akes fly and drop--a rough, brutal business it seems at
first, the hewing off great masses of stone, so firmly compacted, fused
and concreted together. At first it seems unintelligible enough; but
the dints become minuter and minuter, here a grain and there an atom,
till the smooth and shapely limbs begin to take shape. At first it
seems a mere bewildered loss, a sharp pang as one parts with what seems
one's very self. How long before the barest structure becomes visible!
but when one once gets a dim inkling of what is going on, as the
stubborn temper yields, as the face takes on its noble frankness, and
the shapely limbs emerge in all the glory of free line and curve, how
gratefully and vehemently one co-operates, how little a thing the
endurance of mere pain becomes by the side of the consciousness that
one is growing into the likeness of the divine.

May 23, 1889.

when Goethe was writing Werther he wrote to his friend Kestner, "I am
working out my own situation in art, for the consolation of gods and
men." That is a fine thing to have said, proceeding from so sublime an
egoism, so transcendent a pride, that it has hardly a disfiguring touch
of vanity about it. He did not add that he was also working in the
situation of his friend Kestner, and Kestner's wife, Charlotte; though
when they objected to having been thus used as material, Goethe
apologised profusely, and in the same breath told them, somewhat
royally, that they ought to be proud to have been thus honoured. But
that is the reason why one admires Goethe so much and worships him so
little. One admires him for the way in which he strode ahead, turning
corner after corner in the untravelled road of art, with such insight,
such certainty, interpreting and giving form to the thought of the
world; but one does not worship him, because he had no tenderness or
care for humanity. He knew whither he was bound, but he did not trouble
himself about his companions. The great leaders of the world are those
who have said to others, "Come with me--let us find light and peace
together!"--but Goethe said, "Follow me if you can!" Some one, writing
of that age, said that it was a time when men had immense and
far-reaching desires, but feeble wills. They lost themselves in the
melancholy of Hamlet, and luxuriated in their own sorrows. That was not
the case with Goethe himself; there never was an artist who was less
irresolute.

One of the reasons, I think, why we are weak