Weimar had now become a place of pilgrimage for young poets, who looked to Goethe as the supreme master of their craft. Among those who came to him was the poet who was destined to take, after Goethe’s death, the first place in the imaginative literature of Germany--Heinrich Heine. Heine visited Weimar when he was twenty-five years of age, and had already taken rank among the most powerful writers of his day. Long afterwards, in “Ueber Deutschland,” he said that in talking with Goethe he involuntarily looked at his side for the eagle of Zeus. “I was nearly,” he says, “addressing him in Greek.” Many a time, when he had thought of visiting Goethe, he had reflected on all sorts of sublime things he would like to say. When he found himself actually in the great man’s presence, he remarked that the plums by the wayside between Jena and Weimar were uncommonly good! So, at least, we are assured by Heine, whose reminiscences were seldom intended to be taken quite seriously. Goethe appreciated Heine’s rare gifts, but said to Eckermann that with all his brilliance one thing was wanting to him--love. He predicted, however, that Heine would be greatly feared. From abroad, as well as from all parts of Germany, testimonies of admiration were from time to time sent to Goethe. On his last birthday he received from fifteen (or perhaps nineteen) Englishmen, among whom were Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and Carlyle, a seal bearing the motto from one of his poems, “Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast” (“Without haste, but without rest”). The suggestion that this tribute of respect and gratitude should be offered to Goethe had been made by Carlyle, with whose translation of “Wilhelm Meister” he had been greatly delighted. Goethe, although he never saw Carlyle, recognized his genius, and foretold his future greatness. During his last years Goethe took little interest in the public affairs of Europe. Least of all did he interest himself in the proceedings of Liberal politicians. On the day when the tidings of the French Revolution of 1830 reached Weimar, his friend Soret went to see him. When Soret entered his room Goethe was in a state of intense excitement, and began to talk of the mighty volcanic eruption at Paris. Soret replied that nothing else was to be expected from such a Ministry. Goethe looked at him in astonishment. What had the Ministry to do with the matter? He had not been speaking of “those people,” but of the contest in the French Academy between Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire!--a contest in which St. Hilaire had supported Goethe’s ideas as to the true way of conceiving organic Nature.