In this, and a similar spirit of acknowledgment, Goethe often spoke of M. Ampere.  We took a decided interest in him; we endeavored to picture to ourselves his personal appearance, and, if we could not succeed in this, we at least agreed that he must be a man of middle age to understand the reciprocal action of life and poetry on each other.  We were, therefore, extremely surprised when M. Ampere arrived in Weimar a few days ago, and proved to be a lively youth, some twenty years old; and we were no less surprised when, in the course of further intercourse, he told us that the whole of the contributors of the. Globe, whose wisdom, moderation, and high degree of cultivation we had often admired, were only young people like himself.

“I can well comprehend,” said I, “that a person may be young and may still produce something of importance—­like Merimee, for instance, who wrote excellent pieces in his twentieth year; but that any one at so early an age should have at his command such a comprehensive view, and such deep insight, as to attain such mature judgment as the gentlemen of the Globe, is to me something entirely new.”

“To you, in your Heath,"[19] returned Goethe, “it has not been so easy; and we others also, in Central Germany, have been forced to buy our little wisdom dearly enough.  Then we all lead a very isolated miserable sort of life!  From the people, properly so called, we derive very little culture.  Our talents and men of brains are scattered over the whole of Germany.  One is in Vienna, another in Berlin, another in Koenigsberg, another in Bonn or Dueseldorf—­all about a hundred miles apart from one another, so that personal contact and personal exchange of thought may be considered as rarities.  I feel what this must be, when such men as Alexander von Humboldt come here, and in one single day lead me nearer to what I am seeking and what I require to know than I should have done for years in my own solitary way.”

“But now conceive a city like Paris, where the highest talents of a great kingdom are all assembled in a single spot, and by daily intercourse, strife, and emulation, mutually instruct and advance each other; where the best works, both of nature and art, from all the kingdoms of the earth, are open to daily inspection; conceive this metropolis of the world, I say, where every walk over a bridge or across a square recalls some mighty past, and where some historical event is connected with every corner of a street.  In addition to all this, conceive not the Paris of a dull, spiritless time, but the Paris of the nineteenth century, in which, during three generations, such men as Moliere, Voltaire, Diderot, and the like, have kept up such a current of intellect as cannot be found twice in a single spot in the whole world, and you will comprehend that a man of talent like Ampere, who has grown up amid such abundance, can easily be something in his four-and-twentieth year.