nd so transparently certain of his personal survival
after Death!

There is no one, except Leonardo Da Vinci, in the whole history of
our Planet, who gives us quite that sense of a person possessed of
some secret illumination not granted to the rest of the world. There
is much reassurance in this. More than has been, perhaps, realized.
For it is probable that "in his caves of ice," Leonardo also felt
himself indestructible by the Arch-Enemy. One thinks of those
Cabalistic words of old Glanville, "Man does not yield himself to
Death--save by the weakness of his mortal Will."

Goethe collecting fossils and crystals and specimens of rock-strata;
Goethe visiting Botanical Gardens and pondering on the Metamorphosis
of Plants; Goethe climbing Strassburg Cathedral-Spire; Goethe
meeting the Phantom of Himself as he returned from the arms
of Frederika; Goethe "experiencing the sensation" of crossing
the "Firing-Line"; Goethe "announcing" to Eckermann that
that worthy man had better avoid undertaking any "great" literary
work; Goethe sending Frau von Stein sausages from his breakfast-table;
Goethe consoling himself in the Storm by observing his birth-star
Lucifer, and thinking of the Lake of Galilee, are pictures of
noble and humorous memory which reconcile one to the Comedy of
Living!

How vividly returns to me--your pardon, reader!--the first time I
read "The Sorrows of Werter" in that little "Three-penny" edition
published by Messrs. Cassell! It was in a Barge, towed by three
Horses, on the River, between Langport and Bridgewater, in the
County of Somerset! The majority of the company were as rowdy a
set of good-humored Bean-Feasters as ever drank thin beer in a
ramshackle tavern. But there was one of them--this is twenty-five
years ago, reader!--a girl as fragile as a peeled Willow-wand--and
teased by the rude badinage of our companions we sheltered--as the
friendly mists rose--under a great Tarpaulin at the barge's stern.
Where is that girl now, I wonder? Is she alive? Will she ever blush
with anger at being thus gently lifted up, from beneath the kind
Somersetshire mists, into an hour's publicity? Who can tell? We are
all passing one another, in mist-darkened barges, swift or slow. She
is a wraith, a shadow, a receding phantom; but I wave my hand to
her over the years! I shall always associate her with Lotte; and I
never smell the peculiar smell of Tarpaulin without thinking of "the
Sorrows of Werter."

"Werter" has