others called him a wicked man and an overvalued poet.[7] [7] That this was not only the case at Dessau, may be seen by a number of contemporary reviews of Goethe’s works republished some years ago and the exact title of which I cannot find. It is dangerous, no doubt, to go through life with so imperfect a measure, and I have for a long time suffered from it, particularly in cases where I ought to have been able to make allowance for small failings. But as I had been brought up to approach people with a complete trust in their rectitude, and with an unlimited admiration of their genius, it took me many years before I learnt to make allowance for human weaknesses or temporary failures. I have lost many a charming companion and excellent friend in my journey through life, because I weighed them with my rusty Dessau balance. I had to learn by long experience that there may be a spot, nay, several spots on the soft skin of a peach, and yet the whole fruit may be perfect. I acted very much like the merchant who tested a whole field of rice by the first handful of grains, and who, if he found one or two bad grains, would have nothing to do with the whole field. I had to learn what was, perhaps, the most difficult lesson of all, that a trusted friend could not always be trusted, and yet need not therefore be altogether a reprobate. What was most difficult for me to digest was an untruth: finding out that one who professed to be a friend had said and done most unfriendly things behind one’s back. Still, in a long life one finds out that even that may not be a deadly sin, and that if we are so loth to forgive it, it is partly because the falsehood affected our own interests. Thus only can we explain how a man whom we know to have been guilty of falsehoods towards ourselves may be looked upon as perfectly honest, straightforward, and trustworthy, by a large number of his own friends. We see this over and over again with men occupying eminent positions in Church and State. We see how a prime minister or an archbishop is represented by men who know him as a liar and a hypocrite, while by others he is spoken of as a paragon of honour and honesty, and a true Christian. My narrow Dessau views became a little widened when I went to school at Leipzig; still more when I spent two years and a half at the University of Leipzig, and afterwards at Berlin. Still, during all this time I saw but little of what is called society, I only knew of people whom I loved and of people whom I disliked. There was no room as yet for indifferent people, whom one tolerates and is civil to without caring whether one sees them again or not. Of the simplest duties of society also I was completely ignorant. No one ever told me what to say and what to do, or what not to say and what not to do. What I felt I said, what I thought right I did. There was, in fact, in my small native town very little that could be called society. One lived in one’s family and with one’s