way
home from Strassburg, he relates, the sight of some specimens of
ancient art in Mannheim "shook his faith in northern architecture,"
and the impression he thus received was to become a permanent
conviction. It was in the art of classical antiquity that he was to
find the expression of his maturest ideal; when in later years his
attention was temporarily turned to Gothic architecture, it was with
little of his youthful enthusiasm that he admitted its claim to our
regard.

"I cannot go on long without a passion," Goethe wrote in his
twenty-third year, and we have no difficulty in believing him. In
Strassburg he lived through a passion which was to be the occasion of
his giving the first clear proof to the world that he was to be among
its original poets. On the 14th of October, 1770, more than five
months after his arrival in Strassburg, he wrote these words to a
correspondent: "I have never so vividly experienced what it is to be
content with one's heart disengaged as now here in Strassburg."[85] In
the same letter in which these words occur he casually mentions that
he has just spent a few days in the country with some pleasant people.
These pleasant people were a pastor Brion and his family living at
Sesenheim, an Alsace village some twenty miles from Strassburg. These
few days spent with the Brion family were to be the beginning of a
history which, as Goethe relates it in his Autobiography, has the
character of an idyll, but, when stripped of the poetic haze which he
has thrown around it, is not far from tragedy. He himself is our sole
authority for its incidents, and he chose so to tell them that the
exact truth of the whole history can never be known.[86]

[Footnote 85: _Ib._ Band i. p. 250.]

[Footnote 86: Subsequent investigation has proved that Goethe has
committed several errors of fact in his narrative. For example, he
relates that on his first visit to the Sesenheim family he was vividly
reminded of the family of the Vicar of Wakefield. In point of fact, he
was introduced to Goldsmith's work by Herder, who came to Strassburg
subsequent to Goethe's first visit to Sesenheim.]

The day following the writing of the letter just quoted, Goethe wrote
another letter which proves that his heart was no longer "disengaged."
This letter is, in fact, a declaration of love to the youngest
daughter of the Sesenheim pastor, Friederike--name of pleasantest
suggestions in the long list of Goethe's loves. The letter, it