lt," he says, "that
this was the very Goethe of whom people will one day declare that he is
not at all one person, but is made up of several smaller Goethes."

The house we lived in stood in its own grounds, and very picturesque
they were; some parts delightfully kept, others still more delightfully
neglected. Wild tangles blocked disused paths; weeds and creepers
climbed up the legs of classical statues, and wound round their arms
when they had any. There was a Kiosk too, a little museum in which had
been collected relics of the great battle which had raged furiously in
those grounds. It was dedicated to Prince Poniatowski, who, during the
disastrous retreat of the French army, was drowned with scores of other
fugitives in that rapid little stream, the Elster, which flowed at the
bottom of what was in my days called "Gerhard's Garten," the same stream
in which I now used to take my daily swim.

There were only two houses in that "Garten." In one of them lived the
Herr Legationsrath Gerhard, our landlord, a personal friend of the great
Goethe, and himself a gifted poet, and so good a scholar, that he was
able to make an admirable translation of Burns's poems. The good people
of Leipsic appreciated his talents, but were very angry with him because
he was unmistakably a poet with an eye to business, and he charged five
neugroschen (sixpence) for admission to the historical site and to the
Poniatowski Kiosk.

In the other house we occupied the second floor, and on the first lived
Madame Mendelssohn's sister, Madame Schunck, and her family. The
ground-floor was the private residence of a wealthy wine merchant;
perhaps Schmidt was his name. The latter nearly got us into very serious
trouble in the days when the tide of revolution, set in motion by the
French rising in 1848, had swept all over Germany, and when even the
Leipsickers, usually so peaceful, were up in arms. The standard of
insurrection had been raised throughout the Fatherland, dynasties were
threatened, and thrones shaken. Some of the Saxon patriots had gone to
help their brothers in the Austrian capital, amongst others Robert Blum,
one of the most popular leaders of the democratic party. The barricade
he was defending was taken, and he was made a prisoner. Popular feeling
in Leipsic ran high, and when the news came that he had been tried by
court-martial and shot, it reached fever heat.

Interested as I always was in the doings of man, woman, or child,
espe