imperiously countermanded the order, to the wrath of Basedow, which Goethe turned aside, however, with one of his ever-ready quips. The strangely-assorted trio were not yet tired of each other's company, for, when on July 18th Lavater left Ems, both Goethe and Basedow accompanied him. Their way lay down the Lahn and the Rhine, and on the voyage Basedow and Goethe conducted themselves like German students on holiday--the former discoursing on grammar and smoking everlastingly, the latter improvising doggerel verses and the beautiful lines beginning: _Hoch auf dem alten Turme steht_. On landing at Coblenz the behaviour of the pair was so outrageous that all three were apparently taken by the crowd for lunatics. At Coblenz they dined, and the dinner has its place in literature, for both in his Autobiography and in some sarcastic lines (_Dine zu Coblenz_) Goethe has commemorated it. He sat between Lavater and Basedow, and during the meal the former expounded the Revelation of St. John to a country pastor, and the latter exerted himself to prove to a stolid dancing-master that baptism was an anachronism. On the 20th they continued their voyage down the Rhine as far as Bonn--Goethe still in the same madcap humour. Lavater gives us a picture of him at one moment on the voyage--with gray hat, adorned with a bunch of flowers, with a brown silk necktie and gray collar, gnawing a _Butterbrot_ like a wolf. From Bonn they drove to Cologne, Goethe on the way inscribing in an album the concluding lines of the _Dine zu Coblenz_:-- Und, wie nach Emmaus, weiter ging's [Transcriber's Note: corrected error "Emaus"] Mit Geist und Feuerschritten, Prophete rechts, Prophete links, Das Weltkind in der Mitten.