ty, which strenuous mental labor
permits us, at least temporarily, to forget; but the circumstances which
surround us have invariably an influence of some kind upon our thinking,
though the connection may not be obvious. Even in the case of Goethe,
who could study optics on a battle-field, his English biographer
recognizes the effect of the Frankfort life which surrounded the great
author in his childhood. "The old Frankfort city, with its busy crowds,
its fairs, its mixed population, and its many sources of excitement,
offered great temptations and great pasture to so desultory a genius.
This is perhaps a case wherein circumstances may be seen influencing the
direction of character.... A large continuity of thought and effort was
perhaps radically uncongenial to such a temperament; yet one cannot help
speculating whether under other circumstances he might not have achieved
it. Had he been reared in a quiet little old German town, where he would
have daily seen the same faces in the silent streets, and come in
contact with the same characters, his culture might have been less
various, but it might perhaps have been deeper. Had he been reared in
the country, with only the changing seasons and the sweet serenities of
nature to occupy his attention when released from study, he would
certainly have been a different poet. The long summer afternoons spent
in lonely rambles, the deepening twilights filled with shadowy visions,
the slow uniformity of his external life necessarily throwing him more
and more upon the subtler diversities of inward experience, would
inevitably have influenced his genius in quite different directions,
would have animated his works with a very different spirit."

We are sometimes told that life in a great capital is essential to the
development of genius, but Frankfort was the largest town Goethe ever
lived in, and he never visited either Paris or London. Much of the
sanity of his genius may have been due to his residence in so tranquil a
place as Weimar, where he could shut himself up in his "garden-house"
and lock all the gates of the bridge over the Ilm. "The solitude," says
Mr. Lewes, "is absolute, broken only by the occasional sound of the
church clock, the music from the barracks, and the screaming of the
peacocks spreading their superb beauty in the park." Few men of genius
have been happier in their surroundings than Goethe. He had
tranquillity, and yet was not deprived of intellectual interco