er _abandon_, and with the customary gush of
German sentimentality. It was common then for Germans who had known each
other by report, and were mutually attracted, when first they met, to
fall on each other's necks and kiss and weep. Goethe, as a young man,
had indulged such fervors; but in old age he had lost this effusiveness,
or saw fit to restrain himself outwardly, while his kindly nature still
glowed with its pristine fires. He wrote to Frau von Stein, "I may truly
say that my innermost condition does not correspond to my outward
behavior." Hence the charge of coldness. Say that Mount Aetna is cold:
do we not see the snow on its sides?

But he was unpatriotic; he occupied himself with poetry, and did not cry
out while his country was in the death-throes--so it seemed--of the
struggle with France! But what should he have done? What _could_ he
have done? What would his single arm or declamation have availed? No man
more than Goethe longed for the rehabilitation of Germany. In his own
way he wrought for that end; he could work effectually in no other. That
enigmatical composition,--the "Maerchen,"--according to the latest
interpretation, indicates how, in Goethe's view, that end was to be
accomplished. To one who considers the relation of ideas to events, it
will not seem extravagant when I say that to Goethe, more than to any
one individual, Germany is indebted for her emancipation, independence,
and present political regeneration.[6]

[Footnote 6: (The following interpretation of the "Maerchen" is condensed
from a later portion of this essay, and used here as a foot-note for the
light it throws upon Goethe's political career.)

In the summer of 1795 Goethe composed for Schiller's new magazine, "Die
Horen," a prose poem known in German literature as _Das Maerchen,_--"
_The_ Tale;" as if it were the only one, or the one which more than
another deserves that appellation....

Goethe gave this essay to the public as a riddle which would probably be
unintelligible at the time, but which might perhaps find an interpreter
after many days, when the hints contained in it should be verified.
Since its first appearance commentators have exercised their ingenuity
upon it, perceiving it to be allegorical, but until recently without
success.... I follow Dr. Herman's Baumgart's lead in the exposition
which I now offer.

"The Tale" is a prophetic vision of the destinies of Germany,--an
allegorical foreshowing at the close of t