ing and pillage? Then you bishops, after these horrors, thank God and chant Te Deums!"

Eckermann relates an instance of his profound unconcern for politics. When the news of the French Revolution of July, 1830, reached Weimar, and moved everybody, Eckermann called upon Goethe. "What do you think of the news? The volcano has burst at last.” Eckermann replied, "It is frightful; but what else could have been expected than the expulsion of the royal family?" Said Goethe, "We do not appear to understand each other. I am speaking of the battle between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire. At the last meeting of the Academy, in July, St. Hilaire declared himself at last on my side, and spoke in favor of my theory of transformation." It was indeed an important event, which is just beginning to bear fruit in the present theories of evolution, richer than all the politics of that fervid month of July. If a man's breathing is at the rate of a century, second-hands may decline to measure his pulse.

His respect for the genius of Napoleon, whom he met for the first time at the famous Congress of Kings in Erfurt, 1808, was profound, and it remained unabated. to the day of Waterloo, through all the fluctuations of fortune. In that interview Goethe was naturally flattered to hear Napoleon say that he carried “Werther" with him to Egypt; then also the soldier discussed with the poet some æsthetic points of this novel. People were

never tired of crediting his Napoleonism to the interview ; but it was rooted deeper in a real feeling that Napoleon's genius was the century's greatest birth, and he hoped. that a settled Europe would be the benign trophy of its activity. No feeling, no movement, no combination, no improvised enthusiasm, he thought, could resist and defeat its combinations. The more salutary way seemed to lie through this man's demonic personality, who organized that unconscious Will of history which underlies all men's conscious efforts, to advance or thwart them. A feeling that he too was dominated by this unconscious force of Nature, this drift of a function of hers to subsidize those gifts of ours which seem the freest and most personal to ourselves, held him in secret affinity with Napoleon. He would always say, "Oh, you can do nothing, you cannot alter things: he is too strong."

The disaster of Moscow, in 1812, did not shake this conviction. Nor did it weaken his opinion that the popular enthusiasm which then began to gather all along the path of that retreat would not change the face of Germany. There he was right. Up to that time the German people had shown an inaptitude for political development. Republican ideas were metaphysically entertained. The people had found no way of breaking from the bureaucratic tutelage which succeeded to the old feudality. The municipal usage which has nourished a feeling of independence in other nations was confined to local subjects and details. There was no

homogeneous people to be thus educated and inspired. German unity was hardly more than a reverie of bookworms. The same language was spoken, with variations of no great importance, from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic, but it was used to express provincial states of feeling. The bewildered surface of a map of Germany expressed the absence of uniformity of tendency and of ideal concentration upon polity and administration which reigned among those tenants of princely preserves, whose choicest life had hitherto exhaled in universities, treatises, and mere liberties of speech upon themes indifferent to the State. The best brains enjoyed a famous time in wreaking themselves upon topics of theology, pure reason, the group of the Laocoon, the subjects of the theatre, the Gallic and anti-Gallic verse, the discovery of Shakspeare, the Hellenic and the Romantic dispute. A social life amply supplied with the elements of material and æsthetic satisfaction, and bound to the past by so many charming customs and traditions, was not a despicable substitute for constitutional privileges. Goethe reflected with justice that the enthusiasm which kindled all along the steps of Russian soldiers as they passed into Germany contained more hatred for France than love for municipal and constitutional liberty. That was confined entirely to a few generous thinkers who were doomed to disappointment because they misrepresented their age and country

men.

Solid and whole-souled was the popular feeling of 1813. In Berlin volunteers enrolled themselves at the rate of nine thousand a day. At the universities studentcorps and "leagues of virtue" were formed with sonorous hochs and Homeric clinking of the glasses. Noble and delicately cultured men, recluse students, took the field. shoulder to shoulder with the roughest. The disinterested Fichte and his wife went into the hospital-service.

When the Prussian volunteers made their appearance in Weimar, Goethe wrote: "They behave rudely, and one is not prepossessed." He forbade his son to join. the army, and fled to Teplitz, to Meissen, to Dresden; meeting everywhere the ardent young scholars and poets, Arndt, Körner, Stägemann, Schenkendorf, Reimer, disappointing and maddening all of them by his cool indifference, and predicting evil things to Stein, the Prussian minister.

J. Schmidt ("History of German Literature since Luther's Death") says that he settled down in Teplitz and buried himself in Chinese, as if to put two thousand years between his mind and his country. To H. Meyer, on July 21, he writes: "You must be praised on account of your decision. Whoever possibly can should rescue himself from the present, since it is impossible to live so uncomfortably in proximity to such events without at last going mad with anxiety, confusion, and embitterment."

On May 2, Napoleon gained the battle of Lutzen by

a very narrow chance; Bautzen on May 20, 21; Reichenbach on May 22, - and the Allies still retreat. During an armistice in June an attack was made upon Lützow's Free Corps, on the pretext that they were not regular troops, and in this superfluous skirmish Körner was killed; but the German youth still fought, singing his famous songs: "The storm is out, the land is roused" "Sword, at my left side gleaming" and "Lützow's Wild Chase."

The battle of Dresden was fought Aug. 26, 27; the Allies still retreated, but Napoleon became in consequence too much involved, and his fortune began to turn. The battles of Culm, Aug. 29, 30, were defeats for him: Katzbach, Aug. 26; Gross Beeren, 23; Dennewitz, Sept. 6,-all defeats. At length on the plains of Leipsic, during the famous three days, Oct. 16, 17, 18, Napoleon was almost annihilated. Retreating through Erfurt, he dictated a bulletin of the defeat in the same hotel where Goethe met him to discuss the sentiment of "Werther." During the battle of Leipsic, Goethe was at home writing the epilogue of a play, called "The Countess of Essex," and returning in it to his old admiration for the Emperor. Was it from a shudder which the earth caught from the thunder of Leipsic, that a medallion of Napoleon fell from its place in the poet's study while he was writing? His wife was impressed, but he sought to reassure her by showing that the hero's face was not hurt and the whole damage trifling.