kind in Europe; the wildest, the gloomiest, and it may be hoped the last.  For what good is it to ‘whine, put finger i’ the eye, and sob,’ in such a case?  Still more, to snarl and snap in malignant wise, ’like dog distract, or monkey sick?’ Why should we quarrel with our existence, here as it lies before us, our field and inheritance, to make or mar, for better or for worse; in which, too, so many noblest men have, even from the beginning, warring with the very evils we war with, both made and been what will be venerated to all time?

A wide and everyway most important interval divides Werter, with its sceptical philosophy and ‘hypochondriacal crotchets,’ from Goethe’s next Novel, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, published some twenty years afterwards.  This work belongs, in all senses, to the second and sounder period of Goethe’s life, and may indeed serve as the fullest, if perhaps not the purest, impress of it; being written with due forethought, at various times, during a period of no less than ten years.  Considered as a piece of Art, there were much to be said on Meister; all which, however, lies beyond our present purpose.  We are here looking at the work chiefly as a document for the writer’s history; and in this point of view, it certainly seems, as contrasted with its more popular precursor, to deserve our best attention:  for the problem which had been stated in Werter, with despair of its solution, is here solved.  The lofty enthusiasm, which, wandering wildly over the universe, found no resting-place, has here reached its appointed home; and lives in harmony with what long appeared to threaten it with annihilation.  Anarchy has now become Peace; the once gloomy and perturbed spirit is now serene, cheerfully vigorous, and rich in good fruits.  Neither, which is most important of all, has this Peace been attained by a surrender to Necessity, or any compact with Delusion; a seeming blessing, such as years and dispiritment will of themselves bring to most men, and which is indeed no blessing, since even continued battle is better than destruction or captivity; and peace of this sort is like that of Galgacus’s Romans, who ’called it peace when they had made a desert.’  Here the ardent high-aspiring youth has grown into the calmest man, yet with increase and not loss of ardour, and with aspirations higher as well as clearer.  For he has conquered his unbelief; the Ideal has been built on the Actual; no longer floats vaguely in darkness and regions of dreams, but rests in light, on the firm ground of human interest and business, as in its true scene, on its true basis.