enumerated.
Fear, when your friends say to you what you have done well, and say it
through; but when they stand with uncertain timid looks of respect and
half-dislike, and must suspend their judgment for years to come, you may
begin to hope. Those who live to the future must always appear selfish
to those who live to the present. Therefore it was droll in the good
Riemer, who has written memoirs of Goethe, to make out a list of his
donations and good deeds, as, so many hundred thalers given to Stilling,
to Hegel, to Tischbein; a lucrative place found for Professor Voss,
a post under the Grand Duke for Herder, a pension for Meyer, two
professors recommended to foreign universities; &c., &c. The longest
list of specifications of benefit would look very short. A man is a
poor creature if he is to be measured so. For all these of course
are exceptions, and the rule and hodiernal life of a good man is
benefaction. The true charity of Goethe is to be inferred from the
account he gave Dr. Eckermann of the way in which he had spent his
fortune. "Each bon-mot of mine has cost a purse of gold. Half a million
of my own money, the fortune I inherited, my salary and the large income
derived from my writings for fifty years back, have been expended to
instruct me in what I now know. I have besides seen," &c.

I own it is but poor chat and gossip to go to enumerate traits of this
simple and rapid power, and we are painting the lightning with charcoal;
but in these long nights and vacations I like to console myself so.
Nothing but itself can copy it. A word warm from the heart enriches me.
I surrender at discretion. How death-cold is literary genius before this
fire of life! These are the touches that reanimate my heavy soul and
give it eyes to pierce the dark of nature. I find, where I thought
myself poor, there was I most rich. Thence comes a new intellectual
exaltation, to be again rebuked by some new exhibition of character.
Strange alternation of attraction and repulsion! Character repudiates
intellect, yet excites it; and character passes into thought, is
published so, and then is ashamed before new flashes of moral worth.

Character is nature in the highest form. It is of no use to ape it or to
contend with it. Somewhat is possible of resistance, and of persistence,
and of creation, to this power, which will foil all emulation.

This masterpiece is best where no hands but nature's have been laid on
it. Care is taken that the g