GOETHE; OR, THE WRITER. 265

light reading, those who 100k in it for the enter-
tainment they find in a romance, are (lisappointedt
On the other hand, those who begin it with the
higher hope to read in it a worthy history of
genius, and the just award of the laurel to its
toils and denials, have also reason to complain.

We had an English romance here, not long awn,

O

professing to embody the hope of a new age and
to unfold the political hope of the party called
‘Young England,’ -— i11 which the only reward
of virtue is a seat in Pztrlialnent and a peerage.
Goethe’s romance has a conclusion as lame and
immoral. George Sand, in Consuelo and its con-
tinuation, has sketched a truer and more dignified
picture. In the progress of the story, the char-
acters of the hero and heroine expand at a rate
that shivers the porcelain chess-table of aristocratic
convention: they quit the society and habits of
their rank, they lose their wealth, they become
the servants of great ideas and of the most gen-
erous social ends; until at last the hero, who is
the centre and fountain of an association for tho
rendering of the noblest benefits to the human
race, no longer answers to his own titled name;
it sounds foreign and remote in his ear. “ I am
only man,” he says; “ I breathe and work for
man ; ” and this in poverty and extreme sacrifices.
Goethe’s hero, on the contrary, has so many weak~