“He certainly was.  Did it ever occur to you that he was in some points like Ben Franklin? a kind of rhymed Ben Franklin?  The practical tendency of his mind was the same; his love of science was the same; his benignant, philosophic spirit was the same; and a vast number of his little poetic maxims and sooth-sayings seem nothing more than the worldly wisdom of Poor Richard, versified.”

“What most offends me is, that now every German jackass must have a kick at the dead lion.”

“And every one who passes through Weimar must throw a book upon his grave, as travellers did of old a stone upon the grave of Manfredi, at Benevento.  But, of all that has been said or sung, what most pleases me is Heine’s Apologetic, if I may so call it; in which he says, that the minor poets, who flourished under the imperialreign of Goethe `resemble a young forest, where the trees first show their own magnitude after the oak of a hundred years, whose branches had towered above and overshadowed them, has fallen.  There was not wanting an opposition, that strove against Goethe, this majestic tree.  Men of the most warring opinions united themselves for the contest.  The adherents of the old faith, the orthodox, were vexed, that, in the trunk of the vast tree, no niche with its holy image was to be found; nay, that even the naked Dryads of paganism were permitted to play their witchery there; and gladly, with consecrated axe, would they have imitated the holy Boniface, and levelled the enchanted oak to the ground.  The followers of the new faith, the apostles of liberalism, were vexed on the other hand, that the tree could not serve as the Tree of Liberty, or, at any rate, as a barricade.  In fact the tree was too high; no one could plant the red cap upon its summit, or dance the Carmagnole beneath its branches.  The multitude, however, venerated this tree for the veryreason, that it reared itself with such independent grandeur, and so graciously filled the world with its odor, while its branches, streaming magnificently toward heaven, made it appear, as if the stars were only the golden fruit of its wondrous limbs.’  Don’t you think that beautiful?”

“Yes, very beautiful.  And I am glad to see, that you can find something to admire in my favorite author, notwithstanding his frailties; or, to use an old German saying, that you can drive the hens out of the garden without trampling down the beds.”

“Here is the old gentleman himself!” exclaimed Flemming.

“Where!” cried the Baron, as if for the moment he expected to see the living figure of the poet walking before them.

“Here at the window,—­that full-length cast.  Excellent, is it not!  He is dressed, as usual, in his long yellow nankeen surtout, with a white cravat crossed in front.  What a magnificent head! and what a posture!  He stands like a tower ofstrength.  And, by Heavens! he was nearly eighty years old, when that was made.”

“How do you know?”