sum!'

Death of Goethe.

He had

The name of

The foregoing survey would be incomplete without some notice of the prices of things, the more so as we shall learn hereafter that the pension Karl August gave Schiller was 200 thalers-about £60 of our money-and-he tried to walk a little up and down the room, but, The following morning-it was the 22d March 1832 that the salary Goethe received as Councillor of Legation, after a turn, he found himself too feeble to continue. was only 1200 thalers-about£200 per annum. On reading this, Mr Smith jingles the loose silver in his Reseating himself in the easy chair, he chatted cheerfully pockets, and, with that superb British pride, redolent with Ottilie [his daughter-in-law] on the approaching of consols, which makes the family of Smith so accuspring, which would be sure to restore him. rate a judge of all social positions, exclaims: These no idea of his end being so near. beggarly Germans; I give my head clerk twice the Ottilie was frequently on his lips. She sat beside him, holding his hand in both of hers. It was now observed that his thoughts began to wander incoherently. See,' he exclaimed, the lovely woman's head, with black curls, in splendid colours-a dark background!' Presently he saw a piece of paper on the floor, and asked them how they could leave Schiller's letters so carelessly lying about. Then he slept softly, and, on awakening, asked for the sketches he had just seen-the sketches of his dream. In silent anguish they awaited the close now so surely approaching. His speech was becoming less and less distinct. The last words audible were, More light! The final darkness grew apace, and he whose eternal longings had been for more light, gave a parting cry for it as he was passing under the shadow of death. He continued to express himself by signs, drawing letters with his forefinger in the air while he had strength; and shawl which covered his legs. At half-past twelve he finally, as life ebbed, drawing figures slowly on the composed himself in the corner of the chair. watcher placed a finger on her lip to intimate that he was asleep. If sleep it was, it was a sleep in which a life glided from the world. He woke no more.

The

The influence which Goethe's writings exercised on all the literature of Europe has been noticed by Carlyle, and is fully traced by Mr Lewes. He gives copious analyses of the principal worksespecially the Faust-and on all points of the poet's history and his 'romances of the heart' (more properly of the imagination) we have ample details. No more original or exhaustive memoir has appeared since Lockhart's Life of Scott. A new edition of Mr Lewes's work, still further improved, was published in 1875.

At the little court, Goethe was all but idolised. He dressed in the costume which he had assigned to his Werther, and the dress was adopted by the duke and the courtiers. It was not very sentimental, as Mr Lewes suggests, being composed of blue coat and brass buttons, top-boots and leather breeches, surmounted by powder and pig-tail! The duke, Karl August, though patronising literature in the person of Goethe, seems to have been somewhat idle and dissipated; the Dowagerduchess Amalia was more intellectual. There was also a Baroness von Stein, wife of the Master of the Horse, who captivated Goethe, and the attachment lapsed into a liaison, not uncommon in that court, but which Mr Lewes passes over too slightly, as a matter of course. The poet, however, applied himself to business, was made President of the Chamber, Minister of the War Department, and, finally, elevated to the nobility. Henceforth he is Von Goethe. He gets tired, however, of public life; travels into Italy; and, by consent of the duke, is released, after his return to Weimar, from official duties. His passion for the Frau von Stein now cooled-all his love-scenes are dissolving-views; but in the autumn of 1788, Goethe, 'walking in the muchloved park, was accosted by a fresh, young, brightlooking girl, who, with many reverences, handed him a petition.' The petition contained a request that the great poet would exert his influence to procure a post for a young author, the brother of the maiden who then addressed him, and whose name was Christiane Vulpius. Christiane was humble in rank, clever, but not highly gifted— 'not a Frau von Stein.' She was, however, elevated to the same bad eminence in the poet's regard, and, fifteen years afterwards, when a son had been born to them-when Wilhelm Meister, the Faust, and Lyrics had placed Goethe at the head of German authors-he married Christiane Vulpius. The sunset,' which Mr Lewes put at the head of 'Book the Seventh,' had then commenced. But stirring incidents still remained-'poet' (Pope), the Young Chevalier' (Charles the battle of Jena and sack of Weimar, and, subsequently, the gratifying interview with Napoleon. Love-pasages also were interposed, and the sexagenarian poet 'deposited with deep emotion many a sad experience' in his fiction and poetry. All this German sentimentalism seems as unlike real life as the scenes in the sparkling comedies of Congreve or Wycherley. Goethe at seventy was younger, Mr Lewes says, than many men at fifty. The second part of Faust was completed in his eighty-first year, and at eighty-two he wrote a scientific paper on philosophic zoology. In his latter years his daughter-in-law kept house for him, Christiane having died in 1816. The poet survived her nearly sixteen years. Mr Lewes thus describes the last scene :

MRS OLIPHANT.

TO MRS OLIPHANT, the distinguished novelist, we are indebted for two volumes of Historical Sketches of the Reign of George II., 1869, which appeared first in Blackwood's Magazine. These consist of a series of short biographies, political, literary, and fashionable. Queen Caroline and Walpole head the list, and to these succeed the man of the world' (Chesterfield), the 'woman of fashion' (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu), the

Edward), the 'reformer' (John Wesley), the 'sailor' (Anson), the 'philosopher' (Berkeley), the 'novelist' (Richardson), the 'sceptic' (David Hume), and the painter' (Hogarth). The portraits in this little gallery are drawn with truth and nice discrimination, and give the reader a good idea of all the leading characteristics, the tastes and opinions, prevailing in the reign of the second George. Besides these Historical Sketches, Mrs Oliphant has written two original and interesting biographies-the Life of Edward Irving, and the Memoir of Count de Montalembert, the latter a chapter of recent French history,' in which Montalembert was for thirty years, till his death in 1870, a conspicuous actor.

The Rev. Edward Irving (1792-1834) was a

HISTORIANS, ETC.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

darkening, and shipwreck, and ruin of a gracious and tions in Ireland and Scotland. The work evinces
immense research, learning, and patient investi-
gation.
princely soul.

George Whitefield and the Bristol Colliers.
The colliers of Kingswood, near Bristol, were pro-
verbial for their savage character and brutality. They
had no place of worship near them, and nobody so much
as dreamt of inquiring whether by chance they too might
The wandering evangelist
have souls to be saved.
[Whitefield] saw, and with that instinct or inspiration
which in a great crisis often seems to direct the instru-
ment of Providence, saw his opportunity at a glance.
On the afternoon of Saturday, February 17, 1739,
breaking the iron decorum of the church, but not a
single thread of the allegiance which bound him to her,
he took his stand on a little summit in the benighted
heathen district, and proclaimed to the gaping amazed
populace the message they had never heard before. Ere
long, thousands gathered round him, eager to see so new
a thing, to hear so strange a communication. Under
the spring sunshine they gathered, in an awful manner,
in the profoundest silence,' says the preacher, moved to
the heart by the unhoped-for magnitude of his own
work. The rude miners stood still as death, turning
their dark countenance towards him, weeping white
tears down their grimy, coal-stained cheeks.
since barefooted friars had wandered that way, with the
wide and elastic commission of Rome, had preachers
stood in England by field and hedgerows, calling the
lost sheep to the fold. The eighteenth-century preacher,
in his curled wig and comely bands, is no such pictur-
esque figure as the Franciscan; but yet nothing could
have been more impressive than the scenes he de-
scribes with an evident awe upon his own mind. "The
trees and hedges were full,' he says; all was hushed
when I began.' Sometimes as many as twenty thou-
sand collected around the little hill-at times a thrill
of emotion ran through the crowd. They wept aloud
together over their sins; they sang together with that
wonderful voice of a multitude which has something in
it more impressive than any music. The sun fell aslant
over the sea of heads; the 'solemnity of approaching
evening' stole over the strange scene. Through the
preacher's minute, monotonous diary, there throbs a
sudden fullness of human feeling as he records it. It
And as he
was sometimes almost too much for him.
tells us the story at this long distance, we are still
touched by the tears in his voice.

DR WILLIAM REEVES.

Ever

LORD CAMPBELL.

The legal biographies of JOHN, LORD CAMPBELL, supply a blank that had often been felt in the record of British worthies, and they convey in a diffuse but agreeable way a general knowledge of history, political and social, and of constitutional law and principles. Had proper research been exercised, they would have been valuable. The Lives of the Chancellors and the Keepers of the Great Seal of England, from the Earliest Times till the Reign of George IV., extend to seven volumes, published in 1845-47; and the Lives of the Chief Justices of England, from the Norman Conquest till the Death of Lord Mansfield, form two volumes, 1849. The style of the noble biographer is often loose and careless, and there are many inaccuracies in dates and facts; but there are few more pleasant books than the Lives of the In his later biographies, Lord Campbell had the Chancellors, and it has been eminently successful. advantage of original papers, as well as some personal knowledge of the chancellors. The whole of Lord Loughborough's papers were communicated to him by Lord Rosslyn; he obtained many of Erskine's letters, and also letters of Lord Eldon. A love of anecdote and gossip seasons these memoirs, while, in conclusion, the noble author sums up the merits and demerits of each of his subjects with judicial impartiality and often with discrimination. Lord Campbell himself succeeded to the woolsack-the crowning glory of a long, laborious life. He was born September 15, 1781, the son of a Scottish minister, Dr George Campbell of Cupar, Fife. Having received his education, and taken his degree of A.M. at the university of St Andrews, he repaired to London, entered himself of Lincoln's Inn, and while keeping his terms, officiated as reporter and critic for the Morning Chronicle. He was called to the bar in 1806, and though retarded in promotion by his Whig principles, he was invested with the silk gown in 1827, and in 1830 was returned to parliament for the borough of Stafford. In 1834 he was

-a fortunate and brilliant career, with an old age of physical and intellectual vigour rarely paralrespect. He died June 23, 1861. In 1869, more leled. Yet its possessor failed to command general than eight years after his death, appeared Lives of Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Brougham, which had Campbell, as a continuation of his Lives of the been written but not finally revised by Lord Lord Chancellors. This is a gossiping, untrustspirit. worthy work, written in a mean, depreciatory

In 1857, DR WILLIAM REEVES, Dublin, pub-appointed attorney-general; in 1841, lord chanlished an edition of Adamnan's Life of St Col- cellor of Ireland, with a peerage; in 1850, chiefumba (Vita Sancti Columbæ: Auctore Adam-justice of England; and in 1859, lord chancellor nano Monasterii Hiensis), edited for the Irish Archæological Society. Adamnan was the ninth abbot of Hy or Iona, founded by Columba, the great apostle of the Western Highlanders or Scoto-Irish, said to be born in the year 521, arrived in Scotland from Ireland in 563, died in 597. It appears from Adamnan's narrative that Columba required an 'interpreter when communicating with the king of the Picts. It is stated, however, that before his death he had founded above one hundred monasteries, and three hundred churches, and had ordained three thousand clergy. So much could not have been done in one life-time if the Scoto-Irish and Pictish tongues had been radically different. Dr Reeves printed Adamnan's Life from a manuscript of the eighth century, with the various readings of six other manuscripts preserved in different parts of Europe. He added copious notes and dissertations illustrative of the early history of the Columban institu

JAMES SPEDDING.

The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon-Lord Bacon-collected and edited, with a commentary, by JAMES SPEDDING, M.A. (1874), is a work of great research and labour, extending to seven volumes. It is supplementary to the edition of Lord Bacon's works, collected and edited by Mr Spedding, Mr R. L. Ellis, and Mr D. D. Heath,

639

which also extends to seven volumes. The publication of the Works and Life was spread over the long period of seventeen years, during which the care and research of the editors seem never to have relaxed. Mr Spedding says his object was to enable posterity to form a true conception of the kind of man Bacon was,' and accordingly he gives an unusually full record of a more than unusually full life.' The question of legal guilt Bacon himself admitted. The moral culpability Mr Spedding does not consider so clear, considering the corrupt practices of the age, and the philosopher's carelessness as to money and household management.

his fellow-countrymen, and made his decease, at the end
of so long a life, to be deeply and sincerely regretted
were admirably described in words which Mr Gladstor
quoted from a former speech of Lord John Russell, a
which he eloquently complimented and applied to
present occasion.

the qualities he possessed, are unattainable by others,
'While many of the actions of his life, while many of
there are lessons which we may all derive from the life
and actions of that illustrious man. It may never be
given to another subject of the British crown to perform
services so brilliant as he performed; it may never be
given to another man to hold the sword which was to
gain the independence of Europe, to rally the nations
around it, and while England saved herself by her
constancy, to save Europe by her example; it may never
be given to another man, after having attained such
eminence, after such an unexampled series of victories,
to shew equal moderation in peace as he has shewa
greatness in war, and to devote the remainder of his life
to the cause of internal and external peace for that
country which he has so served; it may never be given
to another man to have equal authority both with the
sovereign he served and with the senate of which he was
to the end a venerated member; it may never be given
to another man after such a career to preserve even to
the last the full possession of those great faculties with
which he was endowed, and to carry on the services of
one of the most important departments of the state with
unexampled regularity and success, even to the latest
day of his life. These are circumstances, these are
this country. But there are qualities which the Duke of
Wellington displayed of which we may all act in humble
imitation: that sincere and unceasing devotion to our
country; that honest and upright determination to act
for the benefit of the country on every occasion; that
devoted loyalty, which, while it made him ever anxious
to serve the crown, never induced him to conceal from
the sovereign that which he believed to be the truth;
that devotedness in the constant performance of duty;
that temperance of his life, which enabled him at all
times to give his mind and his faculties to the services
which he was called on to perform; that regular, con-
sistent, and unceasing piety by which he was distin-
guished at all times in his life: these are qualities that
are attainable by others, and these are qualities which
should not be lost as an example.'

I know nothing more inexplicable than Bacon's unconsciousness of the state of his own case, unless it be the case itself. That he, of all men, whose fault had always been too much carelessness about money-who, though always too ready to borrow, to give, to lend, and to spend, had never been either a bargainer, or a grasper, or a hoarder, and whose professional experience must have continually reminded him of the peril of meddling with anything that could be construed into corruption-that he should have allowed himself on any account to accept money from suitors while their cases were before him, is wonderful. That he should have done it without feeling at the time that he was laying himself open to a charge of what in law would be called bribery, is more wonderful still. That he should have done it often, and not lived under an abid-qualities which may never again occur in the history of ing sense of insecurity-from the consciousness that he had secrets to conceal, of which the disclosure would be fatal to his reputation, yet the safe keeping did not rest solely with himself-is most wonderful of all. Give him credit for nothing more than ordinary intelligence and ordinary prudence-wisdom for a man's self-and it seems almost incredible. And yet I believe it was the fact. The whole course of his behaviour, from the first rumour to the final sentence, convinces me that not the discovery of the thing only, but the thing itself, came upon him as a surprise; and that if anybody had told him the day before that he stood in danger of a charge of taking bribes, he would have received the suggestion with unaffected incredulity. How far I am justified in thinking so, the reader shall judge for himself; for the impression is derived solely from the tenor of the correspondence.

A History of England from the year 1830 to 1874 has been published in three volumes by WILLIAM NASSAU MOLESWORTH, vicar of Spotland, Rochdale. Mr John Bright, M.P., has commended this work as a book 'honestly written,' and 'calculated to give great information to the young men of the country.' The work appears to merit the commendation, and it aims at no higher praise. We quote a brief notice of a memorable national loss and solemnity:

Death of the Duke of Wellington.

During the interval between the dissolution and the re-assembly of Parliament (1852) an event occurred which deeply stirred the heart of the whole nation, from the Queen on the throne to the lowest and meanest of her subjects. The Duke of Wellington, who had attained to the 84th year of his age, had for some time past been becoming more and more infirm. On the 14th of September his feebleness had very perceptibly increased, and at about a quarter past three in the afternoon of that day he tranquilly breathed his last at Walmer Castle, where he was then residing. The qualities which caused him to be regarded with such deep reverence and admiration by the great majority of

A public funeral was of course decreed; and never in any country was such a solemnity celebrated. The procession was planned, marshalled, and carried out, with a discretion, a judgment, and a good taste, which reflected the highest honour on the civil and military authorities by whom it was directed. Men of every arm and of every regiment in the service, for the first and last time in the history of the British army, marched together on this occasion. But what was more admirable still was the conduct of the incredible mass of sympathetic spectators, who had congregated from ali parts of the kingdom, and who formed no insignificant proportion of its population. From Grosvenor Gate to St Paul's Cathedral there was not one foot of unoccupied ground; not a balcony, not a window, that was not filled; and as far as could be observed, every face amidst that vast multitude wore an expression of respectful sorrow. An unbroken silence was maintained as the funeral cortège moved slowly and solemnly forward to the mausoleum prepared to receive the remains of England's greatest warrior in the centre of the stupendous masterpiece of Wren's architectural genius.

HEPWORTH DIXON.

The lives of John Howard, 1850; William Penn, 1851 (revised edition, 1872); and Admiral Blake, 1852, by MR WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON,