This part of his work was congenial to his tastes, but we find him on one occasion complaining bitterly that those in high places consumed in a day more than could be produced in the same time by the labours of all the toilers on the estates under his charge. In discharging the various duties imposed upon him, Goethe became the soul of the entire administrative system, and diffused through all its branches much of his own vigour and thoroughness. As he did his own work honestly, he would take no dishonest work from others; and this came to be well understood by every one who had to carry out his orders. For a long time he was not unhappy in his labours. “The pressure of affairs,” he wrote in 1779, “is very good for the mind; when it has disburdened itself, it plays more freely and enjoys life. There is nothing more miserable than a comfortable man without work.” Again: “Many a time I feel as if I ought, like Polycrates, to throw my most precious jewel into the water. In everything I undertake I have luck.” During these years Goethe disciplined the body not less strictly than the mind. He slept on a straw mattrass, and drank only half the quantity of wine to which he had formerly accustomed himself. Riding, walking, fencing, and other forms of physical exercise he delighted in; and--what must then have been thought an extraordinary eccentricity--he took cold baths regularly in winter as well as in summer. The result of all this was that he enjoyed better health than at any previous period of his life. His manner necessarily changed to some extent in accordance with the change in his character. He was still occasionally capable of the frank and genial outbursts of feeling that had so often delighted his comrades in the days of “Sturm und Drang,” but, upon the whole, he became more calm, sedate, and reserved. This did not mean that there was any diminution of the kindly impulses of his character. Every one who knew him well was aware that the fine spirit of humanity that had welled up so freely in his nature in the early part of his life never, as years went on, lost its original depth and freshness. In the winter of 1777 he went to the Harz mountains, and one of his objects in undertaking the journey was to see whether he could not help a young man who, although a perfect stranger to him, had ventured to tell him, by letter, of troubles that made life intolerable. An unfortunate man who, although also a stranger, appealed to Goethe, received an appointment at Ilmenau, where Goethe not only gave him material aid, but with constant kindness and sympathy encouraged him to maintain his own self-respect by doing valuable work. “Goethe,” wrote Merck, while visiting his old friend, “directs everything, and every one is pleased with him, for he serves many and hurts none. Who can resist the unselfishness of the man?”