In spite of his hatred of Goethe, nay, partly because of it, Menzel, at this period of his career, was revered by the youth of Germany much as Katkóf and Ploug in their first periods were revered in Russia and Denmark. He, above all others, was to them the man of the day, the friend of liberty. One of Gutzkow's aims in his newspaper had been to defend Menzel, the man after his own heart, against the attacks of his enemies--and Menzel had many enemies, for as a reviewer he was disputatious, quarrelsome, and abusive. But he was, or seemed to be, a man of sincere convictions. He urged the necessity for a profounder conception of patriotism and of religion than was then in vogue, but at the same time he was an ardent Liberal in politics, and as such an admirer of Börne and Heine, who looked upon him as a trusty companion in arms; in Parliament he championed all progressive measures, amongst others the emancipation of the Jews. Gutzkow, not yet much over twenty, short, slight, fair, and pale-faced, entered the presence of his lord and master, who was thirteen years older than himself, with a bashful reverence which he has compared to that of the student who appears before Mephistopheles-Faust in the first part of Goethe's drama. He saw a man with broad shoulders, a well developed chest, and dark hair, whose clean-shaven face reminded him of a Romish priest's. Round the mouth, with its ugly yellow teeth, a satiric smile played; the expression of the short-sighted eyes behind the spectacles was half defiant, half dignified. The man's temper seemed to be violent, his will inflexible. An expression of faun-like sensuality would come over his features when he talked of some erotic book, and yet Goethe's worldliness was as hateful to him as his indifference to politics, and he uncritically bowed the knee to men and phenomena that to his mind represented the mysterious. His character was a genuine priestly blend of irony and mysticism. He loved Voltaire, and enthusiastically admired Görres.