indicate what was the result of things he had been long meditating upon. Among others, he introduces, in an aërial, flighty kind of way, here and there a touch which grows into a beautiful picture--a scheme of entirely mute education, at least with no more speech than is absolutely necessary for what they have to do. Three of the wisest men that can be got are met to consider what is the function which transcends all others in importance to build up the young generation, which shall be free from all that perilous stuff that has been weighing us down and clogging every step, and which is the only thing we can hope to go on with if we would leave the world a little better, and not the worse of our having been in it for those who are to follow. The man who is the eldest of the three says to Goethe, "You give by nature to the well-formed children you bring into the world a great many precious gifts, and very frequently these are best of all developed by nature herself, with a very slight assistance where assistance is seen to be wise and profitable, and forbearance very often on the part of the overlooker of the process of education; but there is one thing that no child brings into the world with it, and without which all other things are of no use." Wilhelm, who is there beside him, says, "What is that?" "All who enter the world want it," says the eldest; "perhaps you yourself." Wilhelm says, "Well, tell me what it is." "It is," says the eldest, "reverence--_Ehrfurcht_--Reverence! Honour done to those who are grander and better than you, without fear; distinct from fear." _Ehrfurcht_--"the soul of all religion that ever has been among men, or ever will be." And he goes into practicality. He practically distinguishes the kinds of religion that are in the world, and he makes out three reverences. The boys are all trained to go through certain gesticulations, to lay their hands on their breast and look up to heaven, and they give their three reverences. The first and simplest is that of reverence for what is above us. It is the soul of all the Pagan religions; there is nothing better in man than that. Then there is reverence for what is around us or about us--reverence for our equals, and to which he attributes an immense power in the culture of man. The third is reverence for what is beneath us--to learn to recognise in pain, sorrow, and contradiction, even in those things, odious as they are to flesh and blood--to learn that there lies in these a priceless blessing. And he defines that as being the soul of the Christian religion--the highest of all religions; a height, as Goethe says--and that is very true, even to the letter, as I consider--a height to which the human species was fated and enabled to attain, and from which, having once attained it, it can never retrograde. It cannot descend down below that permanently, Goethe's idea is.