the slow uniformity of his external life necessarily throwing him more and more upon the subtler diversities of inward experience, would inevitably have influenced his genius in quite different directions, would have animated his works with a very different spirit." We are sometimes told that life in a great capital is essential to the development of genius, but Frankfort was the largest town Goethe ever lived in, and he never visited either Paris or London. Much of the sanity of his genius may have been due to his residence in so tranquil a place as Weimar, where he could shut himself up in his "garden-house" and lock all the gates of the bridge over the Ilm. "The solitude," says Mr. Lewes, "is absolute, broken only by the occasional sound of the church clock, the music from the barracks, and the screaming of the peacocks spreading their superb beauty in the park." Few men of genius have been happier in their surroundings than Goethe. He had tranquillity, and yet was not deprived of intellectual intercourse; the scenery within excursion-distance from his home was interesting and even inspiring, yet not so splendid as to be overwhelming. We know from his conversations that he was quite aware of the value of those little centres of culture to Germany, and yet in one place he speaks of Béranger in the tone which seems to imply an appreciation of the larger life of Paris. "Fancy," he says, "this same Béranger away from Paris, and the influence and opportunities of a world-city, born as the son of a poor tailor, at Jena or Weimar; let him run his wretched career in either of the two small cities, and see what fruit would have grown on such a soil and in such an atmosphere."