peace of mind,) she repeated the following extract from the celebrated Yagar-veda*:— "If he that is pure or not pure, in whatever trouble he may be, thinks upon him who has the eyes of Niluphart, he shall have peace, and be pure within and without." Luchsmi Sita bowed her head, and did not refuse the proffered food, although she appeared to take it without considering what she was doing. After a short time, she slowly raised her sad but beautiful face, and looked enquiringly at the old attendant, who immediately saw, by her change of countenance, that she was recognised; for a moment the poor girl stared wildly, then rubbed her eyes to make sure she was not dreaming, and dropping her hands listlessly by her side, looked down as if trying to recollect herself; after a short pause, her wretched state appeared suddenly to flash across her memory, and she burst forth in a tone of anguish and severe distress -"Narayana Nama (Vishnu preserve me)woe is me! what ashes have fallen upon my head!-my eyes are dim. O, Marana Davi!‡ why thus afflict my heart-my house is desolate. In the name of God, and in the name and for the feet of my Guru, assist your slave! Maiya, is it you? may your shadow never be less-may prosperity ever enter your door. Tell me, as you hope to enter Satyakolaş, tell me, dearest Maiya, that my brother-my poor mutilated brother, is safe."

"Praised be to Vishnu, dear Sita, Anuntya is safe; has even enquired after you, and would have visited his sister, but the tongue of unkindness whispered that admission into the Vaikuntha (or Paradise of Vishnu), would be denied, if he ventured to hold converse with-"

"The impure, you would say, Maiya; the disgraced, one who has suffered expulsion from her caste, with whom no one will eat or offer even a drop of water, though she waste away like the Karssura. Dust be upon my heart -may my tongue burn-I have spoken false; is there not Madhoo Row who resembles the Chintamini, and possesses all good qualities. Speak Maiya, tell me, let me hear that he is well-only say that he lives-one word-oh, Swami!** Swami! is it so? Nama Sivaya (bail to Siva!)-my face has become blackwoe is me! my breath is not to be borne. Hail, Kesava, may the sun, may the sove

* One of the daily prayers of the Hindoos.

+ He who has the eyes of Niluphar is Vishnu. ✰ Goddess of Death.

[Guru signifies Priest.

$ Paradise of Brahma, and signifying world of truth. Karssura is the Indian Camphire.

** Lord! Lord!

reign will pardon the sins I have committed by my will, by my memory, by my hand, by my feet, by my breasts!* Eiyoh! eiyoh !† the world is dark-the sky has no sun-why hast thou forsaken me? what evil have I done that thou leavest me at this untimely age? what did I leave undone? who henceforward will take thought for me? woe is me!" In such pathetic and broken appeals did the wretched girl give way to her feelings, sometimes breaking forth into violent screams, at others pouring forth torrents of reproaches against the gods who, she said, had deprived her of all that she valued in the world. Suddenly she became calm and silent, and stood for some time as if considering; then turning to Maiya, who had tried unsuccessfully every method of consolation, she enquired, in a calm tone, the situation of the shoodookadoo ‡ where the body of Madhoo Row would be burnt, and having received a satisfactory description, rushed out of the house. As the spot where this ceremony was to take place was not far distant, she was soon there, with her beautiful dark hair flowing loosely about her person, her large bright eyes glaring with the wildness of despair. She rushed through the crowd, apparently unconscious of what she was doing, and would have thrown herself upon the pile of her lover, which had already been burning some time, had she not been restrained by the European police authorities. Such a sacrifice, no doubt, would have been acceptable to the friends of Madhoo Row, as it would have been considered a sufficient expiation for his sins; as it was, they were highly incensed by her intrusion, it being considered a bad omen, and peremptorily forbid that a woman should witness the burning of the dead; by some she was even cursed, as their anger was doubly excited by the knowledge that she was an outcast, scorned by friends and relations, and expelled from her caste. of the bigoted idolatry of the Hindoos. When the wretched girl was foiled in this attempt to put an end to her sufferings, and perform a sacrifice that would expiate the sins of her lover, her mind and strength, gave way, and she fell apparently lifeless near the blazing pile, where only the ashes of him she had so faithfully loved in life remained.

Such is the effect

The tale is told. A few days afterwards the body of the unhappy girl was found in the Thir-Kolum, or sacred lake, near her own old home.

* Part of one of the prayers of the Hindoos.

+ Exclamations invariably used by the Hindoos when in grief or pain.

The name given to the piece of ground appropriated for the burning of the dead.

more. Another generation, and they and their peculiarities will be altogether forgot ten. Nay, even in the present, few English readers probably have any very distinct idea upon the subject, wherefore a word or two of explanation may not be unacceptable.

The free imperial cities of Germany were so many tiny republics, federally connected with the German, or, more properly, the Holy Roman Empire. As members of the empire, they had voices in the deliberations of the Imperial Diet, at the assemblies of which they were represented by their deputies. As free states they were governed by elective municipal officers, analogous to our mayors and aldermen. But these republican towns were no scenes of anarchical liberty or democratic licence. They were ruled by an endless and inflexible code of laws. The civic magistrates, of innumerable gradations, and the rich citizens, from whose body they were chosen, held themselves as incalculably superior to the humbler classes of their undignified fellowcitizens, or subjects rather, as could the baron of sixteen quarterings to the serf upon his estate: and amongst themselves they stood as stiffly upon their respective ranks and precedencies; they were as hopelessly shackled by the bonds of hereditary decorum, as all the barons in the empire, with all their sixteen quarterings together. Moreover these burgher dignitaries repaid with at least equal contempt, and infinitely more aversion, the contempt and aversion entertained for them by the nobles and petty princes, their immediate neighbours; so that in a very pretty German novel (of which we unluckily forget the name, but think it was one of August Lafontaine's), the course of true love between the son of a rural baron and the daughter of a city bürgermeister, is yet more inveterately thwarted by burgher than by feudal pride.

Now it was in one of the better houses of a city thus constituted, that Goethe, in the year 1749, opened his eyes upon the dull light dimly reflected from opposite walls, across a narrow street, through the small easement windows of an old-fashioned room. And in such a scene, amidst all the trammels of traditional formalities, of obstinate prejudice, unsoftened by general intercourse, and afterwards amidst the pedantic routine of an unimproved German university, did his mighty genius develope itself!

Do we state this to make our hero a sort of miracle? By no means. Whilst we think much of the action of external and extraneous circumstances upon the growing mind, we are no believers in the omnipotence of the

schoolmaster. We hold that to mediocrity only is superlative excellence of education important, and that the nascent master-spirit is merely cramped by incessant tuition. It is the rose-bush or the jessamine that needs the gardener's care to prevent distortion, or prostration on the earth, the giant oak shoots straight up, heavenward, unfashioned, unnoticed even, in his forest, until the strength of his stem, and the luxuriant magnificence of his foliage, attract universal admiration. Now we find enough in the scene of Goethe's childhood to counteract the narrow views of his direct instructors, and to explain at least one early bias of his mind.

Frankfort is rich in feudal recollections and remains, both in matter and in form. There are, or were, for we know not how much may have survived the Holy Roman Empire, walls, and fortresses within fortresses, of the olden time. There resided the Frank monarchs of the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties; there was the Roemerburg where so many emperors had been crowned, and where, in his fifteenth year, Goethe witnessed the solemn coronation of Joseph II. as king of the Romans. Thither, too, did the yearly fairs bring the natives of distant eastern climes with their unwonted garb and rare merchandise; who, on their arrival, were formally met and ushered into the city by a burgher cavalcade; the continuation of a practice begun when merchants dared not move unescorted by warriors pledged for their safety, and the free imperial city would admit no foreign escort within her domains. We leave it to the reader to consider how much and how variously all this must have stirred the imagination of the yet unconscious poet. Then for the gathering of knowledge that should enrich, for the cultivating of those faculties that should govern, a powerful imagination, Goethe's father took one very effective step. He was a stern man, a lawyer, who sought to make his son a lawyer, (how many poets by the way have been fugitives from the banners of law!) and he never permitted any thing once begun, however worthless, not the most trivial book, to be laid aside unfinished.

Is there not in what we have said of Frankfort enough to awaken a poetic mind? Is there not an evident explanation of Goethe's love for German antiquities, as also for Oriental subjects? One word more in elucidation of another peculiarity of his mind and writings. Goethe appears to be deficient in that peculiar reverential feeling towards women which has distinguished the German

or Gothic branch of the great human family, from the days of Tacitus downwards. He never, with the almost single exception of Iphigenia, gives elevation of character to his women. He paints them often sweet and good, sometimes impassioned, but never intellectual, never lofty in virtue or in vice; and those whom he describes, we think, the most con amore, are notable housewives. And in confirmation of this opinion, we may quote a little poem of his addressed to a friend who had complained that he could not put Goethe's poems into his daughters' hands. The poet answers, were your daughters properly employed, the one with the kitchen, another with the linen, the third with the garden, &c. the immorality of my poems would be harmless, since they would not have time or wish to read them. Now whence this un-German feeling as to women? Goethe's first two loves were two low-born, uneducated, but innocent girls.

We are now to speak of the influence of Goethe's character upon his works, and of that of his works upon the reading and writing world; but, as we originally said, very shortly and generally.

Of course every author writes according to his character as well as according to his opinions; but this does not describe the overpowering influence of an author's idiosyncrasy upon the creations of his genius, which the Germans term subjectiveness, in opposition to objectiveness, or the natural impression of external objects upon the mind. The terms are borrowed from grammar (the subjective and objective cases), but may best be explained by examples. Shakspeare wrote objectively; we cannot, from the various characters he has delineated, guess at his own. Lord Byron wrote subjectively, stamping every hero, and every scene he touched, with his own temper, passions, and prejudices. But Lord Byron's subjectiveness is selfevident, by the uniformity of colouring it gives his works. Goethe's, though quite as powerful, is not so immediately apparent, since the fluctuations of his feelings and opinions produced great variety in the style of his productions.

Goethe's first publication, at least of any note, was Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers, The Sorrows of Werter. It was always known that Werter was partly composed upon the history of the author's friend, Jerusalem; but not till the appearance of his Autobiography was it suspected that his own adventures and private feelings impelled him thus to commemorate and idealise poor Jerusalem's

fate. Goethe himself had been in love (a fourth or fifth passion) with a betrothed Charlotte, and had moreover been seized with an inclination, all but irresistible, for self-slaughter. And it should seem that the only way he could devise to save his own life, was thus to satisfy his suicidal appetite by deputy, and kill himself, without pain or inconvenience, in the person of Werter. The novel is said to have instigated others to the crime from which it preserved its author. How that may have been we know not, but this we know, Goethe, at twenty-two years of age, in the year 1771, by this publication at once founded a school; for Germany was forthwith inundated with novels whose heroes and heroines, even when killing themselves, or otherwise yielding to temptations, were too diligent in analysing their unbridled passions and incurable sorrows to awaken a very lively sympathy in any but metaphysical readers, and the disease spread, though less virulently, into France and England.

The next work that asks our notice, is Goetz von Berlichingen, best known in England, we believe, as Goetz with the Iron Hand; the evident offspring of Frankfort associations. The feudal times, since they had passed away, had been despised as coarse and ignorant; but this vivid picture of their bold features and simple manners, of the forcible extinction of the Faustrecht, which the reader, who deems" fisty-cuff law" a vulgar translation, may English as the law of the strongest, at once changed the current of opinion. Ritter spiele, and Ritterromane (Chivalry, Plays, and Romances), forthwith supplanted every other style, save the philosophically sentimental (for, be it observed, many of Goethe's schools managed to co-exist), and we have even heard it whispered, that the bent of Sir Walter Scott's genius was derived from Ironhanded Goetz.

Goethe now visited Italy, where his profound study and ardent admiration of ancient sculpture produced the fancy that all works of art, especially tragedies, should partake of the tranquil character of the plastic art. In this classic style he wrote Iphigenia in Aulis, a beautifully sentimental version of the old story, well suited to the new view; and, in the same tranquilly plastic fashion, he moulded the unplastic, untranquil Italian frenzy of the poet of the south, Tasso, into a drama. Forthwith up started a classic school throughout Germany.

Then came the much-admired Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre, or Apprenticeship. This novel has been translated, and the reader who

recollects its incessant philosophical disquisitions upon all manner of subjects, scarcely interrupted by the slender thread of story, connecting them, need hardly be told that it possesses the tranquil plastic character. But to this it superadded a novelty which founded another school. Here Goethe first, philosophically and poetically, portrayed the vicissitudes of the artist's life and his professional education as a subject for romance, or novel; and Germany now swarms with artist-novels. We have been assured, that as he advanced in years, Goethe became religious. For his own sake we hope he did, and we incline to believe it for two reasons. One is, that we trust powerful minds are likely to end by adopting religious opinions; the other, that such a change explains the wildness and mysticism pervading Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, or Years of Travel. In Germany, be it observed, religion is mysticism. This continuation is as different as darkness from light, from the cheerful reality, the active human nature, that charmed the fancy in the Lehrjahre, despite its faults; and of

the wild mysticism in question we see much in the few German novels that have lately fallen in our way.

Here let us close this little sketch, for of Faust we would not speak. It founded no school,—it could not,—for who should attempt to imitate it? Besides, it so fearfully developes the whole mind and character of its author; his depth of feeling, his abundance of knowledge, his intellectual mastery, his extravagance of fancy, his richness of imagination, and his cynicism; including that bitter satire which too often springs from mental superiority unsupported and unregulated by religion, or by high moral principle, that to say more of it than these few words, would necessarily involve us in every thing we originally professed our resolution to avoid.

We must not, however, omit to mention, ere we conclude, that Goethe's fame and genius early gained him the friendship of the Grand Duke of Weimar, which, happier than Voltaire, he never forfeited; and with whom his influence was not limited to matters of taste, literature, or even philosophy.

THERE was not a finer woman in England than my cousin Georgiana. She had a dark eye and a white hand, a good figure, pretty ankle and well turned arm; and in consequence of the latter gift of nature, had patronised Dizzi and Bochsa, until her performance on the harp might have excited the admiration and envy of King David himself. When I add, that Georgiana possessed a very respectable independent property, my readers will, I am sure, place implicit credence in my assertion, that, had I not been aware of her positive determination never to marry a civilian, I should long since have sought to convince her of the euphony of my patronymic, and have used my best powers of eloquence to induce her to change her maiden denomination of Georgiana Dashwood, into the more musical and matronly one of Mrs. George Frederick Augustus Higginbottom.

But I knew her predilection for the " dear delightful military," and, therefore, to spare her the pain, and myself the mortification consequent upon a refusal, I did not pop.

Her admiration of the "gallant defenders of their country," as she called all the military of her acquaintance, whether regulars, militia, volunteers, or yeomanry, was in fact a passion. She talked of them, she dreamed of them, she lived but for them. Her inclination was evident in her conversation, in her costume, and more especially in the fitting up of her boudoir, where, in the place of puling love-sick poets, and pastoral valleys sacred to love in cottages, battle-pieces and grim-visaged warriors graced the walls.

It was indeed the beau ideal of the boudoir of a colonel's lady, and such Georgiana hoped one day to see it. Consequently, her flirtations were innumerable and incessant;