And yet it is the same as reading Tibullus, Propertius, or the _Amores_. It is the same art, happening merely to be written in a northern tongue. Goethe was a unique, powerful figure in history of letters for one whose manhood saw the French Revolution. One of the strangest things in literature is that it did not move him. When it was sweeping grandly on, for freeing man from trammels of the past, Goethe wrote a scholarly friend in Paris about the good news. The friend supposed of course he meant the Revolution. Goethe, however, had no such thought. He was merely referring to praise the French Academy had given his scientific discoveries. I have read Brandes’ book about Goethe, and with interest, because practically every idea projected was given long ago by the late Professor Calvin Thomas, who very likely is the most trustworthy authority on the _Man of Weimar_. A comparison of the two books about the German writer is interesting. There has seldom been, perhaps, so much rehashing of projected thought of the past as now, so many evidences that limitation has come, and that reconstructed mental clothes are considered good enough. The etched line of Whistler, especially in the first Italian series, is peculiarly like the sentence-line of Loti in his earlier books on the East. There is the same rare distinguished attack, of which not two in a generation are capable. The same wistful, intensified, highly personal beauty, flashed upon the dazzled senses by a moment of tremendous seeing. The same tremulous sensitiveness, that only the exquisitely dowered possess. Mingled with all, _witchcraft_, the vanishing essential of art, which none may seize easily with words. I can recall passages in etchings of those dim, night-palaces of Venice, up which the sad-lighted sea sends faint, equivocating shivers, that give me the exact sensation of lines of Loti. They rise to mind from depths of consciousness. And without volition. Now that Loti is traveling and writing of what he sees no more, and Whistler’s etching needle is stilled, there are two joys fewer in the world for me. I have heard Kubelik! He is young, boyish. When he came upon the platform he was a timid little boy, parading his grandfather’s long black coat. A melancholy boy, buttoned to the chin in black. Beside me sat an old man, who at sight of him exclaimed: To think he is father of twins! Every once in a while, as the concert progressed, he gave expression to the exclamation.