This evening I paid my visit to Göthe. He received me in a dimly lighted room, whose 'clair obscure' was arranged with some 'coquetterie'; and truly, the aspect of the beautiful old man, with his Jove-like countenance, was most stately. Age has changed, but scarcely enfeebled him: he is perhaps somewhat less vivacious than formerly, but so much the more equable and mild; and his conversation is rather pervaded by a sublime serenity, than by that dazzling fire which used occasionally to surprise him, even in the midst of his highest 'grandezza.' I rejoiced heartily at the good health in which I found him, and said with a smile, how happy it made me to find our spiritual King in undiminished majesty and vigour. "Oh, you are too _gracious_," said he, (with the yet uneffaced traces of his South German manner, accompanied by the satirical smile of a North German,[2]) "to give me such a title." "No," replied I, truly from my very heart, "not only king, but despot, for you have subjugated all Europe." He bowed courteously, and questioned me concerning things which related to my former visit to Weimar; then expressed himself very kindly with regard to M----, and my efforts to improve it, gently remarking, how meritorious he ever thought it to awaken a sense of beauty, be it of what kind it may, since the Good and the Noble unfolded themselves in manifold ways out of the Beautiful. Lastly, he gave me some gleam of hope that he might comply with my earnest request that he would visit us there. Imagine, dearest, with what 'empressment' I caught at this, though perhaps but a 'façon de parler.' In the course of our conversation we came to Sir Walter Scott. Göthe was not very enthusiastic about the Great Unknown. He said he doubted not that he wrote his novels in the[3] same sort of partnership as existed between the old painters and their scholars; that he furnished the plot, the leading thoughts, and skeleton of the scenes, that he then let his pupils fill them up, and retouched them at the last. It seemed almost to be his opinion, that it was not worth the while of a man of Sir Walter Scott's eminence to give himself up to such a number of minute and tedious details. "Had I," added he, "been able to lend myself to the idea of mere gain, I could formerly have sent such things anonymously into the world, with the aid of Lenz and others--nay, I could still--as would astonish people not a little, and make them puzzle their brains to find out the author; but after all they would be but manufactured wares." I afterwards observed, that it was gratifying to Germans to see what victories our literature was achieving in other countries; "And," added I, "our Napoleon has no Waterloo to dread."