indeed. At all events it was laid to rest, | power of understanding the writings of their poet-prince." Now there is no room for concealment, and her after-history awakens our sympathy, as the history of any human being will do for whom we have once felt a liking. as so much else had been in like fashion, when he drew the figure of Ottilie in "The Elective Affinities." But that did not hinder his liking to get news about her for many years, perhaps as long as he lived: of his friendship for her there are traces in plenty. On her birthday, the 22nd of May, in the year 1817, he gave her a copy of the edition of his poems of 1815, and wrote four lines on the fly-leaf, saying that "if she found old acquaintances in the book, she would perhaps recognize herself." The two sonnets before mentioned, which were written for her, are wanting in this edition they were added in a later one - but there were, doubtless, features of Minchen's to be found in many of the poems, features not now recognizable. The fact of the gift and of the dedication is to some a tell-tale evidence of love enduring for ten years. Others think that the dedication in particular is evidence of just the contrary; on which point it would be in vain to argue. It is fair, however, to remind readers that it was no uncommon thing for Goethe to give presents, birthday and other, or to write stanzas to ladies, young and old. Professor Walch, of Jena, had twice made an offer of marriage to Minna, and had twice been refused, when, on a third application in the spring of 1821, he was accepted. He was a professor of jurisprudence, the descendant of a long line of learned ancestors, who had filled chairs in the university. He was himself a man of learning and of very good standing, and, moreover, very well off in his worldly circumstances. But he was twenty years older than Minna, who was then thirtytwo. He was, we are told, strikingly ugly and awkward and undignified, and, it is added, pedantic and narrow-minded. No more strangely contrasted couple could well have been put together. Nobody knows why she pledged her word to him. The courtship, or rather the state of betrothal, was so unhappy a one, the bride's aversion was so marked, that three weeks before the wedding both Frau Frommann and Walch himself urged her rather to break off the engagement than fulfil it against her liking. But she stuck to her purpose. Her natural indecision of character seems at first sight to have been wanting on this occasion, and to have given place to a determination most ill-timed and ominous. But if we could look deeper, perhaps we should find that it was that very indecision that made her shrink back from the bold and resolute step of a breach of engagement. The marriage took place in September 1821, and very soon afterwards the unhappy wife left her husband's house and went back to her relations in Züllichau. The pleasant home of her girlhood, in the very same town with her own "home," could no longer be open to her. And this, if we mistake not, is all that is to be told about Goethe and Minna Herzlieb. The sad story of Minna's later life does not belong to literature. She herself, with her shrinking from the eye of strangers, could not bear that anything should be said about her in print. She enjoined on all around her absolute silence in respect of herself. When Mr. Lewes' "Life of Goethe" became known in Germany, she gave no contradiction to the statement that she had lived to be a "happy wife," and she allowed no one else to contradict it. After she was dead, survivors fondly cherishing her memory, perhaps with some awe felt for one whom the Lord had stricken, kept the silence unbroken. Even what has now been told It may have been not long after this might never have become known had not that some sort of mental disorder first attacks been made on the memory of per- showed itself. It was neither severe nor sons no longer able to speak for them-abiding, but it came back. Some time selves. A statement of everything in the afterwards she returned to her husband. order in which it happened was the best Friends did their best to bring the parted way to ward off such attacks. As for that couple together, Minna's own sense of which follows, Minna's friends have been duty impelled her, her longing for Jena indignantly upbraided for "hiding the drew her, and at a distance her husband truth," as though the world had a right to did not seem so disagreeable to her. She be undeceived when it believed Minna's wrote him friendly letters, and she came marriage to have been a happy one. It back to him. But it would not do. She seems very natural that these friends was torn to pieces by her antipathy, should have thought the mistake "one not and fled to her brother again with a materially hurtful to the German nation's fresh attack of her disorder. Yet in years following she tried the same experi- | Minna at once engaged in conversation about ment again and again, always with the the time spent by her in Jena. She was then same result. She who was so gentle and bordering on seventy, but her tall slim figure, loving towards everybody else, could her blooming complexion, and the ease of her not bear even to be near her husband. Whilst one of these trials was going on, she wrote to a friend: "It is dreadful, but when I am at work in my own room, and I hear Walch's voice in the passage, even if I know that he is not coming to me, I tremble from head to foot." Of course, her horror and her infirmity often showed themselves in ways that it is needless to dwell on,- symptoms that in their uncertain coming and going were grievously harrowing at the time to those who doated on the sufferer. When ten years had passed, the experiments were given up, and the ill-assorted couple remained separated. A divorce was talked of, but neither of the two would take the first step. Walch died in 1853. Her disorder, repeatedly coming on, was so distressing that her friends several times sought help for her away from home. On one occasion she came back seemingly quite cured. After her brother's death, her sister-in-law and she kept house together in Züllichau. And when her husband was dead, she came every other year for several months to her fosterbrother's house in Jena. The parents who had cared and sorrowed for her were in their graves, but clinging and clung to she found a loving welcome still. A third generation was growing up; in their hearts her memory is enshrined to this day as a thing beautiful and much beloved. After the death of her sister-in-law in 1864, her old disorder returned with such violence that it was found necessary to take her to a hospital for the insane at Görlitz. There she died on the 10th of July, 1865. We add here a translation of the greater part of a letter written by Herr von Loeper, in Berlin, giving an account of a visit paid by him to Minna Herzlieb: Still she eluded movements made her look at least twenty years print. written for Bettina, to whom I had better ap- Un She denied that Goethe had ever sent her the neither letters nor poems of his, with the exsonnets, and she declared that she possessed ception of some lines which he had written in a copy of his printed poems. At my request It was on the 6th of August, 1857, that I, then in Züllichau on business, on a hot afternoon, sought out the shady house on the Grünberg road, in the first floor of which the widowed Frau Walch lived with her sister-inlaw, the widowed Frau Herzlieb. Unluckily, Mr. and Miss Frommann, on the other hand, say just before my arrival, a party of ladies had they do not believe Minna ever walked with Goethe. It does not strike us that the sonnet "Wachsthum" in assembled themselves in the comfortable, well-particular bears on Minna. It might be hard to underfurnished rooms, and their presence made it stand why she appropriated it to herself; but for the necessary for me to shorten my visit. Both fact that, as will be seen, she possessed it in his handBettina ladies received me with extreme kindness, and writing. Most likely he had given it to her. von Arnim has been much laughed at for appropriating to herself sonnets of Goethe's. Yet, as we now know. Frau Frommann died in 1830; her husband fol- she had at least one of them in her possession, in lowed her in 1837. Goethe's handwriting. she rose and, stepping briskly, fetched from the next room the volume of poems referred to. I copied on a piece of paper, which she gave me, the dedication strophe of May 22, 1817 which, at the time of my visit, was not known to have been addressed to Minna. As I turned over the leaves of the book, our con versation fell on many of the poems contained in it, and I saw that she was quite at home in them, knew a number of them by heart, and, when I quoted a line, could supply the rest. Her honest brown eyes were nearly always covered by their long lashes, and though she entered on the conversation gracefully and delicately, she was, on the whole, reserved and bashful - almost like a young girl. Her sister-in-law, who was in the room the whole time, put an end to the conversation, as the recollections seemed to excite Minna, and the esses. rest of the party were waiting for the hostAt that time I knew nothing about Minna's mental malady, consideration for which, doubtless, guided the conduct of the sister-in-law. Afterwards, at the time of the preparations for the Goethe Exhibition in Berlin, I wrote monize well with her saying to Loeper that she possessed no writing of Goethe's but the lines in the book. These and other discrepancies will not surprise any one who has found out by experience, from memory given by women of the finhow little trust can be put in the evidence est affections and most delicate feelings. ANDREW HAMILTON. From Blackwood's Magazine. LEFT-HANDED ELSA. IX. "You have not told me yet," said the lady, with her brightest smile, "if I really have the honour of speaking with Herr Max Brendel? But you need not tell me — you have a painter's eyes. I am come, I was about to say, to thank in person the young artist who has honoured me by stak ing his earliest success upon the merits of my poor features. Let me be the warmest, if not the first, in my congratulations. saw your work in the Rath-haus- I misSIR, By my absence from Züllichau prevented from sooner answering your letter, I could not till to- took it for a Titian, and I ought to know. day beg your indulgence for my inability, yielding, as II assure you that my friends from Munich do, to the propensities known to you, to fulfil your wish. Great as the worth is that the book has for me, to Minna, and asked her to lend me the vol ume. She refused, in the following charac teristic words: the contribution to your great and magnificent undertaking would be but small. For this reason it will be easy for you to judge mildly of my seeming disobliging Thus hoping, with many regards, yours, ness. MINNA WALCH HERZLieb. 66 There were three things of Goethe's: first, a drawing of his; second, a dried flower, folded in paper, on which, in Minna's hand, was written With great deliberation, and no doubt, with many fine thoughts in his inmost soul, plucked by the dear old gentleman, in our blue room, in a familiar circle of few persons, on the 20th of June 1807;" third, the sonnet, "Wachsthum," in Goethe's handwriting, but without the four first lines, which had been clipped off; underneath it was the date, " 13th December 1807, midnight." 66 The date on the dried flower is a wrong one. In June 1807, Goethe was not in Jena, but in Carlsbad. Minna's having the sonnet in her possession does not har I were glowing with your praises: you will hear from them again before long. Meanwhile, let me be your first patron, if you don't object to my taking a title that honours me more than you. The old castle must have a gallery, and I long to inaugurate my reign there with the first picture of the already great, the future famous master, Max Brendel. Set your own value upon me, and let myself be my own." At first he thought that the vision of the mirror must have taken substance; but her mention of the old castle showed her to be only the newly-arrived foreign baroness of Herr Elias. If so, in spite of the startling coincidence, she was real flesh and blood, and not the fetch of a phantom: and in that case he might be bold enough to use his tongue. He bowed. "I am Max Brendel, gracious lady. For your praise, I will not try to thank you. The face came to me I know not how-but it was yours, and how could I fail to succeed when so inspired? Never did I paint like that before — never, something tells me, shall I be able to paint like that again." Now that his tongue was loosed, it seemed quite natural to find himself talking to one whose face and form had filled his heart and mind for so long, and who, though a stranger, was already his most familiar friend. Even her voice was too much in harmony with her 66 crystalline beauty to sound strange after | bargain, my dear Herr Max. The less an it had once pronounced his name. Even artist cares for wealth, the more his purse such was the voice of which he had should be thought of by others. It is dreamed in connection with his shadow, only a trifle - what are five thousand guland which he had already essayed in vain den, what are five hundred thousand, beto hear. But, alas!" he went on, "I tween me and you? I offer you a swift would let you have the picture willingly as and sure way to glory, which you covet a gift if it were my own - you have al- more than wealth be it yours to show ready more than paid me for a life's work your gratitude by letting me make you -but it is a rule that the prize-painting rich besides. Your biographers shall not becomes the property of the town." write of your first patroness that she preyed upon your genius like a vampire “A foolish, unjust rule, Herr Brendel. It means that you have sold for what was it? a wretched five hundred gulden what would have fetched at least five thousand in Munich, or Paris, or Florence, or Moscow. You have let the town cheat you, Herr Brendel. Five hundred gulden may be something to a poor and clever student: it is an insult to a master. But we will have our revenge. Paint me a replica for five thousand gulden. I have set my heart on that picture, and the copy shall be better even than the original, for I will sit to you in person this time." Her voice was as sweet as the flattery of self-praise. More than this, her offer enabled him to purchase the mirror without giving up his journey to Rome. But where was the thought that should have come first" Five thousand gulden! I can marry Elsa now without going to Rome"? A month ago he would have fallen on his knees and worshipped the bearer of such a gift from heaven to Elsa and to him. And he was fain to worship; but not for Elsa's sake, and not wholly for his own. He had not studied for weeks the mute secret of such lips and eyes in vain. Now that the lips were no longer mute, he felt that he both heard and saw the incarnation of his dream. that she devoured your heart's blood and gave you no reward. They shall call me the generous friend as well as the keen-eyed connoisseur I too have my ambitions, my vanities, my whims, and that is one. Ah! what is this?" she asked, looking at the canvas. "You have already begun upon me a second time?" "Oh, gracious lady, that is nothing," said Max, half-confused. "Only when one's mind is full of a subject to overflowing it runs out into many forms; it is a poor theme that one can exhaust in a single picture—and this "Au revoir, then. To-morrow, at this hour, I will come again, and we will begin in earnest." His prayer, if such it could be called, for a short cut to fame and fortune, had indeed been answered. Already, without having gone to Rome, his fame had been carried to Munich by his judges, and he was being launched into the wide ocean of art by one who was as munificent as she was beautiful, and had already mistaken him for Titian. He was, indeed, no longer the same Max Brendel. His hopes for a long struggle in order to wring domestic happiness with a simple girl from the unwilling hands of unfavourShe was, indeed, transcendently beauti-able fortune seemed inexpressibly poor ful to him; and then he had never and mean. He was still betrothed to seen her smile before. There was the same exquisite symmetry of form and feature, the same diamond sheen of hair, the same transparent rose in her cheek, the same wonderful depth in her speaking eyes. Her tall and graceful though fragile figure, hitherto unseen, her noble bearing, her musical voice, and her gracious words, were new and crowning charms. He bent forward and kissed her hand. "Be all things as you will, gracious lady," he said; "but let no money come between the artist and his inspirationhis first inspiration. I will do all things for you." She smiled upon him yet more winningly. "But I must insist on my part of the Elsa, of course, and must marry her in time, however much his bourgeoise wife, a common journeyman's daughter, might stand in the way of a life-journey that led him among baronesses that would lead him soon among the princes of art, and, in time, among the princes of this world. Titian was the friend of an emperor; and, in a word, what with past despair, present triumph, and future glory, the head of Max Brendel was fairly turned. If it had not been so, the mirror itself would have been less wonderful. It is well for men that their successes, for the most part, cone slowly, late, and tempered with much alloy; when they come all at once, and in the very outset of youth, they act like furious wine. That same evening a messenger from contained his practical joke of the laurel Regenstein brought him, in a sealed en- crown. Then it came out that the unvelope, notes for five thousand gulden, lucky Meyer had returned from the comwith one line of writing: "From my left petition in a half-crazed condition, had hand to my right-a contribution to the said no word to a soul, had gone to his biography of a connoisseur." He scarce- room for an instant or two, had hurried ly comprehended the words, but he gath-out again, as the servant said, like a wild ered that the donor would accept of no re- man, and had never returned. fusal, and delicately wished him to feel that she was merely gratifying a caprice of her own in paying him before his work was begun. Well, then, he must work for her all the more devotedly, that was all, and Rome must be out of the question while she needed him. Down he went at once to Herr Elias, with a note for five hundred gulden in his hand. "That is for the mirror," he said. "Aha! you pay promptly, my good Herr Max," said Herr Elias, as he examined the note. "Eh, eh! this comes from Castle Regenstein-you are in luck's way, my good young gentleman, if you have dealings there. And to get a glass like that for five hundred gulden that happens not every day! But you deserve it, my good Herr Max: you pay your debts down on the nail, not like that rogue of a Meyer, who is in such a hurry to leave the world that he does not wait to pay me my little bill.” "Meyer? What has he done?" "How? Have you not heard? he has drowned himself, that's all; nothing more, my good Herr Max-nothing more." "Good heaven!" "Yes, my good Herr Max. In the water. They found his hat swimming an hour ago a very bad hat indeed. Not worth two kreutzers, on my word. But I can do it up, my good Herr Max; and if you want a hat for Sundays. But Max was gone. He ran out and hurried straight to Meyer's lodging. It was only too likely that the diseased temper of the young man, full of all the weakness of genius and wanting all its strength, should in the first frenzy of exaggerated disappointment, have led him to suicide. He had never fought against an impulse, and he had staked his whole career upon the prize. Max almost felt responsible for his rival's death, even though his conscience, in this matter, was clear. Arrived at Meyer's lodging he found the news only too true. Rothkopf and Sleinitz, walking along the riverside, had caught sight of the black hat floating down the stream. It was carried by an eddy into a bed of rushes, whence Rothkopf amused himself by hooking it to shore. Sleinitz recognized it at once-it He had no friends in the place, and his habits were so retired and reserved that nobody knew whether he had any relations anywhere, much less where they were to be found. Max knew him better than anybody, and he, under the circumstances, took upon himself the duty of searching Meyer's rooms in order to find out any possible clue to the whereabouts of his family. That it was a case of suicide none could doubt for a moment. The hat was evidence of his having been in the river; and the stream was so swift and strong that even a good swimmer would have found it hard to escape, much more a feeble lad like Meyer, who did not know how to swim. That the body, in spite of search, had not been found, proved nothing: so strong a current would soon have carried it many miles away. But assurance became doubly sure when Max found the following note, scrawled in pencil, pinned to a pillow: "Know all men that I, Adolf Meyer, the painter, have been conquered by sorcery. I accuse Max Brendel of being in league with the devil. I quit with scorn and loathing a world where genius has to contend with infernal powers, and I go to find my glory where the work of wizards hath not to be judged by fools. Seek for the body of Adolf Meyer beneath the river; for his soul above the stars. A. M." So it was clear that the poor crazy soul had gone mad on the first provocation and had died. But much was due to his memory at the hands of Max Brendel. The authorities, though slowly moving, would soon arrive to seal the room. The incoherent piece of writing would assuredly condemn its author to the burial of a selfmurderer; while the prophetess herself, who, still under her canvas cover, lay upon the floor, would be overhauled by ignorant and careless hands and insulted by mocking tongues. The successful min, who had unconsciously driven his rival to a grave in the river, was bound to do all he could for Meyer's immediate memory and future reputation. He felt no hesitation in at once destroying the scrawl, and in conveying the prophetess, without lifting her veil, to his own lodging. He was the |