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fairly infer, from the strictness of Goethe's expressed opinions on the subject; a strictness maintained in opposition to not a few of his friends.

A like objection to "Wilhelm Meister" has been already indicated. Taste seems to be sacrificed to truth. But the spirit of the whole work must impress every understanding reader, as dignified and earnest, incomparably beyond the mass of didactic romances. Both its parts-"Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship," and his "Travels," are replete with wisdom, — grave and deep, though not sad or needlessly severe. They deal with the most serious of all subjects-the conduct of life. The form of Wilhelm Meister" is partly allegorical; at least, much of it can scarcely be otherwise denominated. The topography of its scenes is as little definable by longitude and latitude, as that of the "Pilgrim's Progress;" but it has the charm of minutely and vividly depicting ordinary life. To attempt a particular analysis of its contents would be a vain task. As little real idea of it would be conveyed thereby, as in the description of a great painting. Suffice it to say, that the lesson of the whole appears to be, the necessity of slow deliberation, in choosing an external position in life, and the oft-repeated lesson conveyed in the stanza, as occurring at the end of the "Wanderjahre," thus translated by Mr. Carlyle:

clearly, that we cannot stifle the conviction that he must oversee all.

Goethe's occasional and shorter poems would of themselves confer on him the mastership in his art. He has extracted its beauty from almost every situation and relation in life; and that under the most diverse conditions of humanity, geographical and social.

Space compels us to hasten away from a notice of his shorter prose essays to his well-known autobiography, entitled Wahrheit und Dichtung,-"Truth and Poetry,”—and which seems to us emphatically a chef d'œuvre of genius. Of few other great men, even among those who have attracted most attention as literary sovereigns, have we so many personal details; and of none should we reasonably desire more. His career stretches over the most interesting period of modern history, and offers singular analogies and differences, as compared with other literary potentates. The establishment of an intellectual dominion is always a work of time. Apart from this condition, no brilliance of genius or talent, nor even force of character, can secure it. Of the triumvirate of literary sovereigns in modern Europe, Voltaire reached his 85th year, Johnson his 76th, Goethe his 82nd. Between the two latter there are other remarkable features of similarity. The recognition of their greatness arose in large measure from impressions derived through personal intercourse, and from the impulse they gave to the literature of the day. Their works, with one or two obvious exceptions, have been talked of en masse, far more than read and apIts analyses of individual character preciated in detail. Hence, while the and of systems of belief and action, are dominion of both was absolute over a such as we have found nowhere else. large circle of worshippers during their We feel a strange thrill when the spring lifetime, to the next generation it has of our most secret purposes, which, as become all but unintelligible. We we thought, were concealed from all should be still more removed from symothers, is suddenly touched by another, pathy, but for a circumstance which is and the results of the movement ob- connected with the nature of their influjectively set before us with calm, clear, ence,- that of both we have an abununerring delineation. Every possible dance of personal records. If Johnson experience, however alien apparently to had his Piozzi and Boswell; Goethe had the poet's own character, seems to be at his Bettina, Eckermann, and Falk. his service. The "Bekennt nisse einer With this analogy, there is a characterschöner Seele," in the Wilhelm Meis-istic difference. Of Dr. Johnson's early ter," follows out minutely the steps of a years our information is of the scanreligious conversion, and with indescrib- tiest. Goethe's childhood, on the conable warmth and truth; nor can such a stands before us as vividly as our record be the work of a mere spectator. own. This contrast is, we say, not triAnd so of other states of mind and soul. vial or accidental. None can understand In fact, the author sees everything so the child but himself. The mother or

"

Keep not standing fix'd and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam!
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,
And stout hearts are still at home.'

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trary,

the nurse may admire and even wor Other poets besides Goethe have ship; but the tenderest devotee cannot written of their early days. In all comprehend. "Childish things" require cases "the child is father to the man." the spirit of the child to know them. In the life of the bard, "the natural His little world is formed chiefly from | piety" resulting from this connection is within; for the most determined idealist peculiarly binding. The vision of has no such power of subjective creation. There can, then, be no complete "Life" which does not begin with an Autobiography. Now the constant aim of the great German was self-development. He noted every stage of the process with scientific impartiality. His writings abound in personal reminiscences, meeting us in professed "Annals" and "Journals," and they re-appearing in philosophical novels and dramas.

On the other hand, the great Englishman cannot write an autobiography, scarcely a part of one. We turn for a specimen of such an endeavour to his "Journey to the Western Islands." But so far from discoursing of himself, it is almost impossible for him to keep within any reasonable distance even of his path of travel. Amid disquisitions on man in general, and savage or half savage life in particular, it requires an effort to remember that our pilgrimage is among the mists and rocks of the Hebrides; the vast solitudes of Highland glens are peopled with classic forms; a Scotch mountain is used as vantage ground for glances at the Alps and Apennines, the Pyrenæan, and the River Po;" and we are compelled to traverse "the plain of Marathon," in being introduced to "the ruins of Iona."

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earth's brightest colours, its choicest fragrance, and most jubilant music, is granted only to children. Once lost or misprized, it is caught up into heaven, not again to be vouchsafed. The poet is he who remembers most of it, and can describe it most clearly. From Horace, recalling the early inspiration breathed on the

"Non sine Dis animosus infans,"

down to the sadly pleasing story of our own Hartley Coleridge, Wordsworth's dictum has received special confirmation in the biography of poetry. He himself has given us bright glimpses of his youth in the "Prelude," a poem far too lightly estimated. But here the splendour from within, like the dazzling haze in some of Turner's landscapes, obscures the outline, and blends the colours. We are in a land of lakes and mountains—“meet nurse for a poetic child"-but "clouds of glory," borne thither from the antenatal element, overshadow us and them. We breathe empyreal air;

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but we are

His portrait

only half conscious of the environment. Goethe's pictures are clear as the summer landscapes of the continent; bright and sunny as his own Frankfort in the finest days of June. Not only eye and ear, but every sense sympathises with It is Goethe's peculiar merit that the the utterly child-like pleasures which he present, the actual, even the trivial, is summons before us. We feel that in presented in his writings as a symbol of Goethe, reflection is perfectly counterhigh truth. He can make the outside balanced by a clear, decided outlook on of life perfectly transparent for the reve- the world around him. lation of its profoundest depths. His says so. That of Wordsworth bespeaks parable seldom needs an interpretation, exactly the contrary. Instead of the never a lengthened commentary; or, if bright eagle-glance of the German, we it does, we must be content to leave it have the introverted look of one who hopelessly obscure. Trebly important listens rather than sees, or who gazesin his estimation and teaching is every not upon the veritable picture of outevent or circumstance that has an in-ward things-but upon a scene built up fluence on the rest of life. Especially from within, conjured up by the hartherefore, in the commencement, he monies of Nature, and bearing little can regard nothing as common-place. other relation to it,―rising Higher up in the edifice, a brickbat, or a tile, may be a non-essential; it may fall out or remain in, without_exciting notice or causing damage. But if it be part of the foundation it must be regarded as essential to the stability of

the whole.

"like an exhalation with the sound Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet;" a world for spiritual habitation only, not shared in common, as the noblest "real scenery is, by the tax-gatherer, the land-owner, the tenants, and the

poet, but the exclusive freehold of the last." All Wordsworth's descriptions of Nature relapse into this intuition. He even tells us that, on the actual sight of Mont Blanc, he

"6 - grieved
To have a souliess image on the eye
That had usurped upon a living thought
That never more could be."

The "Confessions of an English Opium-eater" now happily re-appearing in a supplemented form, more closely approach the "Dichtung und Wahrheit in a vivid but deeply reflective sketch of childhood. With De Quincey's strangely hostile paper on Goethe, in a well known encyclopedia open before us, we fear this may be regarded by him as no compliment. The Confessions" are unapproachable in their order; but their object requires no such fulness or minuteness of description as Goethe's.

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In fact, thus to have idealized his life is an achievement peculiar to the subject of this sketch; and it points to one of his excellencies on which the reader's patience must excuse one or two further

remarks.

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Of all his intellectual works, that on which Goethe set most store was- -Himself. Time had been when men's whole souls went forth in massive architecture which should be to their descendants "a possession for ever." But with all this striving, they had only reared "desolate places for themselves and for humanity; pyramids and palaces of Nimroud, built in the proportion of one or two grand thoughts, to an infinity of toil, and a vast monotony of surface. But in these late times, the building up and garnishing of a more cunningly built Living Temple, has come to be regarded as the true and worthy work of men. None in modern times has set this more directly before him than Goethe. He cast off his earlier productions as the slough or chrysalis that held in his growing expanding nature; and he thought no present sacrifice too great to promote the well-being of that. His various occupations — his taking up science, art, and letters, simultaneously were thus justified in his own view; and the result justifies it to those who see what he achieved. He looked not to the rearing of any outward work;

but to the building up of a Man; a soul complete in all its proportions. Doubtless he failed in many points; we might point out defects to be avoided; but his object was clearly before him; for this he worked, and in this work he is admirable and worthy of the imitation of all men.

His

Additional personal characteristics we will only glance at. Schiller describes him as of the middle height, stiff, and by no means, at first, attractive in manner, but with a bright overpowering eye. converse was fluent and easy, and the more he was known, the deeper was the interest felt in him; but though his features, especially in youth, were so noble and attractive, he laboured under those disadvantages in society which the deeply serious man can scarcely fail to encounter. In large assemblies, he tells us, "his heart was shut." Age mellowed and beautified his character. All his faculties stayed with him to the last; and his 83rd year, in which he died, found him in his "work-room" still. We have lively pictures of this generous old age in Eckermann's book of Conversations

"Quo fit ut omnis Votivâ pateat veluti descripta tabellâ Vita senis.

In conclusion we would observe that, with some important drawbacks, Goethe has done good service in rebuking that negative view of things which virtually excludes The Supreme Life from a portion of His universe; that he has given ample and positive testimony to the fact that for art and for all other living products of human intellect, there is not, there cannot be, any true renaissance without the abiding belief of a Present and Living God. The men of old had this, in a form not pure indeed, but maintained with the calm, steady conviction of Men. Towards a resuscitation of this conviction, with all its fair and joyous accompaniments, a reunion of beauty and noble intellectual strivings, with the highest sanctions, and the regarding them anew as truly pertaining to the highest life, one man of modern times has laboured with some degree of faithfulness,- JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE.

220

DOMINIQUE FRANÇOIS ARAGO.

THE death of M. Arago leaves in the ranks | unintelligible. Some folks, to this day, of the French Institute a vacuum which support the contemptuous expressions will not easily be filled. Astronomy, they employ when speaking about M. meteorology, the different branches of na- Arago, by the extraordinary statement tural philosophy were never elucidated that he was fourteen years old before by a savant better qualified for his task; he knew how to read! The fact, if it his name had become associated, more were true, seems to us by no means conespecially, with all the mysteries of cos- clusive; but it is not true, and the mography, and he was accordingly con- illustrious man whose loss France cansidered as the grand authority respecting not mourn over too much, had shown aerolites, shooting stars, and comets evidences of his brilliant gifts at an age either with or without tails. Arago when his detractors were still groping dixit served as a sanction for every po- for their way amidst the mazes of abpular theory on atmospheric influences; straction. nay, if he had determined to draw up a DOMINIQUE FRANÇOIS ARAGO was born scheme of nativity, it is extremely pro- on the 26th of February, 1786, at Estagel, bable that he would have dethroned near Perpignan, in the south of France. both old Moore and Zadkiel himself. His father, who held some situation To speak seriously, M. Arago's reputa- under government, gave him an exceltion was principally grounded upon his lent education, and did all his limited talent as a lecturer for the masses; leav- means allowed, to push on an intelliing others to discuss abstruse problems gent young man upon whom was to and to pore over books bristling with devolve in after-life, according to all proequations, he aimed chiefly at the glory bability, the care of providing for a of bringing down the results of those numerous family. From the college of truths Laplace, Newton, or Ampère Perpignan, Dominique proceeded to that had discovered, to the level of an every of Montpellier, where the course of instrucday audience; he sought and obtained tion delivered was on a larger scale, and the useful laurels which deck the brows conducted by superior teachers. It may of practical educators. Many will say be proper to notice here that the analytic that this position and course of studies character of French metaphysics during should have secured to M. Arago general the eighteenth century resulted at any approbation and the thankful acknow-rate in one good effort,-it drove multiledgment of all men really interested in the progress of science. But such has not been the case. The director of the Paris observatory, the secretary of the Institute, the friend of Humboldt and Brougham, has been the subject of controversies so violent that they cast into the shade the celebrated feuds of the romantiques and the classiques.

"Tant de fiel entre-t-il dans l'âme des savans!"

We have only altered the last word of the above line to apply it on the present occasion, and, certainly, those who hitherto may have supposed that x and y binomials and logarithms are incompatible with heated passions, need only read M. Arago's life to find themselves wofully mistaken. He has been called a quack, a dunce, a humbug, by people who think that Chambers's educational course is the profanation of learning, and that philosophy is all the better for being deep, i.e.

tudes to the culture of the exact sciences, and formed a school of men pre-eminently distinguished in that respect. Condorcet, Laplace, Euler, D'Alembert, Lagrange, almost revolutionized the higher branches of mathematics; the wars of the revolution, calling forth to the frontiers a body of artillery-officers and engineers, added another stimulus; and the foundation of the Polytechnic School opened a wide field of activity both for pupils and masters. Young Arago was admitted into that celebrated establishment at the early age of eighteen. The accuracy of his knowledge and his general proficiency secured for him the first place amongst his competitors, and he reached from the very beginning the position he has kept ever since. It is said that when he presented himself as a candidate for pupilage, his answer to the first question so astonished the examiner that he declined putting a second, and

sent him to the Institution with high compliments.

might quietly proceed with such calculations as could be done in the retireThe pupils of the Ecole Polytechnique ment of the study; M. Arago joined M. are supposed to be fully qualified in the Rodriguez at Iviça. Here begins one of course of two years for efficient service in the most romantic incidents on record, either military or civil engineering. M. in the annals of scientific inquiry. The Arago's first appointment was that of sec- interesting travels of Humboldt himself retary to the Board of Longitudes, and contains nothing to match, in point of as such the Emperor ordered him to join adventure, the details of the next period the scientific expedition organized under in M. Arago's life. He was still busily the direction of M. Biot, for the purpose engaged upon his work, when war broke of measuring the arc of the meridian. out afresh. His position at Galatzo, As early as 1670, a Frenchman, named in Iviça, the instruments which he Picard, had begun a series of calculations constantly used, and to which the on the radius of the earth, so as to ob- people were not accustomed, everything tain its diameter; after him, journeys looked suspicious about him; he was had been accomplished with the same immediately set down as a spy. The object in view by Cassini, La Conda- fanaticism of the Spaniards easily mine, Maupertius, and Clairault. But caught flame, his residence was mobbed, the mathematical instruments used at he had the greatest difficulty in esthat time did not possess the necessary de- caping with his life, and all that the licacy; and savans had often either to give entreaties and intercessions of M. up the idea of prosecuting their investi- Rodriguez could obtain for the unforgations, or to remain satisfied with merely tunate Arago, was leave to embark on approximative results. Borda's corde ré- a ship bound for Algiers. He had pétiteur, a most ingenious piece of mech-managed, though with no small trouble, anism, at last raised every obstacle, and to save his instruments and papers; MM. Mechain and Delambre were en- the Dey received him very courteously, abled to measure with the utmost exact- and allowed him to take his passage ness the arc of the meridian comprised | for France, in a vessel belonging to his between Dunkirk and Barcelona. The object of the journey undertaken by M. Arago at Bonaparte's command, and in society with M. Biot, was to follow up Delambre's calculations for the arc in-tacked them and Arago found himself cluded between Barcelona and the Balearic Islands. Although the whole of Europe was then in arms, the claims of science readily obtained the notice which civilized nations will award to them under all circumstances. The Spanish go- | vernment appointed two eminent mathematicians, Chaise and Rodriguez, to join the French deputation, and England granted a safe conduct, which political events rendered absolutely indispensable.

An imaginary triangle was constructed, destined to join Iviça to Spain. The base of that triangle was 142,000 metres in length, about 35 leagues; one of its sides measured nearly 160,000 metres, or 41 leagues. MM. Biot and Arago took their position at the apex of the triangle, on one of the highest mountains in Catalonia, the Spaniards established themselves at Campney in the island of Iviça. In 1807, after many months' arduous toil, the operations were happily finished. M. Biot returned to Paris that he

own government. The crew put off to sea under the most favourable auspices; they were almost in sight of the French coast, when a Spanish privateer at

Set free

a prisoner. He was first conveyed to
the fort of Rosas, then to the pontoons
of Talamos, where he had to undergo
the most cruel treatment, and to expiate
the mishap of belonging to la grande
nation. In seizing, however, upon the
Algerine frigate, the Spaniards had
violated the treaty which still existed
between the two countries, and the
Dey remonstrated in so spirited a
manner, that the crew, the passengers,
and the cargo were released.
once more, Arago thought that this
time he had done with perils both of
sea and of robbers; the ship was ac-
tually in the Marseilles road, when a
violent squall arose and drove the ill-
fated expedition into the neighbourhood
of Sardinia. It so happened that, at
that time, considerations of a political
nature rendered it impossible for the
Algerines to think of seeking hospitality
on the coast of the island: they there-
fore resolved to make for Africa as
fast as they could, and when they dis-
covered that the ship had sprung a leak,

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