consented, not only with reluctance, but with a sort of haughtiness, reminding them of his own fixed principle, that such honours, if they must needs be paid at all, should be paid after death only ;-a principle which received full illustration when the same bust was dragged round the hall in contumely by Gentili's republicans. But the French fashion has prevailed in recent times, and the people of his native canton of Rostino have erected to him (1854) a bronze statue, in the new Place of his romantic. little metropolis Corte. It is not ill imagined. The General stands in the sort of half-military costume which he wore, with broad-skirted coat, and bottes à revers, in act as if about to address an assembly. The execution, it must be confessed, falls somewhat short of the conception, and the hero has rather the air of a 'bourgeois endimanché.' But it is the pride of that secluded district, far and near ; and among the many sturdy, wild-looking mountain figures which you may observe around it, indolently gazing for hours, you will find scarce a man who will not recount to you, with more or less of detail, the main outlines of the life of the great Generale e Gobernatore della Corsica, who expelled the Genoese and the French, raised his country to independence, led its sons to battle as a chosen champion, governed and judged it as a chosen sovereign, and left the savings of his poverty to educate its children.

K

130

VOLTAIRE, ROUSSEAU, AND GÖTHE.*

ON August 28, 1849, and the following days, Germany celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of her greatest writer. All the literary capitals of that land of literature vied with each other in inventing ceremonial observances for the national jubilee. In accordance with the prevailing musical tendencies of the people, operatic representations formed the leading features of the several festivals. The dramatic chefs d'œuvre of the poet were produced with every accompaniment which modern skill in music and decoration could supply; his lyricssolemn, festive, and satirical-were performed in the most brilliant manner by mixed choruses of professionals and amateurs: Schumann, Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and the other living or recent composers of Germany, furnished their sweetest strains for the great occasion. All the literary and philosophical celebrities of the day contributed their quota of odes, speeches, and sentiments. The veteran Alexander von Humboldt officiated as Coryphæus at Berlin, and led the way in an address full of his own brilliant generalisations, of which the most characteristic specimen that we can find is a comparison

* Most of this essay appeared originally in the Edinburgh Review in the form of a critique on some works produced, by the Göthe Jubilee of 1849 Since then Mr. Lewes's masterly life of that author has appeared, and has had a great effect in forming and modifying English opinion respecting him. But after reflection, I have ventured on republishing my own views notwithstanding.

of the lives of men of genius to the appearance of those everlasting lights of celestial space of which the greater orbs are sometimes dispersed like sporadic existences in the measureless ocean, sometimes united in brilliant groups.' Nor were the proper attractions wanting for the inferior orders of the cultivated world. There were triumphal arches, fountains, scenic decorations, transparencies of Göthe surrounded by every attribute of allegory -Göthe as 'Dichterkind' on a griffin, Göthe as 'Dichterjüngling' on a Pegasus-dinners, polkas, illuminations, and fireworks.

Yet it seems that the celebration, everywhere alike, was regarded as a failure. No corresponding inspiration was kindled in the audiences by the laborious enthusiasm of the stage-managers. The multitude listened, dull, spiritless, and uninterested; or, at best, they applauded the music, and gazed on the show, as they might on any other occasion ; but without any notice of the peculiar significance of the day. The Fates themselves appeared to take a pleasure in mocking the solemnity. It was marred everywhere by cross accidents. At Berlin the contractor for the banquet miscalculated the number of his guests, and the assembled votaries had to endure four mortal hours of a dinner which was little better than nominal, the intervals between the speeches not being duly enlivened by courses of more substantial diet. At Weimar, so long the poet's residence, his own family refused to take any part in the business; owing, it was said, to some quarrel with the municipality about the property in his relics. At Frankfort, his birthplace, the burghers were insolvent, and out of humour; the populace savage and sore from the recent chastisement of their neighbour radicals of Baden by the Prussian bayonets. They voted the whole affair a piece of aristocratic impertinence; and when the managers got up a

nocturnal serenade in front of the old house of the Göthes, the mob interrupted it, and put the performers to flight with a chorus of Katzenmusik.'

No doubt the period at which the jubilee fell was an unfortunate one. Men's minds, reeking with political excitement, were little disposed to take interest in the payment of a somewhat pedantic homage to mere literary greatness. The failure of so many cherished schemes of German freedom and union had engendered among the more enthusiastic a spirit of fierce disappointment, which was ready enough to vent itself in bitterness against the memory of the idols of the last generation. The attacks of Börne and his school had, moreover, indisposed the sentiments of many of the younger class towards Göthe. The cherished author of the higher cultivated circles had been represented, with very little reason, as opposed to the political rights of the lower orders; and, with a good deal more, as having laboured to repress that spirit of hopeful activity out of which alone political reforms could arise. His reputation, in short, had become a kind of battle-field between democrats and conservatives; and the former, although for the moment the defeated party, were as yet the loudest. But, beyond all these temporary obstacles to the success of the commemoration, it cannot be denied that a sense of unreality, a blank dissatisfaction, weighed on minds capable of calmer and more elevated judgment. The worship which was once paid, sincerely if blindly, to the living man, had become, they felt, mere conventional idolatry of the dead. Göthe was no longer what he had been, nor was his Germany the same. It was not the fame of the Artist' which was in question that was established. In that character, ' nothing could touch him further;' the Book of Fate had closed on the page which recorded his name. But Göthe

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had been much more than this to Germany. For many years he had been regarded as the first practical philosopher of his day-the Liberator of the age from prejudice and barbarism-the great Teacher, from whom men were to learn how to direct their energies aright, how to achieve that perfect balance or harmony of the faculties and passions in which he placed the supreme good of his system. It was in this capacity that he had been reverenced with an enthusiasm unparalleled in modern days, and which nothing but its honesty preserved from absolute ridicule. Each of his greater works had been overlaid with multiplied gloss and commentary, in which critics vied with each other in extracting from their subject the greatest amount of recondite learning. Every trivial saying which he chose, after his half-solemn half-mystifying fashion, to propound as oracular, had been treasured and expanded as a relic of inspiration. Where was all this glory now? Where was the vaunted world-philosophy' of the accomplished Epicurean? Had it not become as vain and wearisome as the systems of those former schools which it had been held to supersede? Was not there a painful suspicion that much of the weakness and degeneracy of the higher classes-much of their impotence to resist the torrent of those false principles and exaggerated sentiments in which they had long ceased to share was owing to the enervating influence of doctrines once admired as exalting man to the ethereal serenity of angelic natures?

All these were unsettled questions at best. The world had not yet arrived at that point in its progress from which it might survey with judicial clearness the character of the mighty deceased; and his spirit, evoked untimely from its recent grave for this solemnity, was viewed by numbers as a spectre of questionable shape