Even in old age Goethe never paused in his labours as a man of letters. One of the works now issued by him was “Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre” (“Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Travel”). It was published in its earliest form in 1821, but afterwards it was recast, the work as we now have it being finished in 1829. This book has little real connection with the “Lehrjahre,” and ought not to be read as a complete work of art, for Goethe hardly even attempts to give unity to the various elements of which it is made up. Much of it is rather tiresome, but it also contains tales and passages as remarkable for nobility of style as for depth of thought. Especially valuable are those parts of the book in which he develops his mature convictions with regard to education, and the conditions of the high and enduring welfare of industrial societies. Here he anticipates much of what is most deeply characteristic of the thought of our own day. In all directions Goethe continued to exercise his widely varied powers. He edited a periodical called for some time “Kunst und Alterthum in den Rhein und Maingegenden” (“Art and Antiquity in the districts of the Rhine and the Main”). Afterwards he called it simply “Kunst und Alterthum,” and included in it, besides papers on art and archæology, some of his poems and essays in literary criticism. He also published, between 1817 and 1824, a scientific periodical, in which he printed his treatise on the intermaxillary bone, and communicated his discovery as to the constitution of the bones of the skull. This discovery had in the interval been independently made by Oken, but to Goethe the question of priority appeared to be one of absolutely no importance. During this time, too, he went on writing lyrical and other poems, as he had done during all the earlier periods of his career; and he devoted great attention to the preparation of a complete edition of his works, the first volume of which was published in 1827. He also found time to write or dictate an extraordinary number of letters. Goethe had always been a model correspondent, and the various collections of his letters are of inestimable value for the light they throw upon his character. He himself issued, in 1828-29, his correspondence with Schiller; and he prepared for publication his correspondence with Zelter, the genial and eccentric Berlin musical composer, to whom he was warmly attached. We now possess a vast series of Goethe’s letters, some dating from early youth, others written immediately before his death. They reflect accurately many different moods, corresponding to the different stages of his development; but in the letters of all the periods of his life the mind which unconsciously discloses itself is one dominated by a passion for truth, by a lofty sense of honour, and by manly, humane, and generous impulses.