A VISIT TO THE HOME OF GOETHE.

BY AN OLD TRAVELLER.

THERE is nothing prepossessing in the external appearance of the "Athens of Germany." Till the new palace was erected, Saxe Weimar had scarcely a single handsome building. The Ritter Straße, the largest street within the city, is little better than a lane; and the streets which have been built in the neighbourhood of the cemetery are only handsome as compared with the meanness which preceded them. The theatre for the opening of which Schiller wrote his beautiful prologue to Wallenstein-is perfectly plain without, and I was told that the interior was equally simple; but there was no performance the night I was at Saxe Weimar, and when I called at the theatre in the morning neither money nor entreaties could procure me a moment's admission beyond the stage-door. During rehearsals it is strictly prohibited, and it was in this instance the more disappointing, as the piece they were reciting was the Wallenstein's Lager, and on the spot where the author had himself assisted at its first performance. To tread the same ground, and look upon the same objects, associates us more spiritually with the recollections of an eminent man than the sight of relics deposited in glass cases, or chambers that have been desecrated or changed; and there are numberless recollections at Saxe Weimar which make us forget its architectural poverty. The houses of Herder, Schiller, Wieland, and Goethe, and the associations connected with them, give its streets a higher interest than if every building was a palace.

I spent above an hour in the rooms-still remaining as he left themand amongst the relics of Goethe, under the guidance of one of his friends and worshippers; for admirers is too feeble a term for those who have felt deeply the power of his genius, or the influence of his personal acquaintance. There was nothing of splendour, nothing even of a scholar's luxuries. The handsome copy of "Sardanapalus, Foscari, and Cain," presented by Lord Byron, was carefully folded, as it had been by Goethe himself, in a silk pocket handkerchief, and placed, with a few other volumes, in a drawer apart; but the generality of his books had the plain air of actual service, and most of them had been the companions of his long life. They were arranged on shelves of unpainted wood, in a small chamber adjoining his study, which was itself as plainly furnished. A common table, a deal writing desk, a few shelves, and one or two cabinets of the simplest workmanship, were all I noticed. Near his desk was hung a plaster medallion, encircled by himself with an inscription in ink― Scilicet immenso superest ex nomine multum. a profile of Napoleon, which had fallen from the wall and been broken into fragments on the day of the battle of Leipsic, almost at the moment it was lost. The coincidence seems to have made considerable impression upon the imagination of Goethe, who was present when it fell, and by whom the fragments had been reunited and carefully preserved.

It was

Of his MSS. I was shown the original Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen, written in the German character, in 1774; and "Erotica Romana," written in "Italian hand," and dated 1778. My companion

told me that while sitting with him in 1816, the servant having neglected to supply them with wood, Goethe had told him to feed the stove with the manuscript "Erotica." He managed, however, to conceal and preserve it, and evidently felt proud at having saved a relic from the flames.

In one part of the room were materials for some of the experiments connected with his Farbenlehre; and in the cover of a letter, near one of the windows, were some fragments of coloured silk, which had an interest of a different description when I heard for what purpose they had been employed. It appeared that his grandchild had been in the habit of visiting him in his study. He was too kind-hearted to repel her; and when he did not wish to be interrupted he placed her by his side, and offered some small new coin as a reward for unravelling one of the silken shreds: an occupation that generally kept her quiet. I thought more of Goethe after hearing this trifling anecdote than after reading even his "Faust." A mere heartless man of talent must be little better than a Mephistopheles.

Adjoining the study was the poet's bedroom: a small narrow closet with a single window looking into the garden; much the same in size. and appearance as I have seen occupied by a Franciscan friar in his convent. In a corner, the wall of which was tapestried with a piece of common black-and-green carpeting, stood his bed, small and uncurtained, and by its side the chair in which he died. A clock that had marked the hours both of his birth and death was placed in an ante-room, where there were also his collection of minerals and a few of his books.

These were the private apartments; the retirement of the scholar and man of genius; but the principal suite of rooms had scarcely an inferior interest. Here, deposited in glazed presses, were the objects which had gratified his tastes or awakened his recollections of the past. Antiquities and medals, the skull of Vandyke, bronzes, arms, and all the anticaglie that a poet or a painter loves to possess. In one of them was a letter addressed to him by Sir Walter Scott, with his usual beauty of style and kindness of heart. Its commencement alone is a lesson to the vanity or impertinence that so often obtrudes itself upon the privacy of an eminent man. Venerable and much-respected Sir, are the words with which Scott-his equal in talent and in fame-thinks it right to preface his homage to the genius of Goethe. How many of the small-fry of literature have approached the author of "Waverley" himself with less of reverence! or fancied, in the abundance of their self-esteem, that to have addressed any one as "venerable and much-respected sir" would have been a lessening of their own consideration. The contents of the letter I cannot pretend to remember, but I recollect that its effect, as that of most of his other writings, was to make me think better of human nature. There was a private letter, in French, from the Duke of Wellington to the Duke of Saxe Weimar, introducing to him a son of Lord Mansfield; and a whole portfolio of despatches (addressed to General Rapp) by the most distinguished of Napoleon's officers.

Then there was the volume which Goethe used to call his "Album" -a collection of the portraits of his friends; and when I had looked over these more hastily than I could have wished, I had still to see a treasury of the rich offerings which, at various times, had been made to him by

his countrymen and admirers. They were deposited, as from their value and interest they deserved to be, in an iron chest secured by several curiously-constructed locks, and some of them were precious even as works of art. There was a crown of laurel, the leaves of gold, the berries of emerald, sent from Frankfort in 1819 or 1820; and worthy, for its beauty alone, to be placed among the regalia of an emperor. It was accompanied by a detached leaf of the same workmanship, with an intimation that as a year had elapsed since the wreath was ordered, and as every year of his life added a fresh leaf to the laurels of Goethe, his admirers had felt that their offering would be incomplete without a type of the year that had passed. This was not the only present he had received from his native town: there was also a silver drinking-cup which had been sent to him with some choice hock, and bore an inscription to the effect that "the mind was invigorated by wine, and there could be no fire without fuel." Mr. Gough would be of a different opinion.

A handsome seal of enamelled gold, the offering of fifteen of the great poet's British admirers (including Scott, Moore, Carlyle, &c.), was engraved with the motto Ohne hast aber ohne rast-which has more meaning (said one of my German friends) than the mere words import; it refers not exactly to "the spur that the clear spirit doth raise"

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

but to some inward impulse to continued, though not headlong, progress;" or it might be rendered by the Latin festina lente. These are but a small part of the costly gifts which I might notice, were I writing a guide-book or a catalogue.

I have never approached the private life of a man of genius-and it has not always been as a stranger-without being as much struck by the discovery of his habits of unwearied application, the amount of his actual manual labour, as I had previously been by the splendour of his talents. Goethe's correspondence alone, deposited in one of the closets of the bookroom, filled two hundred and twenty-three MS. volumes; and, in the midst of his multifarious labours, he kept a diary, or Tagebuch, that would itself form an extensive work. The last of the volumes which contain it commences January, 1831, with some observations on Scott's Demonology, and ends the 15th March, 1832, with a memorandum of his physician Professor Vogel's account of a recent excursion to Jena, with which Goethe expresses himself well pleased. On the 22nd he died.

The visit I have just attempted to describe was but the commencement of my literary pilgrimage through Weimar. There were still to be seen the houses of Schiller, of Wieland, and of Herder; and the places of their sepulture.

To reach the last resting-place of Schiller and of Goethe, it was necessary to take a rather long walk to the Gottesacker, or cemetery; an establishment of modern date, where the arrangements for the prevention of premature interment are said to have been the model for those adopted at Frankfort.

Near its centre rises a Doric chapel, surmounted by a cupola, which forms the mausoleum of the sovereigns of Saxe Weimar, their coffined remains being deposited in its vault. It was here the Grand-Duke Carl desired that the bodies of his friends, the poets whom he had loved and honoured, should be placed beside his own; but his wishes have been June-VOL. CIV. NO. CCCCXIV.

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neglected, or found incompatible with etiquette, for, though admitted to the same chamber of the dead, the remains of Goethe and of Schiller are placed in a corner apart, and at a very respectful distance from those of grand-dukes and duchesses. This-to use the words of Herr von Raumer, on a different occasion-is kleinlich und nicht würdig-a wrong done both to the dead and the living. It seems like carrying the formalities of a court into the solemnities of another world.

We returned through the park-one of the most beautiful in Germany, as it has always been described-and passed near the small white cottage that generally, for six or eight weeks, was the summer residence of Goethe, and is mentioned by him with pleasant remembrances in his verses on the Gartenhaus am Park. It has no pretension, but is precisely the

Humble shed,

Where roses breathing,

And woodbines wreathing,

Around the windows their tendrils spread;

which Moore describes as the abode of love-Theodore Hook calls a dampery; and those "in smoky cities pent" pause to look at in their evening walks, and envy.

From this I went with my companion to the Grand-Ducal Library -a collection of about 130,000 volumes, not, on this occasion, to see its books, but its relics. Here, again, was Goethe, in the bust executed a year before his death by David, and inscribed with a quotation from Schiller; and there was a bust of Schiller, with a quotation from Goethe. There were also busts of Herder and of Wieland; a fine portrait of Charles V. as a monk (which Mr. Stirling should have had as an illustration of his "Cloister Life"); an engraved one of Canning; and a well-painted full-length of the Grand-Duke Carl, whose cast of features very much resembles that of the great poet whom he was proud to call his friend. It would be difficult to say whether the name of the grandduke or the author of "Faust"-the Groß Herzog or the Groß Dichter had been the most frequently repeated to me during my brief stay at Saxe Weimar. I had still to see-displayed in the library (as Sir Walter Scott's at Abbotsford)—the dress he wore at court; a common dark-green coat, trimmed with gold lace, and preserved with as much veneration as its neighbouring relic, the chorister's dress of Luther; a kind of coarse brown tunic, well worn, and apparently without much attention to a virtue which is still not very strictly regarded by a nation who only use baths medicinally.

With these our videnda finished, and a drive of less than two hours brought us to the heights above Jena-the scene of the great battle of 1806. To an unprofessional eye, it seems impossible that such steep acclivities could be carried against a strong and well-placed force. My military friends tell me that it is not so difficult as it appears. Much of the fire down uneven ground is ineffective; and, when it comes to the bayonet, victory does not greatly depend upon the locality.

This, however, has nothing to do with my recollections of Goethe. They are, I confess, of little amount; and-great as he is—I should not speak of him as of Shakspeare; but what would we not give for notices of Shakspeare's habits and his home, even such as those which I have chanced to collect of Goethe?

DIARY OF A FIRST WINTER IN ROME-1854.

BY FLORENTIA.

The Forum and the Capitol by Night-"In Memoriam"-Legends of the Church of the Ara Coli-A Scrap of Contemporary History.

I LEFT the party with whom I had visited the Coliseum deep in discussion of a certain emperor's supposed admiration of an English lady, who, if report speaks true, would have had no manner of objection to re-enact the role of the Montespan or the Pompadour. The French ladies had been charmed with the coloured lights and a game of hide-andseek with the count in the lower gallery. Every one was talking. I pined for solitude, and stole away along the Sacred Way towards the Forum. Once out of the reach of the ladies' shrill voices, not a sound broke the solemn stillness of the night; the moon, yet high in the heavens, cast down her "dim religious light," the stars shone out, leading the mind to other spheres balancing in space, more glorious perchance than our earth; the night breezes blew softly by, loaded with the moist odour of flowers, and waved the dark groves on the Palatine Hill, stern and repulsive in aspect even under the harmonious influences of this fair summer night. How was it? Suddenly a cloud came before my eyes, the present vanished, and I was again at the old home, the pleasant home where I was born. How my heart swelled as I looked at the bright English woods of living oak, and the pretty garden sloping to the sun, where I played as a child! and there was the verandah and the dear round room, and the books, and the arm-chair, and one that sat on it, so fondly loved, so hardly parted from-one I never may see again! Her fond gaze was on me with an earnest mother's glance, and I felt her soft hand. But hold, my tears!-the vision had fled-all was plain around me, and my soul sickened to think it was a dream! but oh! the depths of household memories, the deep, thrilling chords of unutterable love that were struck in that brief instant of my spirit's wandering!

Opposite the Coliseum, on a low hill, stands a lonely portico, its altar broken and its statues gone, once forming part of the magnificent temple designed and built by Adrian, and dedicated to Venus and to Rome. A forest of elegant marble arcades on either side towards the Forum and the Coliseum marked the double portico elevated on marble steps, conceived by the imperial architect as an improvement on the designs of the famous Apollodorus, whose skill had roused his envy, and whose life was afterwards sacrificed by a too honest criticism on the emperor's erection. Still, notwithstanding the disapprobation of Apollodorus, no temple in ancient Rome could have excelled it in excellence and grandeur. The remains of the pillared colonnade border the Sacred Way, on which I walked, still paved with great blocks of stone, worn by the marks of the chariot-wheels of old Rome! What a world of recollections does it evoke! What tears have fallen here what glory passed by! How many joyful feet have rushed along it-what noble blood has soiled it! Here passed the emperors Augustus, Nero, Tiberius, Caligula, Domitian, gods and priests, to offer sacrifices in the great temple of Jupiter Capi