies, the rosicrucians, may have destroyed, or the storm-wind of the revolution have swept me away by that time; but you will remain, and at some future day you will remember the hour in which i showed you the young prince royal, frederick william the third. he is the future of prussia, and, in the dark day which is now dawning, we are in sore need of a guiding light. fix your eye on the prince royal of prussia, and on his genial friend, prince louis ferdinand!" book iii. chapter i. schiller in dresden. "that is false, i say; false!" cried schiller, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes, as he walked to and fro in his little room. "it is all slander, vile slander!" the two friends, the young councillor of the consistory, körner, and the bookseller, göschen, stood together in the window recess, gazing sadly and sympathetically at the poet, who rushed to and fro, almost breathless with rage, hurling an angry glance at his friends, whenever he approached them. suddenly he stopped, and fastened his gaze on them, intently. "why do you not reply?" asked he, in loud and wrathful tones. "why do you allow me to accuse you both of a falsehood, without even attempting to justify yourselves?" "because we wish to give your just anger time to expend itself," said körner, in his soft, mild voice. "to our own great sorrow we have been compelled to wound our friend's feelings, and it is quite natural that this wound should smart." "and we do not justify ourselves against these reproaches, because they do not apply to us," added göschen, "and because they are only the utterance of your just indignation. believe me, my friend, we would gladly have spared you this hour, but our friendship was greater than our pity." "yes, yes, the old story," cried schiller, with mocking laughter. "out of friendship, you are pitiless; out of friendship you give the death-blow to my heart! and what the most cruel enemy would hardly have the courage to whisper in my ear, merciful friendship boldly declares!" [illustration: schiller.] "schiller, you are deceived! schiller, the girl you love is a cold-hearted coquette, who does not love you, who only keeps you in leading-strings, in order to extort presents from you, and to be able to say that a poet adores her!" "but i will give no credit to such unworthy insinuations! my love shall not be regarded as a mere mockery. you shall not have the pitiful triumph of tearing me from the girl i love. i declare to you and the whole world, i love her, i love the beautiful, the admired, the courted marie von arnim. to her belong my thoughts, my wishes, and my hopes. she is my ideal of beauty, of youth, and of female loveliness. i exult in this love; it will raise me from the dust of earth to the sphere of the eternal and immortal gods!" "my poor friend!" sighed körner, "like your love, the gods only exist in your poetical fancy. listen to reason, schiller!" "reason!" cried he, stamping the floor, wrathfully. "that means the dry insipidity of every-day life, instead of life's festival, wreathed with flowers. no, i will not listen to reason; for you call it reason to consider it possible that the most divine creature on earth could be a base coquette!" "now you go too far, schiller," said göschen, eagerly, "no one made such grave accusations against the daughter. we only said of the mother that she misused your love for her daughter, and that she would never consent to your union. we said that the beautiful young lady was aware of this, and continued to receive your attentions, although she knew the gentleman selected by her mother as her future husband, and would finally consent to marry him. as friends, we conceived it to be our duty to tell you this, in order that you might no longer be deceived in your noblest impulses, and continue to throw away your love, your confidence, and your money, on unworthy objects." "that is the word," cried schiller, with mocking laughter, "now you have uttered the right word! my money, or rather _your_ money, you would say! you tremble for your vile dross! you made me advances, and don carlos is not yet completed. you now fear that my love might distract my attention, and draw me from my work, and that the two hundred dollars which--" "frederick schiller!" cried körner, interrupting him, while göschen turned away, his lips trembling, and his eyes filled with tears; "frederick schiller, now you are unjust; and that, a friend must not be, even in his deepest grief. vile dross has nothing to do with this sacrifice of friendship, and it was not for its sake that we undertook the thankless office of making the blind see. you well know that göschen is a noble and disinterested friend, who rejoiced in being permitted to help the poet of don carlos out of his difficulties, but it is, of course, painful to him to see the loving, confiding man, squander what the poet earns." "it is true, it is true!" cried schiller, "i am unjust! i reproach you instead of reproaching myself, and myself only. oh, my friends, forgive these utterances of my anguish, consider what i endure! you are both so happy; you have all that can lend a charm to life, and adorn it. you are wealthy, you do not know what it is to have to contend with want, and to struggle for existence, nor have you any knowledge of that more painful struggle, the warfare of life without love, without some being who loves you, and is wholly yours. you, my friends, have loved and loving wives, who are yours with every fibre of their being. you have also well-appointed households, and are provided with all that is requisite to enable you to exercise a generous hospitality. but, look at me, the solitary, homeless beggar, who calls nothing on earth his own but that spark of enthusiasm which burns in his heart, who must flee to the ideal, in order to escape the too rude grasp of reality. why must i alone rise from the richly-laden table of life with unsatisfied hunger? why are the stars, for me, merely candles of the night, that give me light in my labors, and the sun only an economical heating apparatus, to which i am only in so far indebted as it saves me expensive fuel for my stove in winter. grant me my portion of the repast which the gods have prepared for all mortals, let me also partake of the golden hesperian fruit. my friends, have pity on the poor wanderer, who has been journeying through the desert of life, and would now recline on the green oasis and rest his weary limbs!" he sank down into a chair, and covered his quivering face with his trembling hands. his two friends stood at his side regarding him sorrowfully. neither of them had the cruel courage to break in upon this paroxysm of anguish with a word of encouragement or consolation. a pause ensued, in which the silence was interrupted only by schiller's deep-drawn sighs, and the few indistinct words, which he from time to time murmured to himself. but suddenly he arose, and when he withdrew his hands from his face its expression was completely changed. his countenance was no longer quivering with pain and flushed with anger, but was pale, and his glance defiant. and when he now shook back the long yellow hair which shaded his brow, with a quick movement of the head, he looked like a lion shaking his mane, and preparing to do battle with an approaching enemy. "enough of these lamentations and womanish complaints," said he, in a resolute, hoarse voice. "i will be a man who has the courage to listen to the worst and defy the greatest agony. repeat all that you have said. i will not interrupt you again, either with complaints or reproaches. i know that you are actuated by the kindest intentions, and that, like the good surgeon, you only desire to apply the knife and fire to my wounded heart in order to heal it. and now, speak, my friends! repeat what you have said!" he walked hastily across the room to the little window, stood there with his back turned to the room, and beat the window-panes impatiently with his cold hands. "frederick, why repeat what is already burning in your head and heart?" said körner, gently. "why turn the knife once more in the wound, and tell you that your noble, generous love is not appreciated, not honored? the best and fairest princess of the world would have reason to consider herself happy and blessed, if the poet by the grace of god loved her; and yet his noble, generous love is misused by a cold, calculating woman, and made the means of adorning its object for richer suitors." "proofs!" cried schiller, imperiously, and he drummed away at the window-panes till they fairly rang. "it is difficult for others to give proofs in such cases," replied körner, in a low voice. "you cannot prove to the man who is walking onward with closed eyes, that he is on the verge of a precipice; you can only warn him and entreat him to open his eyes, that he may see the danger which menaces. we have only considered it our duty to repeat to you what is known by all dresden, and what all your acquaintances and friends say: that this madame von arnim has come to dresden to seek a husband of rank and fortune for her daughter, and that she only encourages frederick schiller's attentions, because the poet's homage makes the beautiful young lady appear all the more desirable in the eyes of her other suitors." "an infernal speculation, truly!" said schiller, with derisive laughter. "but where are the proofs? until they are furnished, i must be permitted to doubt. i attach no importance whatever to the tattle of the good city of dresden; to the malicious suppositions and remarks of persons with whom i am but slightly acquainted, i am also quite indifferent. but who are the _friends_ who believe in this fable, and who have commissioned you to relate it to me? at least, give me the name of one of them." "i will at least give you the name of a lady friend," said göschen, sadly; "her name is sophie albrecht, my wife's sister." schiller turned hastily to his friends, and his countenance now wore an alarmed expression. "sophie albrecht!" said he, "the sensitive artist--she in whose house i first saw marie. is it possible that she can have uttered so unworthy a suspicion?" "she it was who charged me to warn you," replied göschen, with a sigh. "for this very reason, that you first met madame von arnim and her daughter in her house, does she consider it her duty to warn you and show you the abyss at your feet. at this first interview, she noticed with alarm how deep an impression the rare beauty of miss von arnim made on you, and how you afterwards ran blindly into the net which the old spider, the speculative mother, had set for you. this madame von arnim is the widow of a saxon officer, who left her nothing but his name and his debts. she lives on a small pension given her by the king, and has, it seems, obtained a few thousand dollars from some rich relative; with this sum she has come to dresden, where she proposes to carry out her speculation--that is, to keep house here for some little time, and to entertain society, and, above all, rich young cavaliers, among whom she hopes to find an eligible suitor for her daughter. this at least is no calumny, but madame von arnim very naively admitted as much to my sister-in-law, sophie albrecht, calling her attention to the droll circumstance, that the first candidate who presented himself was no other than a poor poet, who could offer her daughter neither rank, title, nor fortune. when sophie reminded her that frederick schiller could give her daughter the high rank and title of a poet, and adorn her brow with the diamond crown of immortal renown, the sagacious lady shrugged her shoulders, and remarked that a crown of real diamonds would be far more acceptable, and that she had far rather see her daughter crowned with the coronet of a countess than with the most radiant poet's crown conceivable. and she already had the prospect of obtaining such a one for her daughter; the poet's admiration for her beautiful daughter had already made her quite a celebrity." "you are still speaking of the mother, and of the mother only," murmured schiller. "i know that this woman is sordid, and that she would, at any time, sell her daughter for wealth and rank, although purchased with her child's happiness. but what do i care for the mother! speak to me of the daughter, for she it is whom i love--she is my hope, my future." "my poor friend," sighed körner, as he stepped forward and laid his hand on schiller's shoulder. this touch and these words of sympathy startled schiller. "do not lament over me, but make your accusations," cried schiller, and he shook his golden lion's mane angrily. "speak, what charges can you prefer against marie von arnim? but i already know what your reply would be. you would say that she has been infected by the pitiful worldly wisdom of her scheming mother, and that i am nothing more to her than the ornament with which she adorns herself for another suitor." "you have said so, frederick schiller, and it is so," replied körner, in a low voice. "yes, the worldly-wise and scheming mother has achieved the victory over her nobler daughter, and, although her heart may suffer, she will nevertheless follow the teachings of her mother, and make a speculation of your love." "that is not true, that is calumny!" cried schiller, violently. "no, no, i do not believe you! say what you please of the mother, but do not defile her innocent daughter with such vile, unsubstantiated calumny!" "what proofs do you demand?" asked göschen, shrugging his shoulders. "i repeated to you what madam von arnim told sophie albrecht, namely, that a rich suitor had already been found for her daughter." "yes, that the mother had found one. but who told you that the daughter would accept him; that marie was a party to this disgraceful intrigue?" "of that you can certainly best assure yourself," said körner, slowly. "how can i do that?" asked schiller, shuddering slightly. "does not miss marie permit you to visit her in the evening?" "yes, she does." "only when you see a light at the window of her chamber--the signal agreed upon between you--only then you are not permitted to come. is it not so?" "yes, it is so, and that you may well know, as i told you of it myself. when marie places a light at that window it is a sign that begs me not to come, because then only the intimate family circle is assembled, to which i certainly do not as yet belong." "you can, perhaps, assure yourself whether the young lady was strictly accurate in her statement. you intend paying her a visit this evening, do you not?" "yes, i do," cried schiller, joyfully, "and i will fall down on my knees before her, and mentally beg her pardon for the unjust suspicions which have been uttered concerning her." "i do not believe that she will receive you to-day," said körner, in a low voice. "this so-called family circle will have assembled again; in all probability you will see a light in the designated window!" "why do you believe that?" "well, because i happened to converse with several young officers to-day, who are invited to madam von arnim's for this evening. they asked if they might not, at last, hope to meet you there, regretting, as madam von arnim had told them, that your bashfulness and misanthropy made it impossible for you to appear in strange society. i denied this, of course, and assured them that madam von arnim had only been jesting; but they said her daughter had also often told them that frederick schiller was very diffident, and always avoided the larger social gatherings. 'if that were not the case,' said these young gentlemen, 'schiller would certainly appear at madam von arnim's the dansante this evening, that is, unless the feelings awakened in his bosom by the presence of count kunheim might be of too disagreeable a nature.'" schiller shuddered, and a dark cloud gathered on his brow. "who is this count kunheim?" "i asked them this question also, and the young officers replied that count kunheim was the wealthy owner of a large landed estate in prussia, who had intended remaining a few days in dresden in passing through the city on his way to the baths of teplitz. he had, however, made the acquaintance of miss von arnim at a party, and had been so captivated by her grace and beauty that he had now sojourned here for weeks, and was a daily visitor at madam von arnim's house." "and she never even mentioned his name," murmured schiller, with trembling lips, the cold perspiration standing on his forehead in great drops. "no, she told you nothing about him," repeated körner. "and this evening count kunheim will be with her again, while the little taper will burn for you at the window, announcing that the impenetrable family circle has once more closed around the fair maid and her mother." "if that were true--oh, my god, if that were true!" cried schiller, looking wildly around him, his breast heaving with agitation. "if this beautiful, this divine being could really have the cruel courage to--" he had not the courage to pronounce the bitter word which made his soul shudder, but covered his face with his hands, and stood immovable for a long time, wrestling with his grief and anguish. his two friends did not disturb him with any attempts at consolation. they understood the poet well; they knew that his heart was firm, although easily moved. they knew that after frederick schiller had wept and lamented like a child, he would once more be the strong, courageous man, ready to look sorrow boldly in the face. and now but a short time elapsed before the manly breast had regained sufficient strength to bear the burden of its grief. schiller withdrew his hands from his face, threw his head back proudly, and shook his golden mane. "you are right, all doubt must be removed," said he; "i will see if the light has been placed at the window!" he looked at his large silver watch--a present from his father. its old-fashioned form, and the plain hair-guard with which it was provided, instead of a gold chain, made it any thing but an appropriate ornament for a suitor of marie von arnim. "it is eight o'clock," said he--"that is, the hour of reprieve or of execution has come. go, my friends, i will dress myself, and then--" "but will you not permit us to accompany you to the house?" asked körner. "will you not permit your friends to remain at your side, to console you when the sad conviction dawns on your mind, or to witness your triumph, if it appears (what i sincerely hope may be the case) that we have been misinformed?" schiller shook his head. "no," said he, solemnly, "there are great moments in which man can only subdue the demons when he is entirely alone, and battles against them with his own strength of soul. for me, such a moment is at hand; pray leave me, my friends!" chapter ii. gilded poverty. the chandelier in the large reception-room had been already lighted; and in the adjoining room, the door of which was thrown open, the servant hired for the occasion was occupied in lighting the candles in the plated candlesticks, while at a side table a second servant was busily engaged in arranging the cups and saucers, and providing each with a spoon; but he now discontinued his work, and turned to the elderly lady, who stood at his side, and was endeavoring to cut a moderately-sized cake into the thinnest possible slices. "my lady," said the servant, humbly, "ten spoons are still wanting. will you be kind enough to give them to me?" "ah, it is true," replied the lady, "i have only given you the dozen we have in daily use, and must fetch the others from the closet. you shall have them directly." "my lady," remarked the first servant, "there are not candles enough. each of the branched candlesticks requires six candles, and i have only six in all." "then you will have to double the number by cutting them in two," rejoined her ladyship, who was counting the slices of cake, to see if she had not already cut a sufficient number. "thirty-three," she murmured, letting her finger rest on the last slice. "that ought to be enough. there will be twenty persons, and many of them will not take cake a second time. a good piece will be left for to-morrow, and we can invite schiller to breakfast with us on the remainder." at this moment, a red-faced maid, whose attire was far from being tidy, appeared at a side door. "my lady," said she, "i have just been to the grocer's to get the butter and sugar, but he would not let me have any." "he wouldn't let you have any?" repeated madame von arnim. "what do you mean?" "my lady," continued the cook, in a whispering voice, and with downcast eyes, "the grocer said he would furnish nothing more until you paid his bill." "he is an insolent fellow, from whom you must buy nothing more, lisette," cried madame von arnim, very angrily. "i will pay this impertinent fellow to-morrow morning, when i have had my money changed, but my custom i withdraw from him forever. i wish you to understand, lisette, in the future you are to buy nothing whatever from this man. go to the new grocer on the corner of market square, give him my compliments, and tell him that i have heard his wares so highly praised that i intend to give him my patronage. he is to keep an account of all i purchase, and i will settle with him at the end of each month." "my lady," said the cook, "as i have to go out again, anyhow, wouldn't it be better for me to run over to the game dealers, in wilsdruffer street, and buy another turkey? one will certainly not be enough, my lady." "but, lisette," rejoined her ladyship, angrily, "what nonsense is this? when we talked over the supper together you said yourself that one turkey would be quite sufficient." "yes, my lady, but you then said that only twelve persons were to be invited, and now there are twenty!" "that makes no difference, whatever, lisette! what will well satisfy twelve, will satisfy twenty; moreover, it is not necessary that they should be exactly satisfied. i was invited to a supper, a few evenings since, where they had nothing but a roast turkey, and a pie afterwards. there were twenty-two persons, and although each plate was provided with a respectable piece of the roast, i distinctly observed that half of the turkey was left over. go, therefore, and get the butter and sugar, but one turkey is entirely sufficient.--every thing depends, however, on the carving," continued her ladyship, when the cook had taken her departure, "and i charge you, leonhard, to make the carving-knife very sharp, and to cut the slices as thin and delicate as possible. nothing is more vulgar than to serve up great thick pieces of meat. it makes it look as if one was not in good society, but in some restaurant where people go to eat all they desire." "my lady knows what my performances are in that line," said the elder servant, simpering; "my lady has tried me before. without boasting, i can make the impossible, possible. for instance, i carved yesterday, at countess von versen's, for a company of twenty-four people, and as a roast, a single hare, but i cut it into pieces that gladdened the heart. i divided the back into as many pieces as there were joints. eighteen joints made eighteen pieces, i divided the quarters into twenty pieces, making in all thirty-eight, and so much still remained that my lady, the countess, afterward remarked that she would perhaps have another little party this evening, and gave me two groschens extra for my services." "carve the turkey so that half of it shall remain," said her ladyship, with dignity, "and i will also give you two groschens extra." the servant smiled faintly and bowed in acknowledgment of this magnanimous offer. he then turned to the table at which the young servant was occupied in folding up the napkins into graceful figures. "here are three bottles of white wine, my lady," said leonhard, thoughtfully. "i very much fear that it will not go round twice, even if i fill the glasses only half full." "unfortunately i have no further supply of this variety," said her ladyship, with dignity, "it will therefore be better to take a lighter wine, of which i have several varieties in my pantry. i will take these three bottles back and bring you others." with a bold grasp she seized them and vanished through the side door. "do you know what her ladyship is now doing?" asked the experienced servant, leonhard, his mouth expanded into a broad grin, as he danced through the room in his pumps, and placed the chairs in position. "she has gone after a lighter wine," replied the younger and inexperienced, who, with commendable zeal, was at this moment transforming the peak of a napkin into a swan's neck. "after a lighter wine," repeated leonhard, derisively. "that is, she is on her way to the pantry with her three bottles of wine, a pitcher of water, a funnel, and an empty bottle. when she enters the pantry she will lock the door, and when she opens the door and marches forth, she will have four full bottles instead of three, and only the pitcher will be empty." the other servant looked up in dismay, heedless of the fact that his swan's neck was collapsing into an ordinary napkin again. "mr. leonhard, do you mean to say that her ladyship is diluting the wine with water?" "young man, that is not called diluting, but simply 'baptizing,' and, indeed, it is very appropriate that, in christian society, where every body has been baptized, the wine should also receive baptism. bear this in mind, my successor." "your successor? how so, your successor?" asked the other, eagerly, as he pushed a piece of bread under a napkin, which he had just converted into a melon. "do you propose to retire to private life, and resign your custom to me, mr. leonhard?" "such custom as this, willingly," growled leonhard, "that is, when i have received my money--when her ladyship pays the last penny she owes me!" "then she has not paid you for your services?" said the younger, in a faint voice. "she has been in my debt since i first served her; she owes me for four dinners and eight soirées. she promised to pay each time, and has never kept her word; and i would certainly have discontinued coming, long ago, if i had not known that my money would then certainly be lost. as it is, i now and then receive a paltry instalment of a few groschens. to-day," he continued, "she went so far as to promise me two groschens extra. promised! yes, but will she keep her word? and it is very evident to me what the end of all this is to be. her ladyship wishes to be rid of me; and i am to be set aside, little by little, and by you, my friend. to-day, we are to wait on the table together; but the next time she drums a company of matrimonial candidates together, you alone will be summoned. therefore, i call you my successor. i hope you will profit by my example. it is a fearful thing to say, but nevertheless true, i stand before you as a living example of how her ladyship cheats a noble servant out of his well-earned wages. but patience, patience! i will not leave this field of my renown without having at least avenged myself! i intend to beg her ladyship to pay me; and if she refuses to do so, i will exercise vengeance, twofold, fearful vengeance. before the company assembles, i will be so awkward as to fall down and break the four bottles of baptized wine--before the company is assembled, because if i did it afterwards, the guests would hear the crash, and know that she had had wine; but if i do it beforehand, nobody will believe that i broke the bottles." "that is a splendid idea," observed the younger servant, grinning. "i will bear this in mind, and follow your example." "i told you i was a living example, my successor," said leonhard, impressively. "you can learn of me how to suffer, and how to avenge your wrongs." "but you spoke of twofold vengeance. in what will your second act of vengeance consist?" "the second act of vengeance will be this: in spite of the promised--mark the words of your unfortunate living example--in spite of the promised two groschens, i will not cut the unhappy turkey (which, to judge by the length of her spurs, must have been torn from her family as an aged grandmother) into little, transparent slices, leaving half of it for the next day; but i will cut the whole turkey into pieces, and such great thick pieces, that it will not go round once, and nothing but the neck and drumsticks will be left when her ladyship's turn comes. bear this in mind for the future, my successor! i am now going to her ladyship with a flag of truce before the battle. if she rejects the conditions on which i consent to make peace, the result will be made known to you by its crashing consequences. i am now going, my successor; and i repeat it, for the last time, i am your living example!" gravely nodding his well-dressed and powdered head, the servant glided through the room on his inaudible dancing-shoes, and vanished through the side door, which opened into a small room, connected with the kitchen by a passage. her ladyship was neither in this room nor in the kitchen, but, as leonhard had prophesied, had repaired to the pantry and locked herself in. the living example smiled triumphantly, and knocked gently at the door. "what is it?" asked her ladyship from within. "who knocks?" "only leonhard, my lady, who has come after the four bottles of wine." "you shall have them directly," replied his mistress; and leonhard, whose ear was applied to the keyhole, heard for a moment a sound as of water gurgling through a funnel. then all was still, and he hurriedly withdrew from the keyhole. the door was now opened, and madame von arnim looked out. "come in and take the wine; there it stands." leonhard danced up the two steps and into the pantry, and laid hold of the bottles, two in each hand. "and now, my lady," said he, bowing profoundly, and waving his arms slowly to and fro with the bottles, like a juggler who first throws himself into the proper position before beginning his performances; "and now, my lady, i beg that you will graciously accord your humble servant a few moments' conversation." her ladyship inclined her head haughtily. "speak, leonhard, but be brief; my company will soon arrive." the younger servant was still at work preparing for the supper; and, while so engaged, was at the same time reflecting on the dangers and uncertainties of life, and particularly on those attending a career so open to the caprices of fortune as that of a valet de place. suddenly the silence was broken by a loud crash; and the servant rushed to the side door to listen. he could now distinctly hear the angry, scolding voice of her ladyship, and the humble, apologetic murmurs of the cunning leonhard. "yes," said the younger servant, grinning with delight, "he has broken the four bottles of wine! consequently," he quickly added, his voice subdued to a low murmur, "her ladyship has not paid him, and will probably not pay me either! that is sad, for i bought a pair of new cotton gloves especially for this occasion," said he, surveying his hands. no, her ladyship had not paid leonhard; as usual, she had endeavored to console him with promises for the future, and the servant had taken his revenge. with unspeakable satisfaction, he was now engaged in picking up the fragments of glass which covered the floor, perfectly indifferent to the volleys of wrath which her ladyship thundered down upon him from the threshold of the pantry. "what am i to do now? what can i do?" asked his mistress, finally. "to give a supper without wine is impossible!" having cleared the wreck away, leonhard now arose. "my lady," said he, with an air of profound deference, "i deeply regret this unfortunate occurrence, and i humbly beg you to deduct the value of these four bottles of wine when you pay me my wages for the four dinners and eight soirées, not including to-day's!" "that i will do, as a matter of course," rejoined her ladyship; "but what am i to do now!" "i take the liberty of making a suggestion," murmured the living example, submissively. "in the first instance, your ladyship took from me the three bottles of strong wine, giving me four bottles of a lighter variety instead. now, as i have had the misfortune to break these four bottles, how would it do to fall back on the original three bottles of strong wine? as i pour out the wine in the pantry, i could baptize it a little, and add some water to each glass. what does your ladyship think of this plan?" her only reply was an annihilating glance, which leonhard received with an air of perfect composure, as her ladyship rustled past him and descended into the kitchen. chapter iii. marie von arnim. with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes her ladyship passed on, not to the parlor, but through a side door and into a small chamber. it was a plainly-furnished bedroom. it contained two uncurtained beds and a bureau, which stood in front of the only window through which but little light penetrated the room from the narrow side street into which it opened. a young girl of extraordinary beauty was sitting before the bureau, on which a single candle burned. her small, lovely oval head was that of a venus; the tall, slender and graceful figure, that of a juno. in conformity with the fashion of that day, her dark-brown and shining hair was arranged in hundreds of little curls, encompassed with a golden band, which terminated on her forehead in a serpent's head. her eyes--the large blue eyes which contrasted so wondrously with the dark hair--were gazing at the mirror. a sad smile played about her beautiful, crimson lips, as she looked at the reflection of her own figure, at the lovely, rosy countenance, the full and rounded shoulders, the arms of dazzling whiteness, and at the tapering waist, brought out to great advantage by the closely-fitting blue silk bodice. she wore no ornament but the golden band in her hair; her jewels were her youth and her beauty; the tears which trembled on her eyelashes were more precious gems than were ever mined for in the depths of the earth, for these came unsought from the depths of her heart. she was so completely absorbed in her sadly-sweet dreams that her mother's entrance was unobserved; and not until now, when her mother stood at her side, was she awakened from her reverie. "what do you wish, mamma?" she asked quickly. "have our guests arrived? am i to go down?" she was about to rise, but her mother motioned her back with an imperious gesture. "remain where you are, no one has come yet. lisette will announce the arrivals as they come. i desire to speak with you." her daughter sighed, folded her hands on her lap, and let her head fall on her bosom in mute resignation. "i think i know what you wish to speak about, mother," she whispered. "that i can readily believe, nor is it at all surprising that you should," said her corpulent ladyship, as she seated herself at her daughter's side. "i wish to speak to you of our future and of your duties. this state of things can continue no longer! i can no longer endure this life of plated poverty. i must no longer be exposed to the humiliations i am compelled to suffer at the hands of shoemakers and tailors, grocers and servants, and the host of others who are dunning me for a few paltry groschens. my creditors have compelled me to run the gantlet again to-day, and i have been so annoyed and harassed that i feel like crying." "poor mother!" sighed marie. "ah, why did we not remain in quiet, little pillnitz, where we were doing so well, where our modest means were sufficient for our support, and where we were not compelled to gild and burnish our poverty!" "for the hundredth time i will tell you why we did so," rejoined her mother, impatiently. "i left pillnitz, and brought you to dresden, because in pillnitz there were only pensioned revenue officials, invalid officers, and a few gray-headed lawyers and judges, but no young gentlemen, and, least of all, no marriageable, wealthy gentlemen, for you." "for me, mamma? have i ever expressed any longing to be married?" "perhaps not, for you are a simple-minded, foolish dreamer; but i desired it. i recognized the necessity of making a wealthy and a suitable match for you." "if you had recognized this necessity, mother," cried marie, bursting into tears, "it was very cruel of you to let any other than such wealthy, marriageable gentlemen come to our house. if this is really a matrimonial bureau, we should have permitted only those to register themselves who possessed the necessary qualifications." "i see you are becoming quite sarcastic and bitter," said her ladyship, shrugging her shoulders. "you have profited somewhat by your interview with schiller." marie drew back with a quick, convulsive movement, and a sigh escaped her lips. "you should not have mentioned the name of this noble man at such a time, at a time when i am again compelled to deceive him." "enough of this sentimentalism, marie," rejoined her mother. "monsieur schiller is a very pleasant and agreeable man; he may be a great poet besides, but a suitable husband for you, he is not! he can scarcely earn enough for his own support, and his clothing is not respectable. how did he look when he came here yesterday? you will admit that it is impossible to bring him into the society of rich cavaliers and elegant officers, in his disorderly costume." "he looked just as he did when we first met him at madame albrecht's, and yet you then begged him to visit us. and you it was who afterwards encouraged his visits." "nor do i regret having done so," remarked madame von arnim, quietly. "councillor schiller is a man of high respectability and eminence. our intimacy with him is of great advantage to us. it proves to the world that we are wise and intellectual ourselves, for otherwise, so intellectual a man would not have selected us as associates. believe me, this intimacy has greatly advanced our social position; it has called great attention to us, and placed your youth and beauty in the proper light. gentlemen of the highest standing and greatest wealth now consider it a great honor to be permitted to visit at our house, since they know that frederick schiller adores you, each one of them is anxious to achieve the renown of supplanting the celebrated poet in your favor and making you his wife. you have a great many suitors, marie, and you owe them, in a great measure, to your intimacy with schiller." "but that is wrong, that is criminal!" cried marie, bursting into tears. "why so?" rejoined madame von arnim, laughing. "he was the alluring bait we used to catch our gold-fishes with; i can see nothing criminal in that. why was this wise man foolish enough to fall in love with you, as he must have known that a union between you and him is impossible?" "why impossible?" asked marie, quickly; she dried her eyes, and looked defiantly into her mother's complacent, smiling countenance. "why impossible? because you are of too good, too noble a family to ally yourself with a man who is not a nobleman, who has no preëminent rank." "mother, frederick schiller's rank is higher and more illustrious than that of counts and barons. there are hundreds of princes, counts, and barons, in the german empire, and but one poet, frederick schiller. happy and highly honored throughout all germany will the woman be to whom frederick schiller gives his name, whom he makes his wife." "well, that may be," said madame von arnim, contemptuously, "but one thing is certain, and that is, that you will never be this woman." "and why not?" asked marie, passionately. "if schiller really loves me, and offers me his hand, why shall i not accept it? because he is not wealthy? he will know how to convert the treasures of his intellect into millions of money. until then i can practice economy. my wants are few, and you well know, mother, that i can make a little go a long way. then, permit me to be happy in my own way. i will tell you the whole truth, mother, i love frederick schiller, and, if he asks me to be his wife, i shall be the happiest of god's creatures." "nonsense!" rejoined her ladyship. "you will be kind enough to give up all thought of this foolish love, and make up your mind to marry the noble and wealthy gentleman selected for you by your mother." "mother," cried marie, imploringly, "do not be so cruel, have pity on me! do not compel me to destroy my own happiness, for i tell you that i can only be happy at schiller's side." "and why should you be happy?" asked her mother, coldly. "what right have you to happiness above the rest of mankind? do you suppose i am happy? _i_ have never been, and have never imagined i had a _right_ to be. life is a pretty hard nut; in attempting to crack it we break our teeth, and when we at last succeed, we find that it is empty, after all. whether we are personally happy or not, is a matter of small moment--the one thing is to do our duty to others; and your duty it is, to repay your mother for her sacrifices for yourself and your brother. at your father's death you were both young children, and of course his lieutenant's paltry pension was not sufficient for our support. but i could not let you starve, and it was my duty to give you an education that would qualify you to take the position in society to which your rank entitles you. i did not hesitate for a moment, and, although i was still young, and might have made a second and an advantageous marriage, i gave up all such plans, sold my handsome and costly trousseau, and retired with you to the little town of pillnitz, where i devoted myself wholly to the education of my children. you know that this is so, do you not?" "i do," replied marie, as she grasped her mother's hand and carried it to her lips. "you sacrificed yourself for your children, and they are indebted to you for all that they are." "unfortunately, that is not a great deal as yet," said her mother. "your brother is only a poor second-lieutenant, whose salary is not sufficient for his support, and you are only an indigent young lady of noble birth, who must either become a governess or marry a fortune. my means are now entirely exhausted. little by little i have sold all the valuables i possessed, my diamonds, my jewelry, and my silver-ware. i finally parted with my last jewel, the necklace inherited from my mother, in order that we might live in dresden a year on the proceeds. but the year is almost at an end, and my money also. we cannot maintain ourselves here more than four weeks longer, and then the artistic structure of our social position will crumble over our heads, and all will be over. you will be compelled to earn your own bread, your poor brother will be reduced to the greatest extremities, and your mother will have to take up her abode in a debtors' prison, as, after her well-considered plans have failed, she will have no means to meet the demands of her numerous creditors. all this will be your work, the responsibility rests with you." "o my god, have pity on me!" sobbed marie. "show me the result of all this trouble!" "the result is, governess or countess," said madam von arnim, quietly. "in your weakness you may suppose there could be a third alternative, that of becoming councillor schiller's wife. yet i will never give my consent to such a misalliance; a misalliance is only excusable when gilded over with extraordinary wealth. but councillor schiller is poor, and will always remain poor; he is an idealist, and not a practical man. i should like to know what advantage i should derive from having the poet schiller as a son-in-law. can he compensate me for my sacrifices? can he replace my jewels, my trousseau, and my silver-ware? you know that he cannot, and never will be able to do so. it is your sacred and imperative duty to compensate and reward me for the sacrifices which i have made for you, and to secure to me in my old age the comfortable existence of which care and solicitude for yourself and your brother have hitherto deprived me. you will marry the rich count kunheim. you will receive his attentions in such a manner as to encourage him to offer you his hand, which you will then accept. i command you to do so!" "but, mother, this is impossible, i do not love the count, i cannot marry him! have pity on me, mother!" she sank down on her knees, and raised her hands imploringly. "i repeat it; i love frederick schiller!" "well, then, love frederick schiller, if you will," said her ladyship, with a shrug of her shoulders, "but marry count kunheim. it is given to no woman to marry the object of her first love, to make the ideal of her heart her husband. you will only share the common lot of woman; you will have to renounce your first love and make a sensible marriage. i can tell you, however, for your consolation, that marriages of the latter sort generally prove much happier in the sequel than these moneyless love-marriages. when hunger stalks in at the door love flies out at the window. on the other hand, the most lovelorn and desolate heart will finally recover, when given a daily airing in a carriage-and-four. drive in your carriage, and accord me a seat in it; i am weary. i have been travelling life-long on the stony streets, and my feet are wounded! marie, i entreat you, my child, take pity on the poor mother, who has suffered so much, take pity on the brother, who must give up his career in life, unless we can give him some assistance. he would be compelled to leave the army, and perhaps his only resource would be to hire himself out as a copyist to some lawyer, in order to earn a subsistence. marie, dear marie, i entreat you, take pity on your family! our happiness is in your hands!" she made no reply, she was still on her knees, had covered her countenance with her hands, and was weeping bitterly. her mother gazed down upon her without an emotion of pity, her broad, fleshy face and little gray eyes expressed no sympathy whatever. "be reasonable, marie," said her ladyship, after a short interval, "consider the happiness of your mother and brother, rather than the momentary caprice of your heart. cast aside these dreams, this sensitiveness, and seek your own happiness in that of your family." "it shall be as you say," said marie, rising slowly from her knees. "i will sacrifice my own happiness for your sake, but i make one condition." "and that is--?" "that all these little mysteries and intrigues be discontinued, and schiller be told the whole truth. no more signs are to be given requesting him not to come; he is no longer to be made use of and yet denied at the same time. he must not be permitted to hope that his addresses will be accepted; he must learn that they will be rejected. if he should then still desire to visit us, our door must be open to him at all times, and the light must never be placed in my window again to warn him off. this is my condition. accept it, and i am ready to cover my face with a mask, and play the rôle which the necessities of life compel me to assume." "i will accept it," replied madame von arnim, "although i consider it very impolitic. schiller's nature is violent, easily excited, and deficient in that aristocratic cultivation which represses all the movements of natural impulse. for instance, if he should come here this evening, a very disagreeable scene might ensue; he would be capable of reproaching me or yourself quite regardless of the presence of others." "and he could reproach us with justice," sighed marie, "i am resolved rather to bear his anger than to deceive him any longer." "but i am not," rejoined her ladyship, "i have a perfect horror of these _scènes dramatiques_. but you will have it so, you made it your condition, and nothing remains for me but to accept it. and now, be discreet, be sensible; induce count kunheim to declare himself this evening, if possible, in order that schiller may hear of your betrothal as a _fait accompli_." "i will do your bidding," said marie, with a sad and yet proud smile. "give yourself no further care, the sweet dream is at end, i have awakened. it is a sad awakening, and i will have to weep a great deal, but my tears shall not accuse you; if i am unhappy, i will not say that you were the cause of my unhappiness. it was god's will, this shall be my consolation; god wills it and i submit!" "and you do well, and will live to thank me for having prevented you from becoming the wife of a poor german poet. and now, that we have disposed of this disagreeable affair, come to my heart, my daughter, and give me a kiss of reconciliation." but, instead of throwing herself into her mother's extended arms, marie drew back. "no," said she, "do not kiss me now, mother; we could only exchange a judas kiss. come, give me your hand, mother, and let us go to the parlor to receive our guests. let us, however, first extinguish this candle." "yes, we will, or rather i will carry it with me to the kitchen, where a little more light would not be amiss," said her ladyship, taking the candle from the bureau. "go to the parlor, my daughter, and receive our guests, i must first go to the kitchen to see if every thing is in order." they both left the chamber; marie repaired to the parlor, and her mother passed on to the kitchen, to see if the new grocer had furnished the butter and sugar. to her great relief, she learned that he had, and, elated by this success, she determined to send to the accommodating grocer for a few bottles of wine to replace the broken ones. nothing more was now wanting for the completion of her soirée! she hastily gave the cook a few instructions, and then returned to the bedchamber with the candle. "he must not come this evening," said her ladyship to herself; "he might frustrate the whole plan, for marie is transformed into another being in his presence, and count kunheim would not fail to observe that she did not love him. no, the light must be burning--schiller must be kept away. as the rich countess kunheim, marie will some day thank me for not having kept my promise. yes, she certainly will!" she hastened forward to the window and placed the light in a conspicuous place. but what was that! at this moment, a loud peal of laughter resounded in the narrow street beneath the window--a peal of laughter that was so bitter, so mocking, that it startled even her ladyship's fearless heart; it seemed almost like a threat. her ladyship now repaired to the parlor to receive her guests, who had begun to arrive, and this disagreeable sensation was soon forgotten. madame von arnim greeted each one of her guests with the same stereotyped smile--the same polite phrases. she quietly conducted the few old ladies, who had been invited to give dignity to the occasion, into the adjoining boudoir, and recruited an invalid major to play whist with them. and now, after having satisfactorily disposed of these guests, and rendered their gossiping tongues harmless, she returned to the parlor, and displayed to the assembled officers and cavaliers the smiling, pleasant countenance of a lady who is ready to become a loving and tender mother-in-law.--for propriety's sake, a few young women had also been invited, having small pretensions to good looks, and of modest attire; such ladies as are commonly termed friends, and who are nothing more than the setting which gives additional lustre to the gem. to entertain these friends was the mission of the second-lieutenants, while the officers of higher rank and the wealthy cavaliers congregated around the goddess of their adoration--the lovely marie von arnim. she was now once more the radiant beauty; her countenance was rosy and joyous, her blue eyes were bright and clear, and bore no evidence of the tears which had flowed back to her heart. a smile played about her rosy lips, and merry, jesting words escaped the mouth which but now had uttered wails and lamentations. count ehrhard von kunheim was completely captivated by her grace and beauty; his gaze was fastened immovably on her lovely countenance. the homage she received from all sides was a flattering tribute to the lady of his choice--the lady he now firmly resolved to make his bride. it was very pleasant to see his future wife the object of so much adoration. he would gladly have seen the whole world at her feet, for then his triumph would have been so much greater in seeing himself favored above all the world. he gazed proudly at the array of rank by which his love was surrounded; the expressions of admiration were sweet music in his ear. he mentally determined to address her this very evening; in a few brief hours it would be in his power to cry out to his rivals: "the lovely marie von arnim is mine! she is my bride!" how great, how glorious a triumph would that be! it was a pity that _he_ was not present! to have carried off this prize before him would have crowned his triumph. "miss marie," asked the count, interrupting the joyous conversation which she was carrying on with several officers, "you have graciously promised to make me acquainted with your protégé, mr. schiller? is he likely to come this evening?" the smile faded from her lips, the lustre of her eyes was dimmed, and she looked anxiously around, as if seeking help. her eyes met the keen, threatening glance of her mother, who at once came forward to her assistance; she felt that escape was no longer possible--the hand of fate had fallen upon her. "i fear councillor schiller is not coming," said her ladyship, in her complacent manner. "no, he is not coming," repeated marie, mechanically. regrets, and many praises of the genial poet they so much admired, and whose latest poems were so charming, now resounded from all sides. "it is really a pity that you have never been able to gratify us by producing this celebrated poet," said count kunheim to the beautiful marie. with a forced smile, she replied, "yes, it is really a pity." "and why is he not coming?" asked several gentlemen of madame von arnim. "pray tell us, why is it this councillor only comes when you are alone, and is certain of meeting no company here?" "he avoids mankind, as the owl does the light," replied her ladyship, smiling. "we gave him our solemn promise that we would not receive other visitors when he is with us; we promised, moreover, that we would let him know when we had company in the evening by giving him a signal." "and do you really give him the signal, my lady?" asked count kunheim. "yes, we do," replied marie, in a low voice. "and may i ask in what the signal consists that announces to the man-fearing poet that other mortals have approached his goddess?" "it is no secret," said madame von arnim. "i will tell you, count. the signal is a lighted candle placed at the window of our dressing-room. when he sees this light, he beats a retreat, and turns his back on our house." "will he come if no light is burning for him?" inquired count kunheim, quickly. "he will," replied madame von arnim, laughing. "therefore, if no light should burn in the window, he would come this evening?" "certainly he would. he vows that he only lives and thinks when in my daughter's presence; and he would undoubtedly have come this evening if i had not given him the signal." "but, mother," exclaimed marie, "you are mistaken; we did not give the signal to-day." "then, as you gave no signal, he has simply declined to avail himself of your invitation for this evening," remarked count kunheim. "no, no, count, he has not come, because i gave the signal." "not so, my lady," observed a cold, quiet voice behind her; "true, you gave the signal, but he has come nevertheless." "schiller!" exclaimed marie, turning pale, and yet she smiled and her eyes sparkled. she was on the point of hastening forward with extended hands to meet him, but her mother had already interposed her colossal figure between her and the poet, and was gazing at him defiantly, as if to signify her readiness to take up the gauntlet if he should meditate warfare. "you are heartily welcome, councillor schiller," said she, in dulcet tones. "we feel highly honored and are particularly pleased to have you join us at last on an evening when we have company. these gentlemen will all be delighted to make your acquaintance. we were speaking of you when you entered, and all were regretting that you were not here, and--" "of that i am aware," said schiller, interrupting her. "i had been standing in the doorway for some time, but you were conversing so eagerly that no one noticed my presence. i saw and heard all." schiller's voice trembled while uttering these words, and his countenance was deathly pale. "then you heard us all express an ardent desire to make your acquaintance," said count kunheim, stepping forward. "i esteem myself highly fortunate in being able to gratify this desire. permit me to introduce myself. i am count von kunheim." schiller did not seem to observe the count's extended hand, and bowed stiffly; he then looked over toward the window-niche, to which marie had withdrawn, and where she stood trembling, her heart throbbing wildly. how angry, reproachful, and contemptuous, was the glance he fastened on her countenance! but his lips were mute, and as he now withdrew his gaze, he erected his head proudly, and a derisive smile quivered on his thin, compressed lips. with this smile he turned to the gentlemen again, and greeted them with a haughty inclination of his head, like a king who is receiving the homage of his subjects. "you expressed a desire to see me, gentlemen, i am here. the conversation which i overheard, compelled me to show myself for a moment, in order to correct a little error imparted to you by madame von arnim." "an error?" said her ladyship, in some confusion. "really, mr. schiller, i am at a loss to understand exactly your meaning." "i will make myself understood, madame von arnim. you told these gentlemen that i avoided mankind as the owl avoids the light. but this is not the case, and i beg these gentlemen not to credit this statement. i do not avoid mankind, and i do not hate my fellow-creatures, but i love them. i love and revere the human countenance, for the spirit of god is reflected in the human eye. i love my fellow-creatures, and although they have sometimes caused me pain, and rudely awakened me from my dreams of happiness, yet, my faith in humanity is unshaken, and--" "oh, schiller," cried marie, stepping forward from the window-niche, and no longer able to conceal her agitation, "schiller, give me your hand, tell me--" "miss von arnim," said he, interrupting her, "i have nothing to say to you, i only desire to speak to these gentlemen! i do not wish you to consider me a foolish misanthrope, gentlemen, and therefore, i take the liberty of correcting a second erroneous statement made by madame von arnim. she told you that i had exacted of her the promise, to warn me by a signal-light when the ladies were entertaining company, because social intercourse was burdensome and repugnant to me. this is, however, not the case, but exactly the reverse. these ladies, and particularly miss marie von arnim requested me to come here only when the window was dark, and on the other hand never to visit them when i saw a light in the window. miss von arnim--" "schiller," said she, interrupting him, in a loud and trembling voice, and laying her hand on his arm, "schiller, i conjure you, go no further!" "miss von arnim also explained to me why she desired this," continued schiller, as though he had not heard marie's imploring voice, as though he did not feel the pressure of her trembling hand. "miss von arnim told me that on the evenings in which the signal would be given the circle of her mother's nearest relatives would be assembled in the house, in which circle it was impossible to introduce a stranger. gentlemen, it affords me great pleasure to recognize in you the dear cousins and uncles of this young lady, and i congratulate her on her brilliant and exclusive family party. and now permit me to explain why i dared to enter this house, although the light displayed in the window proclaimed the presence of the family." "but there was no light at the window," exclaimed marie, eagerly; "this is an error! i desired that you should come this evening, and on that account it was expressly understood between my mother and myself that no--" "the light was there," said her ladyship, interrupting her; "i had placed it there! be still, do not interrupt the councillor; he said he had something to explain.--continue, sir! why did you come, although the light was displayed in the window?" "because i wished to know what it really meant," replied schiller, with composure and dignity. "you see, my lady, i am not afraid of the light, and i seek the truth, although i must admit that it is a painful and bitter truth that i have learned to-day. but man must have the courage to look facts in the face, even if it were the head of the medusa. i have seen the truth, and am almost inclined to believe that the eternal gods must have imparted to me some of the strength of perseus, for, as you see, i have not been transformed into stone, but am still suffering. and now that i have corrected her ladyship's errors, i humbly beg pardon for having cast a shadow over the gayety of this assembly. it will certainly be for the last time! farewell, ladies!" he inclined his head slightly, but did not cast a single glance at the lovely marie von arnim; he did not see her faint, and fall into count kunheim's arms, who lifted her tenderly and carried her to the sofa, where he gently deposited his precious burden. nor did he see the friends rush forward to restore the insensible young lady to consciousness with their smelling-bottles and salts. no, frederick schiller observed nothing of all this; he walked through the parlor and antechamber toward the hall-door. near the door stood the 'living example,' looking up with an expression of unspeakable admiration at the tall figure of the poet, who had written his two favorite pieces, "the robbers," and "fiesco." he was so grateful to the poet for having put her ladyship to shame, that he would gladly have knelt down and kissed his feet. "oh, mr. schiller, great mr. schiller," murmured leonhard, hastening forward to open the door, "you are not the only one whom she has deceived. she has deceived me also; i, too, am a wretched victim of her cunning. but only wait, sublime poet, only wait; i will not only avenge myself, but you also, mr. schiller. i will cut the pieces still larger, and the turkey shall not go half around, not half around! i will avenge both myself and schiller!" he did not hear a word of what leonhard had said, for he hurried past him, down the steps, and out into the street. there he stood still for a moment gazing at the lighted windows, until a veil of unbidden tears darkened his vision. the burning tears trickling down his cheeks aroused him. he shook his head angrily, and pressed his clinched hands against his eyes to drive them back; not another tear would, he shed. away! away from this house! away! chapter iv. souls in purgatory. as if pursued by the furies, with uncovered head, his yellow locks fluttering in the wind, he rushed onward through the streets, over the long elbe bridge, past the golden crucifix, which towered in the moonlight, and now along the river bank beneath the brühl terrace, following the river, and listening to the rippling waves, that murmur of peace and eternal rest. the moon threw golden streaks of light on the river, and a long shadow on its bank, the shadow of the poet, who was hurrying on in grief and agony. where? he did not know, he was not conscious that he was walking on the verge of an open grave; he was only instinctively seeking a solitude, a retreat where the ear of man could not hear, nor the eye of man see him. he wished to be alone with his grief, alone in the trying hour when he would be compelled to tear the fair blossom from his heart, and tread it under foot as though it were a poisonous weed. he wished to be alone with the tears which were gushing from his soul, with the cries of agony that escaped his quivering lips--alone in the great and solemn hour when the poet was once more to receive the baptism of tears, that his poetic children, his poems, might be nourished with the blood that flowed from his wounded breast. he had now entered the little wood which at that time skirted the river bank a few hundred yards below the terrace. its darkness and silence was what he had sought, and what he needed. alone! alone with his god and his grief! a loud cry of anguish escaped his breast and must have awakened the slumbering birds. the foliage of the trees was agitated by a plaintive whispering and murmuring, as though the birds were saying to the moonbeams: "here is a man who is suffering, who is wrestling with his agony! console him with your golden rays, good moon; give him of your peace, starry summer eve!" perhaps the moon heard the plaintive appeal of the birds and the spirits of the night, for at this moment it broke forth from the concealing clouds and showed its mild, luminous countenance, and pierced the forest with its golden beams, seeking him who had disturbed the peace of slumbering nature with the agonized cry of his wakeful, tormenting grief. there he lies, stretched out like a corpse, or like one in a trance. but the moon sees that he is not dead, not unconscious, and sadly witnesses the tears trickling down his countenance, and hears his sobs and wails, the wails of the genius suffering after the manner of humanity; and yet the spirit of god dwells in his exalted mind, and will give him strength to overcome this grief. the night sheds a soft light on his tearful countenance, as though it greeted him with a heavenly smile; and the stars stand still and twinkle their greetings to the poet. the melody of the birds is hushed, and they listen in the foliage, as though they understood his lamentations. schiller had now raised his head; the stillness and solitude of the night had cooled the burning fever of his soul. "is it then true, am i destined only to suffer and to be deceived? years roll on and i have not yet enjoyed the golden fruits that life promises to man, the golden fruits of arcadia. my heart was filled with such joyous anticipations, my soul longed for these fruits. although the spring-time of my life has hardly begun, its blossoms have already withered. all is vanity and illusion! falsehood alone can make men happy, truth kills them like god's lightning! i have looked thee in the face again to-day, truth, thou relentless divinity, and my heart burns in pain, and my soul is filled with agony. the poet is a prophet, my present condition proves it; what the poet in me sung, the poor child of humanity now experiences; my sufferings are boundless." he buried his face in his hands, and the moon saw the tears which trickled out from between his fingers, and heard the poet's plaintive, trembling voice break in upon the stillness of the night like the soft tones of an Æolian harp: "ich zahle dir in einem andren leben, gieb deine jugend mir! nichts kann ich dir als diese weisung geben. ich nahm die weisung auf das andre leben und meiner jugend freuden gab ich ihr! gieb mir das weib, so theuer deinem herzen! gieb deine laura mir! jenseit des grabes wuchern deine schmerzen! ich riss sie blutend aus dem wunden herzen, ich weinte laut und gab sie ihr!"[ ] "and gave--albeit with tears!" repeated schiller once more, and a cry of anguish escaped his breast. "is it then inevitable? is man born only to suffer, and are those right who assert that life is only a vale of sorrow, and not worth enduring?" he seemed to be painfully meditating on this question. nature held its breath, awaiting his answer; even the birds had ceased chirping, and the wind no longer dared to rustle in the tree-tops. in what tones will the Æolian harp of the soul respond? what reply will the poet make to the question propounded by the man? he looks up at the bright firmament shedding its peaceful beams upon his head; he looks at the stars, and they smile on him. there is something in him that bids defiance to all sorrow and melancholy. a soft, heavenly, and yet strong voice resounds in his soul like the mysterious manifestation of the divinity itself. he listens to this voice; the pinions of his soul no longer droop; he rises, stretches out his arms towards the moon and the stars, and his soul soars heavenward and revels in the glories of the universe. "no," he exclaimed, in loud and joyous tones, "no, the earth is no vale of sorrow, it is the garden of the almighty. no, life is no bauble to be lightly thrown away; the sufferings life entails must be endured and overcome. give me strength to overcome them, thou indwelling spirit; illumine the darkness of my human soul, thou flame of god, holy poetry! no, it were unworthy the dignity, unworthy the honor of manhood, to bow the head under the yoke of sorrow, and become the slave of melancholy for the sake of a faithless woman. a greeting to you, you golden lights of the heavens! you shall not look down on me with pity, but with proud sympathy! i am a part of the great spirit who created you, am spirit of the spirit of god, am lord of the earth. down with you, sorrows of earth! down with you, scorpions! i will set my foot on your head, and triumph over you. you shall have no power over me. i am a man; who is more so?" and exultantly and triumphantly he once more cried out to the night and the heavens: "i am a man!" it was not the sky which now illumined his countenance, it was the proud smile of victory; the light in his eyes was not the reflection of the stars, but the brave courage of the soul which had elevated itself above the dust of the earth. "the struggle is over, grief is overcome! i greet thee, thou peaceful tranquil night, thou hast applied the healing balsam to my wounded breast: and all pain will soon have vanished!" he turned homeward, and walked rapidly through the wood and along the river bank, which was here and there skirted with clumps of bushes and shrubbery. suddenly he stood still and listened. it seemed to him that he had heard the despairing cry of a human voice behind some bushes, close to the river bank. yes, he had not been mistaken, he could now hear the voice distinctly. schiller slowly and noiselessly approached the clump of bushes from behind which the voice had seemed to proceed; he bent the twigs aside, and, peering through the foliage, listened. he beheld a strange sight. he saw before him the river with its rippling waves, and, on its narrow bank, kneeling in the full moonlight, a human form--a youth whose countenance was pale and emaciated, and whose long black hair fluttered in the breeze. his features were distorted with anguish, and the tears which poured down his hollow cheeks sparkled in the light like diamonds. he was partially undressed, and his coat, hat, and a book, which, to judge from its size and shape, appeared to be a bible, lay at his side on the sand. the youth had raised his bare arms toward heaven, his hands were clasped together convulsively, and in his agony his voice trembled as he uttered these words: "i can no longer endure life. forgive me, o god in heaven, but i cannot! thou knowest what my struggles have been! thou knowest that i have tried to live--tried to bid defiance to the torments which lacerate my soul! thou knowest how many nights i have passed on my knees, entreating thee to send down a ray of mercy on my head, to show me an issue out of this night of despair! but it was not thy will, almighty father! thou hast not taken pity on the poor worm that writhed in the dust, on the beggar who stretched out his hands to thee, imploring alms! then, pardon me at least, and receive me in thy mercy! i am about to return to thee; o god, receive me graciously! and thou, thou hard, cruel, joyless world, thou vale of affliction, a curse upon thee--the curse of a dying mortal who has received nothing but torment at thy hands! farewell, and--" he arose from his knees, and rushed forward with extended arms toward the deep, silent grave that lay there ready to receive him. suddenly a strong hand held him as in a vice, he was drawn back and hurled to the ground at the water's edge. it seemed to him that a giant stood before him--a giant whose golden locks were surrounded by a halo, whose eyes sparkled, and whose countenance glowed with noble anger. "suicide," thundered a mighty voice, "who gives you the right to murder him whom god has created! felon, murderer, fall on your knees in the dust and pray to god for mercy and forgiveness!" "i have prayed to god for weeks and months," murmured the trembling youth, writhing in the dust, and not daring to look up at the luminous apparition that hovered over him like god's avenging angel. "it was all in vain. no ray of light illumined the night of my sufferings. i wish to die, because i can no longer endure life! i flee to death to seek relief from the hunger that has been gnawing at my vitals for four days, and has made of the man a wild animal! i--" his wailing voice was silent, his limbs no longer quivered; when schiller knelt down at his side, he saw that his features were stiffened and that his eyes were widely extended and glassy. schiller laid his ear on the unfortunate man's breast and felt his pulse. his heart was not beating; his pulse no longer throbbed. "it is only a swoon, nothing else; death cannot ensue so quickly unless preceded by spasms. poor unfortunate, forgive me for calling you back to the torment of existence; but we are men, and must not violate the laws of nature. i must awaken you, poor youth!" he stretched out his hands to the river, filled them with water, and poured it on his pale forehead, and, as he still lay motionless, he rubbed his forehead and breast with his hands, and breathed his own breath into his open mouth. slowly life dawned again, a ray of consciousness returned to the glassy eyes, and the trembling lips murmured a low wail, which filled the poet's soul with sadness, and his eyes with tears of sympathy. there lay the image of god, quivering in agony; the most pitiful complaint of the human creature was the anxious cry of the awakening human soul, "i am hungry! i am hungry!" "and i have nothing to allay his hunger with," said schiller, anxiously; "nothing with which to make a man of this animal." "woe is me," groaned the youth, "this torment is fearful! why did you call me back to my sufferings? who gave you the right to forbid me to die?" "who gave you the right to die?" asked schiller, with severity. "hunger," groaned the youth, "hunger, with its scorpion teeth! if you compel me to live, then give me the bread of life! bread! give me bread! see, i beg for bread! i preferred to die rather than beg, but you have conquered me and bowed my head in the dust, and now i am a beggar! give me bread! do not let me starve!" "i will bring you bread," said schiller, mildly. "but, no, you might avail yourself of my absence to accomplish your dark purpose. swear that you will remain here until i return." the unfortunate youth did not reply; when schiller again knelt down at his side, he saw that he was again in a swoon. "when he awakens, i will have returned," murmured schiller. he arose, and ran rapidly to the little inn that stood at the foot of brühls's terrace. to his great joy, a light was still burning in the main room, and, when he entered, several guests were still sitting at the table enjoying their pipes and beer. schiller stepped up to the counter, purchased a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine, and returned with all possible haste to the unfortunate youth, who had resumed consciousness, and was, at the moment of his arrival, painfully endeavoring to raise his head. schiller knelt down, and rested the poor youth's head on his knees. "be patient, my poor friend, i bring relief, i bring bread!" how hastily did his trembling hands clutch the loaf, and how eagerly did they carry it to his mouth! how radiant was his countenance when he had taken a long draught from the bottle which schiller held to his pale lips. the poet turned away, he could not endure this painful sight. sadly and reproachfully he looked upward. "o god, thou hast made thy world so rich! there is enough to provide a bounteous repast for all! the trees are laden with fruits, and man may not pluck them; the bakeries are filled with the bread of life, and man may not take, although he is starving. he sinks down in the death agony while the rich usurer drives by in his splendid equipage, and looks down proudly and contemptuously upon the unhappy man whose only crime is that he is poor. o eternal, divine justice, it is in vain that i seek thee behind the clouds. i look for thee in vain in the palaces of the rich, and in the huts of the poor!" "ah, how refreshing, how delightful was this bread and wine!" sighed the unfortunate youth. "you are my saviour, you have freed me from torment. i thank you! let me kiss this merciful hand!--you will not permit me, you withdraw it? you despise me, the suicide, the coward? you have a right to do so!" "no," said schiller, gently, "i do not despise, i pity you. i also have suffered, i also have felt the scorpion stings of poverty. no, i do not despise you. all men are brothers, and must aid one another. all cares are sisters, and must console one another. speak my brother, tell me, how can i aid you? unburden your bosom to my sister soul, and i will try to console you." "you are an angel-messenger from god," sobbed the young man. "your lips speak the first words of sympathy i have heard for long months. i could bathe your feet in tears of gratitude. yes, my brother, you shall hear the sad history of my life, and then you will perhaps justify, perhaps pardon, the crime i was about to commit. oh, my brother!" schiller seated himself at his side on the river bank, and the pale youth rested his head on the poet's proffered shoulder. a pause ensued. while he who had but just returned from the gates of death, was endeavoring to collect his confused and wandering thoughts, the voice of pity was resounding in the heart of him who had been stronger than his brother in the hour of trial, who had bid defiance to misfortune, and with manly fortitude had overcome grief. his heart was filled with sympathy for his weaker and less courageous brother, who had desired to flee from life because his soul lacked the pinions which had borne the poet aloft, above the dust and misery of earth. "how can he fly to whom the almighty, the omnipresent, has not given the pinions of enthusiasm? he must crawl in the dust, his only thought is the gratification of his animal instincts, and like an animal he must live and perish. for him from whom god withholds this heavenly ray, all is night and darkness--no stars shine for him; it were well he sought safety in the silence of the grave, in a cessation of torment! i thank thee, o god, for the strength thou hast given, for the ray of light thou hast sent down to illumine my dark path in life!" these words did not pass schiller's lips, they were only uttered in the depths of his soul. he looked up at the moon and stars, journeying in unchangeable serenity on their heavenly course. "smile on, smile on! you know nothing of man's sufferings. the eternal laws have marked out your course. why not ours, too? why not man's? why must we wander in the desert of life, seeking happiness, and finding pain only! we conceive ourselves to be godlike, and yet we are no more than the worm that writhes in the dust, and is trodden under foot by the careless passer-by." these were the thoughts that passed through schiller's mind, while the pale youth at his side was narrating, in a voice often interrupted by sobs and tears, the history of his sufferings. it was a simple, unvarnished story of that suffering and want altogether too proud to seek sympathy or relief. a story such as we might daily hear, if our ears were open to the mute pleadings that so often speak to us in the pale, careworn countenances of our fellow-travellers in the journey of life. why repeat what is as old as the world! a shipwrecked life, a shipwrecked calling! there was that in this son of poverty which urged him to the acquisition of knowledge; he believed his mind endowed with treasures, and his ambitions heart whispered: "you will one day be a renowned preacher! god gave you inspiration; inspiration will give you the words with which to move the hearts of men!" he was the son of a poor tailor, but his father looked with pride on the boy who always brought home the best testimonials from his school, and who was held up to the other scholars as a model of diligence. it would be an honor for the whole family if the tailor's son should become a learned man and a pastor. all that the parents could save and earn by hard work they willingly devoted to the education of their son, that he might become a scholar, and the pride of his family. what is there, that is glorious and beautiful, which parental love does not hope for, and prophesy for the darling son? young theophilus had passed his examination with honor, and had repaired to the university in leipsic to continue his studies when the sad intelligence of his father's death reached him, summoning him back to dresden, to his mother's assistance. he now learned, what he, the student who had lived only in his books, had hitherto had no knowledge of whatever. he learned that his affectionate father had contracted debts, and pawned all that he possessed, in order that his son's studies might be promoted. when the father found it no longer possible to assist his son, he had died of grief. and now the usurers and creditors came and took possession of every thing, regardless of the distressful cries of the unhappy mother, and the protestations of her despairing son. the law awarded them all, and they took all! theophilus had reason to esteem it almost a blessing when his mother followed her husband to the grave a short time afterward. in the hospital of the ursuline sisters, he had at least found shelter for her, and six days afterward she found rest in her last abode in the narrow coffin accorded her by charity. but where was a refuge to be found for the poor son who had so suddenly been driven from the study into the desert of life, where he could find no oasis in which to refresh himself and rest his wearied limbs? at first he refused to be discouraged, and struggled bravely. so little is needed to sustain life! and for this little he was willing to give all the knowledge acquired by honest diligence. he applied to the rich, to the learned, to artists; he offered his services, he wished to give instruction, to teach children. but, where were his recommendations? what guaranties had he to offer? the man who sought work was taken for a beggar, and the persons to whom he applied either turned their backs on him, or else offered a petty gratuity! this he invariably rejected; he wished to work, he was not a beggar. his unseasonable pride was ridiculed, his indignation called beggar insolence! long days of struggling, of hunger, and of humiliations; long nights without shelter, rest, or refreshment! this little wood, on the river bank, had been his bedchamber for a long time. here, on the bed of moss, accorded him by nature, he had struggled with despair, feeling that it was gradually entwining him in its icy grasp! finally, it held him as in a vice, and he felt that escape was no longer possible. hunger had then spoken to him in the tempter's voice, and whispered to his anxious soul that crime might still save him; it whispered that he could not be blamed for a theft committed under such circumstances, and hard-hearted society would alone bear the responsibility. then, in his anguish, he had determined to seek refuge, from the tempter's voice, in death, in the silent bed of the river. theophilus narrated this sad history of his sufferings with many sighs and groans. he painted a very gloomy picture of his life, and schiller was deeply moved. he laid his hand on the poor youth's pale brow and looked upwards, an expression of deep devotion and solemn earnestness depicted in his countenance. "thou hast listened to the wails of two mortals to-day, thou spirit of the universe. the one spoke to thee in the anger of a man, the other in the despairing cry of a youth. impart, to both of them, of thy peace, and of thy strength! give to the man the resignation which teaches him that his mission on earth is not to be happy, but to struggle; teach the youth that the darkest night is but the harbinger of coming day, and that he must not despair while in darkness and gloom, but ever look forward hopefully to the coming light." "thou hast had hope--in thy belief thy prize-- thy life was centred in it," murmured theophilus, smiling sadly. schiller started and looked inquiringly at the youth, who, in so strange a coincidence of thought, had given expression to his despair in lines taken from the same poem from which the poet had repeated a verse in his hour of trial. "are the lines you have just uttered your own?" asked schiller. "no," replied the youth, softly, "from whence should such inspiration come to me. the lines are from schiller's poem, 'to resignation,' from the pen of the poet who is the favorite of the gods and muses, the poet who is adored by all germany." "do you know this frederick schiller, of whom you speak with such admiration?" "no, i have never seen him, nor do i desire to see him! i love and adore him as a sublime spirit, as a disembodied genius. i would, perhaps, envy him if he should appear before me in human form." "envy him, and why?" "because he is the chosen, the happy one! i do not wish to see the poet in bodily form; i do not wish to know that he eats and drinks like other men!" "and suffers like other men, too," said schiller, softly. "no, that is impossible!" cried theophilus, with vivacity. "his soul is filled with heaven and the smiles of the divinity; he cannot suffer, he cannot be unhappy!" schiller did not reply. his head was thrown back, and he was gazing up at the heavens; the moon again shone on his countenance, and the starlight sparkled in the tears that rolled slowly down his cheeks. "he cannot suffer, he cannot be unhappy!" he repeated in a low voice. it seemed to him that a transformation was going on within himself, that he was growing larger and stronger, and that his heart had laid on a coat of armor. he sprang from the ground, stood proudly erect, and shook his arms aloft. "here truly is manly strength, the sinews are tightly drawn, the muscles are firm; a genius has selected this breast as its abode, to give it strength to shake off the burden of sorrow." he felt that his good genius had conducted him to this unhappy man, that he might be taught that the strong alone can bear pain, and that the weak must succumb under the rod of affliction. his heart was filled with pity for the weak brother at his side. "it was god's will that i should save you from death; in so doing, i however contracted the obligation to preserve your life. i will meet this obligation. tell me, what were your plans before your father's death?" "i hoped, when i should have finished my course at the university, to enter some family as teacher, where i could, in time, earn enough to enable me to go to the catholic seminary in cologne, and maintain me there, while completing my studies." "you are a catholic?" "my father was from the rhine, and my mother was of polish extraction. both were catholics, and it was their fond hope that their son might some day receive ordination and become a priest of the catholic church. it seems, however, that i have only been ordained to misery, and i could veil my head and die in shame and remorse!" "young man, this is blasphemy, you forfeit god's grace when you speak in this manner. he sent me here to save you, and with his aid i will not leave my task uncompleted. how much will enable you to prepare yourself for your future career?" "the sum that i require is so great that i scarcely dare mention it." "would one hundred dollars be sufficient?" "that is far more than i need, more than i ever possessed!" cried theophilus, almost terrified. "if i should promise to give you this amount--to give it to you here, at this same place, and at this hour, in a week from to-day, would you swear to wait patiently and hopefully until then, and to make no further wicked attempt on your life?" "i would swear to do so," replied theophilus, in a trembling and tearful voice. "by the memory of your father and mother?" "by the memory of my father and mother!" "well, then, my brother, with god's help i will bring you the money in a week from to-day. i would say to-morrow, if i had the money; but i am poor, like you, my brother. no, this is hardly true. i am rich, for i have friends, and these friends will furnish the money you require, if i entreat them to do so." "you will narrate my history to your friends?" said theophilus, blushing. "that i will have to do, in order to awaken sympathy, but i will not mention your name, nor will i so closely narrate the circumstances that they can possibly divine of whom i am speaking. moreover, you told me that you had no friends or acquaintances in dresden?" "true," sighed theophilus, letting his head sink on his breast, "misfortune knows itself only, and cares are its only friends. it conceals its wounds, and hides itself in darkness. but i have no longer the right to be proud; i bow my head in humility. plead my cause, my noble, generous friend, my saviour! god's mercy will give you eloquence, and the consciousness of having saved a human being from disgrace and crime will make your words irresistible. my heart is filled with the joyful conviction that god has sent you as a messenger of peace and reconciliation. i will believe in, and confide in you; i will live, because you tell me to live!" "live, my brother, and hope!" said schiller, gently. "await me at this place, and at this hour, a week from to-day; i hope to bring you the money. but you must have something with which to purchase the necessaries of life until then. here, my brother, take all that i have in my purse. i have only four dollars, but that sum will suffice to provide you with food and lodging." theophilus took the money, and kissed the giver's hand. "i have proudly rejected the gifts offered me by the rich, preferring to die rather than receive their heartless charity. but from you, brother samaritan, i humbly accept the gift of love. i willingly burden myself with this debt of gratitude." "let us now separate," said schiller. "in a week we meet again. but _one_ request i desire to make of you." "you have but to command, and i will obey you implicitly." "i beg you not to attempt to find me out, or to learn who i am? we have seen each other's countenances in the moonlight, but they were covered with a golden veil. do not attempt to remove this veil in the light of day, and to learn my name. i feel assured that you will make no mention of this incident of to-night, but i also desire to avoid meeting you in future. i therefore beg you not to go out much in dresden, and not to frequent the main streets of the city. if we should meet, my heart would prompt me to extend my hand and speak to you, and that would not be desirable." "further down on the elbe there is a little inn where i can board cheaply. from here i will go to this inn and there remain till the appointed hour. i will not go near the city." "good-night, brother!" said schiller, extending his hand. "here we shall meet again. and now, turn you to the left, and i will turn to the right. may good spirits watch over us till our return!" chapter v. separation. schiller walked homeward with rapid strides. the streets of the city were silent and deserted, and the houses enveloped in darkness. he passed by the house in which she lived for whom he had suffered so much. he did not look up, but his head sank lower on his breast, and a feeling of unutterable sadness came over him; but he had no pity for himself, not a single sigh or complaint escaped his breast. a sensation of chilliness crept over him as he now entered his solitary dwelling. no one was there to extend the hand of sympathy and bid him welcome. his two friends had awaited his return for a long time, but had finally gone home. they knew their friend's disposition, they knew that schiller always avoided men when his passions were aroused, and sought out some solitude where no eye could witness his struggle to subdue them. "he very probably has gone to loschwitz, to spend a few days in the pavilion in which he wrote 'don carlos,'" said körner. "his genius always directs the poet aright, and he possesses the healing balsam for his wounds in his own breast. i will go to loschwitz myself, to-morrow, to see if he is there, and to make a few inquiries as to his condition. if i find him there i shall leave him to himself till his agitation and passion have subsided, and he voluntarily returns to his friends." "but if he is not there?" said göschen, anxiously, as they stepped out into the street. "i never before saw schiller in so violent a state of excitement. if this fearful awakening from his delusion should overcome him--if in his despair he should--" "do not conclude your sentence," said körner, interrupting him, "do not utter that terrible word. do not insult your absent friend; remember that he is a genius. he will not yield to despair like an ordinary man; his soul will soon recover its buoyancy." but for this night, at least, körner's prophecy was not destined to be fulfilled. true, schiller had overcome despair, but the pain still rankled in his breast. the bed on which he threw himself in his physical exhaustion was a bed of pain. his thoughts and remembrances were the thorns that pierced his heart, and drove sleep from his couch. he arose the next morning at a late hour in a state of feverish excitement, entered his plainly-furnished parlor, and looked gloomily around him. but yesterday his parlor had looked so cosey and comfortable, to-day it seemed so bare and desolate. those flowers in the little vase were but yesterday so bright and fragrant, to-day they were faded. the books and papers on his table were in the greatest disorder. the appearance of the room awakened in schiller the sensation of sadness and desolation we experience on entering the deserted room of a dear friend who has suddenly left us. yes, joy, love, hope, and enthusiasm, had departed from this room; it now looked dreary and desolate. how can we work, how can we write poetry, without enthusiasm, without joy? "elegies on a faithless sweetheart," said schiller, in loud, mocking tones. "a tearful poem, with the title: 'when last i saw her in the circle of her suitors;' or 'the amorous swain outwitted!'" he burst into laughter, stepped to the window, and commenced tapping on the panes with his fingers, as he had done when körner and göschen first aroused his suspicions concerning his love. he was now reminded of this; he hastily withdrew his hands and walked back into the room. but he suddenly recoiled, and uttered a cry of dismay, as though he had seen a ghost. marie von arnim stood in the doorway, pale but composed, her large blue eyes fastened with an imploring expression on schiller's countenance. she gave him no time to recover from his surprise, but locked the door behind her, threw her bonnet and shawl on a chair, and walked forward into the room. "schiller," said she, in a soft, trembling voice, "i have come because i do not wish you to despise me, because i do not wish the thought of me to leave a shadow on your memory." he had now recovered his composure; a feeling of anger raged in him and demanded utterance. "what is there surprising in your coming? why should you not have come? ladies of rank go in person to their tailors and shoemakers when they desire to make purchases or leave orders, why should you not come to a poet to order a nuptial poem. i am right in supposing that the young lady wishes me to write a poem in honor of her approaching nuptials with count kunheim, am i not? i am also right, i believe, as regards the name of that favored member of the exclusive family circle of yesterday, who is destined to become that young lady's husband?" "yes, you are," she replied, softly. "you see, schiller, i have not interrupted you, but have received your words as the penitent receives the blows of the rod, without complaint or murmur, although blood is streaming from her wounds. but now be merciful, schiller! let this punishment suffice, and listen to me!" "i know what the substance of the poem is to be," observed schiller, in the same threatening voice. "undoubtedly you desire a sort of illustration of the courtship, from the first meeting down to the avowal, and then the golden honeymoon is to be painted in brilliant colors. probably it would meet your wishes if a comical feature were also introduced; for instance: a poor poet, who, in his absurd conceit, had dared to consider himself count kunheim's equal, and who, acting on this belief, had even dared to fall in love with the beautiful young lady, who, of course, only laughed at his presumption." "no, schiller, who would have been the proudest and happiest of women if circumstances had permitted her to avow her love freely and openly." "yes," cried schiller, gruffly, "circumstances are always the scapegoats of the weak and faithless. i, however, admit the difficulties arising from the circumstances by which you were surrounded in this instance. you were making use of the poet's love to allure richer suitors into your toils, a game requiring some finesse. my rôle was neither a flattering nor a grateful one, but yet it was a rôle, and a dramatic poet cannot expect to have good ones only. but enough of this! let us speak of the poem. when must it be ready?" "schiller," she cried, almost frantic, tears streaming from her eyes, "schiller, will you have no pity on me?" "did you have pity on me?" asked he, with a sudden transition from his mocking to an angry tone of voice, and regarding marie, who had folded her hands humbly, and was looking up at him entreatingly, with glances that grew darker and angrier as he spoke. "i ask you, did you have pity on me? did it never occur to you, while engaged in your shrewd calculation, that you were preparing to give me a wound for which there is no cure? when two loving hearts are torn asunder by death or the hand of fate, the pain can be borne, and time may heal the wound; when the cruel laws of human society compel us to separate from those we love, a consolation still remains. the sacred, the undimmed remembrance of past hours of bliss, and the hope that time, the great equalizer, may remove all obstacles, still remains. but what consolation remains to him who has been cheated of his love, his enthusiasm, and his ideal?--to me, over whose heart the remembrance of this deception lies like a pall? from whence am i to derive faith, hope, and confidence, now that you, whom i loved, have deceived me? you have not only destroyed my happiness, but you have also offended the genius of poetry within me. henceforth all will seem cold and insipid. the word 'enthusiasm' will ring in my ear like a mockery. i will even mistrust the vows of fidelity uttered by the lips of my dramatic creations; for, now that you have so shamefully deceived me, there is no longer any thing noble, pure, and beautiful." he hurled a last angry glance at her, and then turned away, walked to the window and looked out into the street. marie von arnim followed him and laid her cold, trembling hand on his arm. "schiller, if i were really the woman you take me to be, would i have come to you at the risk of being observed by others--at the risk of its becoming known throughout the city that i had visited you? i have come, schiller, because i was unwilling that the most beautiful music of my life should end in discord, because i was unwilling that you should remember me with anger, when i only deserve commiseration." "commiseration!" repeated schiller, shrugging his shoulders. "yes," she continued, in a soft voice, "yes, i deserve it. i am not bad, not faithless, and not false. i am only a poor girl whose heart and hands have been fettered by fate. a poor girl who cannot do what she would, but must obey god's command and submit to her mother's will. do not require me to acquaint you with all the misery which afflicts my family, with the cares and humiliations which those must suffer who cover their want with a veil of wealth, and polish and plate iron poverty till it has the appearance of golden plenty. believe me, schiller, we are so poor that we do not know how we are to escape from our importunate creditors." "and yet, you gave agreeable dinners, and entertained the exclusive family circle at delightful suppers," observed schiller, jeeringly, and without even turning to look at marie, who stood behind him. "my mother would have it so, schiller. she had sold her last jewels in order that she might be able to come to dresden, where she hoped to marry her daughter to a fortune. schiller, you will believe me when i swear that i knew nothing of this, and that my first and greatest joy on coming to dresden was experienced when i made your acquaintance, and when you honored me with your notice! schiller, i have dreamed a sweet, a blissful dream." "and the light in the window was the night-lamp in this dream," he observed, in mocking tones. "i make no attempt to justify myself," said she, gently. "my mother gave me her commands, and i was compelled to obey. when she yesterday declared to me that the only issue out of all her troubles was for me to accept count kunheim's addresses, and begged me to do so, i only consented after a long and fruitless struggle, after many tears and entreaties. i yielded to my mother's commands, but i exacted this condition: schiller must now learn the whole truth, these little mysteries must cease, and no light shall be placed at the window this evening, requesting him not to come. this, my mother promised, but she was cruel enough to break her promise." "so that i should still wander about, a deluded and credulous simpleton, if i had not broken through the barriers of the exclusive family circle in defiance of the warning light." "i am thankful that fate willed otherwise, and frustrated my mother's intentions," said marie, gently. "when we are compelled to deny any one the happiness we would so willingly accord, it is our duty to tell him the truth, although it may be painful. truth is a two-edged sword; it not only wounds him who hears, but him also who imparts it. i have come, schiller," continued marie in an agitated voice, after a short pause, "to take leave of you--to say to you: schiller, we shall never meet again in life, let us part in peace!" "never again!" murmured he, slowly turning his countenance toward the woman, who had heretofore looked so bright and joyous, so radiant with youth and beauty, and who now stood at his side so humble and submissive, her tearful eyes raised imploringly to his. "never again!" sighed marie. "our paths in life will henceforth be widely separated. i intend to marry the man whose wealth will save my mother and brother. i will be to him a faithful and grateful wife, although i may not be a loving one. i am to be affianced to count kunheim at noon to-day, and i have employed the last hour of my liberty in coming here to take leave of you, schiller, and to beg forgiveness for the pain inflicted on you, of which i am the innocent cause." "the innocent cause!" cried schiller, turning around and staring at her with his large, flaming eyes. "how can you say that you are the innocent cause of the pain which you inflicted on me? you knew that i loved you. i told you so, and you listened to my avowal. you gave me hope, although you must have known that my love was hopeless." "you speak of yourself only," rejoined marie, in low and trembling tones. "you are not thinking of me at all; it does not occur to you that i also have suffered, that i also have hoped. yes, schiller, i did suppose that my mother would yield to my prayers and entreaties; even yesterday i conjured her on my knees to permit me to seek my own happiness in my own way, as my heart prompted. at that time i was not aware that my mother's circumstances were so desperate. i knew not that her honor and even her liberty were endangered. when she admitted that such was the case, when she disclosed the whole sorrowful truth, i felt as though my heart would break, as though all the blossoms of my future had suddenly faded. the conviction forced itself upon me that it was my duty to sacrifice, to my mother's welfare, my own wishes and hopes. i did my duty; i gave up my own happiness to save my mother--to secure, at least, a ray of sunshine in the evening of her life. i have submitted. i will become the wife of count kunheim." "and will say to him that you joyfully accept and reciprocate his generous love!" "no, i will not tell this noble man a falsehood, nor have i done so. when he yesterday evening offered me his hand, i told him honestly and openly that i esteemed and confided in him, and would be a very thankful and faithful wife, but that my heart was no longer free--a love dwelt therein that could never die, for it was schiller whom i loved!" "you told him that?" asked schiller, with emotion. "and he--" "he agreed with me that the heart which loved schiller could never forget him, but added that he would only esteem me the more, and could never be jealous on account of this love. he said that my love for schiller should be the altar of our married life and of our house--the altar to which we would bring the fruits of our noblest thoughts and feelings." "noble, generous man!" cried schiller, "yes, he deserves to be happy and to possess you. be his wife, marie, and do your duty. let the early blossom of your heart fade, and let the full summer-rose of your love bloom for your husband. you can do so, marie, for--i say it without anger or ill-will--you have never loved me! no, do not contradict, do not attempt to assure me that such is not the case. in this hour, when my soul is elevated above all selfish wishes and desires--in this hour, i rejoice in recognizing the fact, _you have never loved me_. i know that a kind providence has thus spared you the pain i now endure; i know you will be happy at the side of the noble and high-souled man who demands your hand in marriage. i do not mean to say that you will soon forget me; i think too well of myself to believe this. no, you will yet shed tears when you think of him who loved you, but the bridegroom will be there to dry these tears. with tender sympathy he will speak to you of your love, as of a beautiful dream of the spring-time, and you will find that the awakening from this dream on a bright, flowery summer day, is also beautiful, and that will console you. some day, after many years, when my pain has long since vanished, and i have gone home to the unknown land from whence no traveller returns--some day, when your weeping children and grandchildren surround your couch, and you feel your last hour approaching, you will once more remember this dream of the spring-time. it will greet you like a ray of sunshine from the new life that is dawning. with a smile on your lips, you will turn to your children and say: 'i leave you gold and treasures, a brilliant name and high rank. but i leave you a more precious legacy. schiller loved me, and a poet's love is a blessing that is inherited from generation to generation. your father's name gives you rank and honor before men, but the love which the poet consecrated to your mother gives you renown and immortality. strive to be worthy of this love. go to the grave of the poet who died in solitude and poverty, and pray for him!'" "no, schiller, that will not be all that i say to those who will some day surround my death-bed," said marie, drying her tears, in order that her large, luminous eyes might gaze at his sad countenance more fully and firmly. "i will say to them: 'i am now returning to god, and to my first, my imperishable love. in death i may proudly and joyfully confess i have loved schiller! i still love him!'" the poet, as if irresistibly attracted by her enthusiasm and her glowing countenance--hardly knowing what he did--extended his arms toward marie. she threw herself on his breast; he pressed her gently to his heart, and let his hand rest lovingly on her head. it was a silent and solemn moment, a last blissful and sorrowful embrace. their lips were dumb, but their hearts communed in holy thought and prayer. after a pause, schiller gently raised up between his hands the head that was still resting on his breast; he gazed long and lovingly into the fair girl's countenance. the tears that flowed from his eyes fell on hers like glowing pearls, mingling with her own tears and trickling down her cheeks. schiller bowed his head, and kissed the lips that responded warmly to his own. he then pressed her hands to his eyes and released her from his embrace. she turned slowly, walked toward the door, and put on her shawl and bonnet. "farewell, schiller!" "farewell, marie!" and now she stood in the doorway, her eyes fastened on him in a last lingering look. he stood silently regarding her. a grating noise broke in upon the silence; it was the closing door behind which marie had vanished. schiller remained standing at the same place, his eyes fixed on the door. had it suddenly grown so dark? was the sun overcast? or was it only the tears in his eyes that made the room look so gloomy? had a storm suddenly arisen? did an earthquake make the ground tremble beneath him? or was it only the storm of passion that was passing over his head? why was it that his knees trembled, and that he would have fallen to the ground had not a chair stood near by, into which he sank, groaning? the hour in which a man wrestles with his agony--the hour of renunciation and conquest, is sacred; the eye of god only may witness it, but no tongue must attempt to describe it, unless indeed that of the poet whose pain is surrounded by the halo of poetry--the poet to whom the hour of renunciation has also become the hour of enthusiasm. some one is weeping and lamenting behind that door. is it marie? some one is speaking in loud and earnest tones behind this door. is it the poet composing an inscription for the gravestone of his love? "give me thy laura--give me her whom love to thy heart's core endears; i tore the fond shape from the bleeding love, and gave--albeit with tears!" a loud knock is heard at the door, and then a second, and a third, in quick succession. schiller shakes back the hair from his countenance, and hastens forward to see who is clamoring for admission. chapter vi. the song "to joy." it was the postman, who brought the poet a rosy, perfumed letter from weimar. with eager hands, schiller opened and unfolded the missive. his countenance beamed with joy as he recognized madame von kalb's handwriting. "good and noble woman, you have not forgotten me! do you still think of me lovingly?" no, she had not forgotten him; she still loved him, and begged him, with tender and eloquent entreaties, to come to her. "schiller, the world is a solitude without you; you are the thought of my inmost thoughts, the soul of my soul! frederick, separation from you has disclosed the holy mystery of your heart and of mine. it is this: we are the two halves that were one in heaven, and our mission on earth is to strive to come together, in order that our eternal indivisibility and unity of spirit may be restored. schiller, when we are once more united, hand in hand, and are gazing in each other's eyes, we shall feel as if we had left the earth and were once more in heaven. frederick, come to your charlotte!" "yes, i am coming to my charlotte, i am coming!" cried schiller, in a loud voice, as he pressed the letter to his lips. "you have saved me, you have made me myself again, charlotte! i am no longer lonely, no longer unloved. your heart calls me, your spirit longs for me. i feel as though my soul's wings, destined to bear me aloft above the misery of earth, were growing stronger. they will bear me to you, charlotte--to you, the dearest friend of my life! you shall console, you shall restore me, your friendship shall be the balsam for the wounds of my heart. eternal fate, i thank thee for having permitted me to hear this call of friendship in this my hour of trial. i thank thee that there is still one soul that i can call mine; i praise thee that i am not compelled to stand aside in shame and tears, like an unloved, friendless beggar, while the happy are feasting at the richly-laden table of life. one soul i can at least call my own, and i will keep her holy, and love and thank her all the days of my life. away with tears! away with this sorrowing over a dream of happiness! farewell, marie! be forgiven. i will think of you without anger, and rejoice when you become a happy countess! farewell, marie![ ] a greeting to you, charlotte! i am coming to you! i am coming!" he walked slowly to and fro; the cloud of sorrow that had rested on his brow gradually lifted, and his countenance grew clearer and clearer. the man had conquered--the poet was once more himself. "i will go to körner! i must see my friend!" he took down his hat, and walked out into the street. his mind had freed itself of its fetters, his step was elastic, and he bore himself proudly, his blue eyes turned heavenward, and a joyous smile rested on his thin and delicate lips. thus he entered körner's dwelling, and found his friend on the point of starting to loschwitz, to see what had become of the poet. schiller extended both hands and greeted him with a loving glance. "here i am again, my friend. the prodigal son returns from his wanderings, and begs to be permitted to take up his abode in your heart once more. will you receive him, friend körner?" "i will not only receive him, but will kill the fatted calf in honor of his return. i will give a festival, to which all our friends shall be invited, in order that they may rejoice with me, and exclaim, 'the wanderer has returned! blessed be the hour of his return!'" schiller threw himself into his friend's arms, and pressed him to his heart. "i have caused you much sorrow and trouble. i have been a wild and stubborn fellow. why should beautiful women be blamed for not loving this ungainly and unmannerly fellow, when there are so many handsomer, richer, and happier men in the world? marie von arnim is right in marrying the rich and handsome count kunheim; and you must not blame her on this account, or say of her that she deceived me. she has only done what we all must do on earth: she has done her duty, and god will bless her and give her his peace in the hour of death for so doing.--but let us speak no more of this." "no, my friend, we will speak of it no more," said körner, heartily; "let us only rejoice that you have returned to your friends; that you once more believe in us and our friendship. how happy my wife will be when her dear friend is restored to her again! how glad göschen will be when you once more extend your hand to him in a loving greeting!" "poor, generous göschen!" said schiller, thoughtfully. "i was cruel and unjust to him yesterday, i imputed ignoble motives to my friend!" "he thinks of it no longer," said körner; "he has no memory for the words spoken by your anguish. he will be only too happy when you once more greet him with a loving smile." "how good and patient you all are with me!" said schiller, softly; "and how little have i deserved such treatment at your hands! in truth, i feel as though i had now returned to you after a long separation--as though i had only seen you of late through a cloud that had arisen between us, and in which a single star shone, and-- be still, no more of this! the cloud has been dissipated; i now see you again, and will rejoice with you as long as we are together." "schiller, you do not contemplate leaving us?" said körner, sadly. "i am a poor wanderer, my friend, whose stay at any one place is but brief. at last, a time will come even for me, when i can lay down my staff and knapsack, and exclaim, 'here i will rest! this is my home!' but the gods only know whether this home will be in the grave or in the heart of a woman!" "no sad thoughts now, my friend, if you please, now that i am ready to exult and rejoice over your return!" "you are right, no sad thoughts at this time! let us turn our thoughts to joy. the first song i write shall be in praise of joy. i will no longer avoid mankind, no longer seek solitude! as you said, körner, so shall it be! give the prodigal son a festival, call our friends together, let us once more assemble around the festive board and partake of the repast of friendship and joy. this festival shall be in honor of my return and of my departure." körner gave this festival. the lost one, who had of late withdrawn himself from his friends in the violence of his love, had now returned, and this was a fitting occasion for joy and festivity. he called his friends together; he had for each a kind word and a tender greeting. göschen was richly rewarded when schiller gave him the manuscript of his don carlos, that was now to be given to the world, and to entwine the halo of immortality around the poet's brow, and to enkindle and fan the flame of enthusiasm in thousands and thousands of hearts! six days after schiller's "return," the festival which körner had promised took place. körner and his beautiful young wife, theresa huber, göschen, and the artist sophie albrecht, were present; a few friends in leipsic had also joyfully availed themselves of körner's invitation, and had come to dresden to see the poet once more. there he sat at the festive board, his arm thrown around körner's neck; in his right hand he held the goblet filled with sparkling rhine wine. his eyes beamed and his countenance shone with enthusiasm. his glance was directed upward, and, perhaps, he saw the heavens open and the countenance of the blessed, for a soft and joyous smile played about his lips. "look at this favorite of the muses," cried körner. "one might suppose they held him in their embrace, and were whispering words of inspiration into his poet's heart." "perhaps they are whispering a song of joy in my ear, my friend, in order that i may repeat it to you, the favorite of the gods! but before i do so, i will narrate a history--a history that will touch your hearts and open your purses, unless you are cold-hearted egotists, and then you deserve to share the fate of king midas, whose very food and wine were turned into gold because he was a hard-hearted miser. i condemn you to this punishment if you have the courage to listen to my story without being moved to tears and generosity!" with deep pathos and eloquence schiller recounted to his listening friends his midnight adventure, his conversation with the poor youth who had attempted to take his own life. so graphic was his representation of the unfortunate youth's distress and vain struggles, that the hearts of his hearers were deeply touched, and no eye remained dry. when he had concluded his narrative and told his friends of the promise he had made to poor theophilus, schiller arose from his seat, took the plate which lay before him, and walked around the table, halting at each seat and extending his plate like a beggar, with soft words of entreaty. when the ready hands opened and dollars and gold-pieces rang out on the plate, schiller inclined his head and smiled, thanking the givers with looks of tenderness. now he had returned to his seat and was counting the money. "seventeen gold-pieces and thirty dollars. i thank you, my friends! you have saved a human life; you have redeemed a soul from purgatory! to-morrow night i will take this love-offering to the poor youth; the blessing of a good man will then rest on your closed eyelids, and you will be rewarded with sweet dreams and a happy awakening. now, my dear friends, you shall receive from the poet's lips the thanks that are glowing in my heart. now, you shall hear the exulting song to joy which körner supposed the muses were whispering in my ear. raise your glasses and listen; when i incline my head repeat the words last spoken." schiller arose, drew a small, folded sheet of paper from his pocket, opened it, glanced over it hastily, and then let it fall on the table. he did not require it; his song resounded in his mind and brain; it was written on the tablets of his heart, and his lips now uttered it exultantly: "joy, thou brightest heaven-lit spark, daughter from the elysian choir, on thy holy ground we walk, reeling with ecstatic fire!" his eyes shone with enthusiasm, his cheeks glowed, and a heavenly smile illumined his whole countenance, while reciting his song "to joy." his friends caught the inspiration of his poem, arose with one accord from their seats, clasped hands and gazed into each other's eyes--into the eyes that shone lustrously, although they were filled with tears. now, at the culminating point of his rapture, schiller's countenance suddenly quivered with pain as he recited a second verse of his song: "yea--who calls _one_ soul his own, _one_ on all earth's ample round:-- who cannot, may steal alone, weeping from our holy ground." "who cannot, may steal alone, weeping from our holy ground," repeated his friends. the tears gushed from their eyes; they clasped hands more firmly, and listened breathlessly to the words of the poet, whose voice now rose again to the high tones of enthusiasm. it was almost like an adoration of joy, friendship, and love. their hearts beat higher, mightier and mightier the waves of rapture surged in their kindred souls. "myriads join the fond embrace! 'tis the world's inspiring kiss. friends, yon dome of starry bliss is a loving father's place." they embraced each other; they wept, but with rapture, with enthusiasm. the kiss that passed from mouth to mouth was given to the whole world; for all that the world could offer of love, of friendship, and of happiness, the friends found combined at the happy festival to which schiller had dedicated his song "to joy." chapter vii. together once more. night had come, a dark, gloomy night. the moonlight that had played so beautifully, on the rippling waters of the elbe, a week before, was wanting on this night. the sky was overcast, and the clouds that were being driven through the heavens by the wind, cast on the river dark shadows that looked like yawning graves. theophilus stood on the river bank at the same place where he had knelt and prayed a week before. he stood there gazing at the dark river and looking up from time to time at the driving clouds. "if he should not respect his word, if he should not be able to keep his promise, because no generous hearts responded to his entreaties! what then? will this river be my grave? are the waves murmuring my death-song? no, no! be brave, theophilus; wait patiently, be strong in hope! his voice was so gentle, so full of conviction, when he promised to meet me here to-night, to bring me help! he appeared before me like the angel gabriel; i will believe that god sent him in human form, and that he will also send him a second time. hope, my heart, and be strong in faith!" he folded his hands in silent prayer, and listened anxiously to every slight noise other than the murmuring of the waves on the shore, and the rustling of the wind in the trees, that broke in upon the stillness of the night. some distance up the river, on its opposite bank, lay the city with its many lights. on the elbe bridge, towering conspicuously above all other objects, stood the gilded crucifix, surrounded by a circle of lighted lamps, placed there by pious hands. theophilus saw this crucifix, and it awakened pious thoughts and brave resolutions in his breast. "i will endure all that may befall me in patience and hope. by resignation and pious devotion, i will endeavor to atone for the sins committed in my despair. my whole life belongs to thee, my god, and shall be dedicated to thy service! i will serve the poor and the unfortunate. every man who suffers shall be my brother, to every man who stumbles will i extend a helping hand. i will strive to dry the tears of the weeping, and, if i can do nothing else, i will, at least, pray with them. this, i swear to thee, my god!--this i swear by yon luminous crucifix!" the great bell resounded from the tower of the catholic church, striking the eleventh hour. theophilus shuddered; he remembered that he had heard this bell at the moment when he was on the point of plunging into his watery grave, and that it had then resounded on his ear like a death-knell. "never will i hear this hour strike without fear and trembling. it will always sound to me like the knell of the doomed criminal. grant, o god, that in such an hour i may prove myself a repentant sinner, and make atonement for my crime! i resolve that i will do so," cried he, in a loud voice. "i swear that this eleventh hour shall each day remind me of my crime, and find me ready to devote to the welfare of mankind the life i was about to sacrifice to despair." "in the name of god and humanity i accept your vow!" said a solemn voice behind him. "here i am, my brother. forgive me for having kept you waiting, but important business prevented my coming earlier, and i found it difficult to steal away from the friends who were with me, without attracting observation. while awaiting me, you have formed good resolutions, and made your peace with god and your conscience. hold fast to them, my brother; be firm and brave. elevate your thoughts above things perishable, let your soul soar above the vanities of earthly existence, and you will find that spiritual joys will amply console you for the sorrows of earth. here is the money i have brought you, here are one hundred and twenty dollars. according to your calculation it will suffice to enable you to complete your studies, and give you a start in your career. take the money, my friend, and let us part." "part! without giving me the name of my benefactor and saviour?" asked theophilus, holding the hand, that had given him the money, firmly clasped in his own. "part! and may i never hope to see and thank you in the light of day?" "thank me, my brother, by being happy. bear the light of day within you, and then i shall be rewarded, then my memory will live in your heart. why should i tell you my name? i am your brother, let that suffice. go on your way, be just, and do good to others who are suffering and who are unhappy, as you were. this shall be my thanks: i say to you, with christ: 'what you do to the least of these my brethren, that you have done unto me.' bear this in mind!" the voice was silent; theophilus knew that he was again alone. he folded his hands, bowed his head, and prayerfully repeated the words, that, in the stillness of the night, and amid the rustling of the wind, had resounded on his ear like the solemn tones of an organ. "what you do to the least of these my brethren, that you have done unto me. bear this in mind!" "i will bear this in mind! i will endeavor to atone for the evil i have done! i dedicate myself to god's service. the holy crucifix, that illumines the surrounding darkness, has also illumined the darkness of my soul. i will go to cologne, and enter the seminary, in order that i may become a priest--a pious, humble priest of the church of god. farewell! earthly vanity, earthly pride, and earthly hope! i will be a priest of mercy, for god has shown me mercy, and sent an angel-messenger to save me. i will bear this in mind!" while theophilus was wending his way to dresden, schiller was journeying toward weimar in the stage-coach. after giving theophilus the money collected for him, schiller had hurried to the post-office, where his friends were waiting to take leave of him, and bid the traveller a last farewell. "farewell! we shall soon meet again; i will soon return!" cried schiller from the stage-coach, as it rolled out of the court-yard on through the city gate into the soft summer night. "charlotte is awaiting me!" murmured schiller, as he sank back on the hard cushions. "charlotte is awaiting me. she is the friend of my soul. our spirits belong to each other, and i will show my friend the wounds of my heart, in order that she may heal them with the balsam of tender friendship." but, strange to say, the nearer he came to his journey's end, the more joyfully his heart throbbed, the less painful its wounds became. "charlotte, dear charlotte, if i were but already with you! i feel that the fire which drove me from mannheim is not yet extinguished; a breath from your lips will suffice to kindle the spark into a conflagration." there is weimar! now the stage-coach has entered the city. schiller is on classic ground! on the ground where germany's greatest poets and intellects dwell. wieland and herder, bertuch and bode, dwell here; here are also many artists and actors of eminence, and here lives the genial duke charles august! and yet weimar is desolate, for goethe is not here; he left more than a year ago. schiller knew this, but what did he care now! he had so longed to tread this classic ground that his heart throbbed with joy at the prospect of seeing and becoming acquainted with the celebrated men whose works he had read with so much enthusiasm--whom he could now meet with the feeling that he was not unworthy of them, and that he also now filled a place in the republic of intellect. he had been occupied with these thoughts during the whole journey; but now they suddenly vanished. he thought only of madame von kalb, the friend he had not seen for two years--the friend whose dear lips had called him to her side in the hour of his deepest distress. he had taken lodgings in the chief hotel of the city; it was already quite late in the evening, so late that it seemed hardly proper to call on a lady. he would not remain in his solitary chamber, but would walk out, and at least look at the house in which she lived. if the lights had, however, not yet been extinguished, if she should still be awake-- he did not complete this thought, but sprang down the steps, ordered the servant, who was walking to and fro in the hall, to accompany him and show him the house in which madame von kalb lived, and rushed down the designated street with such long and rapid strides that the servant could scarcely follow him. there is the house in which madame von kalb lives, a modest little house at the entrance of the park. a light is still burning behind the basement windows, and he sees the shadow of a tall woman pass across the closed curtains. "that is her figure, i would recognize it among thousands! that is charlotte!" "i intend to enjoy this beautiful summer night in the park," said schiller, turning to the servant, with a hasty movement. "you may return, i will be able to find my way back, alone." as soon as the servant had vanished around the next corner, he walked up to the door and opened it very softly, in order that the bell above it might not betray his entrance. "i will take her by surprise," murmured he to himself; "i will see what effect my unexpected coming will have on my dear friend." the bell rang in such low tones that it could certainly not have been heard in the room. but a servant came forward from the back end of the hall. "i call at madame von kalb's request. she is in this room, is she not?" "madame von kalb is in. may i have the honor of announcing you?" "it is unnecessary, she is awaiting me. i can enter unannounced." he had uttered these words in subdued tones; charlotte must not hear him, must know nothing of his arrival until he stood before her. he opened the door noiselessly, closed it gently behind him, and now stood between the door and the heavy velvet curtain that hung over the entrance. he could, however, see his friend through an opening in the curtain. she sat reclining on the sofa, her beautiful eyes gazing dreamingly into empty space. her cheeks were pale with inward agitation, and a soft smile played about her lips. of whom was she thinking? of whom was she dreaming? "charlotte! dear charlotte!" she uttered a cry and sprang up from her seat. "charlotte, you called me to your side, and here i am! will you not welcome me?" she stood as though incapable of utterance, but the beautiful, the loved countenance, with its proud and noble expression, its rosy lips, and soft smile, was before him. before her stood schiller, whom she had yearned for since they last parted, whom she had loved ardently and faithfully for two long, long years, without having seen him. but, now he was there, he stood before her with extended arms. she thought nothing, she felt nothing more than that schiller had returned, and was once more at her side. happy, blissful reunion! "welcome, my schiller! welcome, friend of my soul!" she threw herself on his bosom, and he entwined his arms around her, as though they were two chains with which he intended to bind, and hold her forever. yes, forever! "tell me, charlotte, that you love me! utter the word which your lips refused to confess in mannheim. do not again drive me out into the darkness of life, as you did in mannheim. i am weary of wandering, and am disgusted with the world. you alone are true, in you only can i confide. accord me a home where i may lay down my head and rest. tell me, charlotte, that this is my heart's home. tell me that you love me? you do not reply, charlotte? why are you silent?" he opened his arms to release her, that he might look at her. but she did not raise her head, she still lay on his breast. she had fainted! he lifted her in his arms, carried her to the sofa, and knelt down beside her. as she lay there with closed eyelids, and pale lips, he bowed down over her and pressed his glowing lips to hers, entreating her to return to life. "charlotte, friend, awaken! forgive me for having dared to surprise you in the wilfulness of my happiness. return to me, friend of my soul! i will be quiet and gentle, will sit at your feet like a child, and be contented to look up at your dear countenance, and read in your eyes that you love me. open these dear eyes! soul of my soul, heart of my heart, let me hear your loved voice! give me a word of consolation, of hope, of love!" and charlotte, called by the voice she had longed to hear for two long years, awoke, and looked up lovingly into the countenance of him who was the sun of her existence. she entwined her arms around his neck and kissed his lips and his eyes. "i greet you, i kiss you, proclaimer of my happiness." "you must tell me that indeed you love me. my heart thirsts for these words; it is wounded and bleeding, and you must heal it. i will drink that oblivion from your lips, charlotte, that will make me forget all, save that you love me. it is disconsolate to be alone and unloved! i cling to your heart as the shipwrecked mariner clings to the flower thrown up before him by the waves, hoping thereby to save himself. charlotte, do not let me sink, save me! let me seek safety from the storm in the haven of your love! say that you will let me seek and find peace, enthusiasm, and happiness, in this longed-for haven." she threw her arms around his neck, and pressed a kiss on his forehead. "i love you, schiller, i love you; i have the courage to tell you so, and to break through all barriers, and place myself at your side. i have the courage to testify before the whole world, and even to confess to my husband: 'i love frederick schiller. our souls and hearts are bound together. tear them asunder, if you can!' i love you, and with that i have said all--have said, that i will be yours before god and man, and that nothing shall longer separate us." "and your husband?" asked schiller, anxiously. "he is a good and generous man," said charlotte, smiling. "he will not desire to hold me fettered to himself against my wish. our union was based on convenience and interest, and was never a happy one. we have lived together but little; our natures were entirely different. i have lived in retirement, while my husband has passed his time in luxury and amusements at the court of queen marie antoinette, where he is a welcome guest. we respect and esteem, but we do not love each other. when i confess my love and plead for a divorce, my husband will certainly give his consent. then i can belong wholly to the man i not only love, but so highly esteem that i joyfully dedicate myself to him until death, and even beyond the grave." "it shall be as you say, my friend," cried schiller, raising her hand to his lips. "nothing shall separate us, and even the king of terrors shall have no terrors for us; in the joyousness of our union of souls we will defy him. yes, we will defy death, and the whole world!" they kept their promises; they defied the whole world; they made no secret of their union of hearts; they denied to none that they were one and indivisible. charlotte had the heroism to defy the world and acknowledge her love freely. she had the courage to remain whole days alone with schiller in her little house. she held herself aloof from society, in order that schiller might read to her his two new novels, and, above all, his 'don carlos.' nor did she avoid being seen with him in public. how could she deny him before men, when she was so proud of him and of his love! she helped to adorn and make comfortable the little apartments he had rented; she sent him carpets, flower-vases, chairs, and many other things. she felt that she was his mother, his sister, his sweetheart, and his friend. in the ardor of her passion, she endeavored to combine the duties of these four persons in herself; she felt that the divine strength of her love would enable her to do so. in her confidence and guilelessness of heart, she never even asked herself this question: will the man i love be willing to rise with me in this whirlwind of passion, to soar with me from heaven to heaven, and to revel in ever-youthful, celestial thought and feeling, regardless of earthly mutability? together, they visited the heroes of art and literature in weimar, and, together, they drove out to tiefurt, where the duchess amelia had taken up her summer residence. the duchess gave the poet of "don carlos" and "fiesco" a cordial welcome. "i was angry with you on account of your 'robbers,' mr. councillor," said she, "nor was 'louise müllerin' entirely to my taste. but 'fiesco,' and, above all, 'don carlos,' have reconciled me to you. you are, in truth, a great poet, and i prophesy a brilliant future for you. remain here with us in weimar!" "yes, mr. schiller," cried the little maid of honor von göckhausen, as she stepped forward, courtesied gracefully, and handed him a rose, "remain in weimar. the muses have commanded me to give you their favorite, this rose, and to tell you, _sub rosa_, that weimar is the abode of the gods, and that the nine maidens would be well contented to remain here." "göckhausen, take care," said the duchess, laughing. "i will tell goethe what a fickle, faithless little thing you are. while he was here, my thusnelda's roses bloomed for him only, and for goethe only was she the messenger of the gods and muses. now, the faithless creature is already receiving messages from the muses for frederick schiller! but she is not to be blamed; the poet of 'don carlos' deserves homage; and, when even the muses worship goethe and schiller, why should not göckhausen do it also? do you know goethe?" "no, not personally," replied schiller, softly; "but i admire him as a poet, and i shall be happy if i can some day admire and love him as a man also." "you should have come earlier," sighed the duchess. "you should have made his acquaintance during the early days of his stay in mannheim. then, you would indeed have loved him. at that time, he was in the youthful vigor of his enthusiasm. it was a beautiful era when goethe stood among us, like the genius of poetry, descended from heaven, enflaming our hearts with heavenly rapture. he is still a great poet, but he has now become a man of rank--a privy-councillor! beware, my dear councillor schiller, lest our court atmosphere stiffen you, too, and rob your heart of its youthful freshness of enthusiasm. goethe was a very god apollo before he became a privy-councillor, and was entitled to a seat and voice in the state council. by all means avoid becoming a minister; the poet and the minister cannot be combined in one man. of this, goethe is an example." "no, he is not," cried göckhausen, eagerly; "goethe can be all that it pleases him to be. he will never indeed cease to be a poet; he is one in his whole being. poetic blood courses through his veins; the minister he can shake off at any time, and be himself again. this he proved some eighteen months ago, when he suddenly took leave of our court and all its glories, and fled from the state council, and all his dignities and honors, to italy. he cast all this trumpery of ducal grace behind him, and fled to italy, to be the poet by the grace of god only!" "see, my thusnelda has returned to her old enthusiasm!" cried the duchess, laughing. "that was all i desired; i only wished to arouse her indignation, and make her love for goethe apparent.--now, mr. schiller, you see what my thusnelda's real sentiments are, and how true she is to her distant favorite." "much truer, probably, than he is to his former favorites," said göckhausen, smiling. "men cannot be true; and i am satisfied that werther, if he had not shot himself prematurely, would subsequently have consoled himself, although the adored lotte was married, and could never be his. laugh on, duchess! i am right, nevertheless. is not goethe himself an example of this? did he not love charlotte von kästner? if he had shot himself at that time, he could not have consoled himself afterwards with charlotte von stein, to become desperate once more, and finally to take a pleasant and consolatory trip to italy, instead of leaving the world. truly, the charlottes are very dangerous to poets; but i would, however, advise each and every one of them to beware of falling in love with a poet, for--how forgetful i am! i beg your pardon, madame von kalb!" "why, my dear young lady?" "because i did not remember that you, too, were a charlotte," murmured the malicious maid of honor, meekly. von kalb laughed, but she was more subdued and thoughtful after this visit than usual. her eyes often rested on schiller with a peculiar, inquiring look, and when he sat at her side on the sofa that evening, she laid her hands gently on his shoulders and gazed intently into his countenance. "you love me, schiller, do you not?" "i love you, although you are a charlotte. that is the question you intended to ask, is it not?" she smiled and laid her head on his shoulder. "schiller, i would that our union of heart and soul had already received its indissoluble consecration. i would that my husband had already given his consent to a separation and i were wholly yours." "are you not truly and wholly mine? is not our union indissoluble? does not god, does not the whole world know that we are one and inseparable? does not society respect and treat our relation to each other with consideration for both of us? the people with whom we come in contact have the discretion to leave us when they observe that we wish to be alone. did not von einsiedel, who called on you this evening, leave again when the servant told him that i was with you? was not even the duchess amelia so considerate as to invite us together yesterday; for that she did so out of consideration for the relation existing between us, wieland told me.[ ] you see, therefore, my dearest friend, that no one doubts, or ignores our union." "why do you call me your dearest friend?" asked she, anxiously. "why? because you are. is it not your opinion, also, that friendship is the highest power of love?" she said yes, but she was very thoughtful after schiller had gone. "i would that my husband were here, and that the word of separation had already been spoken!" she murmured. several months passed before her husband arrived in weimar. madame had not been able to endure this uncertainty, this continued hypocrisy. she had written to her husband, confessing her love and her relation to schiller, and begging him, as her best friend, to give her his advice and to promote her happiness. her husband had replied at once as follows: "my dear friend, for the very reason that i am, as you say, your best friend, i will treat your letter as though i had not received it. it is obliterated from my memory, and i only know that i love and esteem you as the mother of my little boy, and that the dearest wish of my heart is your happiness. let us leave these little afflictions of the heart to time, the great healer. i am coming to weimar in a few months, and we shall then see if time has not exercised its healing properties on yourself and on the heart of an easily-excited poet. if this should not be the case, however, and you should then repeat the words written in your letter, it will still be time to see whether the desires of your heart can be gratified without detriment to our son's interests. let us, therefore, postpone the decision for a few months." he had also written to schiller, but without any reference to charlotte's communications. his letter was full of quite hearty sympathy, profound admiration for the poet, and earnest assurances of friendship. he concluded by announcing that he would come to weimar in a few months, and that schiller would find him ready to do him any service, and to make any sacrifice for him that the poet could expect at the hands of a friend. schiller folded the letter thoughtfully, and a glowing color suffused itself over his cheeks. "he will come," said he to himself, in a low voice. "it will be a strange meeting for me, i already blush with shame when i think of it. he loves me, he calls me his friend, and yet he knows all! will i really have the courage to demand this sacrifice of a friend, and--" asked he in a low voice--"and do i really so ardently desire this sacrifice? i came here to seek consolation from a dear friend, and i found love--love that has drawn me into the whirlpool of passion. we are both being driven around in its eddying circles, and who knows but that marriage is the sunken reef on which our hearts will ultimately be shipwrecked. save us from a violent end, thou spirit of the universe; save me from such an end, thou genius of poetry; let me fly to some peaceful haven where i can find safety from the storms of life! there is a mystery in every human breast; it is given to god only and to time, to solve it. let us, therefore, wait and hope!" when her husband arrived in weimar a few months afterward, this mystery seemed to have sunk deeper in charlotte and schiller's hearts; neither of them had the courage to lift the veil and speak the decisive word. charlotte was paler and quieter than usual, and her eyes were often stained with tears, but she did not complain and made no attempt to bring her husband to an explanation. only once, when she held her little boy, who had just recovered from an attack of illness, lovingly in her arms, her husband stepped up to her, and gave her a kind, inquiring look: "could you ever make up your mind to leave this child, charlotte--to deliver it over to the care of a stranger." "never, no, never!" cried she, folding her arms tenderly around her delicate little boy. "no, not for all the treasures--for all the happiness earth can offer, could i part with my darling child!" "and yet you would be compelled to do so, if you should lay aside the name your child's father bears," said her husband, gently. he made no explanation of his words, but his wife had well understood him, and also understood his intention when, after a short interval, he smilingly observed that he would now go to see schiller, and take a walk with his dear friend. when her husband had left the room she looked down at the pale child, who was slumbering in her arms. tears gushed from her eyes, and she folded her hands over her boy's head: "give us all peace, thou who art the spirit of eternal love! give us wisdom to discern truth and strength, to make any sacrifice in its behalf!" on the evening of this day, after a long walk which schiller had taken with charlotte's husband, and during which they had conversed on the highest intellectual topics only, schiller wrote to his bosom friend körner, in dresden: "can you believe me when i assert, that i find it almost impossible to write anything concerning charlotte? nor can i even tell you why! the relation existing between us, like revealed religion, is based on faith. the results of the long experience and slow progress of the human mind are announced in the latter in a mystical manner, because reason would have taken too long a time to attain this end. the same is the case with charlotte and myself. we commenced with a premonition of the result, and must now study and confirm our religion by the aid of reason. in the latter, as in the former case, all the intervals of fanaticism, skepticism, and superstition, have arisen, and it is to be hoped that we will ultimately arrive at that reasonable faith that is the only assurance of bliss. i think it likely that the germ of an enduring friendship exists in us both, but it is still awaiting its development. there is more unity in charlotte's mind than in my own, although she is more changeable in her humors and caprices. solitude and a peculiar tendency of her being have imprinted my image more firmly in her soul, than her image could ever be imprinted in mine. her husband treats me precisely as of yore, although he is well aware of the relation existing between us. i do not know that his presence will leave me as i am. i feel that a change has taken place within me that may be still further developed."[ ] chapter viii. goethe and moritz. "cheer up, my friend! grumble no longer! rejoice in life and throw off the burden of your cares! open your eyes and behold the beauties of the world created by the almighty spirit of the universe! we have studied and worshipped the immortal gods and immortal arts in rome--we have been living with the ancients; now let us live for a few days with eternal youth, with ever-fading, ever-blossoming nature! let us live like god's children in his glorious world!" it was goethe who spoke these words--not goethe, the secretary of legation, who, at the end of the year , had secretly withdrawn from his friends, and even from his beloved madame von stein, and fled to italy, the land he so ardently desired to visit. no, it was not that goethe, who, during the last months of his sojourn in weimar, had eschewed his youthful exuberance of feeling, his exaggerated manner, and his werther costume, and had assumed the grave dignified air which he deemed becoming in a high official! no, he who spoke these words, was the poet johann wolfgang von goethe, the poet who was once more himself, now that he sojourned under italy's glorious skies--the poet whose soul glowed with enthusiasm, and on whose lips inspiration trembled--the poet who sought the essence of the divinity in the least flower, and who saw the glory of his maker reflected in the countenance of each human being. this goethe it was who spoke these cheering, encouraging words. he addressed them to philip moritz, with whom he had been living in rome, and other parts of italy, for the last two years, and with whom he had rejoiced and sorrowed in many pleasures and vicissitudes. they had both come to italy to make new men of themselves. goethe, to become himself again--to become the original, creative genius. moritz, to heal his heart-wounds, and refresh his mind with the wonders of art and nature that abound for every man, who has eyes to see, in italy--this land of art and poetry. philip moritz had eyes to see, and the woman he loved had begged him not to close them, not to shut out from his vision the treasures which the god of creation and the gods of art had so plentifully bestowed upon this favored land. marie von leuthen was the woman of his love, and she it was who had entreated him to go to italy, that he might recover from the wounds life had inflicted, his grief be healed, and hope restored to his heart. "go," she had said to him, "italy and art will be a healing balm for your wounds. recover from them, and return after two years, renewed in mind and constant in heart, and i will give you a joyful answer if you then ask me if i love you." philip moritz had journeyed to italy as she bade him. on arriving in rome he learned that goethe had been in the city for some time. moritz at once sought out his adored poet, and since then they had been close comrades. he admired and worshipped goethe, who tenderly loved the friend (who was often so gloomy, and whose merriment was often exaggerated), in spite of his peculiarities. together they visited the treasures of art in rome; together they made excursions to the neighboring villages and places of interest, on foot or on horseback, as the case might be. on an excursion of this kind to frascati, moritz had been thrown from his horse, and had his arm broken. goethe had nursed him like a brother; for long days and weeks he had been the sufferer's only consoler and associate. "i have just left moritz," he wrote on one occasion to madame von stein. "the bandages were to-day removed from his arm, and it appears to be doing well. what i have experienced and learned at the bedside of this sufferer, in the last two weeks, may be of benefit to us both in the future. during this period he was perpetually alternating between the greatest misery and the highest delight."[ ] this "greatest misery" the poor hypochondriac had borne in silence. the "highest delight," he had shared with his happier friend, with goethe, the favorite of the gods. in the autumn they had both left rome, and gone out to castel gandolfo, to pay a visit to the house of a hospitable friend. many eminent poets and artists were sojourning at this charming place at that time. gayety and merriment was the order of the day. it was in vain that goethe endeavored to draw his friend moritz into this magic circle of enjoyment. it grieved him deeply to see his friend brooding over his studies, to see the sad and gloomy expression that rested on his features. goethe's entreaties and exhortations were at times successful in arousing him from this condition; but, after a short interval of forced gayety and mocking merriment, he would relapse into his ordinary state of silent melancholy. "let us live as god's children in his glorious world!" moritz raised his pale countenance from the book over which he had been brooding, and looked tenderly, and yet sadly, at goethe. "happy, enviable man," said he. "but who can feel and think as you do?" "you can, moritz, if you only try," cried goethe. "but, above all, tell me what burden is resting on your soul, and what these wrinkles on my friend's brow mean." "they mean that i have a sad presentiment," replied moritz, with a sigh, as he threw his book aside and rose from his seat. "i am angry with myself on this account, and i have sought to dispel this presentiment, but all to no purpose! the skies of italy are no longer serene, the whole world seems like a huge grave; of late, even rome's works of art have appealed to me in vain; my ear has been deaf to their sublime language." [illustration: goethe.] "but, speak out, growler, monster," cried goethe, impatiently, "what northern spleen has again penetrated your northern heart? what is the matter with you? what imps have taken up their abode in your brain? what crickets are fiddling in your ears, and transforming the author, the linguist, and the sage into a miserable, grief-stricken old woman, who shuffles along through god's beautiful world, and burrows in the ground like a mole, instead of soaring upwards to the sun like an eagle?" "corpo di bacco!" cried moritz, striking the table so furiously with his fists that he sent the books flying in every direction, and upset the ink-bottle, flooding his papers with its black contents. "corpo di bacco! enough of your ridicule and abuse! how dare you call me a miserable old woman, how dare you compare me with a mole? how dare you make yourself merry over my northern heart? you, above all, whose heart is a lump of ice, an extinguished coal, that even the breath of a goddess would fail to enkindle! if one of us is an iceberg, it is you, mr. johann wolfgang goethe! you are an iceberg, and your heart can never thaw again, but will remain coffined in an eternal winter. what do you know of the sufferings of a man who loves the fairest, the best, and the noblest of women, and who, tormented by terrible forebodings of her death, tears his own flesh with the serpent's tooth of care, and who is blinded by his grief to all the beauties of god's world!" "that is it," said goethe, heartily, "then i have attained my object. with the iron hammer of my abuse i have beaten on the anvil of your obdurate temperament until i have made the sparks fly and kindle a fire. that was all i desired, you overgrown, harmless child; i only called you an old woman in order to awaken the man in you, and i now beg your pardon a thousand times for this abuse. he who has seen the old shrews that infest the neighborhood of st. peter's, and has suffered from their visitations in the chiesa maria della pace, knows how terrible a creature such an old fright is, and how offensive it is to be compared to such a personage. i humbly beg your pardon, philip moritz, professor, sage, connoisseur of art, and first-class etymologist. but as for your presentiments and your fears that some evil may have befallen your sweetheart, permit me to say that they are only the vagaries of a lover who blows soap-bubbles into the air, and afterward trembles lest they should fall on his head as cannon-balls. why, in the name of all the saints, do you give vent to your yearnings in trumpet tones, and afterward consider them the death-song of your love? was it not agreed upon between you two lovesick children of affliction that these two years of your sojourn in italy should be a trial of your love and fidelity? was it not understood that you were not to exchange a single letter during this period?" "yes, that was our agreement," replied moritz. "marie would have it so; she wished to try me, to see whether i would remain faithful and constant in love, even among the glories of italy." "well, then! what is it that oppresses you? what do these lamentations signify? what are you afraid of?" "do not laugh, goethe," murmured philip moritz. "i will tell you, a dream has tormented and alarmed me; a dream that has returned to me for three successive nights. i see marie lying on her couch at the point of death, her cheeks pale and hollow, her eyes dim and fixed; old trude kneels at her side wringing her hands, and a voice cries in my ear in heart-rending tones: 'philip, my beloved philip, come! let me die in your arms.' this is the dream that has haunted me for three nights; these are the words that have each time awakened me from sleep, and they still resound in my ear when i am fully aroused." "dreams amount to nothing," said goethe, shrugging his shoulders, "and your faith in them proves only that cupid transforms even the most sensible men into foolish children, and that the wanton god can make even sages irrational." "i would he made you so, you mocker at love and marriage," rejoined moritz, grimly. "i would like to see you a victim of this divine madness. i trust that cupid, whom you deride, will send an arrow into your icy heart and melt it in the flames of infinite love-pains and heaven-storming longings! i hope to see you, the sage who has fled from all the living beauties, from all the living women here in italy, as though they were serpents of eden--i hope to see you compelled by one of them to eat of the apple, and experience the dire consequences! i hope--" "hold, rash mortal!" said goethe, interrupting him, with a smile. "you know that children and fools often speak the truth, and that their prophecies often become realities. it is to be hoped an all-kind providence will preserve me from a new love, from new flames. no, the fires of love have been extinguished in my heart; in the warm ashes of friendship that still remain, a spark may sometimes glimmer sufficiently to enable me to read the name of my beloved friend, charlotte von stein, engraven therein." "warm ashes of friendship, indeed!" observed moritz, in mocking tones. "a sorry tenant for the heart of the poet of werther." "really," cried goethe, "i believe this fellow would be capable of imploring the gods to visit a 'werthercade' upon me." "i not only would be capable of doing so, but i really will do so," rejoined moritz. "i entreat the gods to bless and curse you with a heaven-storming, bliss-conferring and annihilating love, for that is all that is wanting to drive the last vestiges of humanity out of you, and make of you a demi-god with a halo of love-flames around your semi-divine head. yes, wolfgang goethe, poet by the grace of god, to whom the immortal have vouchsafed the honor of creating an 'iphigenia' and an 'egmont'--yes, i hope that a glowing, flaming, and distracting love, may be visited upon you!" "that you should not do," said goethe, gently, "let me make a confession, moritz: i believe that i am not capable of such a love--am not capable of losing my own individuality in that of another. i am not capable of subjecting all other thoughts, wishes, and cravings, to the one thought, wish, and craving of love. perhaps this was at one time my condition, perhaps my werther spoke of my own life, and perhaps this tragedy was written with the blood of my heart, then bleeding for charlotte kästner. but you perceive that i did not shoot myself like werther. i have steeled my heart since then to enable it to rely on its own strength, and to prevent its ever being carried away by the storm of passion. i am proof against this, and will ever be so!" "to be in rome!" exclaimed moritz, "in rome, with a heart void of all save the ashes of friendship for charlotte von stein, and to remain cold and indifferent to the most beautiful women in the world!" "that is not true, that is calumny!" said goethe, smiling. "my heart is not cold, but glows with admiration and love for the noblest and loveliest woman, for the goddess of beauty, chastity, and virtue. she was my first love in rome, and will be my only love. i yearned for her until she at last yielded to my entreaties, and took up her abode in my poor house. yes, i possess her, she is mine! no words can give an idea of her, she is like one of homer's songs!"[ ] "i would like to know," cried moritz, in astonishment, "yes, really, i would like to know of whom you are speaking!" "i am speaking of her," said goethe, pointing to a colossal bust of the juno ludovisi, that stood on a high pedestal in a corner of the room. he approached the pedestal, looked up into the proud and noble countenance of the chaste goddess, and greeted her with a radiant smile. "i greet you, mysterious goddess, on whose brow love and chastity are enthroned! when i behold you i seem to hear words of revelation, and i then know that you reflect all that the fancy of the poets, the researches of the learned, and the piety of priests, ever thought or depicted that is sublime and beautiful. you are the blessing-dispensing isis of the egyptians, the venus aphrodite, and mother mary, all in one, and i stand before you in pious awe, adoring, loving and--" "holy mary! holy januarius!" screamed a voice from the doorway, and a woman, in the picturesque dress of an italian peasant, rushed into the room. "signori, signori, a wonder, a miracle!" "what do you mean, signora abazza?" asked goethe, laughing, as moritz, alarmed by the old woman's screeching, withdrew hastily to the window recess. "what do i mean?" repeated the old woman, as she sank breathlessly into a chair. "a miracle has occurred, signori! my cat is praying to god the father!" "how so, signora?" asked goethe, while moritz had abandoned his retreat and was slowly approaching the old woman, curiosity depicted in his countenance. "i mean just what i say, signori! i went to your bedchamber to make up the bed, and the cat accompanied me as usual. suddenly i heard a whining and mewing, and when i looked around, supposing she had hurt herself in some way, i saw her--but come and look yourselves. it is a miracle, signori! a miracle!" she sprang up, rushed to the door of the bedchamber, opened it, looked in, and beckoned to the two friends to approach. "softly, softly, signori; do not disturb her!" goethe and moritz walked noiselessly to the door, and looked into the adjoining room. there, on the antiquated wardrobe, opposite goethe's bed, and illumined by the sunlight that poured in through the broad window, stood the colossal bust of the almighty jupiter. in front of this bust, full of beauty and regal composure, stood madame abazza's gray cat, upright on her hind feet. she had laid her forepaws on the god's broad breast, and stretched her neck so that she could gaze into his majestic countenance, and touch with her tongue the lips with their godlike smile, and the beard with its curling locks. she kissed his divine lips ardently, and zealously licked his curly beard, stopping now and then to gaze for a moment at his royal countenance, and to utter a tender, plaintive mew, and then renewing her attention to beard and lips. goethe and moritz looked on with smiling astonishment, the old woman with pious dismay. "come to me, pussy," cried the signora at last; "come to me, my little pet, i will give you some milk and sugar; come!" but call and entreat as she would, the cat would not allow herself to be disturbed in her devotions, not even when goethe walked heavily through the room and stepped up to the wardrobe. she continued to kiss the god's lips and beard, and to utter her plaintive mews. signora abazza, who was standing in the door-way, with folded hands, now protested that the cat sang exactly like father ambrose when he officiated at the morning mass, and that her heart, the signora's, was filled with pious devotion. "i must, however, bring this cat-mass to an end," cried goethe, laughing, "for if the cat continues her devotions much longer, another miracle will take place: the divine locks will dissolve, and the lips, so expressive of wisdom and majesty, will be nothing more than shapeless plaster. halloo! father cat, away with you! you shall not transform the god into a lump of plaster!" with threatening tones and gestures he frightened the cat down from the wardrobe, and drove her out of the room. goethe and his friend then returned to the parlor. "wonders are the order of the day," said moritz, thoughtfully, "and we are surrounded by a mysterious atmosphere of dreams and tokens." "only when we are dreamers," cried goethe, laughing. "to the unbiassed there is nothing miraculous, to them all things seem natural." "how can you explain the cat's rapturous devotion?" "in a very prosaic, pitiful manner," replied goethe, smiling. "you know, exalted dreamer, that this bust was moulded but a few days ago, and you also know that grease was used to prevent the plaster from adhering to the form. some of this grease remained in the cavities of the beard and lips; the cat's fine sense of smell detected its presence, and she was endeavoring to lick it off."[ ] philip moritz raised his arms, and looked upward with comic pathos: "hear this mocker, this cold-hearted materialist, ye eternal, ye sublime gods! punish the blasphemer who mocks at his own poetic genius; punish him by filling his cold heart with a lost passionate love! cast down this proud poet in the dust, in order that he be made aware that he is still a mortal in spite of his poetic renown, and that he dare not attempt to hold himself aloof from human love and human suffering!--venus aphrodite, pour out the lava streams of your passion on this presumptuous poet, and--" "hold, hold!" cried goethe, laughing, as he seized his friend's arms, and forcibly drew them down. "you remind me of thetis invoking the wrath of the great zeus upon the head of the son he believed to be guilty, and to whom the god granted his cruel prayer." "signori, signori!" cried signora abazza from the outside. "come in, come in, signora! what is the matter this time?" "signore zucchi has arrived from rome with his divine signora," said the old woman, appearing in the doorway, "they inquired at the post-office for your letters and papers, as they promised to do, and here is the mail signora angelica has brought you." goethe hastily opened and examined the sealed package which she had handed him. "newspapers! newspapers!" exclaimed he, throwing the folded papers on the table. "i am surrounded by living nature, what care i for lifeless newspapers." "you will not read them?" said moritz. "you have no desire to learn what is taking place in the german empire, to learn whether the emperor has undertaken another campaign against presumptuous prussia or not?" "no, i wish to know nothing of war," said goethe, softly. "i am a child of peace. i wish eternal peace to the whole world, now that i am at peace with myself."[ ] "then permit me, at least, to interest myself in these matters," said moritz, taking one of the papers from the table and opening it. with a cry of joy goethe picked up the three letters that fell to the floor. "two letters for me! a letter from my charlotte, and one from my dear friend, herder! and here is a letter for you, friend moritz." "a letter for me!" said moritz, clutching and hastily opening the letter goethe held in his extended hand. "who can have written to me?" "read, my friend, and you will see. i will first read herder's letter, it probably contains his opinion of my 'egmont,' which i sent him some time ago." he seated himself at the little table, opposite moritz. both were soon busily reading, and goethe was so completely absorbed in his letter that he did not notice how pale moritz had become, and how the letter trembled in his hands; nor did he hear the deep sighs that escaped his lips. "i knew these fault-finders would not understand my clärchen; they demand another scene, explaining her relation to egmont. another scene! where am i to introduce it? where?" "goethe," said moritz, rising and handing the letter, which he had read again and again, to his friend, "goethe, read this, and then laugh at my dreams and presentiments, if you can." "what is it?" asked goethe, looking up. "but what is the matter with you, my friend? how pale you are, and how you tremble! tears in your eyes, too! have you received bad news?" "i have," groaned moritz. "marie is ill. read!" goethe took the letter and hastily glanced over it. it was from professor gedicke in berlin; he announced that marie leuthen had been ill for some time; that she had, at first, concealed her illness, but now admitted it, and expressed an ardent desire to see moritz. the physician had given it as his opinion that a reunion with her lover after so long a separation would have a beneficial effect on his patient, and infuse new life into her being; it was therefore considered desirable that moritz should speedily return to germany and berlin, to restore health and happiness to his beloved. "strange, truly strange!" said goethe. "your dream is being fulfilled, your presentiment has become reality." "fearful reality!" groaned moritz. "marie will die, i shall not see her again!" "no, oh no," said goethe, endeavoring to console him. "you take too gloomy a view of things; your fancy conjures up horrible visions. you will see her again. the magical influence of your presence, the heavenly fire of your love, will save her. women are generally such sensitively constituted beings that all ordinary laws are set at defiance when they love. they die of love, and they live on love. marie is ill because she longs to be with you; she will recover when she once more beholds you, and reads love and fidelity in your countenance." "marie will die!" groaned moritz. "god grant that i may, at least, arrive in time to kiss the last death-sigh from her lips!" "you are then about to take your departure? you will leave italy and return to germany?" moritz shrugged his shoulders. "truly, goethe, in this question i see that your heart is cold and loveless. i leave here within an hour!" goethe extended both hands, and his eyes shone with deep sympathy, as he gazed lovingly into his friend's pale countenance. "moritz, i am not cold and not loveless. i understand you. i appreciate your grief. i know that you must leave me, and must answer this call. do not misunderstand me, my friend, and when i subdue the holy flames, that glow in your soul and my own, with the prose of every-day life, remember that i have eaten much bitter fruit from the tree of knowledge, and that i anxiously avoid being poisoned in that manner again. but a blasphemer i am not, and be it far from me to desire to shake your resolution. love is the holy god who often determines our thoughts and actions, and love it is that calls you! go, my friend, answer this call, and may love console and give you heavenly delight. go! i will assist you in getting ready! we will go to work at once! the stage leaves here for rome in a few hours, and you will arrive there in time to take the mail-coach for milan this evening." goethe assisted his friend in preparing for his departure with such tender solicitude that moritz's eyes filled with tears at the thought of separation from his dear companion. angelica kaufmann, the celebrated painter, who had now been married to the artist, tucchi, for some months, sent twice to her friend goethe inviting him to take a walk, but in vain. it was in vain that a merry party of artists, who were sojourning in castel gandolfo, sang beneath goethe's window, and entreated him to join them in an excursion to the mountains, where they proposed to draw, paint, and amuse themselves till evening. goethe let them go without him and remained with his friend, endeavoring to console and encourage him. when the trunk was entirely packed, goethe quietly slipped a well-filled purse into the tray, hastily locked the trunk, and handed the key to moritz. "all is now ready, my friend. listen how our friend, the stage-driver, is cracking his whip and giving vent to his impatience, at the delay we have caused, in his charming italian oaths. we will promise him a gratuity, as an incentive to make him drive rapidly, to ensure your arriving in rome in time for the mail-coach." "may heaven grant that i arrive in berlin in time to find marie still living! this is all i crave! you see life has made me humble and modest; my life has been rich in misfortunes and poor in joys. i found two beautiful blossoms on my journey: marie's love and goethe's friendship. but i will lose them both; death will tread the one of these blossoms under foot, and life the other." goethe laid his hand gently on moritz's shoulder, and gazed into his countenance in deep emotion. "what fate has determined concerning the blossom of your love, that we must await with composure and resignation, for death is an almighty king, before whom the haughtiest head must bow in reverence. but the blossom of friendship which we have so tenderly nurtured, and which has so often cheered and refreshed our hearts--that blossom we will preserve and protect from all the storms of life. you may be right in asserting that the flames of love are extinguished in my heart, but the light of friendship is still burning brightly there, and will only expire with my death. be ever mindful of this, and, although you suppose me to be a cold lover, you shall never have cause to consider me a cold friend. let this be our farewell; ever bear this in mind." "this thought will console and encourage," said moritz, his eyes filling with tears. "all that i have enjoyed in these last few years that was good and beautiful, i owe to you, and have enjoyed with you alone! farewell, my pylades! i feel that, like orestes, i am being pursued by furies, and driven out into the world, to death and to despair! farewell, goethe!" they clasped each other in a long embrace, and then goethe led his friend down to the stage in silence. he gave the angry driver a gratuity, and pressed his friend's hand warmly in a last farewell. chapter ix. leonora. goethe stood for a long time on the steps in front of the house, following with his gaze the departing stage, and listening to the jingling of the little bells with which the horses were adorned. when this also had finally become inaudible, goethe turned slowly, a deep sigh escaping his lips, and reëntered the house. but his apartments seemed bare and solitary, and even the drawings and paintings which had usually afforded him so much pleasure, were now distasteful. he impatiently threw brush and palette aside and arose. "this solitude is unendurable," he murmured to himself, "i must seek company. i wish i knew where my merry friends have gone, i would like to follow them and take part in their merrymakings. but they will all have gone, not one of them will have been misanthropical enough to remain at home. i shall probably have to content myself with the society of signora abazza and her cat." with rapid strides he passed down the broad marble steps and out into the garden. here all was still and solitary. no human forms could be seen in the long avenues, bordered on either side with dense evergreen. no laughter or merry conversation resounded from the myrtle arbors. in vain the wind shook down the ripe fruit from the orange trees, the merry artists were not there who were in the habit of playing ball with the golden fruit. in great dejection goethe moved leisurely down the avenue which led to the large pavilion, built on a little hill at the end of the garden, and commanding a magnificent view of lake albano and its wooded shores. goethe walked slowly toward this point, regardless of his surroundings of the marble statues that stood here and there in niches hewn out of the dense evergreen, and of the murmuring of the neighboring cascades. the study of nature in all its details usually afforded him great enjoyment. he sought out its mysteries as well in mosses, flowers, and insects, as in the tall cypress, the eagle, and the clouds. but to-day, nature with all its beauties was unheeded by the poet, he was thinking of his absent friend; the words of separation still resounded in his ear. his mind was burdened with an anxious feeling like a presentiment of coming evil. but goethe was not the man to allow himself to be weighed down by sadness. he suddenly stood still, threw back the brown locks from his brow with a violent movement of the head, and looked around defiantly. "what misery do you wish to inflict on me, hollow-eyed melancholy," cried he, angrily. "where do you lie concealed? from behind which hedge have you fastened your stony gaze on me? away with you! i will have nothing to do with you; you shall not lay your cold, damp hand on my warm human heart. i will--" he suddenly ceased speaking, and looked up at the pavilion, astonishment depicted in his countenance. in the doorway of the pavilion, facing the garden, stood two girlish figures. a ray of sunshine penetrated the open window at the other end of the hall and illumined this door-way, surrounding these figures as with a frame of transparent gold, and encircling their heads with a halo of light. the one was tall and slender; the dark complexion, the brown cheeks, slightly tinged with crimson, the purple lips, the delicately-curved nose, the large, sparkling black eyes, the glossy black hair, and an inexpressible something in her whole appearance and expression, betrayed the roman maiden, the proud daughter of the cæsars. the young girl who stood at her side was entirely different in appearance. she was not so tall, and yet she was as symmetrical in form as the goddess ascending from the waves. her light hair fell in a profusion of ringlets around the brow of transparent whiteness, and down over the delicate shoulders that were modestly veiled by her white muslin dress. her large black eyes were milder than, but not so luminous as, those of her companion; her delicately-formed cheeks were of a rosier hue; an innocent smile played about her purple lips, and illumined her whole countenance. her lovely head rested on her companion's shoulder, and when she raised her right arm and laid it around her neck, the loose sleeve fell back and disclosed an arm of dazzling whiteness and rare beauty. they stood there in silence, surrounded by a halo of sunshine, looking dreamily around at the garden with its variegated autumnal hues. at the foot of the hill on which the pavilion was situated, stood goethe, his countenance radiant with delight, feasting his eyes on this charming picture. "apollo himself must have sent me this divine picture. i will engrave it deeply on my heart, that it may some day find utterance in living, breathing poetry. ye are the fair ones of whom my soul has of late been dreaming, whenever torquato tasso's image arose before my imagination. i will make you both immortal, at least in so far as it is given to the poet to make aught immortal. apollo, i thank thee for this apparition! these are my two princesses, my two leonoras, and here stands tasso, looking up to them with enraptured adoration! but, o ye gods, harden my heart against the flames of love, preserve me from tasso's fate!" "signor goethe!" exclaimed the roman maiden, who had just perceived the poet standing at the foot of the hill, as she stepped forward to the head of the stone stairway that led up to the pavilion. she stood there bowing her head in greeting, and beckoning to him to come up, while the fair-haired girl remained in the door, smiling at her friend's eager gestures. "come up, signore; mother is in the pavilion, and a party of friends will soon join us here; we shall then play and be merry." "yes, we shall play and be merry," cried goethe, as he rushed up the steps, and extended his hand to the fair friend who awaited him. "a greeting to you, beautiful amarilla, and many thanks for your kind invitation." signora amarilla grasped his hand cordially, and then turned to her friend, "leonora--" "leonora!" repeated goethe, startled, "the signora's name is leonora?" signora amarilla looked at him with astonishment. "yes, leonora. and why not? is this name so remarkable, so unheard of?" "no, not exactly that, and yet it is a remarkable coincidence that--" in her animation, amarilla took no notice of the words schiller had murmured, but ran to the door, grasped her friend's hand, and led her forward. the young girl seemed to follow her almost reluctantly; her lovely eyes were cast down, and a brighter color diffused itself over her cheeks. "leonora, this is the signore goethe, about whom i told you so much this morning--the signore who lives in rome, in the house adjoining ours, on the corso--the one to whom the artists recently gave the magnificent serenade that was the talk of all rome for three days. we supposed the signore to be a rich inglese, because he indulged in so costly a pleasure, but he tells us that he is only a poor german poet; this, however, i do not believe. but look up, leonora! look at the gentleman! he is an intimate acquaintance of mine, and i have already told you so much about him." while signora amarilla was laughing and speaking, with the unceasing fluency of tongue peculiar to the ladies of rome, leonora stood at her side, her eyes still cast down. goethe's gaze was fixed immovably on the beautiful vision before him. did his ardent gaze, or his glowing thoughts, exercise a magical influence over her? slowly she raised her head, and opened the large timid eyes, shaded with long black lashes, and looked at goethe. their glances met, and both started; the hearts of both beat higher. her cheeks glowed, his turned pale. he felt as though a whirlwind had arisen in his heart, and was carrying him he knew not where, either heavenward or into an abyss. his head swam, and he staggered back a step; she grasped her friend's hand, as if to sustain herself. signora amarilla had observed nothing of this mute greeting and interchange of thought; she chatted away merrily. "now, signore goethe, permit me to introduce this young lady; you will have great cause to be thankful for the honor conferred on you. this is my dear friend signora leonora bandetto. her brother is the confidential clerk in the business establishment of mr. jenkins. he was very homesick, and longed to be with his family in milan. as he could not conveniently leave rome, he begged that his sister leonora might be permitted to come on to live with him and take charge of his household. the most beautiful daughter of milan came to rome in answer to this appeal. i made her acquaintance at a party at mr. jenkins's, and we became friends. we love each other tenderly, and i stormed signore bandetto with entreaties until he consented to lend me his sister for a few weeks. leonora came to castel gandolfo to-day, and will spend two weeks with us, two heavenly weeks. this is the whole story, and now let us go into the pavilion." she tripped gayly toward the door, leading her friend by the hand; goethe followed them slowly, his breast filled with strange emotions. at the entrance they were received by signora amarilla's mother, who was surrounded by a number of young ladies who had just arrived. several young gentlemen, artists and poets, soon joined the party; the little pavilion was now the scene of great gayety. laughter and jesting resounded on all sides; and, finally, the game of lotto, the favorite game of the romans, and the occasion of this little gathering, was commenced. poor moritz, poor friend, who is journeying toward rome in sadness, it is well that you cannot look back at this scene! it is well that you cannot see the friend for whom your heart is sorrowing, seated between the two lovely women, between amarilla and leonora, laughing and jesting with the former, but having eyes and thoughts for leonora only! it is well, poor moritz, that you cannot see goethe's eyes kindling with rapture, and his countenance radiant with enthusiasm, as he laughs and jests, the youngest among the young, the gayest among the gay! it is now signora amarilla's turn to keep the bank. goethe is her partner; he divides his money and winnings with her, but the losses he bears alone. the beautiful amarilla's mother, who is seated in front of them on the other side of the long table, looks on with great content, laughs heartily at signore goethe's jokes, and rejoices at the bank's success, because her daughter's little treasure increases. but a change comes over her countenance, her dark eyes no longer sparkle with delight. this change is evidently owing to the fact that signore wolfgang goethe has dissolved the partnership that existed between himself and her daughter; he tendered his services as partner to leonora, and is accepted. not being familiar with the game, she allows goethe to guide and direct her. she is fast losing her timidity, and is already conversing quite gayly and confidentially with the signore who eagerly gratifies all her little wishes. the right to keep the bank now passed from leonora to her neighbor. goethe, however, did not offer to be her partner too, but quietly retained his place between the two lovely girls. while amarilla, with all the animation of her southern nature, gave her exclusive attention to the game, while all the players were anxiously listening to the numbers as they were called out, and covering them on their cards with little squares of glass, goethe sat leaning back in his chair, gazing into the beautiful countenance of his neighbor, who no longer desired to take part in the game, but preferred to cease playing, as she told goethe naively, rather than run the risk of losing the two scudi she had already won. "signore, we must not tempt fortune," said she, as she raised the little coins, which amounted to two scudi in value, in her delicate little hands, and then let them fall one by one into her lap. unconscious of what she was doing, she continued to play with the little bajocchi and paoli, raising and letting them fall again and again into her lap. goethe smilingly regarded the beautiful hands as they toyed with the little coins, and thought of correggio's celebrated painting of danaë and the shower of gold. the thought occurred to him: "it is well that the gods no longer roam the earth tempting innocence with such a shower! could this lovely child also have been ensnared by the shower of gold?" "you laugh, signore," said leonora, looking earnestly at goethe; "you laugh, but it is, nevertheless, true! we must not tempt fortune; we are sure to suffer when we confide in fortune." "is fortuna so bad a goddess?" asked goethe, smiling. "fortuna is no goddess," replied leonora, earnestly; "fortuna is a demon, signore. she is the daughter of the tempter who spoke to the mother of mankind in the garden of eden. if we listen to her words and allow ourselves to be ensnared by her allurements, our good thoughts vanish, and we are led astray." "you calumniate the noble goddess, signora. you are doubly unjust to fortuna; has she not smiled on you to-day, and are not your thoughts good and innocent?" "i, myself, am a proof that she is a temptress, a demon," said leonora, eagerly, but in a subdued voice. "i will tell you my thoughts, signore; there is something in your eyes that compels me to confess the truth. listen, signore. when i, thanks to your good advice and skill, had won the first few paoli, i rejoiced over my fortune and thought to myself: 'i will give these to theresa, the old woman i see on the steps of the santa marie della pace, every morning when i attend mass at this church.' old theresa invariably stretches out her withered, trembling hand, and i am so rarely able to give her any thing, for my brother is not rich, signore, and we are compelled to economize his earnings. it always grieves me to have to pass by the poor woman without giving her any thing. i rejoiced over the first few paoli i had won, calculating that i could have them changed into copper coins and give theresa one each day for a whole week. at this moment you handed me a few more paoli, telling me that i had already won an entire scudo. but what followed! old theresa's image vanished from my heart; it occurred to me that my brother had recently wished for a new cravat, and that i could now purchase it with my scudo. you are laughing at me, signore, are you not? you are right; it is very bold in me to impart my foolish, girlish thoughts to so wise a gentleman as yourself." "no, signora, i am not laughing at you," said goethe, in such tender tones that she looked up in surprise and listened attentively, as though his words were sweet music. "i was only amused because your own words rebutted your accusations against fortuna. the goddess has awakened good thoughts only in your bosom!" "but i have not yet finished, signore! only wait a little! my old beggar-woman was forgotten, and i had determined to devote my scudo to the purchase of the silk cravat for my brother. but i won, again and again, and you poured the little paoli into my hand, and observed laughingly: you are now rich, signora, for you have already won more than two scudi! your words startled me; i now heard a tempting voice whispering in my breast: 'play on, leonora; play on. win one more scudo, and then you will have enough to buy the coral earrings you recently admired so much, but were unable to buy. play on, leonora; win money enough to purchase this jewelry.' i was about to continue playing, thinking neither of the old woman nor of my brother, but only of my own desires. but i suddenly remembered the last words my confessor, father ignatio, had spoken to me in milan when i took leave of him. he said: 'my child, when you hear the tempter's voice, pray for strength to resist his allurements;' and i did pray, signore. while we were praying, i vowed to the holy virgin that i would not purchase the jewelry, but would expend my scudi for my brother and my poor old theresa only. i will keep my vow. now you will admit that fortuna is a demon, a daughter of the temptress who spoke to our mother eve, and was the cause of the expulsion of mankind from paradise, will you not?" goethe did not reply; with an inward tremor that was inexplicable to himself, he gazed at the lovely being whose cheeks were flushed with animation, and whose countenance shone with the holy light of purity and innocence. her sweet voice still rang in his ear after she had ceased speaking. "confess, signore!" repeated leonora, eagerly. goethe gave her a look of infinite mildness and tenderness. "signora, you, at least, are still in paradise, and may the avenging angel with the flaming sword never touch the pure brow which the angel of innocence has kissed and sanctified." "we have finished, the game is at an end!" cried the imperious voice of amarilla's mother. in the bustle which ensued, leonora, who was listening breathlessly, failed to catch the words which goethe added in a low tone. the company had arisen from the table, and formed little groups in various parts of the pavilion. goethe had stepped to an open window and was looking out at the lake, that glittered in the last rays of the setting sun. suddenly a hand was laid heavily on his shoulder; he slowly turned and saw signora frezzi, amarilla's mother, standing at his side. her countenance was grave, her brow clouded, and the accustomed smile was wanting on her lips. "signore goethe, you are a stranger, and are, of course, not familiar with the usages of our favored land," said she, in subdued, reproachful tones. "have i sinned, signora?" asked he, gayly. "have i been guilty of an impropriety?" "yes, signore, you have, and as amarilla's mother, i must say that i cannot suffer the innocent child to be affronted." "but, signora," he asked, in alarm, "how can i have affronted your daughter?" "i will tell you, signore. you have known my daughter since your concert in rome, and, when we met here in castel gandolfo a week ago, you showed a disposition to cultivate her acquaintance. since then you have been her companion on all our walks and excursions. it is recognized as your right by all our friends and acquaintances, and no one would dream of attempting to take your place at her side. it is a good old custom for each young lady and gentleman to select a special friend during their summer sojourn in the country. it binds the young lady and gentleman who have associated themselves in this manner, to the most enduring and delicate attentions to each other until they return to rome, when, of course, all obligation ceases." "what impropriety have i committed?" "this impropriety, signore: for the last week you have been recognized by every one as the _amico_ of my daughter, and now, when you have scarcely made the acquaintance of her friend leonora, you transfer the attentions hitherto shown to my daughter to this young lady. this is not proper, signore, and i must request you--" "i have a request to make of you first, signora," said goethe, interrupting her in severe and imperious tones. "i must request you not to forget that i am a stranger, and cannot give up the customs and usages of my own country. in germany it is customary for gentlemen to be polite to all ladies. this, it seems to me, is better and more agreeable than to show exclusive attention and devotion to _one_ lady to the neglect of all others. you will have to permit me to pursue the course i deem the most proper." he left her side, and walked through the pavilion to the bay-window in which the two young ladies were standing. they both smiled as he approached. amarilla had just broken off a twig of blooming myrtle from the vine that clung to the lattice-work of the pavilion, and was fastening it in leonora's hair. she pointed proudly to her friend: "see how beautiful she is, signore! does she not look like the goddess of love with the flowers of love in her hair?" leonora blushed and turned her head hastily toward the open window. the myrtle fell from her hair to the floor, at goethe's feet. he stooped down and picked it up. his heart beat tumultuously, and a feeling of wondrous delight ran through his whole being as he handed it to amarilla to be replaced in leonora's hair. "how long will it be," said amarilla, smiling, as she again fastened the myrtle in her friend's hair; "how long will it be before i adorn this golden hair with a real bridal wreath!" she looked smilingly at goethe as she uttered these words, and this look made his heart quake. how composed this heart had hitherto been since his sojourn in italy! how carefully had goethe avoided awakening it from this state of dreamy repose! how sedulously had he avoided women, living only for art and nature! now, when he hardly knew that he had a heart, it suddenly beat tumultuously, and filled his breast with all the sweet sensations and stormy desires of former days! he was so astonished and bewildered by this revelation, that he was unable to take part in the conversation going on around him, or to appear indifferent to this charming girl. he left the pavilion and sought out the most solitary part of the park, where he walked to and fro for hours, listening to the sweet voices that were whispering in his soul. he smiled when he remembered how moritz had entreated the gods to melt his icy heart; his friend's wish was being gratified in a charming manner! "i thank you, ye eternal gods, for having accorded me this highest revelation of poetry here in italy; i thank you for having enkindled in my heart the holy flames of love. i laughed at you, venus aphrodite, and you are punishing the sinner with your sweetest wrath; you are permitting him to feel that undying youth is still glowing in his bosom. for love is eternal youth, and i love! yes, i love!" it was late at night, and his friends had long since retired to rest, but goethe was still walking to and fro in the gloomy avenues of the park--in the avenues in which the pious fathers of the order of the holy ignatius had formerly wandered, forming plans to divert the power and glory of the whole world into their hands. the palace that now belonged to the wealthy mr. jenkins had formerly been the summer residence of the general of this order. the monastery was situated at the other end of the park. pope urban had once walked arm in arm with his friend the jesuit general in these avenues, and together they had considered how they were to subjugate princes and nations, and make themselves masters of the world. goethe thought of this as he stepped into the main avenue, and saw before him the grand old palace. "truly," murmured he, "this is the work of the holy fathers. they have thrown a jesuit's cloak over the mischievous god. in this disguise, he has dogged my footsteps, and, while i fondly believed myself to be conversing with an honest priest on learned topics, this impudent knave has so bewitched me that i have abjured all wisdom, and am about to become a fool among fools." "but what is to come of this, you fool?" asked he of himself. "where is your love for this beautiful child to lead you?" he listened, as if expecting an answer from the night wind that rustled by. he looked up at the moon, to see if a solution of this mystery of the future could be found in its shining countenance. in his heart the mocking words of his own song were all the while ringing, singing, and laughing in low tones: "heirathen, kind, ist wunderlich wort, hör' ich's, möcht ich gleich wieder fort!"[ ] he repeated these words again and again, as he slowly walked toward the house, endeavoring to convince himself that they embodied his own sentiments. but the moonbeams are strange sorcerers; over the glittering waters of the murmuring cascades, and in every open myrtle-blossom, he saw the countenance of a lovely girl, who seemed to greet him with her dark, starlike eyes, and whose golden hair encompassed her angel countenance as with a halo of beauty and innocence. goethe smiled, and whispered the following lines of the same song: "heirathen wir eben, das übrige wird sich geben!"[ ] chapter x. a dream of love. strong and mighty, harnessed, and full of life, as minerva had sprung forth from the head of jupiter, had love suddenly arisen in goethe's heart. a single day had awakened it, a single night had sufficed to make it strong, mighty, and confident of victory. when goethe, after having passed a night of delightful dreams, left his apartments on the following morning, and repaired to the large saloon in which the jesuit general had formerly entertained his devout guests, and in which merry artists and men of the world, and joyous and beautiful women, were now in the habit of assembling, his countenance wore a glad smile. he had bravely resolved to permit himself to be borne onward on the seething, silver waves of feeling, regardless of whither they tended--satisfied that they would bear him to some one of the enchanted isles of bliss, on the fragrant shores of which two white arms would embrace him, and two radiant eyes would whisper wondrous music in his listening heart. he was alone in the large room. the artists had returned at a late hour from their excursion of the previous day, and had not yet left their apartments. angelica kaufmann, who, with her husband, the old painter zucchi, was always the first to take her seat at the breakfast-table, had to-day sent down word that she was tormented with headache, and would breakfast in her apartments. signora frezzi avoided the parlor, because she did not desire to meet goethe, whose abrupt behavior of the day before had offended her. the newspapers that had arrived yesterday were lying around on the little tables. goethe seated himself at one of these tables, and opened one of the large english papers which are so great a solace to the blue-eyed daughters of albion. two joyous, girlish voices interrupted his reading, causing him to throw his paper hastily aside, and sending the hot blood to his cheeks. the voices were those of amarilla and leonora, who had come from the park, and now entered the parlor. they were attired in simple morning dresses, and looked charming with their fresh, rosy cheeks, and the blossoming sprigs of pomegranate in their waving hair. amarilla's quick, roving eye detected goethe first, and she uttered a joyous greeting as she hurried forward with extended hands. leonora stood at a distance, but her smiling lips and the timid glance of her large eyes were more eloquent than amarilla's words could possibly be. he stepped forward and extended his hand to leonora, and, when she laid her little hand in his, timidly, and yet with an expression of childlike confidence, his soul exulted, his heart overflowed with joy, and his countenance beamed with delight. amarilla did not observe this, as she was busily engaged in pouring out the coffee at one of the tables. leonora turned pale under goethe's glances, blushed, and then turned pale again, and withdrew her hand with a quick, convulsive movement. she slowly raised her eyes, and looked at goethe so reproachfully, so anxiously, that a tremor of joy and emotion ran through his whole being. "be firm, my heart, do not yield so soon to this sweet enchantment! first inhale the fragrance of this purple blossom which we call love, before you pluck it and press it to your heart. be firm, and enjoy the pure delight of the dawning sunlight!" she glided slowly from his side, and now, when she stood at the table assisting amarilla, her anxious look vanished; the timid little dove felt safe under the protecting wing of the older and stronger dove; she had instinctively heard the rustle of the falcon's wings, but now that she was at the side of her sister dove she no longer feared. leonora smiled again, took part in the merry conversation which amarilla had begun with signore wolfgang, and seated herself at his side at the breakfast-table, which amarilla had arranged for the three. it was a beautiful morning; the fresh breeze wafted clouds of fragrance into the room through the broad, open glass doors; the rustling of the orange and myrtle trees, and the murmuring and plashing of the cascades, greeted the ear like soft music. to goethe, the two lovely girls between whom he sat seemed as bright and fair as the morning. their ingenuous conversation seemed to him more charming and instructive than any conversation he had ever had with the most intellectual women, or the greatest scholars on the most profound subjects. his attention was, however, chiefly directed to the fair daughter of milan, the maiden with the light hair, dark eyes, and the delicate, transparent cheeks--the maiden, whose countenance was but the mirror of her soul, the mirror in which her every thought and impulse was reflected. amarilla had taken one of the english newspapers, had folded it into a cap in imitation of the _fazzoletta_ of the albanian peasant-women, and placed it jauntily on her pretty head. she was dancing around in the room, and singing in a low voice to the melody of the tarantella, one of those little love-ditties which gush so harmoniously from the lips of italian maidens. "she flies about like the bee, sipping sweets from every blossom, and fancies the world a vast flower-garden, created only for her delight." "are you of that opinion, beautiful leonora?" asked goethe, with a tender glance. she shook her head slowly. "no," said she; "i know that both the bee and the flower are of but little importance in the great economy of the universe. i often think," she continued, in a low voice, and with a charmingly thoughtful air, "i often think that we poor, simple girls are nothing more in the sight of god than the bee and flower, and that it is immaterial whether we live or die." "you have too poor an opinion of yourselves," said goethe, in low and impassioned tones. "you do not know that the almighty sometimes takes pity on men, and sends an angel of innocence, grace, and beauty, to console the human soul and refresh the human heart. you do not know that you are such an angel to me!" she shook her lovely little head dissentingly. "i only know, signore, that i am a poor ignorant girl, and that i often long to cast off my stupidity, and be able to understand what wise men say. it is, however, not altogether my own fault that i am so stupid, that--" "you are unjust to yourself," cried goethe, interrupting her; "you should not confound the divine ignorance of innocence with stupidity." "i speak the truth only," rejoined leonora; "and you see that i am attempting to excuse myself by telling you that it is not wholly our own fault that we are so foolish and ignorant. our parents and instructors, in their anxiety for our welfare, fear to open our eyes, believing it best that a girl should learn and know nothing. they do not teach us to write, because they fear that we would do nothing but write love-letters; nor would they teach us to read, if it were not to enable us to use our prayer-books. we are scarcely taught to express ourselves well in our own language; and it occurs to none to have us instructed in foreign languages, and give us access to the books of the world."[ ] "would you like to be able to read in these books of the world, leonora?" "i would give all i possess to learn english! whenever i hear mr. jenkins and my brother, or madame zucchi and her husband, conversing in english, it makes me feel sad, and a feeling of envy comes over me that i never experience at other times. see, signore, amarilla has made a _fazzoletta_ from one of these large english papers, and is skipping around with it on her head, while i--i would give every thing to be able to read and understand what is written in the papers, which i know bring us intelligence from the whole world." "you say you would give every thing to be able to read these papers? what will you give me if i teach you how to do so?" "do teach me," she cried, clapping her little hands joyfully; "oh, do teach me! i will be so thankful, so very thankful! you will make me so happy, and i know that you are noble and generous, and will find your best reward in having made a poor ignorant girl happy." "do you, then, really believe me to be so disinterested, signora?" asked goethe, gazing earnestly into her animated countenance. "no, leonora, you are mistaken in me! i am not so godlike as you suppose!" at this moment the ringing tones of amarilla's voice were wafted in from the terrace. she was singing to the charming air so well known to every italian maiden and youth, and so familiar even to the orange groves and flowers, because they have so often heard it resounding from the cooing, exulting lips of lovers: "io ti voglio ben' assai ma tu non pens' a me!" alarmed by the impassioned tones of goethe's voice, leonora turned her head quickly toward the terrace. she smiled when she saw amarilla skipping about from tree to tree, singing like a humming-bird, as she plucked a blossom or a sprig here and there, and arranged them into a bouquet. "see, signore," whispered leonora as she raised her delicate little hand and pointed to her friend. "i told you before that we were not taught how to write, for fear that we would write love-letters. see what we poor ignorant girls resort to when we wish to write a love-letter. instead of using the letters of the alphabet we take flowers, that is the whole difference." "do you mean to say that amarilla is writing a love-letter with her flowers?" "be still, do not betray her, signore. look down, that no profane glance may desecrate the letters which god and the sun have created!" "but i may look at that young man who is stealing out from behind the evergreen-hedge, may i not?" "of what young man are you speaking?" asked leonora, in alarm. "of the young comaccini, who is cautiously peering through those bushes, and for whom the fragrant love-letter, which amarilla holds aloft so triumphantly, is probably intended." "no, do not look that way, signore," cried leonora, with an air of confusion, as she hastily took one of the papers from the table and handed it to goethe. "you said you would teach me to read these papers, to make out these difficult english words. please do so, signore. i will be a very thankful scholar!" goethe smiled as he took the paper and unfolded it. he had laid his left arm on the back of the chair, in which leonora sat; with his right hand he held the paper before her lovely countenance. he began to read and translate, word for word, the passage at which her rosy finger pointed. she listened with breathless attention, utterly unconscious that their heads were side by side, that her cheeks almost touched his, and that her fair, fragrant hair was intermingled with his brown locks. her whole soul was filled with the determination to impress each word that goethe uttered indelibly on her mind. her glances flew like busy bees from the paper to his lips, unconscious that they bore a sting which was infusing sweet poison into the heart of her zealous teacher. to be the teacher of a beautiful young girl is a dangerous office for a man who is young, and impetuous, and whose heart is not preoccupied. to read out of one book, cheek by jowl, so near to each other that the breath of his lips is mingled with hers, and that he can hear her heart's quick throbs--when has a woman done this with impunity, unless it was her lover or her husband with whom she was reading! francesca da rimini would not have been murdered by her jealous husband, if she had not read launcelot with her handsome brother-in-law paolo malatesta. "one day we were reading for our delight, of launcelot, how love did him enthrall; alone we were and without any fear, full many a time our eyes together drew, that reading, and drove the color from our faces; but one point only was it that o'ercame us, when as we read of the much longed-for smile, being by such a noble lover kissed, this one, who ne'er from me shall be divided, kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating. galeotto was the book and he who wrote it, that day no further did we read therein."[ ] they too were reading for their delight, and were alone without any fear. amarilla sang and danced about on the terrace, and paid no attention to the two who were sitting so close together and studying the english newspaper so earnestly. the passage at which leonora pointed, chanced to be the simple, touching history of a young man and a girl who loved each other devotedly, but could not be united because the man was already married. the girl, unable to conquer her love, and yet tormented with remorse and anguish, had buried her love and her sorrows in the dark waters of the thames. her lover poisoned himself when he learned the sad intelligence, leaving a letter, in which he begged that they might be permitted to rest in one grave. leonora's attention was so entirely absorbed in the translation of the separate words that the meaning of what they were reading escaped her. in breathless excitement she listened to the words of glowing passion that fell from her teacher's lips, and stored them away in her memory, as newly-acquired precious treasures. she cried out with delight, when, after they had translated the passage for the second time, she succeeded in comprehending its meaning, and could render whole sentences and periods in her own language. she was so beautiful in her innocent joy, her countenance was so animated, her eyes so radiant, the smile on her lips was so charming, that a tremor of delight ran through goethe's being as he gazed at the fair creature. he said to himself that it must be enchanting to open the treasures of knowledge to this charming child of nature, and to learn from her while giving her instruction. they were still absorbed in the english lesson, and did not observe that the door was noiselessly opened, and that a young man with a merry countenance and bright smile appeared on the threshold. but, when he saw the two, seated side by side, shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek, she gazing fixedly at the paper, he regarding her with an expression of passionate tenderness--when the young man saw this, his merry expression vanished, and he cast a look of anger and hatred towards the readers. leonora had just succeeded in translating the whole narrative, unassisted by her teacher, and now uttered the concluding words in a loud voice: "they found it sweeter to die in love than to live without love!" the pale young man with the angry countenance slowly withdrew, closing the door as noiselessly as he had before opened it. they observed nothing of this, and continued reading until a number of their friends and acquaintances entered the room, when they laid the paper aside, with a sigh and a mutual look of regret and tenderness. the servants now appeared and were soon hastily engaged in preparing the breakfast table for the numerous guests who were sojourning in the house. angelica kaufmann, who had just entered the room on mr. jenkins's arm, stepped forward and greeted goethe, cordially, mildly reproaching him with having neglected and forgotten her. goethe replied to this reproach, but not in his usual gay and unrestrained manner, and her keen glance detected a change in his countenance. "one of the muses or goddesses of olympus has paid you a visit this morning," said she. "her kiss is still burning on your cheeks, and the heavenly fire is still flaming in your eyes. tell me, my friend, which muse or which goddess was it that kissed you?" "why must it have been an immortal woman, angelica?" asked goethe, laughing. "because no mortal woman can touch your hard heart. you know your friend moritz always called you the polar bear, and maintained that you had an iceberg in your breast instead of a heart. he was right, was he not?" "woe is me, if he was not, but is to be!" sighed goethe, thinking of the dire visitation moritz had called down upon his head. breakfast was announced, and the guests began to seat themselves at the table. the place of honor was generally conceded to be at goethe's side, mr. jenkins therefore requested angelica kaufmann to take the seat on goethe's right hand. while he was looking around, considering to whom he should accord the second place of honor on goethe's left, leonora stepped forward and quietly seated herself in the coveted place at her instructor's side. "i cannot separate myself from you, maestro," said she, smiling. "you must repeat, and explain to me, a few words of our lesson. only think, i have already forgotten the sentence which commences: 'sweet it is to die in love.'" angelica's astonished look convinced goethe that she had heard these words, and this confused him. his embarrassed manner, when he replied to leonora, betrayed to angelica the mystery of his sudden change of color when she had first spoken to him on entering the room. "i was mistaken," said she, in a low voice, and with her soft smile, "it was not a goddess or a muse who visited you. the god of gods himself has kissed your heart and opened your eyes that you might see." yes, these flaming eyes did see, and love had softened the poet's hard heart with kisses. his soul was filled with rapture as in the days of his first boyish love; every thing seemed changed--seemed to have become brighter and fairer. when he walked in the park with his friends after breakfast it seemed to him that his feet no longer touched the earth, but that his head pierced the heavens, and that he beheld the splendor of the sun and the lustre of the stars. he had gone to the pavilion, where he had first seen leonora, hoping to find her there now. amarilla had drawn her aside, after breakfast, and whispered a few words in her ear. goethe had seen her shudder, turn pale, and reluctantly follow her friend from the room. he hoped to find her in the pavilion. she was, however, not there; a few groups of ladies and gentlemen were standing at the open windows, looking at the beautiful landscape. goethe stepped up to one of these windows and gazed out at the lovely lake with its rippling waves and wooded banks. it had never before looked so beautiful. he did not view this picture with the eye of an artist, who desires to reproduce what be sees in oil or aquarelle, but with the eye of an enraptured mortal, before whom a new world is suddenly unfolded, a world of beauty and of love.[ ] suddenly he heard amarilla's merry, laughing voice, and his heart told him that she also was near--she, the adored leonora! goethe turned towards the entrance. yes, there was leonora; there she stood on the threshold, at her side a young man, with whom she was conversing in low and eager tones. "here you are, signore goethe," cried amarilla, stepping forward. "we have been looking for you everywhere, we--" "signora," said goethe, interrupting her, and laying his hand gently on her arm, "pray tell me who that young man is with whom your friend leonora is so eagerly conversing?" "we have been looking for you to tell you this, and to make you acquainted with young matteo. he has come to tell leonora that the rich old uncle whose only heir he is, has suddenly died, and that no impediment to his marriage now exists." "what does it concern your friend whether this mr. matteo has grown rich, and can now marry or not?" "what does it concern her?" said amarilla, laughing. "well, i should think it concerned her a great deal, as she is betrothed to this mr. matteo, and their marriage is to take place in a week." not a muscle of his face quivered, not a look betrayed his anguish. he turned to the window, and stared out at the landscape which had before shone so lustrously in the bright sunlight. how changed! all was now night and darkness; a film had gathered over his eyes. while he stood there, immovable, transfixed with dismay, he observed nothing of the little drama that was going on behind him; he did not feel the earnest gaze of the two pairs of eyes that were fastened on him: the eyes of leonora, with tender sympathy; the eyes of the young man, with intense hatred. "i saw him turn pale and shudder," hissed matteo in leonora's ear. "it startled him to hear that you were my betrothed. it seems that you have carefully concealed the fact that you were my affianced, and about to become my bride?" "i have not concealed it, matteo, i had only forgotten it." "a tender sweetheart, truly, who forgets her betrothal as soon as another, perhaps a handsomer man, makes his appearance." "ah, matteo," whispered she, tears gushing from her eyes, "you do me injustice!" he saw these tears and they made him furious. "come now, and introduce me to this handsome signore," commanded matteo, grimly; "tell him, in my presence, that our marriage is to come off in a week. but if you shed a single tear while telling him this, i will murder him, and--" "step aside, signore, if you please," said a voice behind him; "step aside, and permit me to pass through the door-way." the voice was cold and composed, as was also the gaze which goethe fastened on the young man. he did not even glance at leonora; he had no words for the fair-haired girl, who looked up into his countenance so timidly and so anxiously. he passed out into the open air, down the steps and into the garden, leaving behind him her who but yesterday had seemed to him as the dawn of a new day, the glorious sunshine of a new youth--her, who to-day had cast a pall over his soul, and had cried into his sorrowing, quivering heart the last adieu of departing youth. he passed the confines of the park, strode rapidly into the forest and sought out its densest solitude. there, where the stillness was unbroken, save by the rustling of trees and the dreamy song of birds--there he threw himself on a bed of moss, and uttered a cry, a single, fearful cry, that made the forest ring, and betrayed to god and nature the mystery of the anguish of a noble, human heart, that was struggling with, but had not yet overcome, its agony. goethe did not return home from the forest until late in the evening. he retired to his room and locked himself in, desiring to see no one, to speak to no one, until he had subdued the demons that were whispering words of wild derision and mocking despair in his heart. he would not be the slave of passion. no one should see him until he had mastered his agony. early the next morning he again wandered forth into the forest with his portfolio under his arm; leaving a message at the house for his friends to the effect that they must not expect him back to dinner, as he had gone out to draw, and would not return till late in the evening. his friends, and _she_ above all, should not know what he suffered! the forest is discreet, the trees will not betray the poor child of humanity who lies at their feet struggling with his own heart. "i will not suffer, i will not bear the yoke! did i come to rome for any such purpose? did i come here to see my peace and tranquillity of mind burn like dry straw, under the kindling glances of a beautiful girl? no! i will not suffer! pain shall have no power over me! it will and shall be conquered! away with you, hollow-eyed monster! i will tread you under foot, will grind you in the dust as i would an adder!" he sprang up from his bed of moss, and stamped on the ground, furiously. he then walked on deeper into the forest, compelling himself to be calm, and to contemplate nature. "goethe, i command you to be calm," cried he, in stentorian tones. "i will collect buds and mosses, and choose butterflies and insects. help me, spirit of nature! aid me, benign mother. give me peace, peace!" with firmer tread, his head proudly erect, he walked on in the silent forest, still murmuring from time to time: "i will have peace, peace!" while goethe was struggling with his heart, in the depths of the forest, and striving to be at peace with himself, another heart was undergoing the same ordeal, in silence and solitude. the heart of a tender, young girl, who hoped to attain by prayer what the strong man was determined to achieve by the power of his will. she did not even know what it was that had so suddenly darkened her heart; she only felt that a change had taken place--that she was transformed into another being. an unaccountable feeling of anxiety had come over her--a restlessness that drove her from place to place, through the long avenues of the park, in search of solitude. she only asked herself this: what had she done to cause signore goethe to avoid her so studiously? why had he left the house so early in the morning, and returned so late in the evening, for the past three days? why was it that he conversed gayly with others when he returned in the evening, but had neither word nor look for her? these questions gave her no rest; they tormented her throughout the entire day. "what wrong have i done him? why is he angry with me? why does he avoid me?" she sat in the pavilion repeating the questions that had made her miserable for the last three days, when suddenly matteo, who had followed her, stepped forward and regarded her with such anger and hatred that she trembled under his glance like the dove under the claws of the falcon. "what is the matter with you, leonora?" he asked, gruffly. "why are you weeping?" "i do not know, matteo," murmured leonora. "please be patient with me, it will soon pass away." he laughed derisively. "you do not know! then let me tell you. you have no honor! you have no fidelity! you are a vile, faithless creature, and not worthy of my love." "how can you speak so, matteo? what have i done?" "i will tell you what you have done," he cried, furiously. "you have listened to the honeyed words of the tempter. be still, do not contradict me! i saw you seated together--he, breathing sweet poison into your heart; and you, eagerly inhaling it. i hate and despise him, and i hate and curse you! there! i hurl my engagement ring at your feet, and will never take it back again--no, never! we are separated! matteo will not stoop to marry a girl who has broken faith with him." "i--with you? matteo, that is false! that is false, i tell you." "false, is it?" he cried, furiously. "well then, swear by the holy virgin that your heart is pure; swear by all the saints that you love me, and that you do not love him, this signore goethe!" she opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words escaped her lips. her lovely features assumed an expression of dismay; she stared into vacancy, and stretched out her arms as if to ward off some horrible vision that had arisen before her. "speak!" cried he. "swear that you do not love him!" her arms sank helplessly to her side, and a deathly pallor spread over her countenance as she slowly, but calmly and distinctly murmured: "i cannot swear, matteo! i know it now, i feel it now: i do love him!" matteo responded with a cry of fury, and struck leonora with his clinched fist so forcibly on the shoulder, that she fell to the ground with a cry of pain. he stood over her, cursing her, and vowing that he would have nothing more to do with the faithless woman. with a last imprecation, he then turned and rushed out of the pavilion and down into the garden. all was still in the pavilion. leonora lay there with closed eyelids, stark and motionless, her countenance of a deathly pallor. a pale woman glided in through the open door, looked anxiously around, and saw the form of the poor girl extended on the floor. "she has fainted! i must assist her!" it was angelica kaufmann who uttered these words. she had been painting outside on the porch, had heard every word that was spoken in the pavilion, and now came to help and console the poor sufferer. she knelt down by her side; rested her head on her knees, drew a smelling-bottle from her dress-pocket and held it to the poor girl's nose. she opened her eyes and gazed dreamily into the kind, sympathetic countenance of the noble woman who knelt over her. "it is you, signora angelica," murmured leonora. "you were near? you heard all?" "i heard all, leonora," said the noble artiste, bending down and kissing her pale lips. "and you will betray me!" cried she, in dismay. "you will tell him?" "no, leonora, i will not betray you to any one. i will tell no human being a word of what i have overheard." "swear that you will not, signora. swear that you will keep my secret, and that you will not betray it to _him_, even though my life should be at stake." "i swear that i will not, leonora. have confidence in me, my child! i have suffered as you suffer, and my heart still bears the scars of deep and painful wounds. i have known the anguish of hopeless love!" "i too, suffer; i suffer terribly," murmured leonora. "i would gladly die, it would be a relief!" "poor child, death is not so kind a friend as to hasten to our relief when we call him! we must learn to endure life, and to say with smiling lips to the dagger when we draw it from the bleeding wound: 'paete, paete, non dolet!'" chapter xi. adieu to italy. writhing in agony for three days and three long nights, at length goethe found relief in the omnipresent balsam, all-healing nature! the poet-eagle was healed! the pinions of his soul had recovered from the wounds inflicted by cupid's envenomed arrow. six days of solitude, six days of restless wandering, six days of communing with god and nature, six days of struggling with his own weakness--these six days have made him six years older, taught him to conquer pain, and restored him to joyousness and confidence in himself. on the morning of the seventh day, goethe entered the room where his friends were assembled, and greeted them with all his former gayety and cordiality. no change was observable in his countenance, except that he had become a little paler, and that his large brown eyes looked still larger than usual. only once did an anxious expression flit over his countenance, and that was when he asked signore zucchi why his dear friend angelica had not come down to breakfast with her husband. "she is not here," replied zucchi. "she has been in rome for the past three days." "in rome?" repeated goethe, with astonishment. "we intended making an excursion together through the albanian mountains, and now she has left us! when will she return?" "that the physicians alone can tell you," replied zucchi. "is signora angelica ill?" asked goethe, with alarm. "oh, no, not she! but the young girl, the beautiful leonora, has suddenly fallen ill. angelica found her lying insensible on the floor of the pavilion. she interested herself in the poor girl, did all she could to cheer and console her, and even attempted to reconcile her to her affianced, from whom she had been estranged. leonora, however, declared that she would never marry young matteo--that she would become no man's wife, but would always remain with her brother. at her earnest request, angelica took her to rome, to her brother's house. she had hardly arrived there before she was taken violently ill with an attack of fever. she is in a very precarious condition, and angelica, instead of finishing the large painting for which an englishman has offered four thousand scudi, has made herself this poor girl's nurse." goethe had listened to this narrative in silence, his head bowed down on his breast. when zucchi ceased speaking, he raised his head, and cast a quick glance around the room. he saw gay and unconcerned countenances only. no one observed him--the story of his anguish was known to none of his friends. he also seemed to be perfectly quiet and composed--to be occupied solely with his paintings and drawings. when his friends suggested that the time had now arrived to carry out their projected tour through the albanian mountains, goethe declined to accompany them, telling them that an alteration which his friends in germany desired him to make in his "egmont," necessitated his speedy return to rome. goethe returned to the city on the evening of the same day, and repaired, immediately on his arrival, to the house of signore bandetto, to inquire after his sister's condition. she was still dangerously ill, and the physicians gave but little hope. signora angelica was with her, nursing her like a tender mother. he returned to the house for the same purpose later in the evening, and so on each ensuing day. gradually, the bulletins were more favorable, and he was told that she was steadily improving. goethe had been in rome for two weeks, and had neither written nor painted during this time; he had even avoided the gods of the belvidere and the holy halls of st. peter's. the wounds of his heart were not yet quite healed. leonora's illness still made them smart. to-day, he had again repaired to signor bandetto's house, had seen angelica kaufmann, and had been told that all danger was now over. a weight of care was removed from his soul, and he now entered his studio with a gay and unclouded countenance for the first time during his stay in rome. his studio was a scene of wild confusion; books, papers, drawings, chairs, and tables, were in the greatest disorder. the juno ludovisi's head was gray with dust, and the impious chambermaid had thrown the poet's dressing-gown over the figure of cupid, as though the god of love were a clothes-rack. goethe laughed loudly, laughed for the first time in long, long weeks, and relieved the poor god of his disgraceful burden. he then bowed profoundly, and looked intently into the mischievous god's smiling countenance, as if to defy him to do his worst. from this hour goethe was once more himself. all grief had vanished from his heart, and he was again restored to his former peace and gayety. he once more belonged to the gods and muses, to poetry and to nature. but, above all, to poetry! in the hours of his anguish the arts had not been able to rescue and strengthen him, but wondrous thoughts and sublime feelings had taken root in his soul. pain was overcome, as was also love. when he saw leonora, after her recovery, and when she thanked him, in faltering tones, for his sympathy, and his frequent inquiries during her illness, goethe smiled, and treated her as a kind father treats his child, or a brother his sister. she fully understood the meaning of this smile, and shed many bitter tears in her little room in the stillness of the night, but she did not complain. she knew that this short-lived passion had fallen from goethe, as the withered blossom falls from the laurel-tree, and that she would be nothing more than a remembrance in his life. this consciousness she wore as a talisman against all sorrow; the roses returned to her cheeks, her eyes once more shone lustrously, and never in her after-life did she forget goethe, as he never forgot her. the remembrance of this beautiful girl shone as a bright, unclouded star throughout goethe's entire life; and in the days of his old age, when the heart that had throbbed so ardently in rome had grown cold, goethe said and wrote of this fair girl: "her remembrance has never faded from my thought and soul." another painful awakening soon followed this short dream of love--the awakening from the dreamy, enchanting life in italy, the return to germany. it was a pain and a joy at the same time. the deep pain of separation from rome, and the joyful prospect of returning to his home and friends, and, above all, to his friend charlotte von stein? "it was for her sake that i conquered this passion," said goethe to himself. "i told her that i would return to her, unfettered in hand and heart, and i will keep my promise. charlotte's love, charlotte's friendship, shall console me for what i have denied myself here, for what i leave behind me! you, too, will be there, muses; you will follow me to the fatherland, and assemble lovingly around the poet in the little house in weimar. a poet i am; that i feel; of that i am now convinced. in the next ten years of work that will at the utmost be vouchsafed me, i will strive to accomplish, by diligent application, as much that is good and great as i achieved without hard study in the days of my youthful vigor and enthusiasm. i will be diligent and joyous! i will live, create, and enjoy, and that i can do as well in weimar as in rome! i will bear the italian heaven within me; i will erect 'torquato tasso' as a monument to italy and myself. farewell, sublime, divine roma! a greeting to you, you dear little city, in which the prince lives whom i love, and the friend who belongs to my soul. a greeting to you, weimar!" book iv. chapter i. the return. to-day is the anniversary of the birthday of the beautiful princess ferdinand, and is to be celebrated by a grand reception in the royal palace of berlin. the rank and fashion of berlin are invited. the ladies of the aristocracy are occupied with nothing but their toilette, this object of first and greatest importance to the fair creatures who form so marked a contrast to the lilies of the field, which neither toil nor spin, and are yet so gorgeously arrayed. nor do these beautiful lilies of the parlor toil or spin; nor do they wait for the lord to array them, but take this care upon themselves, and make it an affair of state in their lives. to the countess moltke it is also an affair of state, and all the more so as her waning beauty demanded increased attention to the arts of the toilette. the rose-colored satin dress lies on the sofa, awaiting the garland of roses destined to encircle its skirt. her rich black hair is also to be adorned with a wreath of roses, for the countess has a decided penchant for them and fancies the color of her robe and flowers will be reflected in her countenance, and impart to it a youthful, rosy hue. the flowers had been ordered a week before at the establishment of marie von leuthen, the first manufacturer of them in the city, and the countess was now awaiting the return of the servant she had sent after them. for the past two years, and since the day on which she had opened her store on frederick street, marie von leuthen had furnished flowers for all the ladies of high rank in berlin. it was considered _bon ton_ to buy one's wreaths, bouquets, and garlands from her. no one arranged them so prettily as she, no one understood imitating nature in so beautiful and artistic a manner; moreover, it gave one the appearance of patronizing the unfortunate young woman, whose fate had been the all-engrossing topic of conversation in good society for an entire week. her flowers were also very dear, and it was therefore all the more honorable to be able to say: "i purchased them from madame von leuthen. true, she is exceedingly dear, but her work is good, and, moreover, it is a sort of duty to assist her with our patronage. she is, as it were, one of us; we have been entertained by her, and have enjoyed many agreeable evenings at her house." marie von leuthen had ceased to be a lady of fashion, but she had become the fashionable flower-manufacturer of the city, and, as we have already said, it was considered essential to adorn one's self from her establishment. madame von moltke was therefore not a little dismayed when the servant returned, and announced that the flowers were not ready, and that madame von leuthen begged to be excused for not having been able to furnish them. "but did you not tell her that i must necessarily have them?" asked the countess. "my lady, i not only told old trude so, but i reproached her violently for having accepted an order which her mistress could not execute; but the old woman shut the door in my face, and gave me no other answer than this: 'the flowers are not ready.'" "but they can perhaps still be got ready," said the countess. "probably she has a great deal of work on hand for this evening, and it will perhaps only be necessary to offer her a higher price in order to secure the preference above her other customers. let my carriage be driven to the door. i will see and speak with this inconsiderate person myself!" a quarter of an hour later the countess's carriage stopped in front of the store in frederick street, over the door of which was written in large letters: "marie von leuthen, manufacturer of flowers." the servant hurried forward to open the door, and the countess glided majestically into the store, and greeted the old woman, who advanced to meet her, with a proud, and almost imperceptible inclination of the head. "i wish to speak with madame von leuthen herself," said the countess, imperiously. "her ladyship, however, well knows that none of madame von leuthen's customers have had the pleasure of seeing her in the last two years," rejoined the old woman in sharp tones. "her ladyship, like all the other inquisitive ladies, has often attempted to see and speak with my mistress, but always in vain. madame von leuthen has neither time nor inclination to be chatted with or stared at. she does the work and i receive the orders. her ladyship must therefore have the goodness to say what she has to say to old trude." "i have come for my flowers," said the countess, angrily. "my servant tells me that he received the very impertinent message that they not only were not, but would not be, ready. i can, however, scarcely credit his statement, for i ordered these flowers myself, and when an order has been accepted, it must of course be filled at the proper time." "your servant told you the truth," replied old trude, in grumbling tones, "the roses will not be ready." "and why not, if i may be permitted to ask?" "certainly, why should you not ask? of course you may ask," rejoined trude, shrugging her shoulders. "the answer is: the roses have not been got ready, because madame von leuthen has not worked." "has your mistress then done so well that she is on the point of retiring from business?" asked the countess. trude raised her eyes with a peculiar expression to her ladyship's haughty countenance, and for a moment her withered old face quivered with pain. but this emotion she quickly suppressed, and assumed her former peevish and severe manner. "what does my lady care whether my little marie desires to retire to rest or not, or whether the good lord wills that she shall do so," said she, gruffly. "enough, the roses cannot indeed be ready, and if her ladyship is angry, let her scold old trude, for she alone is to blame, as she never even gave madame von leuthen your order." "this is, however, very wrong, very impertinent," cried the countess. "pray, why did you accept the order?" "true, that i ought not to have done," murmured the old woman to herself, "but i thought she would grow better, and instead--my lady," said she, interrupting herself. "i have nothing more to say, and must beg you to content yourself with my reply. no more flowers will be furnished to-day, and i will immediately lock the front door." "she is a rude person," cried the countess, angrily. "if she dares to insult those who assisted her impoverished mistress out of benevolence and pity, in this shameless manner, the consequence will be that her customers will withdraw their patronage and give her no more orders." "as you please, my lady," said old trude, sorrowfully. "but be kind enough to go, if you have nothing further to say." the countess gave the presuming old woman an annihilating glance, and rustled out of the store and into her carriage. trude hastily locked the door behind her, and pulled down the blind on the inside. "who knows whether i shall ever unlock this door again!" sighed she. "who knows whether she shall ever make flowers again!" the old woman sank down on a chair and burst into tears. she quickly dried her eyes, however, and assumed an air of gayety when she heard her name called in the adjoining room, and walked hurriedly into the apartment from which the voice had proceeded. "here i am, my little marie," said she, on entering; "here i am." she hurried forward to the pale lady, who was sitting in the arm-chair at the large round table. was that really marie? was this pale woman with the large lustrous eyes, with the hectic flush on her hollow cheeks--was this really that proud beauty who had laid aside rank and wealth with royal contempt--who with joyous courage had determined to create for herself a new life, and, after having avenged herself on her unworthy husband and her unnatural mother, had gone out into the world to earn a subsistence with the work of her hands? the figure of that woman had been tall and full--the figure of this woman was shrunken, and, in spite of the heavy woollen dress which she wore, it was evident that nothing of their former beauty and fulness remained to these shoulders, to these arms, and to this unnaturally slight figure. and yet, although this pale woman had retained so little of her former beauty, there was still an inexpressible, a touching charm in her appearance. disease had laid waste her fair form, but disease had not been able to deprive these eyes of their lustre, nor these cheeks of their rosy hue. to be sure, the same lustrous eyes and flushed cheeks were the fatal evidences of that disease which gives those whom it destroys the appearance of improvement, and permits them to hope until the last moment. her brow was clear and transparent, and a soft, tranquil smile rested oftener on her thin, delicate lips than formerly. true, her figure was thin and unattractive, but this attenuation gave to her appearance something spirituelle. when she glided lightly and noiselessly through the room, the thought would occur to you that she was not a woman of earth, but must really be one of those of whom we read in song and story--one who, for some fault committed in heaven, or in the realm of spirits, is compelled to descend to the earth to make atonement by learning to suffer and endure pain like mortals! she had been working flowers of every variety. roses and lilies, violets and forget-me-nots, tulips and pinks, and whatever else the names of these lovely children of the spring and sun may be, lay on the table in the greatest confusion. they were in the varied stages of completion, some half finished, and others wanting only a leaf or the stem. marie held a bunch of lilies in her delicate hand, and trude sighed when she observed it. it seemed to her that her darling looked like the angel of death, standing on the brink of the grave, and waving her lilies in a greeting to the new life that was dawning for the dying mortal! "trude, who was it i heard speaking in the other room, who spoke in such loud tones?" asked marie, as she leaned back in the arm-chair, as if exhausted by her work.--"why do you not answer? why do you not tell me who was there? good heavens!" she cried, suddenly, "it cannot have been--o trude, for god's sake, tell me, who was it? and if it was he, trude--if he has at last come, then--" "be still, marie!" answered the old woman, interrupting her, and assuming an air of gayety. "you are still the same young girl, just as impatient as ever! no, no, it was not he! it was only countess moltke, who wished to speak with you about a garland of roses." "countess moltke!" repeated marie, thoughtfully. "she, too, was present on that terrible day when--" "do not speak of it, do not think of it!" entreated the old woman. "you know the doctor told you that if you desired to grow healthy and strong again, you should lay aside all sad thoughts, and endeavor to be right cheerful." "i am cheerful, trude," replied marie, smiling. "each day brings him nearer, each fleeting hour shortens our long separation. i now bless the disease that attacked me two months ago, for, under the impression that i was about to die, you then did what i never would have done, you caused good professor gedicke to write to him and tell him to come home, as his marie was very ill. i thank you, good trude, for confessing this, and for giving me the blessed assurance that he will soon be here. but yet it was cruel to terrify and alarm him! i hope, however, that the professor has again written since then, and told him that all danger is over, and that i am very greatly improved!" "and he did so, marie; he wrote immediately after the receipt of his letter from rome, announcing his departure for home, and requesting that further intelligence, as to your condition, should be sent to him at the post-office in stuttgart. mr. moritz knows that all danger is over, and that you are doing well. you are certainly doing well, are you not, dear marie?" "yes, i am doing well, very well indeed, and better each day. i feel, at times, as though i had wings, and had flown high above the earth; when i look down, every thing seems small and indistinct, as though far away in the dim distance. you, however, are always near me, as is also his dear countenance; his large dark eyes are ever shining into my heart like two stars. i feel so happy when i see them--so light and free, that i seem to have bidden adieu to all earthly care and sorrow. only at times my eyes grow a little dim, and my hands tremble so when i wish to work, and then something pains me here in the breast occasionally! but this need not disquiet you, trude, it only pains a little, and it will soon pass away." "yes, indeed, it will soon pass away!" said trude, turning aside, and hastily wiping away the tears which rushed to her eyes in spite of her endeavors to repress them. "certainly, marie, you will soon be entirely restored to health and strength; this weakness is only the result of your long illness." marie did not reply, but cast a quick, searching glance at old trude's kind face, and then slowly raised her eyes toward heaven with an expression of earnest entreaty. but then a soft smile flitted over her countenance, and the ominous roses on her cheeks burned brighter. "yes, i will soon recover, trude," she said, almost gayly. "under such treatment i cannot fail to recover. you nurse me as tenderly as a mother nurses her child. and it is very necessary that i should, good trude, for our supply of flowers is almost exhausted, and our purse is empty. this is the case, is it not? you gave countess moltke no garland of roses because we had no more." "yes, such is the case, marie, if you must know. the roses are all sold, but that is easily accounted for, as no elegant lady is willing to wear any flowers but yours. you are quite right, marie, you must make haste and get well, so that you can make a fresh supply of beautiful roses. but, in order to be entirely restored to health, you must rest and do no work whatever for the next few weeks." "the next few weeks!" repeated marie, in a slightly mocking tone of voice. "the next few weeks! trude, that seems like an almost inconceivable eternity, and-- but, good heavens! you do not believe that weeks will pass before philip comes?" "but why should i believe any thing of the kind, marie?" said the old nurse, in tranquillizing tones. "he left rome long ago, and mr. gedicke says we may expect him at any hour." "how pleasantly that sounds! what music lies in your words, trude!" sighed marie. "we may expect him at any hour! do you know, good trude, that i am still nothing more than a foolish child! i have been awaiting philip these two long years, and during this time i have always been joyous and patient, for i know that this separation was necessary, and would be a blessing to him i loved. 'before the roses bloom, the thorns grow, and we are wounded by them when we pluck the lovely flowers!' this i have constantly repeated to myself during these two long years, and have borne the pain which the thorns caused me without murmuring. but now, when i know that i will soon see him again--now, each hour is magnified into an eternity of torment, and all reasoning is in vain, and all patience exhausted. i feel as though i could die for very longing to see him. and yet, i am determined not to die; i must live--live to pluck the roses after having suffered so much from the thorns. but, alas! trude, if my sufferings shall have been too great--if i should die of these many wounds! sometimes it seems to me as though my strength were entirely exhausted, and-- there, the thorn is again piercing my heart! how it pains!" she sank back groaning, and pressed her quivering hand to her breast. trude hurried forward, rubbed her cold, damp brow with strengthening essences, and then ran to the closet to get the little phial of medicine which the physician had prescribed for such attacks of weakness. "open your lips, marie, and swallow these drops; they will relieve you." she slowly opened her eyes, and her trembling hand grasped the spoon which trude had filled from the phial, and carried it to her pale lips. "that will do you good, my dear child," said the old nurse, in a firm voice, that knew nothing of the tears which stood in her eyes. "the doctor said these little attacks were harmless, and would cease altogether by and by." "yes, they will cease altogether by and by," whispered marie, after a pause. "cease with my life! i will not die! no, i will not!" with a quick movement, she arose and walked rapidly to and fro in the little room. a few roses and violets were swept from the table by marie's dress, and fell to the floor. in passing, marie's foot crushed them. she stood still and looked down sadly at these flowers. "see, trude," said she, with a faint smile, "a few moments ago i was complaining of having suffered so much from thorns, and now it looks as if fate intended to avenge me. it strews my path with flowers, as for a bride on her way to the altar, or for a corpse that is being borne to the grave." "but, my child, what strange words these are!" cried trude, with assumed indignation. "the physician says that all danger is past, and that you are steadily improving; and you say such sad and ominous things that you make me feel sad myself, and make the tears gather in my eyes. that is not right, marie, for you well know that the doctor said you must carefully avoid all agitation of mind, and endeavor to be uniformly cheerful." "it is true, good nurse, i ought to be cheerful, and i will be cheerful. you see it is only because i so long to live--so long to pluck a few roses after having been wounded by so many thorns. you must not scold me on this account," continued marie, as she entwined her arms lovingly around her old nurse. "no, you must not scold me!" "i am not scolding you, you dear, foolish child," said trude, laughing. "i, too, so long to see you live; and if i could purchase life for you with my heart's blood--well, you know i would gladly shed my blood for you, drop by drop." "yes, i know you would," cried marie, tenderly, as she rested her head on trude's shoulder. "fortunately, however, it is not necessary," continued the old nurse. "marie will live and be happy without old trude's assistance. professor philip moritz will make us healthy and happy." "you, too?" asked marie, a happy smile lighting up her countenance.--"really, trude, i believe you love him too, and i suppose i ought to be jealous of you for daring to love my philip." "yes, i not only love him, but am completely bewitched by him," rejoined trude, laughing. "i long for him, day and night, because i desire to see my child happy. like a good, sensible girl, you must endeavor to recover your health and strength, in order that your philip may rejoice when he arrives, and not suppose you to be still unwell." "you are right, trude, philip will be alarmed if i am not looking well and strong. but then i really am well; all that i want is a little more strength. but that will soon come, as i intend to guard against all agitation and sad thoughts. these thoughts, however, return, again and again, particularly at night, when i am lying awake and feel feverish; they sit around my bed like ghosts, and not only tell me sad legends of the past but also make gloomy prophecies for the future. at night i seem to hear a cricket chirping in my heart in shrill, wailing tones: 'marie, you must die, you have made many roses for others, but life has no roses for you, and'--but this is nonsense, and we will speak of it no longer." "we will laugh at it," said trude, "that will be still better." she stooped down to pick up the flowers marie had trodden under foot, and availed herself of this opportunity to wipe the tears from her eyes. "the poor things! look, marie, you have completely crushed the poor little violets!" "there is a beautiful and touching poem about a crushed violet," said marie, regarding the flowers thoughtfully. "philip loved it, because his adored friend, goethe, had written it. one day when i showed him the first violets i had made, he smiled, pressed the little flowers to his lips and repeated the last lines of this poem. it seems to me that i still hear the dear voice that always sounded like sweet music in my ear. 'and if i die, 'tis she who takes my life; through her i die, beneath her feet!'" "there you have commenced again," sighed trude. "no more sad words, marie, it is not right!" "you are right, nurse," cried marie, throwing the flowers on the table. "what care we for crushed violets! we will have nothing to do with them! we will be gay! see, i am ascending my throne again," she continued, with mock gravity, as she seated herself in the arm-chair. "now i am the princess in the fairy-tale, and you are the old housekeeper whose duty it is to see that her mistress is never troubled with ennui. begin, madame; relate some story, or the princess will become angry and threaten you with her bunch of lilies." "i am not at all afraid," said trude, "i have a large supply of pretty stories on hand. i learned a great deal while attending to your commissions yesterday, marie." "my commissions? ah yes, i recollect, i asked you to look at the little monument on my father's grave. it has already been placed there, has it not?" "yes, marie, and the large cross of white marble is beautiful; the words you had engraved on it in golden letters are so simple and touching that the tears rushed to my eyes when i read: 'he has gone to eternal rest; peace be with him and with us all! his daughter, marie, prays for him on earth; may he pray for her in heaven!' the golden words shone beautifully in the sun." "they came from my heart, trude. i am glad that i can think of my father without sorrow or reproach. we were reconciled; he often came to see me, and looked on at my work for hours together, rejoicing when i had finished a flower." "it is true," said trude, "your father was entirely changed. i believe his conscience was awakened, and that he became aware of how greatly he had sinned against a good and lovely daughter." "do not speak so, trude. all else is forgotten, and i will only remember that he loved me when he died. the blessing uttered by his dying lips has wiped out his harsh words from my remembrance. let it be so with you, too, trude! promise me that you will think of my father with kindness only." "i promise," said the old woman, hesitatingly, "although--well, let the dead rest, we will speak of the living. marie, whom do you suppose i met on my return from the churchyard? mrs. general von leuthen!" "my mother," exclaimed marie, raising her hand convulsively to her heart, "my mother!" "yes, your unnatural mother," cried trude, passionately; "the woman who is the cause of all your misfortunes and sorrows--the woman i hate, and will never forgive--no, not even in my hour of death." "i have already forgiven her, although my hour of death is, as i hope, far distant. where did you see her?" "riding in a beautiful carriage, and very grand and stately she looked, too. happening to see me, she called out to the servant, who sat by the coachman's side, to halt. the carriage stopped, and her ladyship had the wondrous condescension to beckon to me to approach." "and you did so, i hope?" said marie, eagerly. "yes, i did, but only because i thought you would be angry with me if i did not. i stepped up to the carriage, and her ladyship greeted me with the haughtiness of a queen, and inquired after the health of my dear mistress. she wished to know if you were still happy and contented, and whether you never regretted what you had done. to all of which i joyously replied, that you were happy and contented, and were about to be married to the dear professor who was expected to arrive to-day. her ladyship looked annoyed at first, but soon recovered her equanimity, and said she was glad to hear it. she then observed that something of a very agreeable nature had also occurred to her a short time ago, and that her exalted name and high connections had at last been a great service to her. she had become lady stewardess of the countess von ingenheim's household, and at her particular request his majesty the king had permitted her to resume her family name, and call herself countess dannenberg. she had a large salary, a waiting-maid, and a man-servant. moreover, the king had given her a pair of beautiful horses and a magnificent carriage, with her coat of arms painted on the door. the king was very gracious to her, as was also countess ingenheim. i tell you, marie, her ladyship was almost delirious with joy, and exceedingly proud of her position. you know who this countess ingenheim is, do you not?" marie shook her head slowly. "i believe i did know, but i have forgotten." "this countess ingenheim is the wife of the left hand of our king; her maiden name was julie von voss, and she was maid of honor to the queen-dowager. the king made her a countess, and his bad councillors and favorites told him he could marry her rightfully, although he already had a wedded wife. these exalted interpreters of god's word told the king that it was written in the bible: 'let not your right hand know what the left does,' and that this meant: 'it does not concern the wife of your right hand, although you should take another on your left.' the king was easily persuaded of this, and the pious privy-councillor wöllner, who is an ordained priest, performed the ceremony himself, and is on this account in high favor at court. the newly-created countess von dannenberg has become lady stewardess to the newly-created countess ingenheim; she is proud of it, too, and does not consider it beneath her dignity to be in the service of the wife of the right hand. to have a celebrated professor as son-in-law was not enough for her--that she called a disgrace. but she bends the knee to gilded disgrace, and acts as if she were not well aware that the wife of the left hand is no better than the mistress, and that the ancient nobility of the countess von dannenberg is sullied when it comes in such close contact with the brand-new nobility of the countess ingenheim." "say no more, trude, do not give way to passion," said marie, wearily. "i am glad that she has at last found the happiness and content she has so long been seeking. on earth each one must seek out his happiness in his own way, and we can reproach no one because his is not ours." "but we can reproach every one who seeks it in a dishonorable way, and that her ladyship has done, and--" "be still, trude!" interrupted marie; "you forget that she is my mother." "why should i remember it?" cried trude, passionately; "why should not i also, at last, forget what she has forgotten throughout her entire life? i hate her!" "and i," said marie, softly, as she folded her hands piously and looked upward, "i forgive her with my whole heart, and wish her all the happiness she can desire." "ah, marie," cried the old woman, as she hurried forward, seized marie's hands and covered them with kisses, "how good an angel my marie is, and how wicked, how abominable an old woman i am! forgive me, my child, i, too, will endeavor to be better, and to learn to be good and pious from you." "as if you were not so already, my dear nurse!" cried marie, as she entwined her arms lovingly around the old woman, who had seated herself on a stool at her feet and was looking up at her tenderly. "as if you were not the best, the most loving, the kindest and the bravest of women! what would have become of me without you? how could i have survived these two long, terrible years, if you had not stood at my side like a mother? who has worked with me and kept my little household in good order? who nursed me when i was sick? who cheered me in my hours of sadness, and laughed with me in my hours of gladness? you, my dear, kind nurse, you did all this: your noble, honest, brave heart has supported, guarded, and protected me. i thank you for all this; i thank you for your love, and if i should die, my last breath of life and my last thought will be a blessing for my dear, good nurse!" they held each other in a long and close embrace, and for a time nothing was heard but sighs and suppressed sobbing. then old trude released her darling, with a last tender kiss. "here we are in the midst of emotions and tears," said she, "although we had determined to be cheerful and gay, in order that we might give our dear philip a joyous reception if he should happen to come to-day, and not have to meet him with tear-stained countenances." "do you, then, really consider it possible that he may come to-day?" asked marie, eagerly. "professor gedicke said we might expect him at any hour," replied trude, smiling. "let us, therefore, be gay and merry; the days of pain and sorrow are gone, and hereafter your life will be full of happiness and joy." "do you really believe so, trude?" asked marie, fastening her large luminous eyes in an intent and searching gaze on the pale, wrinkled countenance of her old nurse. she had the courage to smile, and not to falter under the anxious gaze of her darling. "certainly i do," said she; "and why should i not? is not your lover coming back after a separation of two years? are we not to have a wedding, and will we not live together happily afterward? we are not poor; we have amassed a little fortune by the labor of our hands. to be sure, we cannot keep an equipage for our marie, but still she will have enough to enable her to hire a carriage whenever she wishes to ride, and it seems to me it is all the same whether we drive with four horses or with one, provided we only get through the dust and mud. but listen, marie, i have not yet given you all the news, i have something to tell that will be very agreeable." "then tell me quickly, trude, i love to hear good news." "my child, you have often asked me if i had heard any thing of mr. ebenstreit, and if i knew what had become of him. in your goodness you have even gone so far as to observe that you have been hard and cruel toward him." "and i have been, trude, i presumed to play the rôle of fate and take upon myself the punishment which is god's prerogative only. true, i had bitter cause of complaint against him, and he was to blame for my unhappiness, but i am not free from blame either, and he, too, had just cause of complaint against me. i had stood before god's altar with him--had, at least, recognized him as my husband before the world, and yet i have hated and detested him, and have fulfilled none of the duties which devolved upon me from the moment of our marriage." "but you were never married, marie. you did not utter a single word at the wedding? you did not pronounce the 'yes.'" "do not speak so, trude; we deceive our conscience with such pretences, and only persuade ourselves that we have done no wrong. but when we lie sleepless on our couches during the long night, as i do, then the slumbering conscience awakens, all self-deception vanishes, and we see things as they really are. yes, i know that i have not behaved toward ebenstreit as i ought to have done, and i wish i knew where he is, so that i could write to him and make peace with him before--" "before you marry, you would say, marie? then, listen! i know where mr. ebenstreit is. i also know that he is doing well, and that he, too, longs to see and speak with you. what do you say to this news, my child?" "i am glad to hear it, trude, and wish to see ebenstreit as soon as possible, for all things are uncertain on earth, and if he came later--" "yes, if he came later," said trude, interrupting her, "our dear professor might be here, and then we would not have time to occupy ourselves with any one else. you see i thought of this when i saw mr. ebenstreit, and therefore--" "what? you have seen and spoken with him?" "of course i have, my child. from whom could i have otherwise learned all this? he entreated me to procure him an interview with you. i told him to come here in two hours and wait outside, promising to call him in if you should permit me to do so. the two hours have now passed, my child. will you see him?" "wait a moment," said marie, turning pale. "i must first collect my thoughts, i must first nerve myself. you know i am very weak, trude, and--there! i feel that thorn piercing my breast again! it pains fearfully!" she closed her eyes, threw herself back in the chair, and lay there quivering and groaning. trude remained standing near the door tearfully, regarding the pale, attenuated countenance, which was still her ideal of all that was lovely and beautiful. slowly marie opened her eyes again. "you may bring him in, trude, but we will be composed and avoid speaking of the past." marie followed trude with a sorrowful gaze, as she walked noiselessly to the door and out into the hall. "the good, faithful old nurse!" murmured she. "does she really believe that i shall recover, or is she only trying to make me believe so? i so long to live, i so long for a little happiness on earth!" chapter ii. reconciliation. the door opened again, and trude entered, followed by a tall, thin gentleman. his cheeks were hollow, and his light hair and brown beard had turned gray, and yet it seemed to marie that he was younger and stronger than when she had last seen him, two years before, on that fearful day of vengeance. his countenance now wore a different, a firmer and more energetic expression, and the eyes that had formerly been so dim, now shone with unusual lustre, and were fastened on marie with an expression of tender sympathy. he hurried forward, grasped the two pale, attenuated hands which marie had extended toward him, hid his countenance in them and wept aloud. for a time all was silent. trude had noiselessly withdrawn to the furthest corner of the room, where she stood, half-concealed by the bed-curtains, endeavoring to suppress her sobs, that her darling might not hear them. "marie, my friend, my benefactress," said ebenstreit, after a long pause, "i have come to thank you. i came here from new orleans, with no other intention and no other wish than the one that is now being gratified: to kneel before you, holding your hands in mine, and to say: i thank you, my benefactress! you have made a new being of me; you have driven out the demons, and prepared the altar for good spirits. i thank you, marie, for through you i have recovered happiness, peace, and self-esteem! marie, when we last saw each other, i was a sordid being, whose soul was hardened with egotism and vanity. you were right in saying there was nothing but cold calculation, and the miserable pride of wealth, in the place where the warm human heart should beat. you stepped before me like the avenging angel with the flaming sword. in your sublime, your divine anger, you thrust the sword so deep into my breast, that it opened like the box of pandora, permitting the evil spirits and wicked thoughts to escape, and leaving, in the depths of the heart that had been purified by pain, nothing but hope and love. when i left you at that time and rushed out into the street, i was blinded and maddened. i determined to end an existence i conceived to be worthless and disgraced. but the hand of a friend held me back, the voice of a friend consoled me; and then, when i was again capable of thought, i found that these words were engraven in my heart and soul, in characters of living flame: 'marie shall learn to esteem me, i will make of myself a new man, and then marie will not despise me.' these words have gone before me on the rough path, and through the darkness of my life, like a pillar of flame. it was my sun and my star. i looked up to it as the mariner looks at his guiding compass when tossed about on the wide ocean. this pillar of flame has at last led me back to the avenging angel, whom i now entreat to become an angel of reconciliation. i entreat you, marie, forgive me for the evil i have done you, forgive me for the unhappiness i have caused you, and let me try to atone for the past!" marie had at first listened to him with astonishment, and then her features had gradually assumed an expression of deep emotion. her purple lips had been tightly compressed, and the tears which had gathered in her large eyes were slowly gliding down over the cheeks on which the ominous roses were once more burning brightly. now, when ebenstreit entreated her to forgive him, when she saw kneeling in the dust before her the man whose image had stood before her conscience for the past two years as an eternal reproach, and as a threatening accusation, a cry of pain escaped her heaving breast. she arose from her arm-chair, and stretched out her hands toward heaven. "too much, too much, o god!" she cried, in loud and trembling tones. "instead of passing judgment on the sinner, you show mercy! all pride and arrogance have vanished from my soul, and i bow myself humbly before thee and before this man, whom i have wronged and insulted!" and before ebenstreit--who had arisen when he saw marie rise from her chair in such great agitation--could prevent it, marie had fallen on her knees before him, and raised her folded hands, imploringly. "ebenstreit, forgive me, i entreat you! i have wronged and insulted you, have lived at your side in hatred and anger, instead of striving to be a blessing to you--instead of endeavoring to seek out with you the path of goodness and justice from which we had both wandered so far. but look at me, ebenstreit! behold what these years of remorse have made of me--behold her who was once the proud tyrant who presumed to command, but has now become a poor penitent who humbly begs forgiveness. speak, say that you forgive me! no, do not attempt to raise me up! let me remain on my knees until you take pity on me in your magnanimity--until you have uttered the words for which my soul thirsts." "well, then, marie," sobbed ebenstreit, his countenance flooded with tears, "i will do your will. marie, i forgive you with my whole soul--forgive you for all my sufferings and tears, and tell you that out of these sufferings consolations, and out of these tears hopes, have blossomed. god bless, protect, and reward you, my benefactress, my friend!" with folded hands, and in breathless suspense, she listened to his words, and a joyous smile gradually illumined her countenance. "i thank you, my friend; i thank you," she murmured, in low tones; and lightly and airily, as though borne up by her inward exaltation, she arose and stood before ebenstreit, a radiant smile on her lips. "do not weep, my friend," she said, "all sorrow and sadness are past, and lie behind us. let us rejoice in the good fortune that brings us together once more for a short time, after our long separation and estrangement. you shall narrate the history of your life during this period, and tell me where and how you have lived and struggled." "no," he said, tenderly, "let me first hear your history." "my friend," she replied, smiling, as she slowly seated herself in the arm-chair, "look at this table, look at these poor flowers made out of cloth, wire, and water-colors. these lilies and violets are without lustre and fragrance. such has been my life. life had no roses for me; but i made roses for others, and i lived because one heavenly flower blossomed in my life--i lived because this one flower still shed its fragrance in my heart. this is the hope of seeing my beloved once more! "do not ask me to tell you more; you will soon see and learn all; and i know you will rejoice in my happiness when my hope becomes beautiful, blissful reality!" "i will, indeed," said ebenstreit, tenderly, "for your happiness has been my constant prayer since our separation; and not until i see you united to the noble man from whom i so cruelly and heartlessly separated you--not until then will i have atoned for my crime, and i conceive of the possibility of a peaceful and happy future for myself." she extended her hand and smiled. but this smile was so touching, so full of sadness, that it moved ebenstreit more profoundly than lamentations or despairing wails could have done. "tell me of your life," said marie, in a soft voice. "seat yourself at my side, and tell me where you have been and how you have lived." he seated himself as she had directed. old trude came forward from the background, and listened eagerly to ebenstreit's words. "i cannot illustrate my history as you did yours when you pointed to these flowers," he said, smiling. "in order to do this i should have to show you forests felled by the axe, fields made fruitful, rivers dammed up, and huts and barns erected after hard toil. when i rushed from your presence, in mad desperation, i met the banker splittgerber on the sidewalk. he had been standing at the door, awaiting me. i endeavored to tear myself from his grasp, but he held me firmly. i cried out that i wanted peace, the peace of the grave, but he only held me the more firmly, drew me away with irresistible force, raised me like a child, and placed me in his carriage, which then drove rapidly to the densest part of the zoological garden. i was wild with rage, and endeavored to jump out of the carriage. but on the side on which i sat, the carriage door was not provided with a handle, and i found it impossible to open it. i endeavored to pass splittgerber and get out at the other door, and cried: 'let me out! no one shall compel me to live! i will die, i must die!' but the old man held me with an iron grasp, and pressed me down on my seat again. a loud and terrible voice resounded in my ear, like the trumpet of the day of judgment, and to this hour i have not been able to convince myself that it was no other than the voice of good old splittgerber. this terrible voice uttered these words: 'you have no right to die, for you have not yet lived. first go and learn to live, in order to deserve death!' i was, however, completely overcome by these fearful words, and sank back in a state of insensibility." "'you have no right to die, for you have not yet lived,'" repeated marie, in a low voice. "have i then lived, and is it for this reason that--" she shuddered and interrupted herself: "go on, my friend--what happened further?" "of what further occurred i have no knowledge. i have a vague remembrance that i was like a departed soul, and flew about from place to place through the universe, seeking a home and an asylum everywhere, and finding none. i sojourned in hell for a long time, and suffered all the tortures of the damned. i lay stretched on the rack like prometheus, a vulture feeding on my vitals, and cried out vainly for mercy. when my wandering soul again returned to earth and to its miserable tenement--when i awakened to consciousness, they told me that i had been ill and delirious for a long time. good old splittgerber had nursed me like a father, and, when i recovered, made me the most brilliant offers. among many other similar propositions, i was to become his partner, and establish a branch house in new york. i rejected all; i could hear nothing but the trumpet-tones of that voice, crying: 'you have no right to die, for you have not yet lived. go and learn to live, in order to deserve to die!' i wished to deserve to die; that was my only thought, and no one should help me in achieving this end. i wished to accomplish this alone, entirely unaided! after having converted the paltry remnants of my property into money, i suddenly took my departure without telling any one where i was going. i was wearied of the old world, and turned my steps toward the new. i longed to be doing and struggling. i bought a piece of land in america, large enough to make a little duchy in germany. i hired several laborers, immigrants in whose countenances sullen despair was depicted, and with them i began my work; and a vast, gigantic work it was. a morass and a dense forest were to be converted into fruitful fields. what the titans of mythology could perhaps not have accomplished, was achieved by poor mortals to whom despair gave courage, and defiance of misfortune superhuman strength. we worked hard, marie, but our labors were blessed; we had the satisfaction of knowing that they were not in vain, and of seeing them productive of good results. the forest and morass i then bought have now been converted into a splendid farm, on which contented laborers live in cleanly cottages, rejoicing in the rewards of diligence. in the midst of this settlement lies my own house, a simple log-house, but yet a sufficiently comfortable dwelling for a laborer like myself. over the door stands the following inscription: 'learn to work, that you may enjoy life,' and on the wall of my humble parlor hangs a board on which is written: 'money is temptation, work is salvation. true riches are, a good heart and the joyousness resulting from labor.'" "you are a good, a noble man," whispered marie, regarding him earnestly. "i thank you for having come, i rejoice in your return." "i have not returned to remain," said ebenstreit, pressing her hand to his lips. "i only returned to see you, marie, and to render an account to heaven, through the avenging angel, whose flaming sword drove me from my sins. you see, marie, there is something of my former accursed sordidness in me still; i dare to speak of accounts even to god and to you, as if the soul's burden of debt could ever be cancelled! no, while i live i will be your debtor.--and your debtor, too, trude," said he, turning, with a smile, to the old woman, who was regarding him wonderingly. "i'm sure i don't know how that can be," said she, thoughtfully; "you have received nothing from me but abuse; that however you certainly still owe me. if you propose to return this now, and call me a short-sighted fool, and an abominable person, as i have so often called you, you will be perfectly justifiable in doing so. i must say that you have the right, and i am glad that i am compelled to say so. you have become a good man, mr. ebenstreit, and the good lord himself will rejoice over you, for it is written in the bible: 'when the unjust man returns to god there is more joy over him in heaven than over a hundred just men.' therefore, my dear mr. ebenstreit, pay me back for all my abuse, and then give me your hand and say: 'trude, we now owe each other nothing more, and after all you may be a very good old woman, whose heart is in the right place, and--her mouth too!'" ebenstreit extended his hand, with a kindly smile. "let us shake hands; the abuse you shall, however, not have. i am your debtor in a higher and better sense; your brave and resolute countenance was often before me, and at times, when a task seemed almost impossible, i seemed to hear a voice at my side, saying: 'work, work on! ransom your soul with the sweat that pours from your brow, you soul-seller, for otherwise old trude will give you no peace, either on earth or in heaven! work, work on! earn your bread by the sweat of your brow, otherwise you can never enter the kingdom of heaven, you soul-seller!' you will remember that this was the only title you accorded me in former days?" "well, mr. ebenstreit, i had others for you, to be sure," said the old woman, blushing, "but that was the main title on account of the five hundred dollars that--" "be still!" interrupted marie, as she slowly arose, and leaned forward in a listening attitude. "did you hear nothing, trude?" "no, my darling. what could i have heard?" "a carriage stopped before the door, and my heart suddenly ceased to beat, as if expecting a great joy or a great sorrow. i seemed to hear steps in the passage. yes, i recognize this step--it is his; he--be still! do you hear nothing?" they all listened for a moment in breathless suspense. "yes, i seem to hear some one walking in the outer hall," murmured the old woman. "let me go and see whether--" "some one is knocking," cried marie. "trude, some one is--" "be composed, my darling, be composed," said trude, in soothing tones; "if you excite yourself so much, it will be injurious. some one knocks again, and--" "trude, be merciful!" cried marie. "go and open the door. do not let me wait; i believe i have but a little while longer to live, and i cannot wait! go!" trude had hurried to the door, and opened it. she started, waved her hand, closed the door again, and turned to marie, who stood erect, in breathless suspense. "marie," said she, vainly endeavoring to speak with composure, "there certainly is some one at the door, who desires to speak with me, but it is no stranger; perhaps he wishes to order some flowers. i will go and ask him." she was about to open the door again, but marie ran forward and held her back. "you are deceiving me, trude. you well know who it is, and i know too. my heart tells me it is he! philip! my philip! come to me, philip!" "marie!" cried a loud, manly voice from the outside. the door was hastily thrown open; and he rushed in, with extended arms. "marie! where are you, marie!" she uttered a loud, piercing cry of joy, and flew to her lover's heart. "my philip! my beloved! god bless you for having come!" "my marie, my darling!" murmured he, passionately. "god bless you for having called me!" chapter iii. grim death. they held each other firmly embraced, heart to heart. all sorrow and sadness were forgotten; they were oblivious of the whole world, and of all that was going on around them. they did not see old trude standing near by, with folded hands, her face radiant with delight; they did not see her follow mr. ebenstreit, who had glided noiselessly out of the room. they did not hear the door creak on its hinges, as she closed it behind her, and left them alone and unobserved in the silent chamber. and, though the two had remained, though hundreds and hundreds of eyes had been fastened on them inquiringly, what would they have cared? they would, nevertheless, have still been alone with love, with happiness, and with the joy of reunion. her head still rested on his breast; he still pressed her to his heart. "marie, the dream of my whole life is now fulfilled; i hold you in my arms, you are mine! the restless wanderer has at last crossed the threshold of the promised land, and love and peace bid him welcome." "yes, my philip," she murmured, softly, "love and peace bid him welcome. pain has left us for evermore, and we shall be happy!" "yes, happy, marie! look up, darling, that i may read love in your dear eyes!" with his hand he attempted to raise her head, but she only pressed it the more firmly to his breast. "no, philip, let my head still rest on your bosom; let me dream on for a little while." "marie, i have yearned to see these dear eyes for two long years; look up, my darling!" "not yet, philip," she whispered, entwining her arms more closely around her lover, her countenance still hid in his bosom. "let me first tell you something, philip! i have been ill, very ill, and it was thought i would die. if you should find me a little changed, a little pale, my beloved, it will only be because i have not yet quite recovered, but am only steadily improving. remember this, and do not be alarmed. look at me! welcome, welcome, my philip!" when she raised her head, a radiant expression of happiness rested on her features; her lips were crimson, her eyes shone lustrously, and the death-roses on her cheeks burned brightly. death had, perhaps, been touched by the supreme happiness of these two beings, who had been wandering under a thunder-cloud of sorrow for long years, and who now fondly believed that they had at last found a refuge from the storms of life, and a balsam for all pain. death, who comes from god, had, perhaps, been moved with divine pity, and had lain concealed behind these flushed cheeks and crimson lips, permitting joy to illumine marie's countenance with a last golden ray of the setting sun, and to give her for a brief moment the appearance of health and strength. philip, at least, did not see the grim messenger; he was deceived by these death-roses, by this ray of sunshine. he had expected to find marie in a much worse condition. gedicke's letter had carried the conviction to his heart that he would find her in a hopeless, in a dying condition, and that nothing buoyed her up, and withheld her from the clutches of the grave, but her longing to see him once more. now she stood before him with rosy cheeks, with a bright smile on her lips, and with eyes that sparkled with joy. "marie, my jewel, my longed-for happiness, how lovely, how beautiful you are! why speak of illness and of pale cheeks! i see nothing of all this; i see you healthy, happy, and beautiful--as beautiful as when i often saw you in my dreams in the long nights of the past--as beautiful as i have ever conceived you to be when standing before the madonnas of raphael and giulio romano in rome and florence. 'gaze at me with your dark eyes,' i said to them. 'you would ask me whether i admire and adore you. true, you are lovely, but i know a marie who is lovelier and purer than you all! i know a marie whose eyes are radiant with the light of womanhood, purity, and virtue. she is not so coquettish as you are, maria della ledia; her eyes are not so dreamy as yours, maria di fuligno. but they are resplendent with holy love, and noble thoughts dwell on her chaste brow!' and now i have thee, and now will i hold thee, my marie, and nothing can separate us more!" "no," she said, thoughtfully, "nothing henceforth can now separate us but death!" "death has nothing to do with us, my darling. we shall live, and live a joyous, happy life!" "yes, live, live!" she cried, in such longing, passionate tones, and with so sad an expression of countenance, that moritz's heart quaked. it seemed to him as though a string had broken on the harp on which she had just begun to play the joyous song of life and of love, and at this moment he saw grim death peering forth from behind the roses on her cheeks, and the smile on her crimson lips. "come, my darling, let us be seated. there is your throne, and here at your feet lies he who adores you, looking up at his madonna, at his marie, with ecstacy." he bore her tenderly to the arm-chair, and then seated himself at her feet. he looked up at her with an expression of deep devotion, his folded hands resting on her lap. she bowed down over him and stroked with her pale little hand his black, curly hair, and the broad forehead she had once seen so gloomy and clouded, and which was now as clear and serene as the heaven in her own breast. "i have thee at last once more, thou star of my life! when i regard thee, i feel that life is, indeed, beautiful, and that one hour of bliss is not too dearly purchased with long years of suffering and want. we paid dearly, philip, but now we have the longed-for happiness. we have it and will hold it fast; nothing on earth shall tear it from us?" "no, nothing on earth, my beloved! like odysseus, i have now returned from my wanderings through life, and here i lie at the feet of my penelopeia; like him, i have driven off the suitors who aspired to the favor of my fair one. was it not a suitor, who slipped out at the door when i entered?" "a suitor of the past," replied marie, smiling. "did you not recognize him?" "have i ever known him? but what do we care, now that he has gone! i am not compelled to drive him off, nor yet to hang old trude as a go-between, as odysseus did the old woman of whom homer tells us." philip and marie both laughed. it was the innocent childlike laughter with which happiness illumines even the gravest countenances, and which permits those who have been sorely tried, and have suffered greatly, to find the innocence of youth and the smile of childhood again on the threshold of paradise regained. "marie, how beautiful you are when you laugh! then it seems as though all these years of sorrow had not been--as though we had only been dreaming, and now awake to find that we are again in the little room under the roof. you are once more my charming young scholar, and professor moritz has just come to give miss von leuthen a lesson in the italian language. yes, that is it, we are still the same; and see! there lie the flowers on your table, just as they were when old trude conducted me to your room to give you your first lesson." he took a handful of flowers from the table and held them between his folded hands. "you dear flowers! she is your god and your goddess! like god she made you of nothing, and, like the goddess flora, she strews you over the pathway of humanity; but to-day you shall receive the most glorious reward for your existence--to-day you shall adorn her, my fair flora!" he sprang up, seized whole handfuls of violets, pinks, lilies, and forget-me-nots, and strewed them over marie's head, in her lap, and all over and about her. "let me strew your path with flowers for the future, my darling. may your tender little feet never more be wounded by the sharp stones! may you never again be compelled to journey over rough roads! flowers shall spring up beneath your footsteps, and i will be the gardener who cultivates them." "you are my heaven-flower yourself, my imperial lily," said she, extending her hands. he took them in his, pressed them to his lips, and then resumed his former seat at her feet. "how handsome you are, philip, and how strong you look, tanned by the sun of italy and steeled by the combat with life! misfortune has made a hero of you, my beloved. you are taller and prouder than you were." "and are you not a heroine, marie, a victorious heroine?" "a victorious heroine!" she said, sadly. "a heroine who is struggling with death! do not look at me with such consternation, philip--i am well. it is only that joy and surprise have made me feel a little weak. you do not find that i look ill, and therefore i am not ill; you say i will recover, and therefore i will recover. tell me once more that i am not ill, that i will recover!" "you will recover; you will bloom again in happiness and joy." "you say these words in a sad voice, as though you did not believe them yourself! but i will not die; no, i will not! i am too young; i have not lived long enough. life still owes me so much happiness. i will not die! i will live--live!" she uttered this in loud tones of anguish, as though life were an armed warrior to whom she appealed to defend her against death, who was approaching her with a murderous dagger in his bony hand. but life had no longer a weapon with which to defend her; it timidly recoiled before the king who is mightier than the king of life, and whose sceptre is a scythe with which he mows down humanity as the reaper harvests the grain of the fields. "philip, my philip," cried marie, her countenance quivering with pain, "remain with me, my beloved! it is growing so dark, and--there, how my breast pains me again! alas, you have scattered flowers at my feet, but the thorns have remained in my heart! and they pain so terribly! it is growing dark--dark!--trude!" the old woman, who had been waiting at the threshold with the humility of a faithful dog, threw the door open and rushed forward to her darling, who lay in the arm-chair, with closed eyes, pale and motionless, her head resting on moritz's arm. "trude, call the physician!" cried he, in dismay. "run for assistance! run! run! she must not die! she shall not leave me! o god, thou canst not desire to tear her from me! thou permittedst me to hear her voice when in rome, when widely separated from her, and i answered this call and flew here on the wings of the wind. it cannot be thy will that i am to be surrounded by eternal silence--that i am never more to hear this dear voice!--help me, trude! why do you not call the physician?" "it is useless, dear sir, useless," whispered trude, whose tears were still flowing in torrents. "all the physicians say that her case is hopeless; they told me that this would occur, and that all would then be at an end. but perhaps this is only a swoon; perhaps we can awaken her once more." was it the strengthening essence with which trude rubbed her forehead, the strong musk-drops which she poured between marie's parted lips, or was it the imploring voice in which moritz called her name, and conjured her not to leave him?--marie opened her eyes and cast a look of ineffable tenderness at the pale, horror-stricken countenance of her lover, who was again kneeling at her feet, his arms clasped convulsively around her person, as if in a last despairing effort to withhold her from the king of terrors, who had already stretched out his skeleton arm to grasp his victim. "i am dying, philip!" murmured marie, in low tones, and her voice resounded on his ear like the last expiring notes of an Æolian harp. "it is useless to deceive you longer; the truth is evident, and we must both bear it as we best may." "marie, i cannot, cannot bear it!" he sobbed, burying his countenance in her lap. "god is merciful; he will take pity on me, on my agony, on my love! god will grant you recovery!" "the only recovery god vouchsafes me is at hand," whispered marie. "recovery is death! i have felt it approaching for many, many days--in the long, fearful nights i have lain awake struggling with this thought, unable to comprehend it, and doubting god's mercy and goodness. my defiant heart refused to submit humbly to god's will, and still continued to entreat a little more life, a little happiness, of him who is inexorable, and upon whose ear the wail of man strikes in as low tones as the last breath of the insect we tread under foot. i comprehended, finally, that all complaints were useless--that nothing remained but to submit, to humble myself, to thank god for each hour of life as for a gracious boon, and to consider each ray of sunshine shed on my existence as a proof of his goodness. i have conquered myself; my stubborn heart has been softened, and no longer rebels against the hand of the almighty, to whom men are as worms, and as the grain of sand to the mighty glacier that touches the clouds. you, too, must be gentle and submissive, my philip. learn to submit to the eternal laws of god!" "no, i cannot," said he, in heart-rending tones; "i cannot be submissive. my heart is rebellious; in my anguish i could tear it from my breast when i see you suffer!" "i am not suffering, philip," said she, her countenance radiant with a heavenly smile. "all pain has now left me, and i feel as though i floated in a rosy cloud, high above all earthly sorrow. from this height i see how paltry all earthly sorrows are, and how little they deserve a single tear. here below, all is paltry and insignificant--above, all is great and sublime. oh, philip, how sweet it will be to meet you once more up there! in blissful embrace, our spirits will soar from star to star, and the glories of all worlds and the mysteries of all creations will be made manifest to us, and our life will be bliss and joy unending! the cloud is soaring higher and higher! philip, i see thee no longer!" "but i see thee, my darling," cried philip, despairingly, as he clasped her sinking head between his hands, and covered it with tears and kisses. "do not leave me, marie; stay with me, thou sole delight of my life! do not leave me alone in the world." his imploring voice had that divine power which, as we are told by the greeks, breathed life into stone, and transformed a cold, marble statue into a warm, loving woman. his imploring voice recalled the spirit of the loving woman to the body already clasped in the chilly embrace of death. "you shall not be solitary, philip," she murmured; "it is so sad to have to struggle alone through life. i must go, philip, but you shall not be left alone." "but i will be if you leave me, marie; therefore stay! oh, stay!" "i cannot, philip," gasped marie, in low tones. "you must place another at your side! another must fill my place. hear my last wish, my last prayer, philip. take a wife, marry!" "impossible, marie, you cannot be so cruel as to desire this." "i have thought of this a great deal, have struggled with my own heart, and am now convinced that you must do so. you must have a wife at your side who loves you. swear that you will seek such a wife. swear this, and accord me a last joy on earth." she raised her hand once more, and her dying gaze was fastened on him imploringly. he could not resist it; he clasped the pale fingers in his quivering, burning hands, and swore that he would do as she bade him. a faint smile flitted over her countenance, and her eyes sought out the faithful old woman, who had loved her like a mother, and who found it no longer necessary to conceal her tears, as she had been doing for many months, in holy and heroic deception. "trude," whispered marie, "you have heard his vow, and you must remind him of it, and see that he keeps it, and marries within the year. kiss me, trude, and swear that you will do so!" old trude had no other words than her tears, no other vow than the kiss which her trembling lips pressed on her darling's brow, already covered with that cold, ominous perspiration which gathers, like the morning dew of another world, on the countenances of those who stand on the threshold of the grave, and is symbolical of the new life to which they will awaken on high. "philip, my beloved, you too must kiss me!" whispered marie, in eager tones. "kiss me! hold me fast! drive death, grim, fearful death, away!" he kissed her, entwined his arms around her, and pressed her to his bosom. trude stretched out her arms imploringly into empty space, as if to ward off "grim death!" but he is king of kings, and claims as his own all who live on earth! silence reigned in the little chamber. holy is the hour of separation--holy the moment in which the immortal soul is torn from its earthly abode, and this holy moment must not be desecrated with lamentations and tears! after a long interval, the heart-rending cry of a man, and the low wail of a woman broke in upon the stillness.--marie had died, but a smile still rested on her lips. chapter iv. goethe's return from rome. goethe has returned! goethe is once more in our midst! he arrived quite unexpectedly yesterday evening, repaired at once to his summer-house in the park, raised the little draw-bridge, and has yet seen no one! this was the intelligence that ran like wildfire through the good city of weimar on the morning of the nineteenth of june, , exciting joy and expectation in the minds of many, and perhaps also some little discontent in the minds of others. all were anxious to see the poet once more, who had been enthroned in weimar as the genius of gayety and happiness, and who had taken these two most beautiful ideals of humanity with him on leaving the capital of thuringia. weimar had changed greatly since goethe's departure. it had, as the duke charles august often complained to his friends, become dull, and "terribly old fogyish." the genial freedom from care and restraint, and the poetic enthusiasm and exaltation had all vanished with goethe. weimar lay slumbering in its dullness and tranquillity on the banks of the murmuring ilm, and the staid and honest burghers of the good city considered it a positive blessing that this restless spirit had departed. the court was also very quiet--so quiet that the genial duchess amelia could no longer endure it, and was preparing to journey to italy in the company of her friends, wieland and herder, to indemnify herself under the bright skies of italy, and in the midst of rare works of art, for the dull life she had led for the past few years. no wonder that the intelligence of goethe's return agitated the little city, and infused a little life and excitement into slumbering society! goethe's servant had appeared at the ducal palace at an early hour on the following morning, had communicated the glad tidings of his master's arrival to the duke's chamberlain, and had begged to be informed at what hour the privy-councillor would be permitted to pay his respects. the duke had briefly replied that he would send the privy-councillor word; nothing more! but half an hour later, instead of sending word, the duke quietly left his palace, crossed the market square with hasty footsteps, and passed on through the streets, into the park, and along its shady avenues to goethe's little summer-house. the bridge was raised, but the ilm was almost completely dried up by the summer heat, and but a narrow, shallow rivulet flowed in the midst of its sandy bed. what cared he, the genial duke, although his boots and prussian uniform should become somewhat soiled in wading across to the little island? he had not come to pay a visit of state, but only to call on his dear friend in an unceremonious manner, and to give him a warm embrace, after a long separation. therefore, forward, through mud and water! on the other side lies the modest little house of his cherished friend! forward! goethe's servant had not yet returned from the city; no one was there to announce the duke, and, if there had been, charles august would have preferred coming unannounced into his friend's presence; he desired to surprise him. noiselessly he crept up the stairway, and threw the door open. "welcome, my wolf! a thousand welcomes! to my arms, beloved brother!" "his highness the duke! how unexpected an honor!" goethe rose hastily from the sofa, and bowed profoundly to the duke, who still stood before him with extended arms. "and in this manner you receive your friend, wolf? truly, i came running here like a lover to a rendezvous with his adored, and now you receive me with a cold greeting?" "i beg leave to assure your highness, that the heart of your humble servant is also filled with joy, in beholding his dear master once more, and that this moment reconciles me to my return, and--" "wolf, tell me are you playing a comedy? are you only jesting, or has your sojourn in rome really made you the stiff and courtly old fellow you appear to be?" "i a stiff old fellow? i a courtly old fellow?" asked goethe, with sparkling eyes; and now he was again the goethe with the apollo countenance, as he had been in rome and castel gandolfo--once more the poet of italy, and no longer the privy-councillor of weimar. as the friends now looked at each other--as the duke's merry brown eyes encountered goethe's fiery, passionate gaze--the last vestiges of the privy-councillor fell from the poet. his handsome countenance brightened, and with a cry of joy he sprang forward, threw himself into the duke's arms and kissed his eyes and lips. "may god forgive me if i am guilty of disrespect! i had determined to return home as a well-trained and respectable privy-councillor and courtier. but i am not to blame if the sight of your dear countenance scatters all my good resolutions to the winds. let me embrace, let me kiss you once more, my dear duke and friend!" and he did so, again and again, with great ardor. the duke's laughter while submitting to this embrace seemed to be only assumed in order to conceal his emotion, and to make his friend believe that the tears which stood in his eyes had not come from the depths of his heart, but were only the consequence of his violent laughter. "i see you are still the same wild, unaccountable genius, wolf! you are as capricious as a beautiful woman, and as imperious as a tyrant! you are still the same goethe!" "not at all times, my duke. i have determined that the sober-minded world here in weimar, shall behold in me a sober-minded privy-councillor, and that i will give no further cause of offence to madame the duchess louise, and all other sensitive souls, by my wild behavior. but, for a quarter of an hour, and in the presence of my dear master, i let the mask fall, and am once more the old goethe or the young goethe. your goethe, my duke and friend!" "thanks, wolf, thanks! i hardly knew what to make of you, and was quite ill at ease when i saw you standing before me with your formal manner and courtier countenance. i thought to myself, 'this is not the goethe you expected to see; this is only his outward form; the inner man has remained in italy.'" "alas! that such should be the case, my duke, but it is so," sighed goethe. "the inner man has not yet quite returned; only after a painful struggle will it be able to tear itself from the beautiful home of art and poetry. but since i see you, my dear friend--since i behold your brave, handsome countenance, i feel that my wounds are healing--that i am coming home! they are healing under your loving glances, and i begin to rejoice in my return, and to consider what i did only from a sense of duty as a real pleasure." "then you did not return gladly, wolf? it was reason, and not your heart, that prompted you to return!" "it was reason only, my duke--the conviction that it was necessary for my well-being. do not be angry with me for saying so, but in this hour my heart must be laid bare to my friend, and he must see and read its every quivering fibre. no, my duke, my heart did not prompt me to return. i returned only because i recognized the necessity of so doing, if i hoped to accomplish any thing great and beautiful. i was compelled to flee from italy, the siren in whose toils i lay bound, and by whom my being was about to be divided, making of the poet that i really am, or at least can become, a talent-monster, who acquires a certain artistic ability in many things, without attaining to perfection in any one of them. had i remained in italy, i would perhaps at last have been able to paint a tolerably good aquarelle picture, and to make a passably good statue according to all the rules of art, and might also have manufactured dramas and poems in my hours of leisure; but i would have knocked in vain at the temple-gates of each individual art. not one of them would have been thrown open to permit me to enter, as the elect, the chosen! at the door of each temple i would have been turned away, and advised to apply for my reward at the abode of another art, and thus i would be considered a worthy applicant nowhere! he who desires to accomplish something great and complete, must bend all the energies of his soul to the accomplishment of one end. he must not diffuse his talents, but must concentrate them in the attainment of one object. he must strive upward; in the spirit he must see before him a summit to which he is determined to climb, removing all obstacles that may retard his progress. this conviction forces itself upon me, and i also became convinced that i possessed only one talent--that is, but one great talent--that could carry me to the summit, and this talent is my talent of poetry. all others are but secondary; and when i take this view of myself, i am reminded of the magnificent marble group in rome, 'the nile, with its tributaries.' there lies the godlike form in its manliness, strength, grandeur, and sublimity. on his sinewy arms, mighty shoulders, and muscular legs, a number of beautiful little boys are gracefully dancing, reclining, and playing with his limbs. these are the tributaries of the god nile, who lies there in sublime composure. he would still be a god although he were entirely alone. we would still admire him and rejoice in his beauty, although he were not surrounded by these graceful, boyish forms. but they would be nothing without him, would not be able to stand alone, and would be passed by as unworthy of attention, if they were not reposing on the grand central form. thus it is with all my other talents and capacities: they are only the little boys of the statue, and with me the poet is the main figure. yes, your highness, thus it is with me. my poetic talent is my nile, and my other little talents are the tributaries that flow into my being to strengthen me, to make the waves of poetry surge higher, and fill the air with music that shall resound throughout the world, and find an echo in heaven and in hell!" "oh, wolf!" cried the duke, now that goethe had paused for a moment, "how happy i am to have you once more in our midst! it is as though the sun had returned, and i had just stepped out of a dark cellar into the fresh, free air, and were walking hand in hand with a friend toward a glittering temple that had been closed to me during his absence. wolf, i was becoming a very prosaic and stupid fellow, and had almost begun to consider the dark cellar in which i was sojourning an agreeable dwelling. i thank god that you have come to relieve me from this curse! speak on, my friend; your words are as sweet music that i have not heard for a long time." "i must speak on, my duke; i must unburden my heart completely, for who knows whether it will often open itself again, and lay aside the covering in which i enveloped the poor thing when i took leave of bright, sunny italy? but i must admit that, since i crossed the borders of germany, i have been twenty times on the point of retracing my footsteps, in defiance of reason and conviction--on the point of giving up every thing, and deciding rather to live in italy as a happy, worthless dilettante, than to dwell in germany as a high official and celebrated poet. i am angry with myself, but i must nevertheless make the admission. i feel that i have been disenchanted since my return to germany: i now view, with sobered sight, many things that memory painted in glowing colors, and the result is that i am by no means pleased. i long to return to italy; and yet, in my inmost soul, i feel that i must remain here, in order to become that for which fate has destined me. i feel like crying, as a bad boy over his broken playthings, and i could box my own ears for entertaining such a desire. i now conjure you, my duke and friend, stand at my side and help me to allay the fury of the storm that is raging in my inmost being. see, what an infamous irony this is on my being! i have happily passed the stormy period of my poetic labors, and have freed myself from the bombast of sentimentality. i despise all this from the bottom of my heart, and am at times so angry with myself about that sentimental fellow, 'werther,' that i would gladly disown him. now a new storm is raging within me in its former fury, and my heart longs for italy as for a lost paradise. so help me, duke; help me to become a sensible man once more!" goethe stamped furiously on the floor as he uttered these words, and his eyes sparkled with anger. "now you look like the thunderer, like jupiter," said the duke, regarding him lovingly. "you have returned handsomer and sublimer than when you departed, and i can readily comprehend that all the goddesses and nymphs of italy have endeavored to retain in their happy land the heavenly being in whom the sublimity of jove and the beauty of apollo are united." "duke!" cried goethe, furiously, "i conjure you, speak seriously! do not annihilate me with your ridicule!" "well, then, we will be serious," said charles august, tenderly. "come here, wolf, and seat yourself at my side on this little sofa, where we have so often sat together in brotherly love. thus it shall be to-day again. i see, to my joy, wolf, that you are unchanged, and your quick temper and fierce anger against yourself are therefore refreshing to your old friend. now let us see what can be done; but this i tell you in advance--you must overcome your longing to return to italy, you must remain here, for only in tranquillity and peace can you attain the high ends of your existence, and climb to the summit of which you were speaking. of this you were convinced yourself, and on this account you left italy and returned home. therefore be true to yourself, you dear, great fellow, and journey on toward your high aim with undaunted heart and steadfast gaze! accomplish your sublime mission as poet, and i will endeavor to procure you the leisure and honorable retirement essential to your poetic labors." "my duke and master, you are indeed my savior!" cried goethe; "you have spoken what i scarcely dared utter! yes, that is it! leisure and retirement i must have. my official sprang wholly from my personal relations to your highness. let our old ones be modified--let a new relation hereafter exist between us. let me fill the whole measure of my existence at your side, so that my strength may be concentrated and made available, like a newly-opened, collected, and purified spring situated on an eminence, from which your will can readily cause its waters to flow in any direction! continue to care for me as you have heretofore done; thus you will do more for me than i could accomplish for myself, more than i can desire or demand. yes, i hope that i will become more to you than i have hitherto been, if you will only command me to do that which no one can do but myself, and commission others to do the rest. i can only say: 'master, here am i, do with me as you will.'"[ ] "let me first tell you, wolf, what it is that no one but yourself can do: gladden my heart, elevate my mind, and restore sunshine to our little city. during your absence i have made a fearful discovery concerning myself; i am fast becoming an 'old fogy,' and if new life and activity are not infused into my sluggish spirit, i greatly fear that my case will soon be hopeless. as it is, i resemble the stagnant waters of a ditch. in its depths swims many a fine fish and blossoms many a fair flower, but the concealing duck-weed covers its surface and hides the treasures that lie below. you and you alone can brighten the mirror of my soul. and if you but now called yourself my servant, i can reverse your poetic phrase, and say to you: 'servant, here am i--do with your master as you will.'" "see, my duke, you make me blush for shame. you alone are master, and you only can do as you will." "then let me tell you what my will is, wolf, and i will be brief, for i observe that the quarter of an hour to which you proposed to limit your outpouring of the heart is almost at an end, and the worthy face of my cabinet president and privy-councillor is already peering forth from behind the godlike countenance of the poet. i wish you to retain the rank and dignities with which you were invested when you left for italy. you are herewith relieved of the duty of presiding in my cabinet and in the war office. you, however, still retain the right to attend the various meetings, if you should find time to do so, and whenever you appear you will seat yourself in the chair set apart for me. i will see that instructions to this effect are issued. on the other hand, you will retain the superintendence of the mining commission, and all other institutions of science and art which you now hold. your chief occupation will, however, be to stand at my side as friend and councillor, and to tell me the plain, unvarnished truth at all times. these are your duties, and you will now perceive that i have known how to read your soul, although we were widely separated, and that i have endeavored to make your future honorable, and not too burdensome. and, that you may not suppose, wolf, that these are only fine phrases and that these thoughts first occurred to me in your presence to-day, i have brought you the written order addressed to the bureau of my cabinet, and the letter in which i acquainted you with all these matters, and which i was about to forward to you in rome when the letter came announcing your departure from that city." "as if my dear, my noble duke ever needed witnesses to confirm his statements," cried goethe, as he gently refused to receive the papers which the duke held in his extended hand. "ah, i perceive the cabinet president is himself once more," cried the duke, laughing. "i must now retire to my ducal palace. others will, i have no doubt, think i have played the barbarian and tyrant by remaining with you so long, and thereby robbing them of the time to which they imagine they have a fairer title." "duke, i know of no one who has a higher and better title to my time and person than yourself, my dear patron and friend." "wolf, it is well that i alone have heard these words," cried charles august, gayly; "i believe there is a woman in whose ears they would have had a discordant sound. the responsibility must not rest on me, if a difficulty should arise on your first meeting. therefore i am going, wolf, although i am very curious to hear of your promised land and of your discoveries and purchases, but for this i will have to wait till the afternoon. you will, of course, dine with me to-day, wolf, and dispense a little of the incense of your eloquence on the altar of my household gods. farewell till we meet again, my returned wanderer! i must, however, request you not to come as the privy-councillor, but as the poet. you may show your official mask and the star on your breast to the court, but appear before me with your apollo countenance and the stars of your eyes." "my dear duke," said goethe, affectionately, "your presence has cheered and strengthened me; i feel as though i had been bathing in nectar, and had been refreshed with ambrosia. when i am with you, nothing will be wanting to my joy and happiness. you must, however, not be angry, my dear duke, if i should sometimes appear grave and stiller than usual in the presence of others, and you will then know that it is only the longing after the distant land of the gods that is tormenting me." "i will know how to account for it, wolf, and will respect your longing; i very much doubt, however, whether others will be equally considerate--i doubt whether one person of whom i am thinking will be particularly pleased with such conduct on your part. have you seen her already, wolf?" "whom does your highness mean?" asked goethe, with a perfectly innocent expression of countenance. the duke laughed. "oh, wolf, wolf, i hope you have not exchanged names, as hector and patroclus exchanged armor, and become von stein.[ ] i hope you return to your old love, faithful and true. ah, there i have made a pun without intending it. excuse me, i entertained no evil design, but now that i have said it i will repeat it. you return to your old love, faithful and true. remain here, you must not accompany me; i came _sans cérémonie_, and i will take my departure in like manner. it is understood that we dine together to-day. adieu!" a cloud gathered on goethe's brow as the duke left the room. "my old love!" said he to himself, in low tones. "i wish he had not spoken that word; it sounds so ridiculous!" chapter v. estrangement. charlotte von stein sat before her mirror, anxiously regarding her countenance, and carefully examining each feature and every little wrinkle that was observable on her clear forehead and cheeks. "no," said she, with an air of joyous confidence, "no, it is not visible; no one can read it in my face! it is a secret between myself and my certificate of baptism!" as intelligent as she was, charlotte von stein was yet subject to that cowardly fear of her sex--the fear that her age might be read in her countenance. she, too, was wanting in that courage which contents itself with the eternal youth of the mind, and does not demand of its covering that it retain no traces of the rude, unfeeling hand of time. a woman who loves has invariably the weakness to desire not to become old, at least in the eyes of him whose image fills her heart--in the eyes of him she loves. she does not consider that, in so doing, she insults the intelligence of the object of her devotion, by admitting that he thinks more of the outward form than of the inner being, and loves with the eyes only, and not with the mind. in the first years of their acquaintance, and in the incipient stage of their attachment, charlotte von stein had always listened to goethe's protestations of love with a merry smile, and had invariably replied: "i am too old for you! remember that i am some years older than you--that i am old enough to be your mother." when she made this reply, goethe would laugh, and kiss with passionate tenderness the fair hand of the woman who offered him motherly friendship, and whom he adored with all the ardor of a lover. but ten long years had passed since then! charlotte thought of this while looking at herself in the mirror, and she sighed as she admitted to herself that she had committed a fault--a great fault, for she had left the cool regions of motherly tenderness, and had permitted herself to be carried away by the tide of goethe's passion; the two flames in her heart had been united into the one godlike flame of love. it had seemed so sweet to be adored by this handsome man, and to listen to his tender protestations and entreaties! it had been so charming to receive each morning a letter filled with passionate assurances of love, and vows of eternal fidelity! she had continued to read these ardent letters until their words glowed in her own heart--until, at last, that day came for the lovers of which dante says: "on that day they read no more"--the day on which charlotte confessed to her enraptured lover that his love was reciprocated. a few days later, goethe had written: "my /first and best friend/! i have always had an ideal wish as to how i desired to be loved, and have vainly sought its fulfilment in my illusive dreams. now that the world seems lighter to me each day, i see it realized in such a manner that it can never be lost again. farewell, thou fairest prospect of my whole life; farewell, thou only one, in whom i need lose nothing, in order to find all!"[ ] charlotte had placed this little letter in a golden locket, from which she was never separated; it had been her blissful assurance, her talisman of eternal youth and joy. she now turned from the mirror that utterly refused to say any thing agreeable, and drew from her bosom her talisman, the locket that contained the relic, the source of so much happiness, love, and delight. relics! alas, how much that we consider real, present, and full of life, is only a relic of the past! how few men there are in whose hearts the love they once vowed should be eternal, is no more than a relic!--the crumbling bone of a saint, to whom altars were once erected, and who was adored as an immortal, unchangeable being. alas, love, thou poor saint, how often are thy altars overthrown, and how soon do thy youth and beauty fade, leaving nothing of thee but a little dust and ashes--a relic! charlotte von stein held the letter in her hands, but the thought did not occur to her that it too was only a relic; she still considered it the eloquent witness of passionate love. while reading the letter, a bright smile had illumined her features, and imparted to them a more youthful and beautiful expression. she now kissed the sheet of paper, and replaced it in the locket which she wore on a golden chain around her neck. what need had she of written evidences? was not _he_ near? would not _his_ lips soon say more, in a single kiss, than thousands of written words could tell? "but he might have come sooner," whispered a voice in charlotte's heart; "it is very late." her beautiful brown eyes cast an anxious look toward the door, and she smiled. her heart throbbed in advance of time; it was still so early in the morning, that it would hardly have been considered proper for him to call at an earlier hour. but now her heart beat quicker--she heard a step in the antechamber. "it is he! be firm, my heart, do not break with delight, for--yes, it is he! it is he!" she flew forward to meet him, with extended hands, her countenance radiant with delight. "welcome, goethe, a thousand welcomes!" "a thousand thanks, charlotte, that your faithful, loving heart bids me welcome!" his large black eyes regarded her with all their former tenderness, and then--then he kissed her hand. charlotte could scarcely restrain a sigh, and could not repress the terror that pervaded her whole being. he felt the tremor in the hands which he held in his own, and it was perhaps on this account that he released them, threw his arms around her and pressed her to his heart. "here i am once more, charlotte, and, as god is my witness, i return with the same love and fidelity with which i left you! you can believe this, my beloved, for it was on your account chiefly, or on your account solely, that i returned at all. you must therefore love me very dearly, charlotte, and reward me, with faithful love and cordial friendship, for the sacrifice i have made for your sake." "it was, then, a sacrifice?" said she, with a touch of irony in her voice that did not escape goethe. "yes, my dearest, this return to cold, prosaic germany, from the warm, sunny clime of happy italy, was a sacrifice." "then i really regret that you did not remain there," said she, with more sensitiveness than discretion. he looked at her wonderingly. "you regret that i have returned? i supposed you would be glad." "i can rejoice in nothing that i have attained by a sacrifice on your part." "my love, do not let us quarrel over words," said he, almost sadly. "we will not unnecessarily pour drops of bitterness into the cup of our rejoicing at being together once more. we have met again, and will endeavor to hold each other fast, that we may never be divided." "if an effort is necessary, then we are already half divided." "but i have come home in order that we may be reunited, wholly and joyfully," said goethe, moved to kindness and generosity by the tears which stood in her eyes, and the annoyance and sadness that clouded her countenance, rendering it neither younger nor more beautiful. but remembrances of the past smiled on him in the lustrous eyes of the woman he had loved so ardently for ten years, and it was still a very comforting feeling, after having been tossed about by the storms of life for so long a time, to return once more to his heart's home, to lie once more in the haven of happiness and love, where there were no more storms and dangers, and where the wearied wanderer could enjoy peaceful rest, and dream sweet dreams. he seated himself at charlotte's side on the sofa, laid his arm around her neck, took her hand in his own, looked lovingly into her countenance, and began to tell her of his journey--of the little accidents and occurrences that can only be verbally imparted. she listened attentively; she rejoiced in his passionate eloquence, in his glowing descriptions of his travels, and yet--and yet, as interesting as this was there was nevertheless another theme that would have been far more so--the theme of his love, of his longings to see her, and of his delight in being once more reunited with his charlotte, and in finding her so beautiful, so unchanged. but goethe did not speak of these things; and, instead of contenting herself with reading his love in his tender glances, his smiles, and his confiding and devoted manner, her heart thirsted to hear passionate assurances of love fall from his lips. her countenance wore a listless expression, and she did not seem to take her usual lively interest in his words. goethe observed this, and interrupted his narrative to tell her that he was delighted to be with her once more, and that she was still as beautiful and charming as ever. hereupon charlotte burst into tears, and then suddenly embraced him passionately, and rested her head on his breast. "oh! let no estrangement occur between us; do not become cold and reserved to me too, as you are to the rest of the world!" "am i that?" asked he, with an offended air. from her at least he had not deserved this reproach, and it affected him disagreeably, casting a damper over the gayety with which he had been narrating his adventures. "am i really cold and reserved?" he asked, as she did not reply, for the second time. "yes, wolf," said she, with vivacity, "you know that you are; the world accuses you of being so." "because i am not like a market-place, open to the inspection of every fool, and in which the inquisitive rabble can gaze at, handle, and criticise every thing, as though the holiest thoughts of the soul were mere wares exposed for sale!--because i am rather to be compared to a fortress surrounded by a high wall, which opens its well-guarded gates to the initiated and chosen only. in this sense i admit that that which is called the world, and which is in reality only the inquisitive, gossipping rabble, composed chiefly of individuals who make great pretensions to intellectuality, but are generally empty-headed--that this world calls me cold and reserved, i admit. but have i ever been so toward my friends, and, above all, toward you?" "no, heaven be thanked! no, my beloved wolf!" cried charlotte, in eager and tender tones, well aware that she had committed an error, which she wished to repair; "no, toward me you have always been friendly, communicative, and open, and therefore--" "and therefore, my love," said he, interrupting her, "therefore you should not have reproached me, undeservedly, in the hour of our reunion." he arose and took his hat from the table. "oh, wolf!" cried she, anxiously, "you are not going?" "i must, my dearest! i must first pay a few formal visits, to avoid giving offence. i must call on some friends i expect to meet at the ducal table to-day." "perhaps it was only on this account that you visited me?" said charlotte, the tears which she could no longer repress, gushing from her eyes. "wolf, did you visit me solely because you expected to meet me in the ducal palace to-day?" he regarded her with a look of distress and astonishment. "charlotte, dear charlotte, is it possible that so great a change has come over you in two short years?" she started, and a glowing color suffused itself over her countenance; the poor woman thought of what her mirror had told her but a short time before, and goethe's question awakened bitter reflections. "am i really so changed?" sighed she, and her head sank wearily upon her breast. "no," cried he, earnestly, "no, charlotte, you cannot have changed; it is only that this first moment of reunion after a long separation has affected us strangely. we will soon be restored to each other completely, we will soon be reunited in love and friendship. charlotte, it is impossible that two years of separation can have torn asunder the holy union of our souls! let us strive to prevent so unhappy a consummation; it would be a misfortune for me--yes, i may say, a misfortune for you, too! i think we love each other so tenderly that we should both endeavor, with the whole strength of our souls, to ward off misfortune from each other. let these be my farewell words, darling, and, as i have just learned that you too will dine at court to-day, i can joyfully say--till we meet again!" he embraced her, and pressed a kiss on her lips, a kiss that wounded her heart more than a cold leave-taking would have done; for this gentle, friendly kiss seemed to her but as the second echo of what her mirror had said! as the door closed behind his loved form, charlotte sank down on her knees, buried her face in the cushions of the sofa, and wept bitterly. his head erect, his countenance grave and earnest, goethe walked on to pay his calls; and those whom he thus honored found that be had come home colder and more reserved than when he had departed. but, at the banquet, in the ducal palace, he was neither cold nor reserved; there he was eloquent and impassioned,--there enthusiastic words of poetic description flowed like golden nectar from his smiling lips; there his eye sparkled and his cheek glowed, and his illustration of life in italy awakened delight and admiration in the hearts of all--of all, except charlotte von stein! she sat at goethe's side, and he often turned his lightning glance on her, as though speaking to her alone, but charlotte felt only that what he said was intended for all. had he but attempted to whisper a single word in her ear, had he given her hand a gentle pressure, had he but made her some secret sign understood by herself only, and permitted her to feel that something peculiar and mysterious was going on in which they two alone participated! in society, goethe had formerly, before his journey to italy, availed himself of every little opportunity that arose to press her hand and whisper loving words in her ear. to-day he was wanting in these delicate little attentions--in these little love-signals, for which she had so often scolded him in former times! she was therefore very quiet, and did not join in the applause of the rest of the company. but, amidst the admiration evoked by his eloquence, goethe listened only to hear a word of approval from charlotte, and, when his friend still remained silent, his animation vanished and his countenance darkened. but they had loved each other too long and too tenderly not to be alarmed by the thought of a possible coolness and separation. true, charlotte often wept in the solitude of her chamber, and accused him of ingratitude; true, goethe often grumbled in silence, and lamented over charlotte's irritability and sensitiveness, but yet he was earnest in his desire to avoid all estrangement, and to restore to their hearts the beautiful harmony that had so long existed. he resumed the habit that had formerly given him so much delight--that of writing to charlotte almost daily. but her sensitive woman's ear detected a difference in the melody of his letters; they were no longer written in the same high, passionate key, but had been toned down to a low, melancholy air. her own replies were of a like character, and this annoyed goethe greatly. he abused the gloomy skies of germany, and lamented over the lost paradise of italy; and charlotte could not help comprehending that she was the cause of his discontent and anger. but still he visited her almost every day, and was always animated and communicative in her society. he read portions of his newly-commenced drama "torquato tasso," with her, told her of his plans for the future, and permitted her to take part in his intellectual life. then she would soon forget her little sorrows and her woman's sensitiveness, and become once more the intelligent friend, with the clear judgment and profound understanding. on an occasion of this kind, goethe requested his "beloved friend" to return the letters he had written to her during the two years of his sojourn in italy. charlotte looked at him in astonishment. "my letters--the dear letters i have kept so sacred that i have not shown a single one of them to my most intimate friends--these letters you desire me to return?" "certainly, my dear, i beg you to do so. i intend having an account of my italian journey published--have also promised wieland some fragments for his "mercury," and, in order to prepare these for the press, it will only be necessary to have the letters i have written to you copied." "can this be possible, wolf?" asked she, in dismay. "do you really intend to have the letters, written by you to me, read and copied by a third person?" "as a matter of course, i will first correct these letters, and leave nothing in them addressed to you personally and intended for your dear eyes only," replied goethe, laughing. "i always had this end in view while writing to you in italy, and you will have observed that my letters were always divided, to a certain extent, into two portions. the first is addressed to you only, my dear charlotte--to you, my friend and my beloved--and this was filled with the words of love and longing that glowed in my own heart. the second portion is a mere narrative and description of what i have seen, heard, and done while in italy, and was intended for publication." "but this is unheard of," cried charlotte, angrily; "this experiment does great honor to your cold calculation, but very little to your heart." "charlotte, i am not aware of ever having done any thing discreditable to my heart in my relations to you!" "relations to me!" she repeated, offended. "certainly, this is an entirely new name for the ardent love you once protested could never expire in your heart." "charlotte, dear, beloved charlotte!" he sighed, sadly, "do take pity on us both. be yourself once more. you were once so noble, so lofty-minded; do not now fall from this high estate, but take a quiet, unprejudiced view of our relations. why should you reproach me for desiring to have a portion of your letters published? will they be any the less your letters on that account?" "they are not, and never were mine!" she replied, angrily; "they merely chanced to be addressed to me--these letters, which you intended for publication even while writing them, and which were so well concocted that it will only be necessary to extract a few little elements of feeling and sentiment to make the manuscript complete and ready for the press. and i, poor, blinded simpleton, imagined that this goethe, who could leave me to go to italy--i imagined that this goethe, whom my soul had followed with its sighs of affectionate longing, still loved me. i was generous enough to believe that the thoughts, love, and confidence contained in his letters were addressed to me only; but now i must learn that i was nothing more to him than the representative of the great hydra-headed monster, the public, and that he was only informing it when he seemed to be speaking to me!" "charlotte, i conjure you, do not continue to talk in this manner; you cannot know how your words grieve my heart! charlotte, by the brightest and most beautiful years of my life, i conjure you, do not step forth from the pure and radiant atmosphere in which you have heretofore appeared to me. i conjure you, my friend, by all the adoration, esteem, and love which i have consecrated to you, do not descend from the altar on which my love has placed you; do not join the throng of those women who are unnecessarily jealous when they fancy their lovers not quite so tender as usual. you are not one of them; remain, therefore, on your altar, and allow me to worship you as i have heretofore done." "you do well to say 'as you have done,' but as you no longer do," cried charlotte, bursting into tears, without considering that woman's tears are but poor weapons to use against men, and that the woman must be very young, very beautiful, and the object of great adoration, who can afford to disfigure her countenance with tears and clouds of discontent. goethe looked at her in surprise and alarm, and his glance rested on her countenance inquiringly, as though seeking the charm that had formerly attracted him so irresistibly. then, as she fastened her tear-stained eyes on his countenance, he started and turned hastily aside, as though some unwelcome vision had arisen before him. the conviction now dawned on charlotte that she had committed a grave error; she quickly dried her eyes, and, with that power peculiar to women, she even forced a smile to her lips. "you turn from me, wolf," said she, in tender tones, "you do not reply?" "my dear," said he, gently, "as you have asked me no question, what can i answer? you asserted that i no longer loved and adored you as in former days. to such an assertion, charlotte, i can make no reply; i would consider it a sacrilegious breach of the union that has been sanctified and confirmed by long years of love and fidelity, and that should be elevated above all doubt and protestations." "then you love me, wolf? you still love me?" "yes," said he; and it seemed to charlotte as though he had laid a peculiar emphasis on this little word. it sounded like another echo of the ominous whisperings of her mirror. for a moment both were silent, perhaps because charlotte was too completely absorbed in her own thoughts. when they conversed again it was on an entirely different topic. after a short time goethe tenderly took leave of charlotte, and left the house; he hurried through the streets and entered the park, to the densest and most obscure retreats of which he had so often revealed his thoughts in past years. this park had been goethe's true and discreet friend for many years, and he now turned his footsteps once more toward the favorite retreat in which he had so often poured out his sighs and complaints in former days, when charlotte had cruelly repelled the advances of her tender friend and lover. goethe suffered to-day also, but his sufferings were not to be compared to those he had formerly experienced in the same shady avenues. then his soul was filled with a despair that was tempted with hope and joyousness. for was there ever a true lover whose ladylove had driven him to despair by her cruelty, who did not nevertheless entertain a joyous hope that her hard heart would at last be softened, and that he would yet become a _happy_ lover? then these avenues had often resounded with goethe's sighs and lamentations, and there the tears of wounded pride had often filled his eyes. to-day he neither sighed nor lamented, and his eyes were tearless, but he looked gloomy, and an expression of annoyance rather than of sadness rested on his countenance. in silence he walked to and fro with hasty strides; suddenly he raised the light cane which he held in his hand and struck a sprig of blossoming woodbine from a vine that overhung the walk, so violently that it fell to his feet; and then his lips murmured: "she is very much changed. she has become an old woman, and i--i cannot make myself ridiculous by playing the lover--no!" he ceased speaking, without having finished his sentence, as if alarmed at his own words. he then stooped down, picked up the sprig of woodbine, and regarded it thoughtfully. "poor blossom," said he, gently, "i did wrong to strike you! you are not beautiful, but you are very fragrant, and it is for this reason probably that the kindly and delicate feeling of the people has given you so pretty a name. they call you, 'the longer, the dearer!' i will not tread you under foot, you poor 'the longer the dearer;' your fragrance is very delightful, and somehow it seems to me as though charlotte's eyes were gazing at me from out your tiny cups." he placed the flower in a button-hole of his coat, and, as though his little "the longer the dearer" blossom had given him a satisfactory solution of his heart-troubles, he left the shady retreat and went toward an opening in the park. he walked rapidly, and was on the point of turning into a path that led to his garden-house, when he saw a young girl approaching from the other side of the road. she was unknown to goethe, and her whole appearance indicated that she did not belong to that favored class that claims to constitute what is called "society." the simple calico dress which enveloped her full and graceful figure, the coarse shoes in which her little feet were enclosed, and the white and delicate little ungloved hands, proclaimed that she did not belong to "society." moreover, the light little hat which ladies of rank wore jauntily on one side of their powdered hair at that time, was wanting. her hair was uncovered, and surrounded her lovely little head with a mass of sunny curls. her countenance was radiant with youth, innocence, and freshness; she blushed as her eyes encountered goethe's lightning glances. her large blue eyes rested on him with an expression of gentle entreaty and tender humility, and a soft smile played about her pouting, crimson lips. this youthful, charming apparition resembled but little the pale, faintly-colored blossoms of the flower which he wore in his button-hole; she was more like the rich mossrose-bud which nestled on the fair girl's bosom, and with which she had confined the two ends of the lace shawl that hung loosely over her beautiful shoulders. goethe now stood before her, regarding her with inquiring, wondering glances. with a graceful movement the young girl raised her right hand, in which she held a folded paper. "mr. privy-councillor, i beg you to take this and read it." "what does this document contain?" asked goethe, in tender tones. "it is a petition from my brother in jena," murmured her clear, silvery voice. "i promised him to give it to the privy-councillor myself, and to entreat him right earnestly to grant my dear brother's request. dear privy-councillor, please do so. we are such a poor and unhappy family; we are compelled to work so hard, and we earn so little. we have to study such close economy, and there are so few holidays in our life! but it would be a glorious fête-day for us all if the privy-councillor would grant what my dear brother so ardently desires." goethe's eyes were still fastened on the lovely apparition that stood before him like an embodied psyche. in her rich, youthful beauty she seemed to him like some myrtle-blossom wafted over from sunny italy. "what is your name, my dear girl?" asked he. "my name is christiane vulpius, mr. privy-councillor," murmured she, casting her eyes down. "not the daughter of that good-for-nothing drunkard, who--" "sir, he is my father," said she, interrupting him in such sad, reproachful tones, that goethe felt heartily ashamed of his inconsiderate words, and took off his hat as he would have done to a lady of rank. "forgive me, mademoiselle, i did wrong. excuse my thoughtless words. but now i can readily comprehend that your family must be poor and unhappy. it seems to me that misfortune has, however, not dared to touch these rosy cheeks and lustrous eyes with its rude fingers." she smiled. "i am still so young, sir; youth is light-hearted and hopes for better times. and then, when i grow weary of our dark little room, i run here to the park. the park is every one's garden, and a great delight for us poor people. here i skip about, seek flowers in the grass, and sing with the birds. is not this enough to make me happy, although hard work, poor fare, and much abuse, await me at home?" "but it seems to me," said goethe, taking the hand, which still held the petition, gently in his own, "it seems to me that this fair hand has no right to complain of hard work. it is as white as a lily." "and this hand has made a great many lilies," rejoined she, smiling. "my work consists in making flowers. i love flowers, and roam through the woods all day long on sundays, seeking beautiful flowers to copy from. my field-flower bouquets are great favorites, and the milliners pay me well for them. they are very fashionable, and the high-born ladies at court all desire to wear field-flower bouquets on their hats. day before yesterday i furnished a field-flower bouquet, which the milliner sold to madame the baroness von stein, on the same day, and yesterday i saw it on her hat." the hand which but now had clasped the white tapering fingers of the young girl so tenderly, trembled a little, and a shadow flitted over his smiling countenance. madame von stein's name sounded strangely on the young girl's lips; it seemed like a warning of impending danger. he looked grave, and released her hand, retaining only the petition. "tell me what it contains," said he, pointing to the paper. "i would rather read it from your lips than from the paper?" "mr. privy-councillor, it concerns my poor, dear brother. he is such a brave, good fellow, and so diligent and learned. he lives in jena, translates books from the italian and french, and sells them to publishing houses. the office of secretary of the university library, in jena, is now vacant, and my brother desires it, and would be so happy if he should receive the appointment! he has dared to address you, mr. councillor, and to entreat you earnestly to use your influence to secure him the situation. i have undertaken to deliver the petition, and to say a great many fine phrases besides. ah, mr. privy-councillor, i had written down a whole speech that i intended to make to you." "then let me hear this speech, my fair girl. the nightingales and bullfinches have hushed their songs, and are waiting for you to begin." "sir," murmured she, blushing, "i do not know why it is, but i cannot." he bent forward, closer to her side, so close that the wind blew her golden locks against his cheek. "why is it that you cannot, my fair child? why not let me hear your beautiful little speech?" "because, because--i have hitherto only seen you at a distance, and then you looked so exalted, and walked with so much stiffness and dignity, that i entertained the most profound respect for the proud old privy-councillor, and now that i am near you i see, well--" "well?" "well," cried she, with a joyous peal of laughter, "i see that you are much too young, that my speech is entirely inappropriate." "why so?" asked goethe, smiling. "try it, let me hear it, nevertheless." she looked up at him with an inquiring, childlike expression. "do you believe that my beautiful speech would influence you and promote my brother's interests? if you believe that, i will speak, for my brother is a dear, good fellow, and i will do any thing to make him happy!" "then let us hear it," replied goethe, delighted with the fair young girl, whose beauty, grace, and naïveté, reminded him of the lovely leonora in rome. yes, it was she, it was leonora, with this difference only, that this fair girl was a northern version of the leonora of the south, but was none the less beautiful on that account. "oh, leonora, you child of the sun and of nature, am i really to be so blessed, am i to find you here again--here where my heart was congealing, and longing for the sunny rays of delight from a fair woman's eyes? yes, leonora, this is your sweet smile and kindling, childlike glance; it is you, and yet it is not you. god and nature were reflected in your countenance, a whole heaven shone in your features. fair nature is reflected in this lovely countenance also, but i seek the divinity in vain, and instead of heaven i find the joyous earth enthroned therein!" goethe was occupied with these thoughts while christiane, blushing, smiling, half-ashamed at times, and then again bold and fearless, was declaiming her well-prepared speech. too much of what was passing in goethe's mind must have been reflected in the tender, ardent glances which rested on her countenance, for she suddenly broke off in the midst of a sentence, murmured a few embarrassed words, blushed, courtesied, and then turned and fled like a startled doe. chapter vi. the two poets. "she is bewitching," murmured goethe, as the beautiful girl was lost to view behind the green bushes that skirted the avenue. "i had no idea that dull, sober weimar contained such a treasure, and--" "goethe! welcome, goethe!" cried the joyous voice of a woman behind him; "how delighted i am to meet you here!" he turned hastily, and saw madame von kalb standing before him, on the arm of a tall, fair-haired gentleman. this was the cause of christiane's flight. the beautiful girl had seen this lady and gentleman coming. she was, therefore, not only beautiful, she was also discreet and modest. goethe said this to himself, while he kissed madame von kalb's extended hand, and gayly responded to her greeting. "the two gentlemen are, of course, acquainted," said she. "i believe i have never had the honor," replied goethe, who had again assumed the cold reserve of the privy-councillor. "who does not know the greatest and most celebrated of germany's poets?" said the other gentleman, a slight flush suffusing itself over his pale, hollow cheeks. "i have known the poet goethe for a long time; i was present when he visited the charles school in stuttgart. he, of course, did not observe the poor scholar, but the latter was delighted to see the poet goethe. and he is now delighted to make the acquaintance of the privy-councillor goethe!" perhaps there was a slight touch of irony in these words, but his large blue eyes beamed as mildly and lovingly as ever. a slight shadow flitted over goethe's brow. "you are right," said he, "in reminding me that there are hours in which the poet must be contented to perform the duties of an official. by the document which i hold in my hand, you will perceive, my lady, that i am an official who has duties to fulfil, and i trust that you will, therefore, excuse me." he bowed formally, and passed on in the direction of his garden-house. "he is becoming colder and more reserved each day," said madame von kalb. "he has been completely transformed since i first saw him here in weimar. then, radiant and handsome as apollo, flaming with enthusiasm, carrying all hearts with him by his impetuosity and genial manner--then we were forced to believe that earth had no barriers or fetters for him, but that he could spread his pinions and soar heavenward at any moment; now, a stiff, unapproachable, privy-councillor, reserved and grandly dignified! schiller, no woman could change so fearfully, or become so false to herself! goethe's appearance has saddened me so much that i feel like crying!" "and i," said schiller, angrily, "i feel like calling myself a simpleton for having addressed a kindly greeting to so haughty a gentleman. he despises me, and looks down upon the unknown dramatic writer with contempt; he--" "frederick," said madame von kalb, gently, "my frederick, such petty envy does not beseem a genius like yourself; you--" "nor do i envy him," said schiller, interrupting her; "in my breast also glows the holy fire that was not stolen from heaven by prometheus for him alone! my spirit also has pinions that would bear it aloft to the sun, if--yes, if it were not for the paltry fetters that bind my feet to earth!" "and yet, my beloved friend," rejoined charlotte, passionately, "and yet i will be only too happy to share these fetters with you--and i would rather live with you in a modest cottage, than in the most magnificent palace at the side of an unloved man." "you are an angel, charlotte," murmured schiller; "you over-estimate me, and i know only too well how little i resemble the sublime image your lively imagination has made of me." he did not look at charlotte while uttering these words, his manner was embarrassed, and his eyes turned heavenward. he suffered charlotte to lead him by the hand, and walked at her side like a dreaming, confiding child. she led him to the darkest and most solitary avenue--to the same retreat in which goethe had walked restlessly to and fro but a short time before. the little branch of woodbine which goethe had struck down with his cane, and from which he had plucked a blossom and placed it in his button-hole, still lay in the middle of the road. charlotte carelessly trod it under foot, never dreaming that these crushed blossoms could have told a tale that might have served her as a warning. but of women's hearts the same may be said that mirabeau said of princes: "they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing!" no; they, too, learn nothing and forget nothing, these poor women's hearts. never have they learned by the fate of another woman that love is not immortal, and that the vows of men, as horace says, "are wafted away like the leaves of the forest." never have they forgotten these vows, and on the leaves of the forest do they still erect air-castles, which they fondly hope will stand forever. they seated themselves on a rustic bench that had been placed in a flowery niche, cut out of the hedge that skirted the path in which they had been walking. there they sat, hand in hand, charlotte's eyes fastened on schiller's noble, thoughtful countenance, with an expression of mingled pain and tenderness. "frederick, you have nothing to say to me?" he raised his eyes slowly, and in the vehemence of her own feelings she failed to observe that his glance was somewhat embarrassed and anxious. "it is very beautiful here," he said in low tones. "this solitude, this eloquent silence of nature, is very delightful, particularly when i can enjoy it at your side, my beloved friend. our souls are like two harps that are tuned to the same tone, and are so near together that, when the strings of the one are touched, those of the other echo a response in the same accord." "god grant that it may ever be so, my frederick! god grant that no storm break in upon the harmony of these harps!" "and from whence should such a storm come, my dear friend, beloved sister of my soul? no, i am sure that this can never be. the love which unites us is exalted above all change and illusion. i can conceive of no purer or more beautiful relation than that of a brother to his sister, when they are loving, and live in a proper understanding of their duties to each other. let this thought truly console us and strengthen our hearts, charlotte, if other wishes entertained by me for a long time, as you well know, should never be fulfilled. charlotte, i am not one of those whose lives flow on in a smooth, unbroken current, and over whose desires auspicious stars shine in the heavens. to forego has ever been my fate, and you, my dearest, have given me painful instruction in this bitter lesson. you will remember how i knelt at your feet in mannheim, passionately entreating you to sunder the fetters which bound you to the unloved man, and to become mine, my wife! it was, however, in vain; and now, when your heart is at last inclined to grant the fulfilment of our wishes and hopes--now, when you would dare to become my wife, another obstacle presents itself that seems to render it impossible that we should ever be outwardly united." "what obstacle, frederick? who can prevent it?" "your husband, charlotte. it seems that he loves you truly, and cannot bear to entertain the thought of separation." "have you spoken with him, frederick? have you honestly and openly told him of our wishes, and have you entreated him to fulfil them?" "i have often attempted to do so, but he always avoided coming to the point. whenever he observed that i was endeavoring to turn our conversation in that direction, he would break off abruptly and introduce another topic of conversation. this convinced me that he loved you dearly, and the thought that i am about to grieve this good and noble man and rob him of a treasure that my own feelings teach me must be very dear to him, pains me to the heart's core." "frederick," said she, softly, "how fearful it is to see the most beautiful flowers of spring fade and die, sometimes cut off by a nipping frost, sometimes parched by the too great warmth of the sun!" "i do not understand you, charlotte," said schiller, in a little more confusion than was entirely compatible with his "not understanding." "and i," cried she, with sparkling eyes, "i wish i did not understand you! tell me, frederick, is your heart really mine? are your feelings toward me unchanged?" he raised his eyes, and gazed into her agitated countenance earnestly and thoughtfully. "charlotte, you ask a question which god alone can answer. who can say of himself that he has a true and exact knowledge of his own feelings? all is subject to change; the sea has its ebb and flow, the sun rises and sets. but the sea ever and again returns to the beach it had before deserted, and the sun ever rises again after the dark night. as the sea and sun, with all their changes, are still eternally constant, so it is also with true love. at times it would seem as though it were withdrawing, and leaving a bleak, sandy desert behind; in the next hour its mighty waves surge back impetuously over the barren strand, chanting, in holy organ-tones, the song that love is eternal." "wondrous words!" cried charlotte; "the paraphrase to a glorious song which i hope the poet frederick schiller will one day sing to the world! but i ask the poet, whether these are also the words of the man frederick schiller? did the hymn to love, just uttered by the poet's lips, also resound in the heart of the man, and was it addressed to me?" "and why these questions, my dearest? the poet and the man are one, and the utterances of the poet's lips are the thoughts of the man; when he consecrates an enthusiastic hymn to love, while at your side, be assured that it is addressed to you!" he laid his arm around her neck, and drew her head to his breast, as he had so often done before in hours of tenderness. but charlotte felt that there was, nevertheless, a difference between then and now: the arm that embraced her did not rest on her neck with the same warm pressure as of yore. she, however, repressed the sigh that had nearly escaped her lips, nestled closer to his bosom, and whispered in low tones: "frederick, your hymn has found an echo in my heart; frederick, i am very grateful to god for your love!" he was silent, his only response was a warmer pressure of the arm entwined around her neck. then both were silent. deep stillness reigned; it seemed as though nature were holding divine service in her green halls under the dome of heaven; at first with silent prayer, then a joyous song of praise resounded from the hidden chorus in the foliage of the tall trees, until the breeze rustled through the leaves in holy organ-tones, and silenced the feathered songsters. to these deep organ-tones, to this rustling of the wind in the foliage, listened the two lovers, who sat there on the little rustic bench in a trance of delight and devotion. both were silent, and yet so eloquent in their silence. he, with his pale countenance turned upward, gazing intently at the blue dome of heaven, as though seeking to fathom its mysteries; she, with her head resting on his bosom, seeking no other, now that she had found this heaven. but the wind now rustled through the trees in deeper and more solemn tones, and awakened charlotte from her sweet repose. a leaf torn from the branches by the wind was borne against her cheek; it glided over her face like the touch of a ghostly finger, and fell into her hands, which lay folded in her lap. she started up in alarm, and looked down at this gift of the wind and trees. they had given her a withered, discolored leaf. like the harbinger of coming autumn had this withered leaf touched her face, and rudely awakened her from her heavenly summer dream. "a bad omen," she murmured, tearing the leaf to pieces with her trembling fingers. "what does this murmuring mean, charlotte?" asked schiller, who had been completely absorbed in his own thoughts, and had not observed this little by-play in the great tragedy of the heart. "what alarmed you so suddenly?" "nothing, it is nothing," said she, rising. "come, my friend, let us go; i fear that a storm is gathering in the heavens." he looked up at the clear blue sky in amazement. "i do not see a single cloud." "so much the better, frederick!" rejoined charlotte, quickly, "so much the better! nothing will therefore prevent our taking the contemplated drive to rudolstadt." her large eyes fastened a quick, penetrating glance on his countenance while uttering these words, and she saw that he colored slightly, and avoided encountering her gaze. "we will carry out our intention of driving to rudolstadt to-morrow, will we not, my friend? i have been promising to pay madame von lengefeld a visit for a long time, and it will afford me great pleasure to see her two daughters again. caroline von beulwitz is a noble young woman, and bears the cruel fate entailed upon her by her unfortunate marriage with true heroism. at the side of this matured summer-rose stands her sister charlotte, like a fair young blossom of the spring-time." schiller, his countenance radiant with pure joy, gave charlotte a tender, grateful look; and this look pierced her heart, and kindled the consuming flames of jealousy. poor charlotte! the wind had dashed a withered autumn-leaf against her face, and but now she had called the woman who was henceforth to be her rival "a fair young blossom of the spring-time." "how beautifully you paint with a few strokes of the brush, charlotte!" said schiller, gayly. "your portrait is an excellent one, and portrays madame von lengefeld's daughters as they really are. caroline, as the full-blown rose, and charlotte as a lovely, fragrant violet." "and which of these flowers do you most admire?" "it is hard to choose between them," replied schiller, laughing. "it is best to admire them together; i can scarcely conceive of their being separated; separation would destroy the harmony of the picture!" charlotte felt relieved. then he loved neither. his heart had not chosen between them. "i am so glad," said she, "that my friends chance to be yours also! how did you become acquainted with the von lengefeld family?" "we are old acquaintances!" replied schiller, smiling. "i made the acquaintance of these ladies four years ago while residing in madame von wollzogen's house, soon after my flight from stuttgart, and it was her son, my friend, william von wollzogen, who took me to see them in rudolstadt."[ ] "rumor says that mr. william von wollzogen loves his cousin caroline devotedly." "and for once, rumor has, as i believe, told the truth. wollzogen loves his beautiful cousin passionately." "and caroline, does she love him?" "who can fathom the heart of this noble woman! her lips are sealed by the solemn vow which united her with her unloved husband, and caroline von beulwitz is too noble and chaste a woman to become untrue even to an unloved husband, and--" schiller hesitated; he now felt how deeply his words must have wounded the woman who stood at his side--the woman over whom be had just pronounced judgment. but women have a wonderful knack of not hearing what they do not wish to hear, and of smiling even when stabbed to the heart. charlotte von kalb smiled on schiller as though his words had not wounded her in the slightest degree. "and has charlotte, has this poor child, at last recovered from her unhappy love? have the bleeding wounds of her young heart at last been healed?" madame von kalb, her countenance wreathed in smiles, had drawn the dagger from her own heart and plunged it into her lover's. "paete, paete, non dolet!" he felt the blow and found it impossible to force a smile to his lips. "what do you mean?" asked he, gloomily. "who has dared to wound the heart of this fair girl?" "i am surprised, indeed, that you should have heard nothing of this affair, my dear friend," said charlotte, the smile on her lips becoming more radiant as she felt that the dagger was entering deeper and deeper. "charlotte von lengefeld was affianced to a noble young man whom she loved devotedly, and it was the most ardent wish of both to be united for life. but, unfortunately, the wealth of their feelings formed a cutting contrast to the poverty of their outward circumstances. madame von lengefeld, a lady of experience and discretion, informed the lovers that their union was out of the question, as they were both poor. yielding to stern necessity they separated, although with many tears and bleeding hearts. the young man entered the hessian army and went to america, never to return. the young girl remained behind in sorrow and sadness, and, as it is said, took a solemn vow never to marry another, as fate had separated her from the man she loved." and after charlotte, with the cruelty characteristic of all women when they love and are jealous, had dealt this last blow, she smiled and gave her lover a tender glance. but his countenance remained perfectly composed, and charlotte's narrative seemed rather to have appealed to the imagination of the poet than to the heart of the man. "it is true," said he, softly, "each human heart furnishes material for a tragedy. all life is, in reality, nothing more than a grand tragedy, whose author is the eternal spirit of the universe. we, little children of humanity, are nothing more than the poor actors to whom this eternal spirit has given life for no other purpose than that we might play the rôles which he has assigned us. we poor actors fancy ourselves independent beings, yes, even the lords of creation, and talk of free agency and of the sublime power of the human will. this free agency is nothing more than the self-worship of the poor slave.--come, charlotte," cried schiller, suddenly awakening from his thoughtful contemplation; "come, my dear friend, let us go. thoughts are burning in my heart and brain, the poet is being aroused within the man. i must write; work only can restore me to peace and tranquillity!" "do you no longer find peace and tranquillity with me, frederick? have they ceased to ring the festive bells of our union of hearts? do they no longer call our souls together, that they may impart light and warmth to each other like two rays of sunshine?" "charlotte, souls too are untuned at times, although the accord of love is ever the same. remember this, and do not be angry if storms should sometimes break in upon the harmony of our souls." "i am never angry with you," said she, in tones of mingled sadness and tenderness. "your peace and your happiness is all i desire, and to give you this shall be the sole endeavor of my whole life. i believe that this is the holy mission with which fate has entrusted me, and for which i have been placed in the world. to do my utmost to add to your happiness and to give joyousness to your heart and gayety to your soul. yes, you shall be gay! your good genius smiles on your labors and relieves the laurel-crowned head of the poet of all care, giving him honor and glory. but i--i will give you happiness and gayety, for i love you; and you, you have told me a thousand times that you loved me, and that my heart was the home of your happiness. i will believe this sweet assurance, frederick, and will hold fast to it forever and evermore. i will look into the future with a glad heart, hoping that we may, at last, overcome all obstacles and belong to each other wholly. you say that my husband always avoids this subject, refusing to understand you. i will compel him to understand us. i, myself, will tell him of our hopes and wishes!" "no, charlotte," said he, "this duty devolves upon me! a time will come when all his endeavors to avoid this subject will be futile, and i will avail myself of this moment to speak for us both. do not look at me so doubtingly, charlotte. you have instructed me in the trying art of patience! be patient yourself, and never forget that the stars of our love will shine forever!" chapter vii. the first meeting. on the next morning schiller and madame von kalb drove to rudolstadt to pay the lengefeld family a visit. charlotte did not fail to observe that schiller's countenance grew brighter and brighter the nearer they approached the little thuringian village, that was so beautifully situated in the midst of wooded hills. madame von lengefeld received her welcome guests, at the door of her pretty little house, with dignity and kindness. behind her stood her two lovely daughters; the eyes of both fastened on frederick schiller, to whom they extended their hands, blushingly bidding him welcome. charlotte von kalb, although conversing in an animated manner with madame von lengefeld, nevertheless listened to every word schiller uttered, and observed his every glance. she heard him greet the two sisters with uniform cordiality, and she saw that his gaze rested on both with the same kindliness. madame von kalb's countenance assumed a more joyous expression, and a voice in her heart whispered, exultingly: "he does not love her, he has no preference for either one of them. he told me the truth, he entertains a brother's affection for _them_, but his tenderness and love are for _me_!" and now that her heart had come to this joyful conclusion, charlotte von kalb's whole manner was gay and animated; she laughed and jested with the two young ladies, was devoted in her attentions to madame von lengefeld, and treated schiller with the most tender consideration. her conversation was very gay and witty, and the most piquant and brilliant remarks were constantly falling like sparkling gems from her smiling lips. "how intelligent and amiable this lady is!" said the elder of the two sisters, caroline von beulwitz, to schiller, with whom they were walking in the flower-garden, behind the house, while dame von kalb remained with madame von lengefeld in the parlor. schiller walked between the sisters, a pretty snow-white hand resting on either arm. his countenance shone with happiness, and his step was light and buoyant. "i should like to ascend straightway into heaven with you two," said he, joyously; "and i think it highly probable that i will do so directly. nothing would be impossible for me to-day, and it seems to me as though heaven had descended to earth, so that i would have no obstacles to overcome, and could walk right in, with you two ladies on my arms." "then let us return to the house at once, in order to guard against any such ascension," said caroline von beulwitz, smiling. "oh, caroline," exclaimed charlotte, laughing joyously, "i wish we could take this flight to heaven! how surprised they would be, and how they would look for us, while we three were taking a walk up there in the clouds!" "and how angry madame von kalb would be with us, for having enticed her dear friend away!" said caroline, ironically. "i would enjoy it all the more on that very account," rejoined charlotte, laughing. "and i, too," protested schiller. "it would be very pleasant if we could sometimes cast aside all earthly fetters and rise, like the bird, high above the noisy, sorrowing earth, and float in the sunbright ether with the loved one in our arms. my dear friends, why not make this ascension to-day?" "to-day! no, not to-day," said charlotte, exchanging a meaning glance with her sister. "it will not do to leave the earth to-day, will it, caroline? we expect to have too pleasant a time here below to think of making the ascension to-day!" "what does this mystery--what do these sly glances mean?" asked schiller. "something extraordinary is about to occur. tell me, lolo, what does all this mean?" "i will tell nothing," said charlotte, laughing merrily, and shaking her brown locks. "it is useless to ask me." "but you, dear caroline, on whose sweet lips the truth and goodness are ever enthroned, you, at least, will tell me whether i am wrong in supposing that a mystery exists that will be unravelled to-day." "yes, my dear friend," said she, smiling, "there is a little surprise in store for you, but i hope you are satisfied that we would never do any thing that--" "and i believe," said her younger sister, interrupting her, "i believe that the solution of this mystery is at hand, for i hear a carriage approaching. listen, it has stopped at our door! yes, this is the mystery! come, my friend, the solution awaits you!" she was about to lead schiller to the house, when caroline gently drew her back. "one moment, lolo! tell me, my friend, do you place sufficient confidence in us, to follow without question and without uneasiness, even when we confess that we are leading you to the solution of a mystery?" schiller clasped the right hands of the two sisters and pressed them to his heart. "i will gladly and proudly follow you wherever you may choose to lead me. i place such confidence in you both that i could lay my life and eternal happiness in your dear hands, and bid defiance to all the mysteries of the world!" "but yet you would like to know what this mystery is, would you not?" asked lolo. "no," replied schiller, with an expression of abiding faith; "no, the solution of the mystery which my fair friends have in store for me will unquestionably be agreeable. let us go." "we are much obliged to you for your confidence, schiller," said caroline. "we will, however, not permit you to be surprised, as the other ladies had determined you should be. it will depend upon your own free-will whether you enter into the plans agreed upon by your friends, or not. schiller, you heard a carriage drive up to our door a few moments since? do you know who were in that carriage? madame von stein and goethe!" "is not that a surprise?" cried lolo, laughing. "yes," he said, with an expression of annoyance, "yes, a surprise, but not an agreeable one. the privy-councillor goethe showed no desire to cultivate my acquaintance, and i would not have him think that i desire to intrude myself on his notice. if he deems my acquaintance undesirable, the world is wide enough for us both, and we can easily avoid each other. as much as i admire goethe's genius, i am not humble enough to forget that i too am a poet to whom some consideration is due. nothing could be less becoming than for schiller to advance while goethe recedes, or even stands still." "but this is not so, schiller; it could not be!" exclaimed charlotte earnestly, while caroline gazed at him with sparkling eyes as though rejoicing in his proud bearing and energetic words. "join with me, caroline, in assuring him that is not the case! tell him how it is." "my friend," said charlotte, in a low voice, "goethe knew as little of your presence here as you of his. the two ladies, madame von stein and madame von kalb, arranged the whole affair, and we were only too glad to assist them in bringing together the two greatest poets of our day, the two noblest spirits of the century, in order that they might become acquainted, and lay aside the prejudices they had entertained concerning each other. while we are conversing with you here, this same explanation is being made to goethe by the ladies in the house. charlotte von stein is also there, and, as you will readily believe, holds the honor of her beloved friend schiller in too high estimation to permit goethe to suppose for a moment that you had connived at this meeting, or were anxious to make an acquaintance which he might deem undesirable." "come, my friends, let us return to the house," said schiller, smiling sadly. "it is but proper that i should make the first advances to my superior in rank and ability, and--" he ceased speaking, for at this moment goethe and the two charlottes appeared on the stairway. "you see," whispered caroline, "goethe thinks as you do, and he, too, is willing to make the first advances." in the meantime goethe had walked down into the garden, still accompanied by the two ladies, with whom he was engaged in an animated conversation. but when he saw schiller approaching, goethe hastened forward to meet him. "madame von kalb has reproached me for having withdrawn so abruptly when we met in the park a few days since," said goethe, in kindly tones. "i admit that i was wrong, but, at the same time, i must confess that it did not seem appropriate to me that we should make each other's acquaintance under such circumstances--as it were by the merest chance." "and yet it is chance again that enables me to greet the poet goethe, to-day," replied schiller, quickly. "but this time it has been brought about by fair hands," cried goethe, bowing gracefully to the ladies, "and, with the ancients, i exclaim: 'what the great gods vouchsafe can only be good and beautiful!'" but, as though he had conceded enough to his friends' wishes, and shown schiller sufficient consideration, goethe now turned again to the ladies, and resumed the conversation in which he had been engaged on entering the garden. they had been questioning him about madame angelica kaufmann, the painter, and goethe was telling them of her life, her genius, and her nobility of mind, with great animation and in terms of warm approval. afterward, when the company were assembled around the table at dinner in the garden pavilion, goethe, at charlotte von stein's request, told them of his travels, of the eternal city, and of that charming life in italy which he considered the only one worthy of an artist, or of any really intellectual man. carried away with enthusiasm, his countenance shone with manly beauty, originating rather from his inward exaltation than from any outward perfection of form and feature. the ladies were fascinated by this handsome countenance, these lustrous eyes, and the eloquent lips which described sunny italy, the land of promise, of art and poetry, in such glowing colors. schiller sat there in silence, listless, his eyes cast down, rarely adding a low word of approval to the enthusiastic applause of the ladies, and never addressing a question or remark to goethe; nor did the latter ever address himself directly to schiller, but spoke to all with the air of a great orator who feels assured that _all_ are listening to his words with deference and admiration. "i am not satisfied with our success to-day," sighed madame von kalb, while returning with schiller to weimar in the evening. "i had promised myself such glorious results from this meeting with goethe. i hoped that you would become friends, learning to love each other, but now you seem to have passed like two stars that chance to meet on their heavenly course, yet journey on without attracting each other. tell me, at least, my dear friend, how you were pleased with goethe." "ask me how i am pleased with a glacier, and whether i feel warm and cheerful in its vicinity. yes, this goethe is a glacier, grand, sublime, and radiant, like mount blanc, but the atmosphere that surrounds him is cold, and the little flowers of attachment that would so gladly blossom are frozen by his grandeur. to be in goethe's society often, would, i confess, make me unhappy. he never descends from this altitude, even when with his most intimate friends. i believe him to be egotistic in an eminent degree. he possesses the gift of enchaining men, and of placing them under obligations to himself, by little as well as great attentions, while he always manages to remain unfettered himself. he manifests his existence in a beneficent manner, but only like a god, without revealing himself--this, it seems to me, is a consistent and systematic rule of action, based on the highest enjoyment of self-love. men should not permit such a being to spring into existence in their midst. this, i confess, makes me detest him, although i love his intellect, and have a high opinion of his ability."[ ] "but you will yet learn to love him as a man, frederick." "it is quite possible that i may," said schiller, thoughtfully. "he has awakened a feeling of mingled hatred and love in my bosom--a feeling, perhaps, not unlike that which brutus and cassius may have entertained toward cæsar. i could murder his spirit, and yet love him dearly."[ ] while "brutus" was giving utterance to this feeling of mingled hatred and love, "cæsar" was also pronouncing judgment over "brutus;" this judgment was, however, not a combination of hatred and love, but rather of pride and contempt. the hero who had overcome all the difficulties of the road, and whose brow was already entwined with the well-deserved laurel, may have looked down, from the sublime height which he had attained, with some proud satisfaction and pitying contempt upon him who had not yet overcome these difficulties, who had not yet vanquished the demons who opposed his ascent. "my dear wolf," said madame von stein to goethe, while returning to weimar, "i had hoped that you would meet schiller in a more cordial manner. you scarcely noticed him." "i esteem him too highly to meet him with a pretence of cordiality when i really dislike him," replied goethe, emphatically. "i have an antipathy to this man that i neither can nor will overcome." "but goethe is not the man to be influenced by antipathies for which he has no good reasons." "well, then," cried goethe, with an outburst of feeling, such as he had rarely indulged in since his return from italy, "well, then, i have good reasons. schiller destroys what i have toiled to create; he builds up what i fancied i had overthrown--this abominable revolution in the minds of men, this heaven-storming conviviality, this wild glowing, and reeling, so very indistinct and cloudy, so replete with tears, sighs, groans, and shouts, and so antagonistic to lucid, sublime thought, and pure enthusiasm. his 'robbers' i abhor--this franz moor is the deformed creation of powerful but immature talent. i found, on my return from italy, that schiller had flooded germany with the ethic and theatrical paradoxes of which i had long been endeavoring to purify myself. the sensation which these works have excited, the universal applause given to these deformed creations of an intoxicated imagination, alarm me. it seems to me as though my poetic labors were all in vain, and had as well be discontinued at once. for, where lies the possibility of stemming the onward tide impelled by such productions--such strange combinations of genuine worth and wild form? if germany can be inspired by the robber, charles moor, and can relish a monstrous caricature like the brutal franz moor, then it is all over with the pure conceptions of art, which i have sought to attain for myself and my poems--then my labors are useless and superfluous, and had best be discontinued."[ ] "but you are speaking of schiller's first works only, my dear friend; his later writings are of a purer and nobler nature. have you not yet read his 'don carlos?'" "i have, and i like it no better than 'the robbers.' it is useless to attempt to reconcile us to each other. intellectually, we are two antipodes, and more than one diameter of the earth lies between and separates us. let us then be considered as the two poles that, in the nature of things, can never be united."[ ] "how agitated you are, my dear friend!" sighed charlotte. "it seems there is still something that can arouse you from your olympian repose and heartless equanimity, and recall you to earth." "'_homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto_,'" rejoined goethe, smiling. "yes, charlotte, i learned in italy to appreciate the vast distance between myself and the great gods of olympus, and i say with all humility: 'i am a man, and a stranger to nothing that is human.'" "i wish you had never been in italy," sighed charlotte. "and i," rejoined goethe, "i wish i had never left italy to return to germany, and to exchange a bright sky for a gloomy one." "how cruel you are, goethe!" cried charlotte, bursting into tears. "cruel!" repeated he, in dismay. "good heavens! are we never to understand each other again! does charlotte no longer sympathize with me in my sorrows, as in my joys? can you not comprehend the deep sadness that fills my heart when i think of italy?" "certainly i can," cried charlotte. "since you told me of your love-affair with the beautiful leonora, i comprehend and understand all. i know that you left your heart in italy, and that it is the longing of love that calls you back to the sunny land from the bleak north." he gave her a lingering, reproachful look. "charlotte, it is now my turn to call _you_ cruel, and i can do so with perfect justice. that which you should consider the best proof of my love and friendship--the unreserved and complete confession i made when i told you of this affair--this same confession seems rather to have made you doubt me, than to have carried the conviction to your heart that you are the being i love most dearly on earth!" "i thank god that i have no confession to make to you," cried charlotte. "i have not forgotten you for a moment. my soul and heart were ever true to you, and, while you were kneeling at the feet of the beautiful leonora, i knelt at the feet of god, and entreated him to bless and preserve the faithless man who was perhaps betraying me at that very hour, and who now carries his cruelty so far that he dares to complain and lament over his lost italian paradise in my presence, and--" "charlotte, do not speak so, i conjure you," cried goethe, interrupting her. "you cannot know what incalculable pain your words inflict. my friend, my beloved, is nothing sacred? is every temple to be overthrown? is every ideal to be destroyed? charlotte, be yourself once more; do not give way to this petty jealousy. be the noble, high-souled woman once more, and lay aside these petty weaknesses. know that the holy bond of love in which we are united is indestructible, and still exists even when fair blossoms of earth spring into life beside it. be indulgent with me and with us both, and do not desire that i, at forty years of age, should be an ascetic old man, dead to all the little fleeting emotions of the heart." "these sophistries are incomprehensible to me," said she, sharply, "and it seems to me that what you call fleeting emotions of the heart are simply infidelity and a desecration of the love which you vowed would be eternal and unchangeable." goethe bowed his head sadly. "it really looks as though we could no longer understand each other," said he, gently. "i admit, however, that i am to blame, and beg you to pardon me. in the future i will be more cautious. i will make no more communications calculated to offend you." "that is, you will withdraw your confidence, but you will not cease to do that which must offend me." his countenance quivered, his eyes sparkled with anger, and his cheeks turned pale, but he struggled to repress the indignant words that trembled on his lips. charlotte turned pale with alarm. goethe looked sternly on his beloved for the first time. she read indifference in his features for the first time. a loud cry of anguish escaped her lips, and the tears gushed from her eyes. goethe did not attempt to console her, but sat at her side in silence, his gaze resting gloomily on her countenance. "it is a cruel destiny that women should be compelled to give vent to their grief in tears, for their beauty is seldom enhanced thereby," said he to himself. "the tears of offended love are becoming in youthful faces only, and charlotte's is not youthful enough. she looks old and ugly when she cries!" poor charlotte! late in the evening of this day goethe left his house through a side door that led from his garden into a narrow little street. his hat was pressed down over his forehead, and a long cloak enveloped his figure. in former days, before his trip to italy, he had often slipped through this small door in the early hours of the morning, and in the twilight, to take the most direct and quiet route to his beloved charlotte; the side door had also been often opened to admit the beautiful madame von stein when she came to visit her dear friend goethe. to-day, goethe had waited until it grew so dark that it was impossible that his curious neighbors could observe his departure, and on this occasion he did not direct his footsteps toward the stately house in which madame the baroness von stein resided. he took an entirely different direction, and walked on through streets and alleys until he came to a poor, gloomy, little house. but a light was still burning in one window, and the shadow of a graceful, girlish figure flitted across the closed blind. goethe tapped twice on the window, and then the shadow vanished. in a few moments the door was cautiously opened. had any one stood near he would soon have observed two shadows on the window-blind--two shadows in a close embrace. chapter viii. wilhelmine rietz. they were victorious, the pious rosicrucians and illuminati, who held king frederick william the second entangled in their invisible toils. they governed the land; by their unbounded influence over the king's mind _they_ had become the real kings of prussia. general von bischofswerder stood at the king's side as his most faithful friend and invoker of spirits. wöllner had been ennobled and advanced from the position of chamberlain to that of a minister of prussia, and to him was given the guidance of the heart and conscience of the nation. this promotion of wöllner to the position of minister of all affairs connected with the church and public schools, took place at the end of the year , and the first great act of the newly-appointed minister was the promulgation of the notorious edict of faith, intended to fetter the consciences of men, and prescribing what doctrines appertaining to god and religion they should accept as true and infallible. they were no longer to be permitted to illumine the doctrines of the church with the light of reason, and to reveal what it was intended should remain enveloped in mystical darkness. it was strictly forbidden to subject the commandments of the church and the doctrines of revealed religion to the _fallacious_ tests of reason. unconditional and implicit obedience to the authorities of the church was required and enforced. but the minister von wöllner was far too shrewd a man not to be fully aware that this edict of faith would be received with the greatest dissatisfaction by the people to whom frederick the great had bequeathed freedom of thought and faith, as his best and greatest legacy. he had fettered reason and intelligence in matters appertaining to religion, but he knew that they would seek revenge in severe criticisms and loud denunciations through the public press. it was necessary to prevent this, but how could it be done? wöllner devised the means--the censorship of the press. this guillotine of the mind was erected in prussia, and at the same time the good king of france and doctor guillotine were, from motives of humanity, devising some means of severing the heads of criminals so quickly from their bodies that death would be instantaneous and painless. good king louis the sixteenth and his philanthropical physician invented an instrument which they believed would answer these requirements, and baptized it "guillotine," in honor of its inventor. good king frederick william caused his misanthropical physician wöllner to erect an instrument that should kill the noblest thoughts and mutilate the mind. this guillotine of the mind, called censorship of the press, was wöllner's second stroke of policy. with this instrument he effectually destroyed frederick the great's work of enlightenment; and yet this same pious, holy, orthodox man published the "works of frederick the great," the royal freethinker and mocker at religion. for these works there was, however, no censorship. the publication of frederick the great's writings was a source of great profit to the wily minister von wöllner, who worshipped with greater devotion at another than the shrine before which he bowed the knee in the church--at the shrine of mammon. the great king now lived in his writings only; the men who had served him faithfully, count herzberg above all, had been dismissed from office, and were powerless; the laws which he had made to protect freedom of thought were annulled, the light which he had diffused throughout his kingdom was extinguished, and darkness and night were sinking down over the minds and hearts of a whole nation! the promise which the circle directors had made to the grand-kophta on the night of frederick the great's death was fulfilled: "the kingdom of the church and of the spirits embraced all prussia, and the power and authority of the government were in the hands of the pious fathers. the invisible church and its visible priests now ruled in prussia. the king was restored to the true faith, and lay in the dust at the feet of the invisibles, who ruled him and guided his mind and conscience as they saw fit." there were still a few brave men left who refused to submit to their control, and bade defiance to this guillotine of censorship--men who warred against these murderers of thought and freedom. there was nicolai, and büsching, and leuchsenring, the former instructor of the prince royal, who never wearied of warning the people, and who unceasingly endeavored to arouse those whom the pious executioners desired to destroy. "nicolai's berlin monthly magazine" was the arena of these warriors of enlightenment, and in this magazine the combat against darkness and ignorance was still carried on, in defiance of censorship and the edict of faith. the practical and intelligent editor, nicolai, still attacked these new institutions with bitter sarcasm; the warning voice of leuchsenring was still heard denouncing these rosicrucians. but wöllner's guillotine vanquished them at last, and the "berlin monthly magazine" fell into the basket of the censors, as the heads of the french aristocrats fell into the executioner's basket when severed by the other guillotine in france. but king frederick william the second submitted to the will of the invisibles, and obeyed the commands of the holy fathers, announced to him through their representatives, bischofswerder and wöllner. let these men rule, let them take care of and discipline minds and souls; the king has other things to do. the minds belong to the rosicrucians, but the hearts are the king's. in her palatial residence, "under the linden-trees," in berlin, sat the king's friend, in brilliant attire, her hair dressed with flowers, and her beautiful neck and bare arms of dazzling whiteness adorned with rich jewelry. she was reclining on her sofa, and gazing at her reflection in a large mirror of venetian glass that stood against the wall on the opposite side of the boudoir; the frame of this mirror was of silver, richly studded with pearls and rubies, and was one of the king's latest presents. a proud and happy smile played about her full, rosy lips as she regarded the fair image reflected in this costly mirror. "i am still beautiful," said she, "my lips still glow, and my eyes still sparkle, while _she_ is fading away and dying. why did she dare to become my rival, to estrange the king's heart from me? she well knew that i had been his beloved for long years, and that the king had solemnly vowed never to desert me! she dies with the coronet of a countess on her pale brow, while i still live as madame rietz--as the self-styled wife of a valet. i have life and health, and, although i am not yet a countess, i can still achieve the coveted title. have i not sworn that i will yet become either a countess, a duchess, or, perhaps, even a princess? neither the royal wife of the right nor of the left hand shall prevent me; while i rise, they will descend. while i am riding in my splendid equipage, emblazoned with a coronet, they will be riding to the grave in funeral-cars. and truly, it seems to me that it must be more agreeable to ride in an equipage, even as plain madame rietz, than to journey heavenward as countess ingenheim." she burst into laughter as she said this, and saluted her image in the mirror with a playful nod. the brilliants and rubies on her neck and arms sparkled like stars in the flood of light diffused through the room by the numerous jets of gas in the splendid chandeliers, richly adorned with crystal pendants. this, as well as all the other apartments of wilhelmine rietz's residence, was furnished with a degree of luxury and splendor befitting a royal palace. the king had kept the promise made to his darling son, count alexander von der mark, in charlottenburg. the affectionate father had given his handsome son the longed-for palace under the linden-trees; and the young count, together with his mother and sister, had taken up his abode in this palace. but the little count von der mark had not long enjoyed the pleasure of standing with his beautiful mother at the windows of his residence, to look at the parades which the king caused to be held there on his account. on such occasions the king had always taken up his position immediately beneath the windows of his son's palace, in order that they might obtain a better view of the troops. the little count had worn his title and occupied his palace but one year, when he died.[ ] the king's grief had been profound and lasting, and never had the image of his handsome boy grown dim in the heart of his royal father. the loss of his son had driven frederick william to the verge of despair, and wilhelmine had been compelled to dry her own tears and suppress her own sorrow in order to console the king. wilhelmine rietz had manifested so much love and tenderness for the king during this trying period, and had practised so much self-denial, that the king's love and admiration for his "dear friend" had been greatly increased. "you are a noble woman, and a heroine," said he. "any other woman would weep and lament--_you_ are silent, and your lips wear a smile, although i well know what pain this smile must cost your tender mother's heart. any other woman would tremble and look with care and anxiety into the future, because the death of the son might be prejudicial to her own position; she would have hastened to obtain from me an assurance that she should not suffer in consequence of this loss. you have done nothing of all this; you have wept and sorrowed with me; you have cheered and consoled me, and have not once asked, who was to be the heir of my little alexander, and what souvenir he had left you." wilhelmine rietz shook her head, and smiled sadly, well knowing how becoming this smile was to her pale countenance. "i need no souvenir of my son," said she; "his memory will ever live in my heart. i have not asked who alexander's heir was to be, because i have never supposed that he could have left an inheritance, for all that i and my children have belongs to the king, and is his property, as we ourselves are. i have not trembled for my own security, because i confide in my king and master as in my god, and i feel assured that he will ever observe his solemn oath and will never abandon me." "no, never, wilhelmine," cried the king. "you are a noble woman! you are, and will ever remain, my dear, adored friend, and my love for you will be more enduring than my love for any other woman. lay aside all care and fear, wilhelmine, and confide in me. all the efforts and intrigues of your friends to injure you shall be unavailing. all else will pass away, but my love for you will endure until death; and no woman, though i love her passionately, will be able to banish you from my side!" "will you swear this, frederick william! will you lay your finger on this scar on my hand and swear that my enemies shall never succeed in banishing me from your side, and that you will ever accord me a place in your heart?" the king laid his hand on this scar, and it recalled to his memory the hour in which wilhelmine had intentionally given her hand a wound in order that he might record his vow of love and fidelity in her own blood. "i lay my hand on this scar," said he, "and swear by the memory of my dear son, alexander, that i will never neglect or forget his mother, but will love, honor, and cherish her until the end. and here is a proof that i _have_ not forgotten you," cried the king, as he threw his arms around her neck, kissed her cheek, and handed her a deed of the palace under the linden-trees, and of all else that had belonged to count alexander von der mark. wilhelmine rietz and her daughter continued to reside in the palace under the linden-trees. her house was one of the most popular resorts in berlin, and the most select and intelligent society was to be found in her parlors. to be sure the rustle of an aristocratic lady's silk robe was never heard on the waxed floors of this stately mansion, but wilhelmine's social gatherings were, perhaps, none the less animated and agreeable on that account. her guests were charmed with her vivacity, brilliant wit, and fine satire, and the most eminent scholars, artists, and poets, esteemed it a great honor to be permitted to frequent wilhelmine rietz's parlors. she loved art and science, was herself somewhat of a poetess, and possessed above all else a mind capable of quickly comprehending what she saw and heard, and of profiting by intercourse with scholars and artists. it was a favorite plea with the gentlemen who visited her house, that wilhelmine rietz was the protectress of art and science, and, moreover, a very intelligent lady, of whom they were in justice compelled to say that she possessed fine sense, much knowledge, and very agreeable manners. the king himself, an intellectual man, and a patron of art and science, often took part in madame rietz's social gatherings. in her parlors he was sure to find the relaxation and enjoyment which he sought in vain in the society of his beautiful and aristocratic wife of the left hand. the beautiful julie von voss, entitled countess ingenheim, had never forgiven herself for having at last yielded to the wishes of her family, to the entreaties of her royal lover, and to the weakness of her own heart, by consenting to become the king's wife of the left hand, although a wife of the right hand still lived. her reason and her pride told her that this little mantle of propriety was not large enough to hide her humiliation. her soul was filled with grief and remorse; she felt that her glittering, apparently so happy existence, was nothing more than a gilded lie--nothing more than shame, garnished over with titles and honors. the king often found his beautiful, once so ardently loved julie in tears; she was never gay, and she never laughed. indeed she often went so far as to reproach herself and her royal lover. but tears and reproaches were ingredients of conversation which were by no means pleasing to frederick william, and he fled from them to the parlors of his dear friend, wilhelmine, where he was certain to find gayety and amusement. wilhelmine rietz thought of all this while reclining on her sofa, awaiting the arrival of invited company--she thought of this while gazing at the reflection of herself (adorned with jewelry and attired in a satin dress, embroidered with silver), in the magnificent venetian mirror. she had always found these conversations with her image in a mirror very interesting, for these two ladies kept no secrets from each other, but were friends, who imparted their inmost thoughts without prudery and hypocrisy. "you will yet be a countess," said wilhelmine. "yes, a countess, and whatever else you may desire." the lady in the mirror smiled, and replied: "yes, a countess, or even a princess, but certainly not one who heaps reproaches upon herself, and dies of remorse; nor yet one of those who seek to reconcile themselves to the world, and to purchase an abode in heaven, by unceasing prayer and costly alms-giving. no, i will be a countess who enjoys life and compels her enemies to bend the knee--who seeks to reconcile herself to the world by giving brilliant entertainments and good dinners, and cares but little for what may take place after her death--a countess who exclaims with her great model, the marquise de pompadour, '_après moi, le déluge!_'" chapter ix. husband and wife. wilhelmine was now interrupted in her animated conversation with her reflection by the abrupt entrance of her "self-styled husband," the chamberlain rietz. she saw him in the mirror, and she saw, too, how the friend with whom she had been conversing, colored with displeasure and frowned. without rising, or even turning her head, she allowed the chamberlain to approach until he stood in front of her, and then she cried, in an imperious voice: "where were my servants? why do you come unannounced to my presence?" rietz, the king's chamberlain and factotum, laughed loudly. "for fear of being turned away, ma belle, and because i considered it more appropriate to come unannounced to my wife's presence. once for all, my dearest, spare me this nonsense, and do not embitter our lives unnecessarily! let your courtiers, your dukes, princes, counts, and professors, wait in the antechamber, and come announced, if you will, but you must receive me as you receive the king, that is, unannounced. on the other hand, i promise you, never to make use of this privilege when you are entertaining company, or are engaged in some agreeable little _tête-à-tête_. are you satisfied? is this agreed upon?" "it shall be as you say," said wilhelmine, pointing to a stool that stood near the sofa. "seat yourself and let me know why you honor me with your presence." but rietz, instead of seating himself on the stool, proceeded with the greatest composure to roll forward a splendid arm-chair, on the back of which a royal coronet was emblazoned. "i suppose i am entitled to use this chair when the king is not present," said he, seating himself; "moreover, i like to sit comfortably. now, i am installed, and the conference between the two crowned heads can begin. do you know, or have you the slightest conception of, what the subject of this conference will be?" "no," replied wilhelmine, placing her little foot with its gold-embroidered satin slipper on the stool, and regarding it complacently, "no, not the slightest, but i beg you to tell me quickly, as i am expecting company." "ah, expecting company! then i will begin our conference, carissima, by telling you to order your servant to inform your visitors that you have been suddenly taken ill and beg to be excused." "before giving this command i must first request you to give me your reasons." "my reasons? well, i will give you one reason instead of many. it might not be agreeable to your guests to have the glass from the window-panes and the stones which have shattered them flying about their heads in your parlor." "my friend," said wilhelmine, still regarding the tips of her feet, "if you feel an irresistible inclination to jest, you will find an appreciative audience among the lackeys in my antechamber." "thank you, i prefer to converse seriously with my wife in the parlor. but if you desire it i will ring for one of these impudent rascals, and order him, in your name, to admit no visitors. moreover, it would be well to have the inner shutters of all the windows of your palace closed. the latter must, of course, be sacrificed, but the shutters will, at least, prevent the stones from entering your apartments and doing any further damage. are your windows provided with shutters?" "i see you are determined to continue this farce," said wilhelmine, shrugging her shoulders. "without doubt you have wagered with some one that you could alarm me, and the closing of the shutters is to be the evidence that you have won the wager. such is the case, is it not?" "no, carissima, such is not the case, and i beg you to play the rôle of the undaunted heroine no longer; it becomes you very well, but you cannot excite my admiration and--" "nor have i any such intention," said she, leaning back on the sofa, and stretching herself like a tigress that appears to be quite exhausted, but is, nevertheless, ever ready to spring upon the enemy. "enough of this, my friend!" cried the chamberlain, impatiently. "listen! if you consider it a bagatelle to have your palace demolished, and yourself accused of being a poisoner, it is, of course, all the same to me, and i have nothing more to say, except that i was a fool to consider it my duty to warn you, because we had formed an alliance, offensive and defensive, and because i could not look on calmly while your enemies were plotting your destruction." the tigress had bounded from her lair, her eyes glowing with great excitement. "you are in earnest, rietz? this is not one of your jokes? my enemies are plotting my destruction! they are about to attack me! speak, be quick! what was it you said about poisoning? do they accuse me of being a poisoner?" "certainly they do, and i am glad that this magical word has recalled my sleeping beauty to life. yes, your enemies accuse you of being a poisoner. it is truly fortunate that i have spies in every quarter, who bring me early intelligence of these little matters." "and whom have i poisoned?" "countess ingenheim, of course. whom should you have poisoned but your rival?" "my rival!" repeated wilhelmine, with a contemptuous shrug of her shoulders. "countess ingenheim was ill. is she worse?" "countess ingenheim is dying!" "dying!" echoed wilhelmine, and a ray of joy gleamed in the eyes of the tigress, but she quickly repressed it. "this is, of course, an exaggeration of the physicians, who will afterward attribute to themselves the merit of having effected her recovery from so hopeless a condition. i have heard of instances of this kind before. four days ago the countess was comparatively well; i met her in the king's little box at the theatre, on which occasion her affability and condescension were truly surprising." "yes, and it is alleged by your enemies that you committed the crime on that very occasion. the countess complained of heat and thirst, did she not?" "yes, she did, and when she sank back in her chair, almost insensible, the king begged me to assist her." "to which you replied that a composing powder was what she required, and that you, fortunately, always carried a box of these powders in your pocket. hereupon you opened the door, and ordered one of the lackeys who stood in the entry to bring you a glass of water and some sugar. when he brought it, you took a small box from your pocket, and emptied a little paper of white powder into the water; when this foamed up, you handed the glass to the countess, who immediately drank its contents. am i accurate?" "you are, and i admire this accuracy all the more, because no one was present in the box but us three." "you forget the lackey who brought the water, and saw you pour the powder into the glass. this morning the countess was suddenly attacked with a violent hemorrhage; whereupon the lackey immediately told her brother, minister von voss, the whole story. her high connections and the entire court have been aroused, and if the countess should die to-day, as her physicians say she will, a storm will arise out of this glass of water, with the aid of which your enemies hope to hurl you from your eminence and consign you to prison." "foolish people!" said wilhelmine, contemptuously. "the king will not only discredit their revelations, but will also hold them to a strict account for their slander. let this be my care." "my dearest, before proceeding to punish these slanderers, i would advise you to consider your own safety a little. i tell you this matter is graver than you suppose, my proud, undaunted lady. the whole pack is let loose, and bischofswerder and wöllner are lashing the conspirators on, and heaping fuel on the flames. they immediately convoked a meeting of the holy brotherhood, and issued a secret order. this order i have seen. you must know that i was received into this holy band some two weeks since, as serving brother of the outer temple halls. what do you think of the title, 'serving brother of the outer temple halls?'" and the chamberlain burst into so loud and mocking a peal of laughter, that his colossal stature fairly trembled. "suppress your merriment for a moment, if you please, and tell me how this secret order of the rosicrucians reads." the chamberlain's countenance quickly assumed an air of gravity. "the order is as follows: 'all the brothers serving in the outer temple halls will repair, at ten o'clock this evening, to your palace, for the purpose of engaging in the charming recreation of battering your windows with the stones that lie piled up in great plenty in this vicinity, in places where the pavement is being renewed; while so occupied, they are to cry--'murderess! poisoner! curses upon her! down with this murderess!' a charming chorus, my angel of innocence!" "yes, a chorus over which the angels in heaven will rejoice, even if they should not be such angels of innocence as i am in this affair. i thank you for this communication; it is really of great importance." "i must, however, beg you, my dear madame, to take this fact into consideration. by making this communication, i not only imperil my salvation, but am probably already wholly lost, and have certainly forfeited all prospects of ever entering the sanctuary of the temple, and becoming an invisible brother. each brother is required, on his admission, to register a fearful oath, to the effect that he will never, although his own life or that of his parents or children should be at stake, betray the secrets of the holy fathers; and i, frail mortal, have betrayed the confidence of my superiors! alas, alas! i am a lost soul! the invisible fathers will expel me from the brotherhood if they should ever hear of this." "give yourself no disquiet, i will never betray you," said wilhelmine, laughing. "i am only surprised that you should ever have been admitted into the brotherhood, and that such an order should have been issued in your presence." "my fairest, they are not aware that the mr. müller of oranienburg, who was received into the holy order by the general assembly some two weeks since, is no other than the veritable chamberlain rietz. you must know that it is impossible to recognize each other in these assemblies, as they are held in a mystical gloom, and that the brothers are known to each other when they meet in the world by certain words, signs, and pressures of the hand, only. my dear, twenty of these rosicrucians might meet at a party, without dreaming that they were so closely connected. the names of all the brothers are known only to the circle directors, and i was of course not such a fool as to write my real name on the slip of paper which i deposited in the urn after having paid the admission-fee of four fredericks d'or, and received in return the holy symbol of initiation in the solemn twilight of the outer temple halls. the exalted fathers, bischofswerder and wöllner, would be astonished, and any thing but delighted, to learn that i was present at the meeting of to-day, and was one of the favored individuals who heard the order given concerning the demolition of your palace." "by all that i hold dear, these traitors shall pay dearly for this malice!" exclaimed wilhelmine, frowning angrily. "this conflict must be brought to a conclusion. i am weary of this necessity of being constantly on the alert to guard against the stratagems and attacks of my enemies. i will have peace, and either _they_ or _i_ must be conquered." "if i might be permitted to give the goddess minerva my advice, i would say: 'make peace with _these_ enemies, and secure the support and assistance of the dear rosicrucians against your other enemies, the aristocrats and court conspirators.' believe me, i give you this advice in all honesty and sincerity, and why should i not? are we not allies, and have we not sworn to assist each other at all times and everywhere? in _this_ respect my charming wife has been a most excellent companion; she has kept her promises faithfully. thanks to her assistance, i have attained all i desired, and there are few men who can say this of themselves. i desired influence, power, and money, and i have them all. by the king's favor i have achieved influence and power, and have amassed wealth by the folly of the persons sent me by you, my dearest, with their petitions for patents of nobility and decorations. in the three years of our reign i have created at least two hundred noblemen, and of this number twenty counts in the first year alone." "yes, indeed, these counts are well known," said wilhelmine, laughing; "the gentlemen of the old nobility call them by no other name than 'the batch of .'"[ ] "moreover, the number of crosses of st. john, and orders of the eagle, conferred by me upon deserving individuals, is legion, and goodly sums of money have they brought into my coffers!" said rietz, laughing. "i desired a well-provided table, at which i could entertain a few gentlemen of rank and convivial spirits; and now gentlemen of this stamp are only too anxious to obtain invitations to my dinners, and to enjoy the delicious pasties for which my french cook is so justly celebrated. i lead a life of enjoyment, and, as i am in a great measure indebted to your recommendation and patronage for this enjoyment, it is but natural that i should be grateful, and should endeavor to serve you to the best of my ability." "i thank you, _cher ami_," said wilhelmine, in kindly tones. "you, too, have always been a good and efficient friend, and it was partly through _your_ influence that my debts were paid, my income doubled, and myself made the mistress of this beautiful palace. i still desire a great many things, however. yon are aware that i am so unfortunate as to be ambitious, and--" "and, in your ear, the name madame rietz is not exactly the music of the spheres." "not exactly, my dear friend, although i must admit that the name is rather musical. but i--" the door of the antechamber was hastily opened, and a lackey appeared on the threshold, holding in his hand a silver waiter on which a folded note lay. "this note has just been left here for chamberlain rietz," said the lackey. rietz took the note and opened it. "madame," said he, after the door had closed behind the servant, "madame, my worst fears are realized. countess ingenheim is dead!" "dead!" repeated wilhelmine, shuddering. "poor woman, she has paid dearly for her short-lived triumph, and those who assert that the poor person was poisoned, are probably right; the shame attendant upon her position, her pangs of conscience and her remorse--these were the drops of poison which she daily imbibed, and of which she has now died. truly, to be the beloved of a king requires a firm heart and very strong nerves. poor woman, i pity her!" "truly, you are worthy of the greatest admiration," said rietz. "you lament the sad fate of your rival, while you yourself are in the greatest danger on her account. you must now decide whether you will receive your company or not." "oh, my friend," sighed wilhelmine, "how can you suppose me capable of indulging in the delights of social intercourse at a time when i have suffered so sad a loss? no, the king's grief is my grief also, and instead of being merry and laughing with others, i will weep with the royal widower." "you are an incomparable woman," cried rietz, with a loud peal of laughter; "as wise, as beautiful, as much the demon as the angel! no wonder you are fearless! your power rests on an adamantine foundation." wilhelmine made no response, but rang the bell, and told the servant who answered her call, to inform the porter that no soirée would take place that evening, and that he was to tell all visitors that mourning for the sudden death of countess ingenheim would compel her to forego the pleasure of seeing them for that evening and the following week. "i beg you to leave me now, my friend," said wilhelmine, beginning to divest herself of the sparkling jewels that encircled her neck and arms. "i must hasten to lay aside these worldly garments, in order that the king may find me attired in sable robes when he arrives." "how! do you believe the king will visit you at a time when his wife of the left hand has but just breathed her last?" "i feel assured that he will. his majesty knows how deep an interest i take in all that concerns him. he knows where to look for sympathy; he knows that i laugh with him when he is glad, and weep with him when he is sad. to whom should he flee in his hour of grief but to me?" "you are right," said rietz, smiling, "to whom should he flee, in his hour of grief, but to his first sultana? i am going, and i truly promise you that if his majesty, in the depth of his grief, should chance to be forgetful of this haven of rest, i will suggest it to our dear, chastened king." "do so, my friend, and hasten to his majesty's side, or my enemies will forestall you, and perhaps console the king in a different manner." "i am going, sultana. but these shutters--shall i order them to be closed?" "and why, pray? i am not afraid of a few stones, and if they should be showered upon us too plentifully, we can retire to one of the back rooms and observe the bombardment in perfect security. when did you say it was to begin?" "as soon as it has grown dark; the deeds of these pious fathers shun the light of day. the calendar says moonlight until ten o'clock; it is therefore probable that the sovereign people, as the rabble of paris now calls itself, will not honor you with a call until that hour. it would be well to notify the police of the flattering attentions awaiting you, and to solicit a guard for the protection of your palace." "i will take good care not to do so," rejoined wilhelmine, smiling. "let the sovereign people amuse themselves by breaking my windows if they choose. the louder they howl and call me poisoner the better, for the king will hear them and he will pity me." "wilhelmine," cried rietz with enthusiasm, "it is a pity you are already my wife; if you were not i should certainly address you. i could love you to distraction!" "do not, my friend, i pray you," said wilhelmine; "you would cut but a sorry figure in the rôle of a disconsolate lover. but now go; it is already eight o'clock, and i hear a great many carriages coming and going." the chamberlain pressed her beautiful hand to his lips, and then took his departure. she regarded him with a contemptuous smile as he left the room, and when the door had closed behind him, a clear and ringing peal of laughter escaped her lips. "to think that this caliban has the honor of being called my husband," said she, "and that i am still the wife of a valet! and why? merely because i am not of noble birth, like--like these sensitive puppets, whose shame is garnished over with noble titles and robes of ermine, and who nevertheless succumb and die under the burden of their self-acquired dignities. i can bear the precious burden! i--will not die! no, not i!" chapter x. the attack. half an hour later the folding-doors of the reception-room were thrown open to admit the king, who came without ceremony, and without attendants, as he was in the habit of doing. wilhelmine hurried forward to meet him; her lovely countenance wore a sad expression, and her beautiful figure was attired in sable mourning-robes. one might have supposed she had lost her mother or a sister, so mournful was her manner, so full of sadness was her glance as she slowly raised her eyes to the king's pale countenance. "my dear master," murmured she, "how kind your majesty is, to think of me, and honor me with a visit, in this your hour of sore trial!" he stroked her soft, shining hair tenderly, and drew her head to his bosom. "i never forget you, my friend, and the thought of your radiant eyes and lovely countenance always consoles me when i am troubled with care or grief, which is unfortunately very often the case." "your majesty's grief has been so great to-day! the divine being whom we all loved and honored has gone from us!" "yes," said the king, with a deep-drawn sigh, his expression more indicative of ennui than of sorrow, "yes, countess ingenheim died this afternoon. but her death did not surprise me; the good countess had been in very bad health ever since the birth of her son, more than a year ago, and my physician had long since told me that she had the consumption, and would not live through the autumn. the poor countess had been very tearful of late; she wept a great deal when i was with her, and was constantly reproaching herself. this was unpleasant, and i visited her but rarely during the last few weeks for fear of agitating the poor invalid. moreover, she kept up a pretence of being well," continued the king, seating himself in the arm-chair, in which rietz had been so comfortably installed a few minutes before. "yes, she wished to impose on the world with this pretence, as if it were possible to avoid observing the traces of her terrible disease in her pale, attenuated countenance! she always held herself erect, went to all the parties, and even visited the theatre, four days ago. you remember it, doubtlessly, as you were present?" "yes, i remember," murmured wilhelmine, as she seated herself on a stool at the king's feet, folded the hands, that contrasted like white lilies with her flowing black-lace sleeves, on his knees, and gave him a tender, languishing glance. she knew how effective these glances were--she knew that she could always bind her lover to herself again with these invisible toils. "if poor julie had but had your eyes and your health!" sighed the king. "but she was always ailing, and in the end nothing becomes more disagreeable than a sickly woman. but let us speak of this no longer, it makes me sad! it is well that my poor julie has, at last, found a refuge in the grave from her unceasing remorse and her jealous love." and thus frederick took leave of the spirit of the affectionate woman who had sacrificed all through her love for him. the consciousness that his love for her had long since died, and that she was nothing more than a burden to him, had killed her. having taken leave of the spirit of his dead love, the king now assumed a cheerful expression, and this expression was immediately reflected in wilhelmine's countenance. she smiled, arose from her stool, threw her soft, white arms around the king's neck with passionate tenderness, and exclaimed: "how is it possible to die when one can have the happiness of living at your side!" the king drew her to his heart and kissed her. "_you_ will live, wilhelmine! you love me too dearly to think of dying of this miserable feeling of remorse. you have been tried and found true, wilhelmine, and nothing can hereafter separate us." "nothing, my dear king and master!" "nothing, wilhelmine; not even a new love. the flames of tenderness that glow in my heart may sometimes flare up and seem to point in other directions, but they will ever return to you, and never will the altar grow cold on which the first love-flames burned so brightly in the fair days of our youth." "god bless your majesty for these words!" cried wilhelmine, pressing the king's hands to her lips. "let us have no more of this formality, i pray you," said frederick william, wearily. "we are alone, and i am heartily tired of carrying the royal purple about with me wherever i go. relieve me of this burdensome mantle, wilhelmine, and let us dream that the days of our youthful happiness have come back to us." "my frederick is always young," whispered she; "eternal youth glows in your heart and is reflected on your noble brow. but i--look at me, frederick william! i have grown old, and the unmerciful hand of time has been laid ungently on my brow." the king looked at wilhelmine, and could find no evidence of this in the fresh, smiling countenance of his enchantress. he listened to her siren voice, and its music soothed his soul and dissipated all care and sorrow. as the hand of the clock neared the tenth hour, and while wilhelmine was engaged in a charming _tête-à-tête_ with the king over a delightful supper of savory dishes and choice wines, the smiling siren told him of the danger that threatened her, of the new intrigue of her enemies at court, and of their determination to incite a mob to attack her palace. "there can be nothing in all this," said the king, smiling; "this story has only been concocted to alarm you. if your enemies had formed any such plan, my superintendent of police would certainly have heard of it, and have taken measures to prevent it." wilhelmine inclined her rosy lips to the king's ear, and narrated in low accents what rietz had told her concerning the order issued by the rosicrucians. the king started with surprise and alarm. "no," said he, "this is impossible; bischofswerder and wöllner are my most faithful friends; they will never undertake to harm you, for they know that you are dear to me, and that your presence is necessary to my peace and contentment--yes, i may even say to my happiness!" "it is for this very reason that they desire to effect my banishment. they hope to gain unbounded control over you, by driving from your side the only being who dares to tell you the truth, and who loves in you the dear, noble man, and not the king! my disinterested love for you, frederick william, is in their eyes a crime, and they accuse me of having committed another crime, for the purpose of tearing me from your heart and treading me under foot like a noxious weed!" "they shall not succeed!" protested frederick william. "but i cannot believe that--" the king ceased speaking; at this moment a deafening roar, as of the sea when lashed to fury by the storm, was heard in the street; it came nearer and nearer, and then the windows of the palace shook with the fierce cries: "murderess! poisoner! curses upon the murderess!" wilhelmine, an air of perfect serenity on her countenance, remained seated at the king's feet, but he turned pale and looked toward the window in dismay. "you perceive, my master," said she, with an air of perfect indifference, "you perceive that these are the exact words agreed upon in the rosicrucian assembly this morning. this is the war-cry of my enemies." "murderess! poisoner!" resounded again upon the night air. "curses upon the murderess!" "i knew they would dare to make this attack," murmured wilhelmine, still smiling. "had i felt guilty, i would have fled or have solicited protection of my king. but i wished your majesty to see how far my enemies would go in their malignity--what cruel measures they would take to effect my banishment." "you have done well," said the king, earnestly; "you have acted like a heroine, and never--" he was interrupted by a loud crash, and something hissed through the broken window. with a loud, piercing cry, wilhelmine threw herself over the king's person and clasped him in a close embrace, as if determined to protect him against the whole world. "they may murder me, but they shall not harm a hair of your dear head, my beloved!" these words, uttered in loud, exulting tones, sounded in the king's ear like an inspiring hymn of love, and he never forgot them. the stone had fallen to the floor, with a loud noise, but no second one followed it. curses still resounded from below, but the mob seemed nevertheless to have been alarmed by their own boldness, and hesitated before commencing a new attack. wilhelmine now released the king from her protecting embrace, and with gentle force compelled him to rise from his chair. "come, my beloved, danger threatens you here! they will soon make another attack." "wilhelmine," said he, with emotion, "give me that stone." as she stooped to pick up the stone that lay at her feet, the black lace shawl fell to the floor, disclosing a purple stripe on her snow-white shoulder. "you are wounded, wilhelmine, you are wounded!" cried the king, in dismay. she had arisen in the mean while, and now handed him the stone, with her siren smile. "it is nothing, my king; the dear people's cannon-ball merely grazed my shoulder. to be sure, it hurts a little, but my arms are not broken." "and it was for me that you received this wound!" said the king, in deep emotion. "you shielded and protected me with your fair form. wilhelmine, i will never forget this; this stone shall be a lasting memorial of your love and heroic devotion!" for the second time a loud crash was heard, and now the stones came flying through the broken windows in quick succession. at this moment several lackeys, pale with fright, rushed into the room to report that the populace were endeavoring to batter down the doors of the palace, and that these were already giving way. "save yourself, my king, flee from this palace!" cried wilhelmine. "permit my butler to lead you through the garden to the little gate that opens into behren street; from there your majesty will be able to return to your palace in safety." "and you, my dearest?" asked the king. "and i," said she, with heroic composure, "i will await my enemies; if they kill me i can die with the proud consciousness that i have saved the life of my king, and that he, at least, is convinced of my innocence!" another shower of stones succeeded, and the parlor was now a scene of fearful confusion. while fierce curses upon the head of the murderess, and denunciations of the poisoner, resounded from the street below, chairs, mirrors, vases, and marble tables, were being broken and scattered in every direction by the stones that poured in through the windows in an uninterrupted shower. in the midst of this din and clatter wilhelmine's voice could be heard from time to time, conjuring the king to fly, or at least to repair with her to one of the apartments in the rear of the palace. but the king remained firm; and issued his commands to the trembling servants, in a loud voice. he ordered them to close the inner shutters, and they did as he bade them. creeping timidly on their hands and knees to the windows, they withdrew the bolts and closed the shutters with a sudden jerk. the king now ordered one of the lackeys to hasten through the garden to the office of his superintendent of police, to acquaint him with the state of affairs, and to request him to disperse the insurrectionary populace. after this messenger had been despatched, and now that the stones were falling harmlessly from the closed shutters, the king dismissed the servants who were present. he was now once more alone with the beloved of his youth. "wilhelmine," said he, "i can never forget your heroism and devotion. you shall have complete satisfaction for the insults offered you to-day, and those who sought your destruction shall bend the knee before you." half an hour later all was still, and the stones were no longer flying against the windows. the chief of police had made a requisition on the military authorities for a body of troops, and the populace had fled in terror from the threatening muskets and glittering sabres. the king had taken his departure in the carriage that had been ordered to await him in behren street. he had, however, taken the stone with him that had struck wilhelmine's shoulder. on taking leave he kissed her tenderly, and told her to await him in her palace at twelve o'clock on the following day, when she should receive the promised satisfaction. wilhelmine was now alone; with a proud, triumphant smile, she walked to and fro in the parlor, seeming to enjoy the scene of confusion and destruction. at times, when her foot touched one of the stones, she would laugh, push it aside, and exclaim: "thus you shall all be thrust aside, my enemies! i will walk over you all, and the stones which you have hurled at me shall serve as a stairway for my ascent!--i have managed well," said she, continuing to walk restlessly to and fro. "i have opened the king's eyes to the malignity and cunning of his friends, and have shown my enemies that i am not afraid of, and scorn to fly from them. messrs. von bischofswerder and wöllner will soon come to the conclusion that they will be worsted in this conflict, and had better seek to form an alliance with their formidable enemy!" as she continued walking amid the surrounding stones and ruins, the blood trickled slowly down her shoulder; and this, with her glittering eyes, gave her once more the appearance of a tigress--of a wounded tigress meditating revenge. wilhelmine was now interrupted in her train of thought by a noise in the street that sounded like the distant roll of thunder. she opened one of the shutters, behind which nothing remained of the window but the frame, and looked out into the night, and down into the broad street of the linden-trees, now entirely deserted. but the noise grew louder and louder, and the street seemed to be faintly illumined in the distance. this light soon became a broad glare; and then wilhelmine saw that it was a funeral procession. she saw a number of dark, shrouded figures bearing gleaming torches, and then a long funeral car, drawn by four black horses. a coffin lay on this car. its silver ornaments shone brightly in the reflection of the torches; a coronet at the head of the coffin glittered as though bathed in the dawning light of a new day. torch-bearers followed the funeral car, and then came a number of closed carriages. it was the funeral procession of countess julie von ingenheim, conveying the corpse to the estate of the family von voss, to deposit it in the ancestral vaults. wilhelmine stood at the window and saw this ghostly procession glide by in the stillness of the night. she remained there until it had disappeared in the distance, and all was again silent. when she stepped back her countenance was radiant with a proud, triumphant smile. "she is dead!" said she, in low tones; "the coronet now glitters on her coffin _only_. i still live, and a coronet will yet glitter on my brow. a long time may elapse before i attain this coveted gem; but this wound on my shoulder may work wonders. i can afford to wait, for i--i do not intend to die. i will outlive you all--you who dare contend with me for the king's heart. our love is sealed with blood, but the vows which he made to you were cast upon the wind!" on the following day, the king repaired to madame rietz's palace at the appointed hour. he came with a brilliant suite; all his ministers and courtiers, and even his son, the prince royal frederick william, accompanied him. the young prince had come in obedience to his father's command, but a dark frown rested on his countenance as he walked through the glittering apartments. when he met the mistress of all this magnificence, and when the king himself introduced her to his son as his dear friend, a glance of contemptuous anger shot from the usually mild eyes of the prince royal upon the countenance of the smiling friend. she felt the meaning of this glance; it pierced her heart like a dagger; and a voice seemed to whisper in her ear: "this youth will destroy you! beware of him, for he is the avenging angel destined to punish you!" but she suppressed her terror, smiled, and listened to the king, who was narrating the occurrences of the riot of the day before, and pointing to the stones which, at the king's express command, had been allowed to remain where they had fallen. "it was an insurrection," said the king--"an insurrection of the populace, that now fancies itself sovereign, and would so gladly play the master and ruler, and dictate terms to its king. i hate this rabble and all those who make it subservient to their ends--who use its rude fists to execute their own plans--and never will i pardon or take into favor such rebels and traitors." as the king concluded, he fastened an angry glance on bischofswerder and wöllner, the covert meaning of which these worthies seemed to have divined, for they cast their eyes down and looked abashed. the king now turned to wilhelmine, raised the lace shawl from her shoulder with a gentle hand, and pointed to the wound which she had received the day before. "look at this, gentlemen! madame rietz received this wound while interposing her own body to protect her king; the stone that inflicted this wound would, but for her devotion and heroism, have struck me in the face. my son, you see before you the protectress of your father; kiss her hand and thank her! and you, too, gentlemen, all of you, thank the heroic woman who shielded your king from danger." this was indeed a glorious satisfaction! wilhelmine's ambitious heart exulted with joy as she stood there like a queen, her hand extended to be kissed by a prince royal, by generals, ministers, and courtiers, whose words of thanks were unceasingly resounding in her ear. but there was one drop of bitterness in all this honey; and the warning voice again whispered, "beware of the prince royal, for he is the avenging angel destined to punish you!" the prince royal had given her a second threatening glance when he stooped to kiss her hand, at the king's command; and she alone knew that his lips had not touched her hand. the king had looked on with a smile while his ministers and courtiers were doing homage to his "protectress." he now turned to the portrait of his favorite son, count von der mark. his boy's soft, mild eyes seemed to gaze down on his father. "my son," said the king, in a loud, agitated voice, "i swear to your blessed spirit, surely in our midst in this hour, i swear that i will reward the mother you so tenderly loved, for all the affection which she lavished upon my boy, and that i will never forget her devotion in risking her own life to preserve mine. my son, i swear to you that i will be grateful to the preserver of my life while i live, and that her enemies shall never succeed in lowering her in my high estimation. my son, in witness of this my solemn vow, i kiss the wound which your noble mother received in my defence!" frederick william stooped and kissed the wound on wilhelmine's shoulder. it was a grand, an impressive moment, and wilhelmine's ambitious heart exulted. visions of a brilliant future arose before her soul, and, as she stooped to kiss the king's hand, she vowed that these visions should be realized! but, when she raised her head, she shuddered. she had again encountered the prince royal's glance. the dagger pierced her heart for the third time, and the warning voice in her soul whispered for the third time: "beware of the prince royal! he is the avenging angel destined to punish you!" chapter xi. youth victorious. charlotte von stein sat in her garden pavilion, anxiously awaiting him for whom it had never been necessary to wait in former days. she had already given him three invitations to pay her a morning visit in the little pavilion in which his protestations of love had so often resounded. but these tender invitations had not been accepted. he had always found some pretext for avoiding this _tête-à-tête_ in charlotte's pavilion; he was too busy, had commenced some work which he desired to finish without interruption, or was troubled with toothache. but charlotte would not understand that he made these excuses in order to give the dark cloud that hung over them both time to pass away. with the obstinate boldness so often characteristic of intelligent women who have been much courted, and which prompts them rather to cut the gordian knot with the sword than to unravel it slowly with their skilful fingers, charlotte von stein had for the fourth time entreated him to grant the desired interview, and goethe at last consented. charlotte was now awaiting him; she gazed intently at the doorway, and her heart beat wildly. but she determined to be composed, to meet him in a mild and gentle manner. she knew that goethe detested any exhibition of anger or violence in women. she was also well aware that he was very restive under reproach. charlotte knew this, and was determined to give him no cause for displeasure. she desired to see this monarch bound in her silken toils once more; she desired to see the vanquished hero walk before her triumphal car as in the past. "i cannot break with him," said she, "for i feel that i still love him; moreover, it would be very disagreeable to be spoken of by posterity as the discarded sweetheart of the celebrated poet! no, no! i will be reconciled to him, and all shall be as it was before! all! and now be quiet, my heart, be quiet!" she took a book from the table before which she was sitting, regardless of what it might be; her object was to collect her thoughts, and compel her mind to be quiet. she opened the book, and looked at it with an air of indifference. it was a volume of voltaire's works, which goethe had sent the day before, when she had written him a note requesting him to let her have something to read. she remembered this now, and also remembered that she had as yet read nothing in the volume. perhaps she would still have time to make good this omission; goethe might ask her about the book. she read listlessly, in various parts of the work; suddenly this passage attracted her attention: "qui n'a pas l'esprit de son âge de son âge n'a que la malheur!"[ ] strange words these! she felt as if a chilly hand had been laid on her warm, quivering heart. was the spirit of her age wanting in her? was nothing but its unhappiness portrayed in her faded countenance? with an angry movement she threw the book aside, arose from her seat, and went to her mirror. "am i really old? is the unhappiness of old age really depicted in my countenance, while the spirit of youth and love is at the same time burning in my heart?" she anxiously scanned her features in search of the handwriting of this inexorable enemy of women, who stalks pitilessly behind their youth and beauty, is their invisible companion on all the rosy paths of life, and who, when he at last becomes visible, drives away all those who had loved, adored, and done homage to their beauty. charlotte sighed; she recognized this handwriting; the enemy was becoming but too plainly visible! she sighed again. "yes, it is written there that i am forty-six years old, and every one can read it! he, too--alas! he, too!" but after a short pause her countenance grew brighter. "charlotte, you should be ashamed of yourself--you insult your friend and lover! he loves you for your beauty of heart and mind, and not for your outward beauty. it was your mind that attracted him, your heart that enchained him, and they have not undergone any change, have not grown older. he loves you for the eternal youth that glows in your heart and mind, and he cares not for the mask with which age has covered your countenance! yes, thus it is, and thus it always will be, for goethe is not like other men; he cares not for outward appearances, he looks at the inmost being. this it is that he loves, and ever will love in me, for this is and ever will be unchanged! be joyous, charlotte, be happy! do not dread the unhappiness of old age. voltaire was wrong, and i will take the liberty of correcting voltaire. his sentence should read: "qui n'a pas l'esprit de la jeunesse n'aura que le malheur de la vieillesse." "yes, thus it should read: 'who does not bear the spirit of youth within himself, to him old age brings nothing but unhappiness!'" as her dear friend soon afterward entered the pavilion, charlotte advanced to meet him with the reflection of enduring youth resting on her brow, and a glad smile on her lips. but he did not observe it, his countenance was grave and earnest. he came with the conviction that the thunder storm that had been long gathering overhead would now burst upon them in all its fury. he had come armed for the fray with this outward sternness of manner, while his soul was filled with grief and tenderness. "goethe," she murmured, extending both hands to greet him, "goethe, i thank you for having come." "charlotte," said he, gently, "how can you thank me for doing what is as gratifying to me as to yourself?" "and yet i was compelled to entreat you to do so for the fourth time. three times you excused yourself with pretexts," she cried, forgetful of her good resolutions, and carried away by her sensitiveness. "pretexts?" repeated goethe.--"well, if you will have it so, i must admit that they were pretexts, and this should convince you, charlotte, of my anxiety to avoid offending you; for to any one else i would plainly and openly have said: 'i will not come.' it will be better for us both if we avoid any further explanation. it would perhaps have been wiser, my dear charlotte, if you had endeavored to master this irritation in silence, instead of bringing about the explanations which it would have been better for us both to have avoided." "i have nothing to avoid; i can give every explanation. i can lay bare my heart and soul to you, wolf, and give an account of my every thought and deed. no, i have no cause to avoid explanations. i love you and have always been true to you, but you, you--" "my love," he said, interrupting her, "do not reproach me again; my soul's pinions are already drooping under the weight of reproaches that retard the flight of my imagination!" "now you are reproaching me!" cried charlotte. "i am to blame that the pinions of your soul are drooping! o wolf, how can you be so cruel! to reproach me!" "no, charlotte, i do not reproach you, and how could i? if you have to bear with me in many things, it is but right that i, too, should suffer. it is much better to make a friendly compromise, than to strive to conform to each other's requirements in all things, and, in the event of our endeavor being unsuccessful, to become completely estranged. i would, however, still remain your debtor in any agreement we might make. when we reflect how much we have to bear from all men, my love, it will teach us to be considerate with each other."[ ] "then we are no longer to endeavor to live together in happiness, but only in an observance of consideration toward each other?" cried charlotte. "i had hoped that consideration for each other's weaknesses would lead us back to happiness. i, for my part, will gladly be indulgent." "i was not aware that i stood in need of your indulgence," said charlotte, proudly. "i will, however, be indulgent, nevertheless. and i will gladly say--that is, if you care to hear it--that your discontent and many reproaches have left no feeling of anger in my heart, although they inflicted great pain." "this is surely to be attributed to the fact that candor compels you to admit that my reproaches are just, and my discontent, as you call my sadness, but natural under the circumstances. tell me, wolf, what reproaches have i ever made that were not fully warranted by your changed manner and coldness?" "there it is!" cried goethe, beginning to lay aside his kindly manner, and to resent charlotte's haughtiness; "therein lies the reproach, and, i must say, the unmerited reproach. this is the refrain that i have been compelled to listen to ever since my return. i am changed, i love you no longer. and yet my return and my remaining here, are the best and most conclusive proofs of my love for you! for your sake, i returned--for your sake i tore myself from italy, and all the beauties that surrounded me, and--" "and also from the beauty who had entwined herself around your faithless heart," added charlotte. he did not notice this interruption, but continued in more animated tones: "and for your sake have i remained here, although i have felt that this life was scarcely endurable ever since my return. i saw herder and the duchess take their departure; she urged me to take the vacant seat in her carriage, and journey to italy in her company, but i remained, and remained on your account. and yet i am told, over and over again, that i might as well have remained away--that i no longer take an interest in my fellow-man, and that it is no pleasure to be in my company."[ ] "that i have never said." "you have said that and much more! you have called me indifferent, cruel, cold-hearted! ask all my other friends if i am indifferent to them, less communicative, or take less interest in all that concerns them, than formerly. ask them if i do not belong more completely to them and to society than formerly." "yes, indeed, so it is! you belong more to them and society, because you belong less to me; you have abandoned our intimate, secret, and peculiar relation, in order to devote yourself to the world in general. this relation is no longer pleasant, because all confidence is at an end between us." "charlotte," cried he, in angry tones, "whenever i have been so fortunate as to find you reasonable and disposed to converse on interesting topics, i have felt that this confidence still existed. but this i must admit," he continued, with increased violence, and now, that the floodgates were once opened, no longer able to repress his indignation; "this i must admit, the manner in which you have treated me of late is no longer endurable. when i felt disposed to converse, you closed my lips; when i was communicative, you accused me of indifference; and when i manifested interest in my friends, you accused me of coldness and negligence. you have criticised my every word, have found fault with my manner, and have invariably made me feel thoroughly ill at ease. how can confidence and sincerity prosper when you drive me from your side with studied caprice?"[ ] "with studied caprice?" repeated charlotte, bursting into tears. "as if my sadness, which he calls studied caprice, were not the natural result of the unhappiness which he has caused me." "i should like to know what unhappiness i have caused you. tell me, charlotte; make your accusations; perhaps i can succeed in convincing you that you are wrong." "it shall be as you say," cried charlotte, passionately. "i accuse you of being faithless, of having forgotten the love which you vowed should live and die with you--of having forgotten it in a twofold love, in a noble and in an unworthy one." "charlotte, consider well what you say; weigh your words lest they offend my soul." "did you weigh your words? you have offended my soul mortally, fearfully. or, perhaps, you suppose your telling me to my face that you had loved another woman in italy, and had left there in order to flee from this love, could not have inflicted such fearful pain." "had left there in order to preserve myself for _you_, charlotte; to remain true to _you_." "a great preservation, indeed, when love is already lost. and even if i admit that the beauty of the charming italian girl made you for the moment forgetful of your plighted faith, what shall i say to what is now going on here in weimar? what shall i think of the great poet, the noble man, the whole-souled, loving friend, when he finds his pleasure in secret, disreputable intercourse with a person who has neither standing nor education, who belongs to a miserable family, and who, in my estimation, is not even worthy to be my chambermaid? oh, to think, to know, that the poet goethe, the privy-councillor goethe, the scholar goethe--that he steals secretly to that wretched house in the evening to visit the daughter of a drunkard! to think that _my_ goethe, my heart's favorite, my pride, and my love, has turned from me to a person who is so low that he himself is ashamed of her, and only visits her clandestinely, anxiously endeavoring to avoid recognition!" "if i did that, it was for your sake," cried he, pale with inward agitation, his lips quivering, and his eyes sparkling. "if i visited her clandestinely, i did so because i knew that your noble perception was dimmed, and that you were no longer capable of looking down upon these petty, earthly relations from a more exalted stand-point. if you were wise and high-hearted, charlotte, you would ignore a relation that lies entirely out of the sphere in which we both live. of what nature is this relation? upon whose rights does it trespass? who lays claim to the feelings i bestow upon this poor creature? who claims the hours that i pass in her company?"[ ] with a loud cry of anguish, charlotte raised her arms toward heaven, "o god, he admits it! he admits this fearful relation!" "yes," said he, proudly, "he does, but he also entreats you to aid him in preventing the relation you so greatly abhor, from degenerating--to aid him in keeping it as it is. confide in me again, look at this matter from a natural point of view, permit me to reason with you on the subject, and i may still hope to bring about a good understanding between us."[ ] "not i!" she cried, with a proud toss of her head. "no good understanding can exist between us while this person stands in the way--this person who makes me blush with shame and humiliation, when i reflect that the hand which grasps my own has, perhaps, touched hers; that these lips--oh, wolf, i shudder with anger and disgust, when i reflect that you might kiss me after having kissed her a short time before!" "there will be no further occasion for such disagreeable reflections," said he, gruffly, his countenance deathly pale. "out of love i have endured much from you, but you have now gone too far! i repeat it, you will never again have to overcome the disgust of being kissed by me, and while i, as you observed, have perhaps kissed another but a short time before! and as for this other woman, i must now confess that you were quite right in reproaching me for visiting her clandestinely, and making a mystery of our relation. you are right, this is wrong and cowardly; a man must always avow his actions, boldly and openly; and this i will do! farewell, charlotte, you have shown me the right path, and i will follow it! we now separate, perhaps to meet no more in life; let me tell you before i go that i owe to you the happiest years of my life! i have known no greater happiness than my confidence in you--the confidence that has hitherto been unbounded. now, that this confidence no longer exists, i have become another being, and must in the future suffer still further changes!"[ ] he ceased speaking, and struggled to repress the tears that were rushing from his heart to his eyes. charlotte stared at him in dismay and breathless anxiety. her heart stood still, her lips were parted, but she repressed the cry of anguish that trembled on her lips, as he had repressed his tears. a warm, tender, forgiving word might perhaps have called him back, and all misunderstanding might have vanished in tears, remorse, and forgiveness; but charlotte was too proud, she had been too deeply wounded in her love and vanity to consent to such a humiliation. she had exercised such great power over goethe for the past ten years, that she perhaps even now believed that he would return, humble himself before her, and endeavor to atone for the past. but the thought did not occur to her that a man can forgive the woman who mistrusts his love, but that he never will forgive her who wounds his pride and his honor. charlotte did not speak; she stood motionless, as in a trance, and saw him take up his hat, incline his head, and murmur: "farewell! dearest, beloved charlotte, farewell!" then all was still, and she saw him no longer! she glanced wildly and searchingly around the room, and when the dread consciousness that he had gone, and that she was surrounded by a terrible solitude, dawned upon her, charlotte sank down on her knees, stretched out her arms toward the door through which his dear form had vanished, and murmured, with pale, quivering lips: "farewell! lost dream of my youth, farewell! lost delight, lost happiness, lost hope, farewell! night and solitude surround me! youth and love have departed, and old age and desolation are at hand! henceforth, no one will love me! i shall be alone! fearfully alone! farewell!" while charlotte was wailing and struggling with her grief, goethe was pacing restlessly to and fro in the shady little retreat in the park to which he had so often confided his inmost thoughts in the eventful years that rolled by. when he left the park, after hours of struggling with his own heart, an expression rested on his noble and handsome countenance that had never been observed there before. an expression of mingled gloom and determination was depicted in his features. his eyes were luminous, not with their usual glow of enthusiasm, but with subdued and sudden flames. "descended into hell, and arisen again from the dead!" murmured he, with a derisive smile, as he walked on through the streets to the wretched little house in which christiane vulpius drunken father and his family lived. she came forward to greet him with an exclamation of joyous surprise, for it was the first time goethe had visited, in the light of day, the little house in which she lived. she threw herself into his extended arms, entwined hers around his neck and kissed him. goethe pressed her lovely head to his bosom, and then raised it gently between his hands. he gazed long and tenderly into her large blue eyes. "christiane," murmured he, "christiane, will you be my wife?" a dark glow suffused itself over her face and neck, and then a clear ringing peal of laughter, like the joyous outburst of a feathered songster, escaped her coral lips, displaying two rows of pearly teeth. "i, your wife, my good friend? why do you jest with poor little christiane?" "i am not jesting, christiane. i ask you in all earnestness, will you be my wife?" "in all earnestness?" repeated she, the gaze of her large, soft eyes fastened with an expression of astonishment on goethe, who stood regarding her intently, his countenance radiant with a tender smile. "give me an answer, christiane." "first, give _me_ an answer, my good friend. answer this question. do you love me? am i still your pet, your singing-bird, your little love, your fragrant violet?" "you still are, and will ever remain my pet, my singing-bird, my little love, and my violet." "then let me remain what i am, my dear sir. i am but a poor little girl, and not worthy to be the wife of a gentleman of high rank; i would cut but a poor figure at your side, as the wife of the mighty privy-councillor, and you might even suppose i had only accepted your love because i had seen the altar and this magnificence in the background." "i could not think so, my darling; i know that you love me." "then i wish you to understand, good sir, that i must remain as i am, for you are pleased with me as i am. let me still remain your violet, and blossom in obscurity, observed by no one but you, my good friend and master. i will serve you, i will be your maid-servant, and will work and sew and cook for you. for this i am suited; but i cannot become a noble lady worthy to bear your celebrated name. if i were your wife, you would often have cause to blush for me; if i remain your love, i can perhaps amuse you by my little drolleries, and you would have no cause to be ashamed of the ignorant girl who craved nothing except to be near you, and to have you smile on her sometimes."[ ] "christiane, you shall ever be near me; i will always smile on you!" protested goethe, deeply moved. "always near you!" repeated christiane, in joyous, exulting tones. "oh, do let me be with you, good sir! let me be your servant--your housekeeper. i will serve and obey you, i will honor you as my master, and i will love you as my dearest friend!" "and i," said goethe, laying his hand on her golden hair, "i swear, by the eternal spirit of love and of nature, that i will love you, and that your happiness shall be the chief end of my life. i swear that i will honor you as my wife, protect and cherish you as my child, and be to you a husband and father until death." he stooped and kissed her shining hair and fair brow, and gazed tenderly into her lustrous eyes. "and now, my pet, get ready and come with me!" "to go where? you cannot intend to walk with me through the public streets in the broad light of day?" "through the public streets, and in the broad light of day, at your side!" "but that will not do," said she, in dismay. "it would not be proper for a noble, celebrated gentleman to be seen in public with a poor, humble creature like myself. what would the world say?" "let the world say what it will! come, my violet, i will transplant you to my garden, and there you shall blossom in the future." she no longer resisted, but threw her shawl over her shoulders, covered her golden tresses with the hat adorned with roses of her own manufacture, stepped with goethe from beneath the roof of her father's wretched house, and walked at his side through the streets to the stately mansion on market square, henceforth destined to be her home. goethe conducted her up the broad stairway, through the antechamber, and into his reception-room. both were silent, but the countenances of both were radiant with happiness. with a gentle hand he relieved her of her shawl and hat, pressed her to his bosom, and then, with upturned eyes, he cried, in loud and impressive tones: "oftmals hab' ich geirrt, und habe mich wieder gefunden, aber glücklicher nie; nun ist dies mädchen mein glück! ist auch dieses ein irrthum, so schont mich, ihr klügeren götter, und benehmt mir ihn erst drüben am kalten gestade."[ ] chapter xii. schiller's marriage. the two great intellects, whose genius shed such rays of light over weimar, and over all germany, neither knew nor loved each other. these two heroes of poetry still kept at a distance from each other, and yet there was a wondrous uniformity in their inner life, although their outward existence was so different. goethe, the recognized poet, the man of rank, who had never known want or care: schiller, still struggling, creating much that was great and beautiful, but aspiring to, and foreseeing with prophetic mind, a future of greater and more brilliant success--schiller, the man of humble standing, who was still wrestling with want and care. his anxiety and poverty were not destined to be relieved by the appointment which schiller received in the year , as professor of history at the university of jena, for--no salary was attached to this professorship! "a mr. frederick schiller," wrote (not the poet, but) the minister goethe--a report forwarded to the duke charles august at that time--"a mr. frederick schiller, who has made himself known to the world by his history of the netherlands, is disposed to take up his abode at the university of jena. the possibility of this acquisition is all the more worthy of consideration from the fact that it could be had gratis." gratis! the dukes of weimar, meiningen, altenburg, and gotha, the patrons of the university of jena, could offer nothing but a professorship without salary to the poet of "don carlos," of "fiesco," of "louise müllerin," and of "the robbers"--to the poet of so many glorious songs, to the author of "the history of the netherlands!" they had but one title, but one appointment, to bestow upon the man to honor whom was to honor themselves, and this appointment was made to save expense! schiller accepted this professorship with the nobility of mind of the poet whose soul aspired rather to honor and renown than to pecuniary reward, and who had, for those who profited by his labors while withholding all compensation, nothing but a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders and a proud smile. schiller's friends were, however, by no means satisfied with this appointment; his practical friend körner called his attention to the fact, that the necessities of life were also worthy of some consideration, advising him to inform the minister of state that the addition of a salary to his title of professor was both desirable and very necessary. but schiller was too proud to solicit as a favor what had not been accorded from a sense of duty. he would not beg bread for the _professor_, hoping that the poet would be able to support him. he had been accustomed to study close economy, and to struggle with want; care had been his inseparable companion throughout his entire life. the poet had ever looked up to heaven in blissful enthusiasm, rejoicing in the glory of god, and had been "with him" while the world was being divided among those who understood looking after their pecuniary interests better than the poet. his heart was rich, and his wants were few. he did not desire wealth, and had refused the rich lady tendered him in marriage by his friend körner. his loving heart should alone be his guide in the selection of a wife. his loving heart! had not schiller a charlotte, as well as goethe? the year had been an eventful one in goethe's heart's history, and had effected a final separation between goethe and his charlotte: the same year was also destined to be an important one in schiller's heart's history, and to bring about a crisis in his relations to his charlotte. the experience of the two women at this period was of a similar nature. charlotte von kalb had often entreated schiller to pay her a visit, but in vain. he had invariably excused himself with the plea that the duties of his professorship in jena were of such a nature that it was impossible to leave there even for a single day. at last charlotte despatched a messenger to jena with this laconic letter: "if you do not come to me in weimar, i will go to you in jena. answer." and schiller's answer was--"i am coming!" she was now awaiting him, gazing fixedly at the door; a nameless fear made her heart throb wildly. "he shall not find me weak," murmured she; "no, i will neither weep nor complain. no, my pride must give me strength to conceal my anguish, and to hear the decision, whatever it may be, with a smiling countenance. i will cover my heart with a veil, and it shall rest with him to withdraw it with a loving hand, if he will." "here you are at last, my frederick!" she said to schiller on his arrival. "it seems, however, that a threat was necessary to bring you!" "no, dearest friend," replied schiller, gayly, "the threat was unnecessary! you know that i love you with my whole soul, and my heart has always yearned to see you once more. the duties of my professorship are such that i find it almost impossible to leave jena." a bitter smile rested for a moment on charlotte's lips, but she quickly repressed it. "it is but natural that the new professor should be so busily engaged as not to be able to find time to pay his friend a visit. and yet, frederick, it was necessary that i should speak to you; life has now brought me to a point where i must decide upon taking one of two paths that lie before me." "charlotte, i am convinced that your heart and your wisdom will prompt you to take the right path," said schiller. she inclined her head in assent. "at our last interview i was excited and agitated; i reproached you for not having spoken to my husband. i believe i even wept, and called you faithless and ungrateful." "why awaken these remembrances, charlotte? i have endeavored to forget all this, and to bear in mind that we should make allowance for words uttered by our friends when irritated. we have both dreamed a sweet dream, my friend, and have, unfortunately, been made aware that our romantic air-castles are not destined to be realized in this prosaic world." "do you call the plans we have both made for our future, romantic air-castles?" "yes," replied schiller, with some little hesitation, "i am unhappily compelled to do so. a marriage with you was the brightest and most glorious air-castle of my fantasy; and may the egotism of my love be forgiven if i once dreamed that this castle might on some blissful day descend to earth and open its portals to admit us within its radiant halls! but sober thought followed quickly upon this trance of ecstasy, and told me that these heavenly dreams could not be realized." "why not?" "because i can offer you no compensation for the great sacrifice you would be compelled to make, and because the thought that you might live to regret what you had done fills me with horror. you are a lady of rank, accustomed to the comforts and luxuries of an aristocratic house. i am only a poor professor, accustomed to hardships and want, and not in a condition to provide a comfortable home for a wife. whoever takes me must enter upon life with modest expectations, and begin an existence at my side that offers little for the present but hopes and prospects. it would even require much self-denial on the part of a young girl, who is but just beginning life, to become the wife of a poor professor and poet. how much more would it require on the part of a lady of high rank to exchange a palace for an humble cottage, and to relinquish wealth, rank, and even the son she so dearly loves? what could i give her in return after she had relinquished all these blessings? charlotte, to live with me is to labor, and labor would wound your tender hands. therefore, forgive the enraptured poet, who thought only of his own happiness when he dared to hope you might still be his, without reflecting that he had no right to purchase his happiness at the expense of that of his idol." "you are right, my dear friend; we must never permit love to make us selfish, and we must consider the happiness of the object of our love more than our own. we will both consider this and act accordingly. you have my happiness at heart; let me, therefore, consider yours. schiller, i conjure you by the great spirit of truth and love, now surely hovering over us, tell me the truth--answer the question i am about to ask as truthfully as you would before god: do you love me so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively, that my possession can alone make you happy?" "charlotte, this is, indeed, a question that i could only answer before god." "god dwells in the breast of each human being, and, by the god of love, who has stretched out his hand over me, i demand of you a truthful answer to my question: do you love me so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively that my possession can alone make you happy?" a pause ensued--a long pause. the god of truth and of love, whose presence charlotte had so solemnly proclaimed, alone beheld the pale countenances of the two beings who stood face to face with the bitter feeling that nothing on earth is constant, and that all is subject to change and destruction--even love! "no!" said schiller, in a low voice, "no, i do not love you so firmly, so warmly, and so exclusively. nor do i believe we would be happy together, for it is only when no passion exists that marriage can unite two beings in an eternal union; and then, charlotte, you are also too exalted for me, and a woman who is a superior being cannot, i believe, make me happy. i must have a wife whom i can educate, who is my creation, who belongs to me alone, whom i alone can make happy, and in whose existence i can renew my own--a wife who is young, inexperienced, and gentle, not highly gifted, devoted to me, and eager to contribute to my comfort and peace."[ ] "in a word, a woman who is young," said charlotte, with proud composure, "or rather, a young girl who is like a sheet of white paper, on which your love is to write the first word." "yes, charlotte, so it is! you understand my heart as you have always understood it." "i relinquish from to-day all further claim to any such understanding, and i can only give you one last piece of advice, and that is, to ask mademoiselle von lengefeld if she is not desirous of being the sheet of paper on which you could write your name. i advise you to marry mademoiselle von lengefeld; she seems to possess all the required qualifications: she is not gifted, has no experience, and can certainly not be called a superior being." "but a noble, an amiable being," cried schiller, passionately; "a being full of innocence and goodness, a fair creature full of heart and feeling, full of gentleness and mildness; moreover, she has a noble heart, and a mind capable of great cultivation. she has understanding for all that is intellectual, reverence for all that is great and beautiful, and is at the same time modest, affectionate, playful, and naïve." "in brief, she is an ideal," said charlotte, derisively. "but let your thoughts sojourn with me for a moment longer. at my request you have told me the truth, now you shall hear the truth from my lips. we might have spared ourselves all these explanations, but i desired to probe your heart to assure myself that i would not wound you too deeply by telling you what i must now avow. now that i am no longer uneasy on that score, you shall hear the truth from my lips. my air-castles have vanished also--vanished so long since, that i scarcely have a recollection of them, and can only think of them as of a foolish dream, that neither could nor should have been realized. i have awakened, and i will remain what i am, the wife of mr. von kalb, and the mother of my son. i live once more in the present, and the past with all its recollections and follies is obliterated."[ ] "i am glad to hear this," said schiller, in a clear and composed voice, the gaze of his large blue eyes fastened on charlotte's cold and haughty countenance with an expression of severity. "i am glad to hear that the past is obliterated from your remembrance, as it is from mine. i can now speak to you freely and openly of the happiness which the future has, as i hope, in store for me. i love charlotte von lengefeld, and now that you have discarded me, i am at liberty to ask her to become my wife." "do so," said she, quietly. "we are about to separate, but my blessing will remain with you; any correspondence between us in the future would, of course, be annoying, and as our letters of the past have become meaningless, i must request you to return mine."[ ] "as you had already written to me on this subject several times, i took the precaution of bringing these letters with me to-day. here they are. i have preserved them carefully and lovingly, and i confess that it gives me great pain to part with these relics of the past." he handed her the little sealed package which he had drawn from his breast-pocket; she did not take it, however, but merely pointed to the table. "i thank you, and i will now return your letters." she walked into the adjoining room, closing the door softly behind her. with trembling hands she took schiller's letters from the little box in which she had kept them. she kissed them, pressed them to her heart and eyes, and kissed them again and again, but when she saw that a tear had fallen on the paper she wiped it off carefully; she then walked rapidly to the door and opened it. on the threshold she stood still, composed, proudly erect. "schiller, here are the letters!" he approached and took them from her hand, which she quickly withdrew. she then returned to the adjoining room, locking the door behind her. this was their leave-taking, this their parting, after long years of love! with downcast eyes and in deep sadness of heart, schiller left the house of the woman he had once loved so ardently. but this soon passed away and gave place to the blissful feeling that he was once more free--free to offer his heart, his hand, and his life, to the woman he loved! a few days later his heart's longing was gratified. he went to rudolstadt and received a loving and cordial welcome from both sisters. both! but only one of the sisters was at liberty to bestow her hand. caroline was not! her hand was fettered by her plighted troth, and even if her husband's consent to a separation could have been obtained, there were other fetters. she was in her sister's confidence. she knew that charlotte loved schiller tenderly. they were together in the quiet little parlor, they three alone, for the mother was absent on a little journey. schiller sat between the sisters, his countenance radiant with happiness. "oh, my fair friends, how delighted i am to be with you once more!" "schiller," whispered caroline, laying her hand gently on his shoulder, "schiller, i have a word to say to you. come!" she conducted him to a window-recess, and inclined her head so close to his ear that her trembling lips kissed one of his fair locks. "schiller," whispered she, "you love my sister, and i know that she loves you. courage, confess your love, and god bless you both!" having said this, she walked noiselessly from the room, retired to her solitary chamber, closed the door behind her, and sank down on her knees. she shed no tears, and the brave soul of this noble woman was exalted above all pain in this hour of her great sacrifice. her chaste lips would not express the noble secret in words, even before god. but her maker may have read her sacrifice in the expression of anguish and resignation in her upturned countenance. "be happy, schiller! god bless you both! be happy! then i will be happy, too." on returning to the parlor, caroline's countenance shone with pleasure, and her lips parted in a happy smile when she saw the two lovers in a close embrace, heart to heart. "oh, dear caroline, she has confessed; you were certainly right! she loves me, she is mine. and so are you, caroline, you are also mine, and we three will belong to each other for evermore!" "yes, for evermore, my friend, my brother!" she gently entwined her arms around schiller's and lottie's neck; and now the three were joined in one close and loving embrace. "i have at last entered the haven of happiness," said schiller, in deep emotion. "i have, at last, found my home, and eternal peace and repose are mine. i am encircled with your love as with a halo, ye beloved sisters; and now all the great expectations which you have entertained concerning me will be realized, for happiness will exalt me above myself. charlotte, you shall never again have cause to tell me i look gloomy, for your love will shed a flood of sunshine on my existence hereafter. you shall teach me to laugh and be merry. o god, i thank thee for permitting me to find this happiness! i, too, was born in arcadia!" they held each other in a close embrace, they wept for joy, and their souls, beaming eyes, and smiling lips, exchanged mute vows of eternal love and fidelity. these were blissful days for schiller. madame von lengefeld had given her consent to the marriage of her daughter lottie with schiller, sooner than the lovers expected. charles august gave the poet the title of privy-councillor, and attached a salary of two hundred dollars to his professorship, as a marriage present. the title delighted madame von lengefeld, and somewhat reconciled her aristocratic heart to the thought that her daughter, who had been on the point of becoming a maid of honor, should now marry a man of the people. schiller deemed his salary of two hundred dollars quite a small fortune, and hoped that this, together with the fruits of his poetic labors, would be sufficient to provide a comfortable home for his darling, and--"space in the smallest cottage for a happy and loving pair!" they were a "happy, loving pair;" and the serene heaven of their happiness was undimmed by the smallest cloud. had a cloud appeared, charlotte's quick eye would have detected and dissipated it before the lovers were aware of its existence. the sister watched over their happiness like their good genius, like a faithful sentinel. at times, while gazing dreamily into his lottie's soft eyes, schiller would smile and then ask her if she really loved him, as though such happiness were incredible. in reply, charlotte would smile and protest that she had loved him for a long time, and that her sister, who had known her secret, could confirm her statement. "and she it was who told me this sweet secret. yes, caroline was the beneficent angel who infused courage into my timid heart." "yes, she is an angel!" said charlotte, thoughtfully. "i look up to her as to a being far superior to myself, and, let me confess, my beloved, that the thought sometimes torments me that she really could be more to you than i am, and that i am not necessary to your happiness." he gazed into her lovely countenance, an expression of perfect peace resting on his own. "your love is all i require to make me happy. the peculiar and happiest feature of our union is, that it is self-sustaining, ever revolving on its own axis in a well-defined orbit; this forbids my entertaining the fear that i could ever be less to either of you, or that i could ever receive less from you. our love has no need of anxiety--of watchfulness. how could i rejoice in my existence unless for you and caroline?--how could i always retain sufficient control over my own soul, unless i entertained the sweet conviction that my feelings toward both, and each of you, were of such a nature that i am not forced to withdraw from the one what i give to the other? my soul revolves between you in safety, ever returning lovingly from the one to the other, the same star, the same ray of light, differently reflected from different mirrors. caroline is nearer to me in age, and therefore more closely akin to me in the form of her thought and feeling; but i would not have you other than you are, for all the world, lottie. that in which caroline is your superior, you must receive from me; your soul must expand in my love, and you must be my creation. your blossom must fall in the spring of my love."[ ] "yes," cried charlotte, entwining her arm more closely around his neck, "i will be your creation, and happy shall i feel in the consciousness of belonging to you, and of being able to contribute somewhat to your happiness."[ ] on the morning of the twentieth of february, , a closed carriage drove rapidly from rudolstadt in the direction of jena. but this carriage stopped in the little village in the immediate vicinity of the university-city--weningenjena--at the door of the village church with its tapering spire. the sexton was standing at the open door in his sunday suit; when the carriage drove up, he hastened forward to open the door. a tall gentleman, attired in black, stepped out; his countenance was pale, but a wondrous light beamed in his eyes, and noble thoughts were enthroned on his brow, while his lips were parted in a soft smile. with tender solicitude, he helped an elderly lady from the carriage. then followed a younger lady, with pale cheeks, but with eyes that were radiant with love and peace. at last a young girl--a girl with rosy cheeks, and a timid, childlike smile on her fresh lips--was about to descend from the carriage, but the tall gentleman would not suffer her to touch the pavement with her tender little feet. he raised her fair form in his arms, and bore her over the rough stones and into the church. the two ladies followed, and behind them came the sexton, gravely shaking his head, and ruminating over the strangely quiet nature of the approaching ceremony. he did what pastor schmidt, who was already standing between the burning wax-candles in front of the altar, had told him to do. he closed and locked the church doors, so that no one should see what was going on in the church. and you, too, ye rude winter winds, hold your breath and blow softly! and thou, thou clear blue sky, look down mildly; and thou, bright sun, shed thy warmest rays through the windows into the little village church of weningenjena. for the poet frederick schiller is standing before its altar at the side of his lovely bride. charlotte weeps, but her tears are tears of emotion and of joy. the mother stands at her side, her hands folded in prayer. caroline's eyes are upturned; and god reads the mute entreaty of her lips. schiller's countenance is radiant with peace and happiness, and manly determination beams in the large blue eyes that gaze so firmly and tranquilly at the preacher, who stands before the altar, proclaiming the sacred nature of the union about to be consummated. subdue your fury, ye boisterous winter storms! do not touch the poet's cheeks too rudely with your cold breath. he has already suffered much from cold winter winds, he has journeyed over rough paths--has renounced and struggled, and has often seen his heart's fairest blossoms bruised and borne away by rude storms. be tranquil, and let the spring-time come, that the buds of his hopes may put forth blossoms. shed thy glorious light upon this little church, thou heavenly sun! greet the poet frederick schiller, the poet of the german nation, who is now celebrating life's fairest festival before its holy altar! but, "ah, life's fairest festival ends the may of life anon; with the girdle, with the veil, is the fond illusion gone!" the end. footnotes: [footnote : "schiller's relations to his parents and the walzogen family," pp. - .] [footnote : fragment of a dialogue between the king and the marquis, last scene, act iii., of "don carlos:" "_king._ and now leave me. "_marquis._ if i can do so with an accomplished hope, this will be the most glorious day of my life. "_marquis._ it is no lost one in mine!"] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "schiller's relations to parents," etc., p. .] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "relations to parents," etc., p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "relations to parents," etc. p. .] [footnote : schiller's own words to henrietta von wolzogen.--see "relations," etc., p. .] [footnote : this scene is historically exact.] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "relations," etc., p. .] [footnote : see charlotte.--"for the friends of the deceased," printed as ms., p. .] [footnote : a provincialism. it should be, "ist nicht aus stuttgart," and means is not from stuttgart.] [footnote : in germany, the word "thou" is frequently used instead of "you" in families and among children, and intimate and dear friends.] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "schiller's flight from stuttgart," etc., p. .] [footnote : zimmermann.--"frederick the great's last days," p. .] [footnote : frederick's words a short time before his death.] [footnote : the king's own words.] [footnote : "will you have the goodness to give me your arm, my prince?"] [footnote : "sire and my king, you confer a great honor on me, and i am very grateful."] [footnote : the fox and the crow.] [footnote : frederick's own words.--see "frederick william iii.," von eylert, vol. i., p. .] [footnote : to this habit of frederick william may be attributed the fact that he was not able to express himself fluently in his own language in later years. when the king spoke french his conversation was vivacious and forcible; when he spoke german, however, he was stiff and embarrassed.] [footnote : the king's own words, uttered beside frederick's corpse.] [footnote : this drawing, which the prince royal had made of the body of frederick the great, was afterward framed, and hung for many years in his study, with this inscription, in his own handwriting: "i sketched this on the th of august, , between the hours of and /p.m./"] [footnote : see preuss.--"frederick the great, a biography," vol. iv.] [footnote : this scene is accurate.--see "mémoires de la comtesse de lichtenau."] [footnote : "unter den linden," a street in berlin.] [footnote : historical.] [footnote : a nickname given the princess at court.] [footnote : frederick von trenck suffered long years of imprisonment on princess amelia's account.--see "frederick the great and his family," by l. mühlbach.] [footnote : this article appeared in the august number of , and created a great sensation in all classes of society.] [footnote : "i will repay thee in a holier land-- give thou to me thy youth; all i can grant thee lies in this command. i heard, and, trusting in a holier land, gave my young joys to truth. give me thy laura--give me her whom love to thy heart's core endears; the usurer bliss pays every grief--above! i tore the fond shape from the bleeding love and gave--albeit with tears." _sir e. b. lytton's schiller._ ] [footnote : marie von arnim married count von kunheim, and retired with him to his estates in prussia. she never saw schiller again, nor did she ever forget him. a fine portrait of schiller hung over her bed until her death. after the death of her husband, in the year , countess kunheim returned to dresden, and lived there in retirement until her death, in the year . but she died without issue, and could not fulfil schiller's prophecy, and speak to weeping children and grandchildren assembled around her death-bed.] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see his correspondence with körner.] [footnote : schiller and his times, by johannes scherr.--vol. ii., p. .] [footnote : "trip to italy."--goethe's works.] [footnote : goethe's own words.--see "trip to italy," goethe's works, vol. xxiii., p. .] [footnote : this cat story goethe relates precisely as above, in his "italian trip."--see goethe's works, vol. xxiii., p. .] [footnote : goethe's own words.--see "italian trip," vol. xxiv., p. .] [footnote : when marriage is spoken of, my child, i feel like leaving at once.] [footnote : let us only marry, the rest will take care of itself.] [footnote : leonora's own words.--see goethe's works, vol. xxiv., p. .] [footnote : dante alighieri's divine comedy, canto v.--translated by h. w. longfellow.] [footnote : see goethe's works, vol. xxiv., p. .--"trip to italy."] [footnote : goethe's own words.--see correspondence of duke charles august with goethe, vol. ii.] [footnote : von stein, the name of goethe's sweetheart--anglicized: _stone_.] [footnote : goethe's correspondence with madame von stein, vol. ii., pp. , . literal translation.] [footnote : schiller's life, by caroline von wollzogen, p. .] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "schiller's correspondence with körner," vol. ii., p. .] [footnote : ibid.] [footnote : goethe's words.--see "goethe's works," vol. xxiii.] [footnote : goethe's words.] [footnote : in the latter part of the year .] [footnote : see "private letters," vol. iii.] [footnote : he who has not the spirit of his age has nothing but the unhappiness of his age. ] [footnote : goethe's own words.--see "goethe's correspondence with madame von stein," vol. ii., p. .] [footnote : goethe's own words.] [footnote : goethe's own words.--see "goethe's correspondence with madame von stein," vol. iii., p. .] [footnote : goethe's own words--see "correspondence with madame von stein," vol iii., p. .] [footnote : ibid.] [footnote : goethe's own words.--see "correspondence with madame von stein," vol. iii., p. .] [footnote : christiane vulpius really rejected goethe's offer of marriage.--see lewes's life of goethe, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote : "often have i erred, and always found the path again, but never found myself happier; now in this maiden lies my happiness. if this, too, is an error, oh spare me the knowledge, ye gods, and let me only discover it beyond the grave!"] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "schiller's correspondence with körner," vol. ii.] [footnote : charlotte's own words.--see "schiller's life of caroline von wollzogen."] [footnote : charlotte's own words.--see "charlotte: a life picture," p. .] [footnote : schiller's own words.--see "schiller's life of caroline von wollzogen."] [footnote : lottie's own words.--ibid.] d. appleton and company's publications. _the seven seas._ a new volume of poems by /rudyard kipling/, author of "many inventions," "barrack-room ballads," etc. mo. cloth, $ . ; half calf, $ . ; morocco, $ . . 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"cullingworth,... a much more interesting creation than sherlock holmes, and i pray dr. doyle to give us more of him."--_richard le gallienne, in the london star._ "'the stark munro letters' is a bit of real literature.... its reading will be an epoch-making event in many a life."--_philadelphia evening telegraph._ _round the red lamp. being facts and fancies of medical life._ "too much can not be said in praise of these strong productions, that to read keep one's heart leaping to the throat, and the mind in a tumult of anticipation to the end.... no series of short stories in modern literature can approach them."--_hartford times._ "if dr. a. conan doyle had not already placed himself in the front rank of living english writers by 'the refugees,' and other of his larger stories, he would surely do so by these fifteen short tales."--_new york mail and express._ by s. r. crockett. uniform edition. each, mo, cloth, $ . . _the standard bearer._ an historical romance. "mr. crockett's book is distinctly one of _the_ books of the year. five months of have passed without bringing to the reviewers' desk anything to be compared with it in beauty of description, convincing characterization, absorbing plot and humorous appeal. the freshness and sweet sincerity of the tale are most invigorating, and that the book will be very much read there is no possible doubt."--_boston budget._ "the book will move to tears, provoke to laughter, stir the blood, and evoke heroisms of history, making the reading of it a delight and the memory of it a stimulus and a joy."--_new york evangelist._ _lads' love._ illustrated. "it seems to us that there is in this latest product much of the realism of personal experience. however modified and disguised, it is hardly possible to think that the writer's personality does not present itself in saunders mcquhirr.... rarely has the author drawn more truly from life than in the cases of nance and 'the hempie'; never more typical scotsman of the humble sort than the farmer peter chrystie."--_london athenæum._ _cleg kelly, arab of the city. his progress and adventures._ illustrated. "a masterpiece which mark twain himself has never rivaled.... if there ever was an ideal character in fiction it is this heroic ragamuffin."--_london daily chronicle._ "in no one of his books does mr. crockett give us a brighter or more graphic picture of contemporary scotch life than in 'cleg kelly.'... it is one of the great books."--_boston daily advertiser._ _bog-myrtle and peat._ third edition. "here are idyls, epics, dramas of human life, written in words that thrill and burn.... each is a poem that has an immortal flavor. they are fragments of the author's early dreams, too bright, too gorgeous, too full of the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds to be caught and held palpitating in expression's grasp."--_boston courier._ "hardly a sketch among them all that will not afford pleasure to the reader for its genial humor, artistic local coloring, and admirable portrayal of character."--_boston home journal._ _the lilac sunbonnet._ eighth edition. "a love story, pure and simple, one of the old fashioned, wholesome, sunshiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a heroine who is merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half so sweet has been written this year it has escaped our notice."--_new york times._ "the general conception of the story, the motive of which is the growth of love between the young chief and heroine, is delineated with a sweetness and a freshness, a naturalness and a certainty, which places 'the lilac sunbonnet' among the best stories of the time."--_new york mail and express._ stephen crane's books. _the third violet._ mo. cloth, $ . . "by this latest product of his genius our impression of mr. crane is confirmed that, for psychological insight, for dramatic intensity, and for the potency of phrase, he is already in the front rank of english and american writers of fiction, and that he possesses a certain separate quality which places him apart."--_london academy._ "the whole book, from beginning to end, fairly bristles with fun.... it is adapted for pure entertainment, yet it is not easily put down or forgotten."--_boston herald._ _the little regiment, and other episodes of the american civil war._ mo. cloth, $ . . "in 'the little regiment' we have again studies of the volunteers waiting impatiently to fight and fighting, and the impression of the contest as a private soldier hears, sees, and feels it, is really wonderful. the reader has no privileges. he must, it seems, take his place in the ranks, and stand in the mud, wade in the river, fight, yell, swear, and sweat with the men. he has some sort of feeling, when it is all over, that he has been doing just these things. this sort of writing needs no praise. it will make its way to the hearts of men without praise."--_new york times._ "told with a _verve_ that brings a whiff of burning powder to one's nostrils.... in some way he blazons the scene before our eyes, and makes us feel the very impetus of bloody war."--_chicago evening post._ _maggie: a girl of the streets._ mo. cloth, cents. "by writing 'maggie' mr. crane has made for himself a permanent place in literature.... zola himself scarcely has surpassed its tremendous portrayal of throbbing, breathing, moving life."--_new york mail and express._ "mr. crane's story should be read for the fidelity with which it portrays a life that is potent on this island, along with the best of us. it is a powerful portrayal, and, if somber and repellent, none the less true, none the less freighted with appeal to those who are able to assist in righting wrongs."--_new york times._ _the red badge of courage. an episode of the american civil war._ mo. cloth, $ . . "never before have we had the seamy side of glorious war so well depicted.... the action of the story throughout is splendid, and all aglow with color, movement, and vim. the style is as keen and bright as a sword-blade, and a kipling has done nothing better in this line."--_chicago evening post._ "there is nothing in american fiction to compare with it.... mr. crane has added to american literature something that has never been done before, and that is, in its own peculiar way, inimitable."--_boston beacon._ "a truer and completer picture of war than either tolstoy or zola."--_london new review._ hamlin garland's books. uniform edition. each, mo, cloth, $ . . _wayside courtships._ "a faithful and an entertaining portrayal of village and rural life in the west.... no one can read this collection of short stories without feeling that he is master of the subject."--_chicago journal._ "one of the most delightful books of short stories which have come to our notice in a long time."--_boston times._ "the historian of the plains has done nothing better than this group of western stories. wayside courtships they are, but full of tender feeling and breathing a fine, strong sentiment."--_louisville times._ _jason edwards. an average man._ "the average man in the industrial ranks is presented in this story in as lifelike a manner as mr. bret harte presented the men in the california mining camps thirty years ago.... a story which will be read with absorbing interest by hundreds of workingmen."--_boston herald._ _a member of the third house. a story of political warfare._ "the work is, in brief, a keen and searching study of lobbies and lobbyists. at least, it is the lobbies that furnish its motive. for the rest, the story is narrated with much power, and the characters of brennan the smart wire-puller, the millionaire davis, the reformer tuttle, and evelyn ward are skillfully individualized.... mr. garland's people have this peculiar characteristic, that they have not had a literary world made for them to live in. they seem to move and act in the cold gray light of reality, and in that trying light they are evidently human."--_chicago record._ _a spoil of office. a story of the modern west._ "it awakens in the mind a tremendous admiration for an artist who could so find his way through the mists of familiarity to an artistic haven.... in reading 'a spoil of office' one feels a continuation of interest extending from the fictional into the actual, with no break or divergence. and it seems to be only a question of waiting a day or two ere one will run up against the characters in real life." also, _a little norsk; or, ol' pap's flaxen._ mo. boards, cents. "true feeling, the modesty of nature, and the sure touch of art are the marks of this pure and graphic story, which has added a bright leaf to the author's laurels."--_chicago tribune._ "a delightful story, full of humor of the finest kind, genuine pathos, and enthralling in its vivid human interest."--_london academy._ /miss/ f. f. montrÉsor's books. uniform edition. each, mo, cloth. _at the cross-roads._ $ . . "miss montrésor has the skill in writing of olive schreiner and miss harraden, added to the fullness of knowledge of life which is a chief factor in the success of george eliot and mrs. humphry ward.... there is as much strength in this book as in a dozen ordinary successful novels."--_london literary world._ "i commend it to all my readers who like a strong, cheerful, beautiful story. it is one of the truly notable books of the season."--_cincinnati commercial tribune._ _false coin or true?_ $ . . "one of the few true novels of the day.... it is powerful, and touched with a delicate insight and strong impressions of life and character.... the author's theme is original, her treatment artistic, and the book is remarkable for its unflagging interest."--_philadelphia record._ "the tale never flags in interest, and once taken up will not be laid down until the last page is finished."--_boston budget._ "a well-written novel, with well-depicted characters and well-chosen scenes."--_chicago news._ "a sweet, tender, pure, and lovely story."--_buffalo commercial._ _the one who looked on._ $ . . "a tale quite unusual, entirely unlike any other, full of a strange power and realism, and touched with a fine humor."--_london world._ "one of the most remarkable and powerful of the year's contributions, worthy to stand with ian maclaren's."--_british weekly._ "one of the rare books which can be read with great pleasure and recommended without reservation. it is fresh, pure, sweet, and pathetic, with a pathos which is perfectly wholesome."--_st. paul globe._ "the story is an intensely human one, and it is delightfully told.... the author shows a marvelous keenness in character analysis, and a marked ingenuity in the development of her story."--_boston advertiser._ _into the highways and hedges._ $ . . "a touch of idealism, of nobility of thought and purpose, mingled with an air of reality and well-chosen expression, are the most notable features of a book that has not the ordinary defects of such qualities. with all its elevation of utterance and spirituality of outlook and insight it is wonderfully free from overstrained or exaggerated matter, and it has glimpses of humor. most of the characters are vivid, yet there are restraint and sobriety in their treatment, and almost all are carefully and consistently evolved."--_london athenæum._ "'into the highways and hedges' is a book not of promise only, but of high achievement. it is original, powerful, artistic, humorous. it places the author at a bound in the rank of those artists to whom we look for the skillful presentation of strong personal impressions of life and character."--_london daily news._ "the pure idealism of 'into the highways and hedges' does much to redeem modern fiction from the reproach it has brought upon itself.... the story is original, and told with great refinement."--_philadelphia public ledger._ two successful american novels. _latitude °._ a romance of the west indies in the year of our lord . being a faithful account and true, of the painful adventures of the skipper, the bo's'n, the smith, the mate, and cynthia. by mrs. /schuyler crowninshield/. illustrated. mo. cloth, $ . . "'latitude °' is a novel of incident, of the open air, of the sea, the shore, the mountain eyrie, and of breathing, living entities, who deal with nature at first hand.... the adventures described are peculiarly novel and interesting.... packed with incidents, infused with humor and wit, and faithful to the types introduced, this book will surely appeal to the large audience already won, and beget new friends among those who believe in fiction that is healthy without being maudlin, and is strong without losing the truth."--_new york herald._ "a story filled with rapid and exciting action from the first page to the last. a fecundity of invention that never lags, and a judiciously used vein of humor."--_the critic._ "a volume of deep, undeniable charm. a unique book from a fresh, sure, vigorous pen."--_boston journal._ "adventurous and romantic enough to satisfy the most exacting reader.... abounds in situations which make the blood run cold, and yet, full of surprises as it is, one is continually amazed by the plausibility of the main incidents of the narrative.... a very successful effort to portray the sort of adventures that might have taken place in the west indies seventy five or eighty years ago.... very entertaining with its dry humor."--_boston herald._ _a herald of the west._ an american story of - . by /j. a. altsheler/, author of "a soldier of manhattan" and "the sun of saratoga." mo. cloth, $ . . "'a herald of the west' is a romance of our history which has not been surpassed in dramatic force, vivid coloring, and historical interest.... in these days when the flush of war has only just passed, the book ought to find thousands of readers, for it teaches patriotism without intolerance, and it shows, what the war with spain has demonstrated anew, the power of the american people when they are deeply roused by some great wrong."--_san francisco chronicle._ "the book throughout is extremely well written. it is condensed, vivid, picturesque.... a rattling good story, and unrivaled in fiction for its presentation of the american feeling toward england during our second conflict."--_boston herald._ "holds the attention continuously.... the book abounds in thrilling attractions.... it is a solid and dignified acquisition to the romantic literature of our own country, built around facts and real persons."--_chicago times-herald._ "in a style that is strong and broad, the author of this timely novel takes up a nascent period of our national history and founds upon it a story of absorbing interest."--_philadelphia item._ "mr. altsheler has given us an accurate as well as picturesque portrayal of the social and political conditions which prevailed in the republic in the era made famous by the second war with great britain."--_brooklyn eagle._ _"a book that will live."_ _david harum._ a story of american life. by /edward noyes westcott/. mo. cloth, $ . . "mr. westcott has done for central new york what mr. cable, mr. page, and mr. harris have done for different parts of the south, and what miss jewett and miss wilkins are doing for new england, and mr. hamlin garland for the west.... 'david harum' is a masterly delineation of an american type.... here is life with all its joys and sorrows.... david harum lives in these pages as he will live in the mind of the reader.... he deserves to be known by all good americans; he is one of them in boundless energy, in large-heartedness, in shrewdness, and in humor."--_the critic._ "thoroughly a pure, original, and fresh american type. david harum is a character whose qualities of mind and heart, eccentricities, and dry humor will win for his creator notable distinction. buoyancy, life, and cheerfulness are dominant notes. in its vividness and force the story is a strong, fresh picture of american life. original and true, it is worth the same distinction which is accorded the _genre_ pictures of peculiar types and places sketched by mr. george w. cable, mr. joel chandler harris, mr. thomas nelson page, miss wilkins, miss jewett, mr. garland, miss french, miss murfree, mr. gilbert parker, mr. owen wister, and bret harte.... a pretty love story also adds to the attractiveness of the book, that will be appreciated at once by every one who enjoys real humor, strong character, true pictures of life, and work that is 'racy of the soil.'"--_boston herald._ "mr. westcott has created a new and interesting type.... the character sketching and building, so far as david harum is concerned, is well-nigh perfect. the book is wonderfully bright, readable, and graphic."--_new york times._ "the main character ought to become familiar to thousands of readers, and will probably take his place in time beside joel chandler harris's and thomas nelson page's and miss wilkins's creations."--_chicago times-herald._ "we give edward noyes westcott his true place in american letters--placing him as a humorist next to mark twain, as a master of dialect above lowell, as a descriptive writer equal to bret harte, and, on the whole, as a novelist on a par with the best of those who live and have their being in the heart of hearts of american readers. if the author is dead--lamentable fact--his book will live."--_philadelphia item._ "true, strong, and thoroughly alive, with a humor like that of abraham lincoln and a nature as sweet at the core. the spirit of the book is genial and wholesome, and the love story is in keeping with it.... the book adds one more to the interesting list of native fiction destined to live, portraying certain localities and types of american life and manners."--_boston literary world._ "a notable contribution to those sectional studies of american life by which our literature has been so greatly enriched in the past generation.... a work of unusual merit."--_philadelphia press._ "one of the few distinct and living types in the american gallery."--_st. louis globe-democrat._ "the quaint character of 'david harum' proves to be an inexhaustible source of amusement."--_chicago evening post._ "it would be hard to say wherein the author could have bettered the portrait he sets before us."--_providence journal._ "full of wit and sweetness."--_baltimore herald._ "merits the heartiest and most unequivocal praise.... it is a pleasure to call the reader's attention to this strong and most original novel, a novel that is a decided and most enduring addition to american literature."--_boston saturday evening gazette._ a pictorial history of the war with spain. _cannon and camera._ sea and land battles of the spanish-american war in cuba, camp life, and return of the soldiers. described and illustrated by /j. c. hemment/, war artist at the front. with over one hundred full-page pictures taken by the author, and an index. large mo. cloth, $ . . "the most interesting book about the war so far is 'cannon and camera.' it is also the best, considered purely as a narrative. mr. hemment was at the right places at the right times.... no series of pictures as good as this on the scenes and events of the war has been made by any other man."--_boston herald._ "clever and picturesque.... over one hundred capital instantaneous photographs illustrate mr. hemment's well-written record, and not the least of the book's recommendations is the outspoken simplicity of its style and the strong impression it makes upon the reader of being the uninfluenced evidence of an eye-witness who 'draws the thing as he see it,' and without exaggeration or prejudice."--_sunday-school times._ "will have a permanent value and a popularity which doubtless the more technical books will lack."--_army and navy register._ "accurate as well as picturesque.... mr. hemment has done his work well. in point of faithful realism there has thus far been nothing better in the whole war literature."--_boston journal._ "the pictures comprise the best set of war views that we have seen."--_philadelphia inquirer._ "he is able to give us consecutive pictures of the war, possessing the great value of viewing it from beginning to end."--_baltimore sun._ "it is a history of the war that will become more valuable as time passes, for it is, in its pictures, an unimpeachable record of events."--_cleveland plain dealer._ _recollections of the civil war._ by /charles a. dana/. with portrait. large mo. cloth, gilt top, uncut, $ . . "out of his rich material mr. dana has woven a marvelous narrative.... written, as the book is, in mr. dana's inimitable english, it is worthy to rank with the autobiography of grant in the list of the really great works which will bear down to posterity the true story of the great war for freedom and for the union."--_boston journal._ "it is a book filled with vitality and warm with strong life. it tells history in the strongest and most impressive manner, and the personality of the writer gives it an additional interest. it is one of the valuable books of the year.... it is sincere even in its prejudices; the most original and enduring work of a strong thinker. the book is a most important contribution to the history of the civil war; it is readable from first page to last, and its vitality will outlast that of more elaborate works on the same subject."--_boston saturday evening gazette._ "the book will rank among the trustworthy sources of knowledge of the civil war."--_new york evening post._ "as interesting as a novel."--_buffalo commercial._ "the book is one of absorbing interest."--_providence journal._ the story of the west series. /edited by/ ripley hitchcock. each, illustrated, mo, cloth, $ . . _the story of the railroad._ by /cy warman/, author of "the express messenger," etc. with maps, and many illustrations by b. west clinedinst and from photographs. "as we understand it, the editor's ruling idea in this series has not been to present chronology or statistics or set essays on the social and political development of the great west, but to give to us vivid pictures of the life and the times in the period of great development, and to let us see the men at their work, their characters, and their motives. the choice of an author has been fortunate. in mr. warman's book we are kept constantly reminded of the fortitude, the suffering, the enterprise, and the endurance of the pioneers. we see the glowing imagination of the promoter, and we see the engineer scouting the plains and the mountains, fighting the indians, freezing and starving, and always full of a keen enthusiasm for his work and of noble devotion to his duty. the construction train and the irish boss are not forgotten, and in the stories of their doings we find not only courage and adventure, but wit and humor."--_the railroad gazette._ _the story of the cowboy._ by /e. hough/, author of "the singing mouse stories," etc. illustrated by william l. wells and c. m. russell. "mr. hough is to be thanked for having written so excellent a book. the cowboy story, as this author has told it, will be the cowboy's fitting eulogy. this volume will be consulted in years to come as an authority on past conditions of the far west. for fine literary work the author is to be highly complimented. here, certainly, we have a choice piece of writing."--_new york times._ _the story of the mine._ as illustrated by the great comstock lode of nevada. by /charles howard shinn/. "mr. shinn writes from ample personal acquaintance with his subject--such acquaintance as could only be gained by familiarity with the men and the places described, by repeated conversations with survivors of the early mining adventures in the sierras and the rockies, and by the fullest appreciation of the pervading spirit of the western mining camps of yesterday and to-day. thus his book has a distinctly human interest, apart from its value as a treatise on things material."--_review of reviews._ _the story of the indian._ by /george bird grinnell/, author of "pawnee hero stories," "blackfoot lodge tales," etc. "only an author qualified by personal experience could offer us a profitable study of a race so alien from our own as is the indian in thought, feeling, and culture. only long association with indians can enable a white man measurably to comprehend their thoughts and enter into their feelings. such association has been mr. grinnell's."--_new york sun._ d. appleton and company, new york.