After all, the present strait of optical astronomy is but the inevitable consequence of its astonishing progress. While instruments remained feeble and imperfect, atmospheric troubles were comparatively little felt; they became intolerable when all other obstacles to a vast increase in the range of distinct vision were removed. The arrival of that stage in the history of the telescope, when the advantages to be derived from its further development should be completely neutralised by the more and more sensibly felt disadvantages of our situation on an air-encompassed globe, was only a question of time. The point was a fixed one: it could be reached later only by a more sluggish advance. Both the difficulty and its remedy were foreseen 167 years ago by the greatest of astronomers and opticians. “If the theory of making telescopes,” Sir Isaac Newton wrote in 1717,[31] “could at length be fully brought into practice, yet there would be certain bounds beyond which telescopes could not perform. For the air through which we look upon the stars is in a perpetual tremor as may be seen by the tremulous motion of shadows cast from high towers, and by the twinkling of the fixed stars. The only remedy is a most serene and quiet air, such as may perhaps be found on the tops of the highest mountains above the grosser clouds.” —_Edinburgh Review_. GOETHE BY PROF. J. R. SEELEY. III. The highest rank in literature belongs to those who combine the properly poetical with philosophical qualities, and crown both with a certain robust sincerity and common sense. The sovereign poet must be not merely a singer, but also a sage; to passion and music he must add large ideas; he must extend in width as well as in height; but, besides this, he must be no dreamer or fanatic, and must be rooted as firmly in the hard earth as he spreads widely and mounts freely towards the sky. Goethe, as we have described him, satisfies these conditions, and as much can be said of no other man of the modern world but Dante and Shakspeare.