“You can see by the date on the pedestal.”

“You are right.  And yet how erect he stands, with his square shoulders braced back, and his hands behind him.  He looks as if he were standing before the fire.  I feel tempted to put a live coal into his hand, it lies so invitingly half-open.  Gleim’s description of him, soon after he went to Weimar, is very different from this.  Do you recollect it?”

“No, I do not.”

“It is a story, which good old father Gleim used to tell with great delight.  He was one evening reading the Gottingen Musen-Almanach in a select society at Weimar, when a young man came in, dressed in a short, green shooting-jacket, booted and spurred, and having a pair of brilliant, black, Italian eyes.  He in turn offered to read; but finding probably the poetry of the Musen-Almanach of that year rather too insipid for him, he soon began to improvise the wildest and most fantastic poems imaginable, and in all possible forms and measures, all the while pretending to read from the book. `That is either Goethe or the Devil,’ said good old father Gleim to Wieland, who sat near him.  To which the `Great I of Osmannstadt’ replied; `It is both, for he has the Devil in him to-night; and at such times he is like a wanton colt, that flings out before and behind, and you will do well not to go too near him!’ "

“Very good!”

“And now that noble figure is but mould.  Only a few months ago, those majestic eyes looked for the last time on the light of a pleasant spring morning.  Calm, like a god, the old man sat; and with a smile seemed to bid farewell to the light of day, on which he had gazed for more than eighty years.  Books were near him, and the pen which had just dropped, as it were from his dying fingers. `Open the shutters, and let in more light!’ were the last words that came from those lips.  Slowly stretching forth his hand, he seemed to write inthe air; and, as it sank down again and was motionless, the spirit of the old man departed.”

“And yet the world goes on.  It is strange how soon, when a great man dies, his place is filled; and so completely, that he seems no longer wanted.  But let us step in here.  I wish to buy that cast; and send it home to a friend.”

CHAPTER IX.  THE DAYLIGHT OF THE DWARFS, AND THE FALLING STAR.

After lingering a day or two in Frankfort, the two friends struck across through Hochheim to the Rhine, and then up among the hills of the Rheingau to Schlangenbad, where they tarried only to bathe, and to dine; and then pursued their way to Langenschwalbach.  The town lies in a valley, with gently-sloping hills around it, and long avenues of poplars leading forth into the fields.  One interminable street cuts the town in twain, and there are old houses with curious faces carved upon their fronts, and dates of the olden time.

Our travellers soon sallied forth from their hotel, impatient to drink the strength-giving watersof the fountains.  They continued their walk far up the valley under the poplars.  The new grain was waving in the fields; the birds singing in the trees and in the air; and every thing seemed glad, save a poor old man, who came tottering out of the woods, with a heavy bundle of sticks on his shoulders.