broad facts, which are inexplicable to him only because he does not see the many subtle links which bind those facts together; he does not see the mind of the sufferer struggling against a growing evil, and finally resigning itself, and trying to put a calm face on the matter. It is easy for us to say, Why did not Goethe part from her at once? But parting was not easy. She was the mother of his child; she had been the mistress of his heart, and still was dear to him! To part from her would not have arrested the fatal tendency; it would only have accelerated it. He was too weak to alter his position. He was strong enough to bear it.

And thus the years rolled on. Her many good qualities absolved her few bad qualities. He was sincerely attached to her, and she was devoted to him; and now, in his fiftyeighth year, when the troubles following the battle of Jena made him 'feel the necessity of drawing all friends closer,' who, among those friends, deserved a nearer place than Christiane? He resolved on marrying her.

It is not known whether this thought of marriage had for some time previous been in contemplation, and was now put in execution when Weimar was too agitated to trouble itself with his doings; or whether the desire of legitimizing his son in these troublous days suggested the idea. Riemer thinks the motive was gratitude for her courageous and prudent conduct during the troubles; but I do not think that explanation acceptable, the more so as, according to her own statement, marriage was proposed in the early years of their acquaintance. In the absence of positive testimony, I am disposed to rely on psychological evidence; and, assuming that the idea of marriage had been previously entertained, the delay in execution is explicable when we are made aware of one peculiarity in his nature, namely, a singular hesitation in adopting any

decisive course of action - singular, in a man so resolute and imperious when once his decision had been made. This is the weakness of imaginative men. However strong the volition, when once the volition is set going, there is in men of active intellects, and especially in men of imaginative, apprehensive intellects, a fluctuation of motives keeping the volition in abeyance, which practically amounts to weakness; and is only distinguished from weakness by the strength of the volition when let loose. Goethe, who was aware of this peculiarity, used to attribute it to his never having been placed in circumstances which required prompt resolutions, and to his not having educated his will; but I believe the cause lay much deeper, lying in the nature of psychological actions, not in the accidents of education.

But be the cause of the delay this or any other, it is certain that on the 19th of October, i. e. five days after the battle of Jena, and not, as writers constantly report, during the cannonade,' he was united to Christiane, in the presence of his son, and of his secretary, Riemer.

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The scandal which this act of justice excited was immense, as may readily be guessed by those who know the world. His friends, however, loudly applauded his emergence from a false position. From that time forward, no one who did not treat her with proper respect could hope to be well received by him. She bore her new-made honors unobtrusively, and with a quiet good sense, which managed to secure the hearty good will of most of those who knew her.

CHAPTER II.

BETTINA AND NAPOLEON.

IT is very characteristic that during the terror and the pillage of Weimar, Goethe's greatest anxiety on his own account was lest his scientific manuscripts should be destroyed. Wine, plate, furniture, could be replaced; but to lose his manuscripts was to lose what was irreparable. Herder's posthumous manuscripts were destroyed; Meyer lost everything, even his sketches; but Goethe lost nothing.*

The Duke, commanded by Prussia to submit to Napoleon, laid down his arms and returned to Weimar, there to be received with the enthusiastic love of his people, as some compensation for the indignities he had endured. Peace was restored. Weimar breathed again. Goethe availed himself of the quiet to print his Farbenlehre and Faust, that they might be rescued from any future peril. He also began to meditate once more an epic on William Tell; but the death of the Duchess Amalia, on the 10th April, drove the subject from his mind.

*It is at once ludicrous and sad to mention that even this has been the subject of malevolent sneers against him. His antagonists cannot forgive him the good fortune which saved his house from pillage, when the houses of others were ransacked. They seem to think it a mysterious result of his selfish calculations.

On the 23d of April, Bettina came to Weimar. We must pause awhile to consider this strange figure, who fills a larger space in the literary history of the nineteenth century than any other German woman. Every one knows the Child' Bettina Brentano, daughter of the

Maximiliane Brentano with whom Goethe flirted at Frankfurt in the Werther days wife of Achim von Arnim, the fantastic Romanticist - the worshipper of Goethe and Beethoven for some time the privileged favorite of the King of Prussia- and writer of that wild, but by no means veracious book, Goethe's Correspondence with a Child. She is one of those phantasts to whom everything seems permitted. More elf than woman, yet with flashes of genius which light up in splendor whole chapters of nonsense, she defies criticism and puts every verdict at fault. If you are grave with her, people shrug their shoulders, and saying she is a Brentano,' consider all settled. 'At the point where the folly of others ceases, the folly of the Brentanos begins,' runs the proverb in Germany.

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I do not wish to be graver with Bettina than the occasion demands; but while granting fantasy its widest license, while grateful to her for the many picturesque anecdotes she has preserved from the conversation of Goethe's mother, I must consider the history of her relation to Goethe seriously, because out of it has arisen a charge against his memory which is very false and injurious. Many unsuspecting readers of her book, whatever they may think of the passionate expressions of her love for Goethe, whatever they may think of her demeanor towards him, on first coming into his presence, feel greatly hurt at his coldness; while others are still more indignant with him for keeping alive this mad passion, feeding it with poems and compliments, and

doing this out of a selfish calculation, in order that he might gather from her letters materials for his poems! In both these views there is complete misconception of the actual case. True it is that the Correspondence furnishes ample evidence for both opinions; and against that evidence there is but one fact to be opposed, but the fact is decisive: the Correspondence is a romance.

A harsher phrase would be applied were the offender a man, or not a Brentano, for the romance is put forward as biographical fact; not as fiction playing around and among fact. How much is true, how much exaggeration, and how much pure invention, I am in no position to explain. But Riemer, the old and trusted friend of Goethe, living in the house with him at the time of Bettina's arrival, has shown the Correspondence to be a romance which has only borowed from reality the time, place and circumstances;' and from other sources I have learned enough to see both Goethe's conduct and her own in quite a different light from that presented in her work.

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A young, ardent, elfin creature worships the great poet at a distance, writes to tell him so, is attentive to his mother, who gladly hears such praises of her son, and is glad to talk of him. He is struck with her extraordinary mind, is grateful to her for the attentions to his mother, and writes as kindly as he can without compromising himself. She comes to Weimar. She falls into his arms and goes to sleep in his lap on their first interview; and is ostentatious of her adoration and her jealousy ever afterwards. This is her own account; and one sees that the position was very embarrassing for Goethe: a man aged fifty-eight worshipped by a girl who, though a woman in years, looked like a child, and worshipped with the extravagance, partly mad and partly wilful, of a Brentano what could he do? He could take a base advantage