sensibility as he was, he had a very strong element of self-control. When he gave up Rica or Lilli, it was with tears, and no end of sleepless nights; and yet he gave them up. Shakespeare, we believe (and there is an instance exactly in point in the story of his Sonnets), had no such power of breaking clear from connexions which his judgment disapproved. Remorse and return, self-reproaches for his weakness at one moment followed the next by weakness more abject than before--such, by his own confession, was the conduct, in one such case, of our more passive and gentle-hearted poet. Where Shakespeare was "past cure," and "frantic-mad with evermore unrest," Goethe but fell into "hypochondria," which reason and resolution enabled him to overcome. Goethe at twenty-five gave up a young, beautiful and innocent girl, from the conviction that it was better to do so. Shakespeare at thirty-five was the abject slave of a dark-complexioned woman, who was faithless to him, and whom he cursed in his heart. The sensibilities in the German poet moved from the first, as we have already said, over a firmer basis of permanent character. It is chiefly, however, the Goethe of later life that the world remembers and thinks of. The bounding impetuosity is then gone; or rather it is kept back and restrained, so as to form a calm and steady fund of internal energy, capable sometimes of a flash and outbreak, but generally revealing itself only in labour and its fruits. What was formerly the beauty of an Apollo, graceful, light, and full of motion, is now the beauty of a Jupiter, composed, stately, serene. "What a sublime form!" says Eckermann, describing his first interview with him. "I forgot to speak for looking at him: I could not look enough. His face is so powerful and brown, full of wrinkles, and each wrinkle full of expression. And everywhere there is such nobleness and firmness, such repose and greatness. He spoke in a slow, composed manner, such as you would expect from an aged monarch." Such is Goethe, as he lasts now in the imagination of the world. Living among statues, books, and pictures; daily doing something for his own culture and for that of the world; daily receiving guests and visitors, whom he entertained and instructed with his wise and deep, yet charming and simple, converse; daily corresponding with friends and strangers, and giving advice or doing a good turn to some young talent or other--never was such a mind consecrated so perseveringly and exclusively to the service of _Kunst_ and _Literatur_. One almost begins to wonder if it was altogether right that an old man should go on, morning after morning, and evening after evening, in such a fashion, talking about art and science and literature as if they were the only interests in the world, taking his guests into corners to have quiet discussions with them on these subjects, and always finding something new and nice to be said about them. Possibly,