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As to the existence of a God, he entertained no doubt whatever,-nay, more, he considered it a truth beyond question. 'Heathen,' as he has been called, he was orthodox in comparison with the advanced thinkers' of our own day. 'Men,' he said, 'now doubt as little the existence of a God as their own, though the nature of the divinity, the immortality, the peculiarities of our own souls, and their connexion with our bodies, are insoluble problems, with respect to which our philosophers take us no further.' It is curious that Goethe, in these conversations, never refers to Shelley, whose declaration of atheism in the poem of 'Queen Mab' had been given to the world a year or two before Eckermann came to Weimar, and whose tragic death occurred in the very year that the conversations began. In conversing about the instinct of birds in caring for the orphaned young of other birds, he says: That is what I call the omnipresence of the Deity, who has every where spread and implanted a portion of his endless love, and has implanted even in the brute as a germ that which only blossoms to perfection in noble man.

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As to the 'moral element,' he was equally at issue with 'modern advanced thought.' It came, he tells us, through God Himself, like everything else. It is no product of human reflection, but a beautiful nature inherent and inborn. It is more or less inherent in mankind generally, but to a high degree in a few eminently gifted minds.'

Even his eschatology resembles, and is evidently drawn from the Christian one I foresee the time when God will have no more joy in man, but will break up everything for a renewed creation. I am certain that everything is planned to this end, and that the time and hour are already fixed in the distant future for the occurrence of this renovating epoch.' At another time, he expresses a feeling most natural to earnest minds when

the burden of 'world-sorrow' presses heavily upon them :

'If, in a depressed mood, one reflects deeply upon the wretchedness of our age, it often occurs to one that the world is gradually approaching the last day. And the evil accumulates from generation to generation! For is it not enough that we have to suffer for the sins of our fathers, but we hand down to posterity these inherited vices, increased by our own.'

'A second Redeemer,' said Eckermann, would be required to move from us the seriousness, the discomfort, and the monstrous oppressions of this state of things.' 'If he came,' said Goethe, he would be crucified a second time.'

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'Christianity,' he says elsewhere, 'has a might of its own, by which dejected, suffering humanity is re-elevated from time to time, and when we grant it this power, it is raised above all philosophy, and needs no support therefrom.'

In the guiding and governing action of a Divine Providence, Goethe again and again expresses his implicit faith. In speaking of what had once seemed adverse circumstances in his life, he says:

'But now I can do reverence to all these hindrances; for during these delays things have ripened abroad, among other excellent men, so that they advance me beyond all conception, and will bring my work to a conclusion, which I could not have imagined a year ago. The like has often happened to me in life, and in such cases one is led to believe in a higher influence, in something "dæmonish" which we adore without trying to explain it further.' Again he says, 'To hear some people speak, one would almost believe that they were of opinion that God had withdrawn into silence since those old times, and that man was now placed quite upon his own feet, and had to see how he could get on without God and His invisible breath.'

Towards Christianity Goethe's last

attitude was certainly not one of rejection, though it would hardly have secured him membership in a Christian Church. Again and again in the last months of his life he recurs to the inspiring effect of a true faith, to the wonderful and majestic figure of Christ as portrayed in the Gospels. 'I look upon all the four gospels as thoroughly genuine; for there is in them the reflection of a greatness which emanated from the person of Jesus, and which was of as divine a kind as ever was seen on earth.'

Again he says, in comparing Romanism and Protestantism, We scarcely know what we owe to Luther and to the Reformation in general. We are freed from the fetters of spiritual narrow-mindedness; we have, in consequence of our increasing culture, become capable of turning back to the fountain head, and of comprehending Christianity in its purity. We have,

again, the courage to stand with firm feet upon God's earth, and to feel ourselves in our divinely endowed human nature. Let mental culture go on advancing-let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity as it glistens and shines forth in the Gospels.'

"The mischievous sectarianism of the Protestants will also cease, and with it the hatred and hostile feeling between father and son, sister and brother; for as soon as the pure doctrine and love of Christ are comprehended in their true nature and have become a vital principle, we shall feel ourselves as human beings, great and free, and not attach especial importance to a degree more or less in the outward forms of religion. Besides we shall all gradually advance from a Christianity of words and faith, to a Christianity of feeling and action.'

'God did not retire to rest after the well-known six days of creation, but on the contrary, is constantly active as on the first. It would have been

for Him a poor occupation to compose this heavy world out of simple elements, and to keep it rolling in the sunbeams from year to year, if he had not had the plan of forming a nursery for a world of spirits, upon this material basis.'

Why, seeing so far and going so far, Goethe did not see farther and go farther, is one of many similar mysteries which we must be content to leave unsolved. One reason, probably, was that the object of his natural worship was rather greatness of intellect--pure reason, than the Divine Love whose revelation is the Lord Jesus Christ. Then the concrete types of Christianity with which he chiefly came in contact the Roman Catholic, the Rationalistic, and the 'Pietistic,' were calculated, each in its own way, to repel rather than attract his full and many-sided nature, while doubtless his egoism presented a more personal barrier to the entrance of the spiritual light which the humble and the childlike are most fitted to receive. another reason, perhaps, lay in his tendency to dissatisfaction with any partial revelation of that Absolute and Incomprehensible Existence, the full apprehension of which is so far beyond the reach of human faculties. That he was not wanting in intense veneration for the Eternal Power and Godhead,' and for the grace and truth' that shone in the person of Christ, his own words conclusively prove.

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The words last quoted were spoken but a few days before his death, in the last conversation but one which Eckermann has recorded. The end seemed to come suddenly, as all endings, perhaps, do seem to come, however long delayed. Eckermann sorrowfully apologises for the too scanty records of the last months by the simple and touching confession, that as he was daily before my eyes, fresh and energetic as ever, I fancied this must always be the case.' So completely does he impart to us his own feeling for his great master that we can almost share

the silent sorrow with which in the closing scene, he stands beside the empty shrine from whence the mighty intellect had fled. 'A perfect man lay in great beauty before me, and the rapture which the sight caused made me forget for a moment that the immortal spirit had left such an abode. I laid my hand on his heart-there was a deep silence-and I turned away to give free vent to my suppressed tears.'

We reluctantly turn away from the pages in which, through the medium of the poet's simple-hearted friend, we have been privileged to hold converse for a while with the mighty dead, and share in what seems an ideal life, as compared with the commonplace of average existence. It is honourable to the literary history of the United States, that the first translation of these conversations, though not a full one, was published in America, the work of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. The more complete translation by John Oxenford, published in England is not an easy book to find, on this side of the sea especially. modern reprint of it, which, so far as the writer is aware, does not exist, would be a boon to readers in America. It is the sort of book to take as a

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companion to a summer solitude, enhancing by its suggestiveness the delights of unrestricted communion with nature, and enriching the harvest of thought which at such seasons, we may garner in Its poetic insight, too, might well furnish an antidote to the superficial 'smartness' and shallow materialism that penetrate too much of our current literature. It is a help to the comprehension of the great works of Goethe, and as has been already said, to the complex and enigmatical character of the man. We see that his faults-great indeed—were at least the faults of a great nature; that the very egoism at which we grow so impatient, was the outcome of the conviction that his 'God-given best' was the perfecting and the full development of the genius which had been bestowed on him. That his life was self-centred was its weakness and its mistake-the weakness and the mistake that stunted its highest development, sullied its fair repute, and obscured to him the highest truth that the poet-teacher can unfold-that the truest greatness and greatest moral beauty for man lies, not in self-assertion but in self-surrender-in willingness to lose his life' that, in the best and truest sense, it may be 'found.'

DESTINY.

BY EDWIN ARNOLD.

SOM

OMEWHERE there waiteth in this world of ours For one lone soul another lonely soul,

Each chasing each through all the weary hours,

And meeting strangely at one sudden goal.

Then blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers, Into one beautiful and tender whole;

And life's long night is ended, and the way

Lies open onward to eternal day.

(Selected.)

HOW IT HAPPENED.

BY ELIZABETH CAMPBELL.

W

ELL, this was how it came about-Colonel Warde said he couldn't get a cup of coffee to suit him at the hotel; and, as I rather prided 'myself on being able to make coffee fit for a king, of course I volunteered to make a cup that would suit him; and, as it was near luncheon, and there is no time like the present, I undertook to make it for him at once'right away,' as our Yankee neighbours have it.

I make coffee in that comparatively recent invention known as the 'French Coffee-pot,' and when I went in search of it I found that the percolator was out of order. Now, ordinarily, that would have been of no consequence, because we are such a nervous family that we seldom drink coffee; it intoxicates us, much as strong drink intoxicates other mortals. Dick says because I make it so strong, and probably that is the reason; since, if I take coffee at all, I want it to be coffee, and not a dark-coloured hot water. However, I will never get this cup of coffee made at this rate, and that is what I began to think when, having managed to repair the percolator so that it would do duty, I proceeded to half fill the cylinder top, and found that the coffee had been ground so fine that it would take the water about three hours to drip through enough for two or three cups. Well, fortunately, after due search, I found some very fine unground coffee, and it only remained to grind it to suit myself.

'Bridget' I asked, with a dim foreboding of evil, have you seen the

little coffee-mill lately?'-but Bridget had not seen it. She seldom sees anything at the right time; but on this occasion she really made an effort, and after some five or ten minutes' skirmishing in the kettle-closet, and subsequently in the cellar, the coffeemill came to the surface, and things began to look favourable for the decoction of that much vaunted and eagerly awaited cup of coffee.

I'm afraid you will think me a shocking poor housekeeper, but I'm not; not nearly so bad as the foregoing would lead you to suppose; only I was a stranger, in a strange city; and Heaven defend me from untrained servants-of all the helpless, useless, shiftless, incapablewell! well! I was just making a few mental remarks of this sort, while I stood watching that Bridget clean the coffee-mill.

'Arrah, ma'am, sure this thing'll niver grind anything agin-sure the childer, bless thim! was playing store with it the other day, and I think it was pebbles they had in it, or something.'

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'What!' I screamed, then it's ruined, of course; and now I am fairly at my wits' end, and Colonel Warde will have to go without his coffee after all. It is too bad. I declare it is-I shall be ashamed to excuse myself.'

A low, rippling laugh fell on my ears at this moment; and turning I saw my sister Beatrice standing in the doorway. Now Beatrice was our queen-she was tall; she was beautiful; she was stately, cold, and grand;

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she was really an old maid; but no one ever thought of applying the term to her, and although she was seven years older than me, I know strangers always supposed her to be younger. Whatever the circumstances of our family, Beatrice always managed to be well-dressed, though she really spent the least money of any of our girls. She was slender and elegant of figure, a pale brunette in type, with magnificent dark, Spanish-looking eyes, and superb head of glossy hair, dark as midnight, and not a single silver thread among its silken coils, while I was visibly growing grey. There was a legend in our family that Beatrice had once been deeply in love-engaged, in fact—and during those halcyon days she was as merry, frolicsome, full of fun and mischief as any of the ordinary mortals of the household; but that I never quite believed, for I could not imagine her other than the calm and stately being she always appeared to us. True, there were moments when she unbent, and then she was more our queen than ever, for she was one of those rarely favoured creatures who rule in every wordwhen she was cold and stately we submitted to her influence and owned her sway absolutely; and when she unbent we basked in the rays of her infrequent sunlight, but owned her sway more abjectly than ever.

So now when I heard that low, musical laugh, I turned and saw her smiling in the doorway, and I smiled a radiant response, for I immediately felt encouraged.

'Why do you laugh at my perplexity, Trix, dear? I'm sure I shall

be too mortified to apologize. I wish I had never had the conceit to say I could make a good cup of coffee.'

'Don't despair, dear; you shall yet make good that harmless boast,' was the encouraging reply; and turning away without further explanation she took a wide-brimmed hat from the stand in the hall, and tying it on as she ran lightly down the front

steps proceeded swiftly along the street. Of course I ran to the diningroom, which commanded a view of the street, and wondered to myself, quite audibly, what on earth she was going to do. How young-how girlish she looked in her plain, princesse robe of black silk! It was buttoned down the back, from the nape of her delicate neck to the simple flounce of knife-pleating round the skirt, which was its only trimming, and it was made with a graceful train, that added to her height and the striking elegance of her figure. At this moment it was caught up in one white hand, for Beatrice never swept the street with her gowns, and had that rare knack of never catching a speck of dust on any article she wore, either in the street or elsewhere, while I was still wondering where she had gone, and what on earth she proposed doing to assist me in my intended coffee-making. I saw her enter the little hardware store at the end of the street, and then I divined her intention. She must have heard Bridget say the coffee mill was spoiled -Well! who could have fancied it? But then one never knows what Beatrice will do.

If she had not done it, I suppose I would have had the temerity, in the course of the next five minutes, to have sent Bridget on the same errand. Although I knew she was quite capable of refusing; but I never would have dreamed of suggesting such a thing to my queenly sister. While I stood wrapt in the wonder of it, holding the canister of unground coffee in one hand, and a tablespoon in the other, Beatrice entered and placed a new coffee-mill on the table before me. had just time to say:

I

Trix dear, you are an angel,' and to bestow a single rapid glance on her face, which seemed strangely movedher eyes were flashing through the moisture of tears, and her usually pale cheeks were aflame with some extraordinary excitement-when she turned and was gone, swift as a lightning-flash.

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