not be too fine to give rest for tired feet without fear of perpetrating vandalism. Why should one dissemble? That is what you go to a hotel for-to put your feet in a chair when you come in tired. Foreigners and our own home-folk also are never weary of caricaturing the American habit of holding the feet higher than the head. It is very bad manners, but it is very good physiology. The highest medical authority declares that a horizontal position of the body is most conducive to a restoration of disturbed equilibrium and to a healthful circulation. But there are some enterprising spirits among us who do not need science to tell them what rests them when they are tired, and, carrying the principle of selfpreservation too far, they have postured themselves too recklessly, and thrust their uplifted feet through all the laws of deference and courtesy. Let them be Anathema. But shall I not take mine ease in mine inn ? And, oh! what madness of mockery, what satanic satire rages in the breast of the hotel proprietor, and forces him to hang the walls of his dining-rooms with mirrors? It is bad enough to come in from your day's journey or day's shopping or day's calling, tired, probably haggard, possibly frowsy, to enter a great, brilliantly lighted room, full of guests, full of waiters; to walk, frightened to death, between long rows of tables, over slippery floors, your boots clicking at every step; but it is agony, it is frenzy to see yourself reproduced in every direction, at every turn. Glance at whatever angle you may, you are dismayed by a flying cloud of hair, a ribbon fluttering awry, a ruffle rippling wrong. Mirrors to right of you, mirrors to left of you, mirrors in front of youwherever you flee, there you are again as large as life, and, you would fain believe, ten times as ugly. But what you want is to get away from yourself; to forget yourself; to be refreshed and renewed by thinking of something novel, pleasant, entertaining. Suppose now that the money spent in filling all the space between windows with lookingglass to multiply your cross, tired, worst self a thousand times, were spent instead upon pictures. Looking-glass is not a cheap material to begin with, and it does not diminish in cost by increasing in size. The money that buys these monstrous mirrors would buy, not so many pictures, perhaps, but enough to hang four sides of a room with lovely landscapes, with beautiful faces, with tranquil and tranquilizing interiors, with stirring sea-scenes, with wild mountain

views, with historic idealism. Then, while you are waiting at table for the ox to grow which is to furnish your beefsteak, you dare lift your eyes without fear of encountering the savage glance of your double-your double, do I say? Your quadruple, your octuple, your vigintivirate! You are not reduced to twirling the spoons with a sham indifference that the very waiters see through. You are not forced into an exasperated contemplation of the perfect "back hair" of your neighbors in front, with the dread certainty that your own is subject to the same prolonged survey of the army in the rear, and with a still more dread certainty that it is open to all sorts of objections. Some wide sweep of desert, some palm-tree of the South, some mountain peak white with perpetual snow, some peasant girl with the sun of Italy in her rich brown cheek and the dark splendor of her hair, fixes your roving eye, enchains your listless soul, makes you forget shops and gazers and back hair, and sends you dreaming through the delights of another world, till savory smells and the pleasing clatter of dishes recall you, refreshed and restored, to the not despicable delights of this.

And how will the morning stars sing together on that millennial day when the landlords of the earth shall pull down their curtains if need be, seeing they are usually gray as to the lace, and dingy as to the damask, and sure to gather dust and defilement, be they never so royal at the outset; shall pull up their carpets if purses be shallow, seeing the carpets are trodden by such ungenial feet as fate may send, and that the deeper the pile, the more surely it hoards its uncanny deposits for sensitive lungs, and delicate nerves, and vivid imaginations; shall give up even its frescoed finery, its breadth of gilded frame and plate-glass, if danger of bankruptcy require it; but shall hold the one indispensable luxury of a hotel to be a library! With lavish generosity, from apparently boundless resources, the proprietors of hotels have furnished their guests with numberless comforts and conveniences. They have made a marvelous outlay to fascinate the eye and to gratify the palate; but it seems never to have entered into the heart of man that this American people knows how to read. An occasional Bible in a bedroom, a gorgeously gilded book of advertisements on the center-table of the gilded and gorgeous drawing-room, a faint, vague rumor of newspapers in the outer darkness where female foot never penetrates,―

THE GOETHE HOUSE AT FRANKFORT.

THE Goethe house in the Hirschgraben at Frankfort-on-the-Main came into the possession of the Goethe family, and first began to have a history in the year 1733. In that year it was bought by Frederick George Goethe's widow, the poet's grandmother. The widow Goethe had inherited a handsome property from her first husband, the proprietor of the hotel "Zum Weidenhof." For her second husband she had married Frederick George Goethe, a tailor, who for her sake dropped the shears, and carried on the business of the hotel until he died in 1730, leaving his widow with two sons. In 1733 the eldest son died, and in the same year the widow sold the hotel and bought this house in the Hirschgraben, to which she retired with her only remaining son, John Caspar, the poet's father. The house at that time consisted of two buildings, a large and a small one, the partition walls of which had been broken through, and the different levels of the floors overcome by steps. As long as the grandmother lived the house remained in this condition, but the poet's father was for many years busied with plans for its reconstruction. In 1754 the grandmother died, and in the following year the rebuilding was begun, the future poet, at the age of six, dressed as a bricklayer, laying the corner-stone. In. 1795 John Caspar Goethe's widow, the poet's mother, sold the house to Herr Blum, a wine merchant. Herr Blum sold it the same year to the widow of the Procurator Roessing. In the possession of the Roessing family the house

VOL. XI.-8.

remained until 1863, when it was bought by public subscription, and placed in the hands of an association called the Free German Foundation (Freies Deutsches Hochstift), to be held by them in trust for the German people.

Such is the simple chronology of a house whose associations render it one of the most interesting in Germany. It has been restored as nearly as possible to its original condition, and its rooms are now used for society meetings and for the purposes of reading and study. Some few articles of the original furniture have with difficulty been secured, but the chief interest to the visitor is in recalling on the spot the story of Goethe's home life. Therefore, before describing these bare though speaking walls, we pause to consider the dramatis persona of the family circle in which grew up the wise poet, the reflection of whose genius has made them all illustrious.

The widow of Frederick George Goethe had spared no pains upon the education of her only remaining son, John Caspar. He had been sent to the gymnasium at Coburg, reputed one of the first schools of that day; went thence to the University at Leipsic, where he studied law, and, later, took the degree of Doctor-at-Law at the University of Giessen. A few years after he came with his mother to live in the house in the Hirschgraben, Dr. Goethe, then in his thirtieth year, made a journey to Italy. In the year 1740 a journey to Italy was an event, and it left upon the poet's father an ineffaceable impression. Twenty-six years after, when the poet in his turn was in Italy, he wrote from Naples: "I can forgive all those who go out of their wits in Naples, and remember with emotion my father, who received an indelible impression from these very objects which to-day I have seen for the first time; and as it is said that he to whom a ghost has appeared will never be joyous again, so in an opposite sense it might be said of him that he never could be unhappy, because he always in thought turned back to Naples." The father brought home engravings, curiosities, collections, and bric-abrac of many kinds. Views of St. Peter's, the Castle of San Angelo, the Colosseum, etc., were hung about the house, and became associated with the poet's earliest recollections. The father's time and thoughts were

occupied for many years in arranging his collections, and in writing out his diary in the Italian language with the greatest care and minuteness. He read, wrote, spoke, and sang Italian-in short, Italy became a very hobby with him for the rest of his life.

Dr. Goethe now anticipated taking a part in the world, but found his hopes quickly frustrated.

"My father," writes the poet, "as soon as he had returned from his travels, had, in accordance with his own peculiar character, formed the project-in order to prepare himself for the service of the city-of undertaking one of the subordinate offices and filling it without emolument, provided it were given him without his being subjected to the ballot. According to his way of thinking, and the conception he had of himself, and in the consciousness of his good intentions, he believed himself worthy of such a distinction, although, in fact, it was in accordance with neither law nor precedent. Consequently, when his request was refused, he fell into ill-humor and vexation-swore that he would never take any position whatever; and in order to render it impossible, procured for himself the title of Imperial Councilor (Kaiserlicher Rath), which the Chief Magistrate (Schultheiss) and the eldest judges bore as a special mark of distinction. In this way he made himself the equal of those in the highest positions, and could no longer begin at the bottom of the ladder."

The Imperial Councilor next turned his attention to matrimony, and sued for and obtained the hand of Catherine Elizabeth Textor, the daughter of the Schultheiss. The bride was not yet eighteen years old, twenty years younger than her husband, nor was this difference ever compensated for by sympathy in thought or feeling. The wife felt herself to be, as was the fact, not so far separated by years from her children as from her husband. She had married because her parents thought the offer an eligible one, and she found herself in the hands of a grim, pedantic, solemn schoolmaster; for Rath Goethe's marriage brought out in him a second hobby, namely, the most rigid pedagogy. He was a man with absolutely nothing to do, who had been carefully crammed with all the book-learning of his day, and it became with him a sort of monomania to impart his knowledge to others. The young wife was, accordingly, at once set to work at writing from dictation, playing on the

harpsichord, singing, studying Italian, etc. The birth of the poet brought her her first vacation, but gradually, the children offering a fresh field for the pedagogue's labors, the wife's education came to be looked upon as completed. Goethe thus sketches the situation:

"A father, certainly affectionate and wellmeaning, but grave, who, because he cherished within a very tender heart, manifested outwardly, with incredible persistency, a brazen sternness, that he might attain the end of giving his children the best education, and of building up, regulating and preserving his well-founded house. A mother, on the other hand, still almost a child, who first grew into consciousness with and in her two eldest children. These three, as they looked out on the world with healthy glances, felt a capacity for life and a longing for present enjoyment. This contradiction floating in the family increased with years. My father followed out his views unshaken and uninterrupted; the mother and children could not give up their feelings, their claims, their desires."

The poet, in recurring to his boyhood, naturally dwells upon his father's severity, which was the paramount impression of that period of his life. But we should not be unjust to Rath Goethe; he was a man to be respected, though not beloved; if formality and sternness be faults, at least they lean toward virtue's side, and as far as instruction goes, he had not simply a passion for it, but great talent. The education that he gave his son was, it is true, very different from that the son would have obtained in any school of that day or this, and seems very desultory and imperfect to those accustomed to the rigid uniformity of schools. Music, drawing, reading, writing, dancing, history, geography, fencing, languages, ancient, modern, and Oriental-everything seemed to be going on at once. want of method in so methodical a man suited the universality of the son's genius, which it might have been difficult to bind down to the routine of a school. Rath Goethe did not pay much attention to the order in which the studies were pursued, so that the children were always busied with something which he thought important. It was one of the characteristics of Goethe's activity of mind that he could all his life spring from one subject to another, even the most diverse; but it was also a part of his nature to busy himself about half a dozen different things almost at the same time, and

Yet this