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From the People's Journal.

THE MOTHER'S DREAM.

BY MRS. NEWTON CROSLAND, (LATE CAMILLA TOULMIN.)

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Of harsh rebuke: "the fault it was her own;
Fruit of the seed which she herself had sown:
The weak indulgence of his Boyhood's day
Had raised the fiend no mortal power could stay."
Then, by the shadowy painting of the dream,
New terrors throng, and o'er her vision gleam.
Entranced she gazed. Behold, there rose to view
A stranger man, yet one her spirit knew;
The soft-eyed babe had grown to this dread thing,
More venom-dowered than is the adder's sting.
The dice-box rattles in his trembling hands;
He throws-the stake his broad ancestral lands!
The fresh-drawn flagon, and the wine-soiled glass,
And haggard form, before the Dreamer pass:
And then, in quick review, some woman's wrongs
Are shrieked in chorus by a choir of tongues:
New crimes the mirror shows in lurid flame-
Then breaks at last beneath its load of shame!

By her Dead Child she still is kneeling, The solemn bell has stayed its pealing; The clouds have wept themselves away, The sun resumed his gorgeous sway, And through the antique oriel pane Streams with a sapphire-emerald stain, And, falling as through ruby deep, Makes Death but seem a rosy sleep.

The little hands so soft and fair
Are folded as in infant-prayer;
The dimpled chin and placid brow
Not yet are marred by passions' glow.
And now the mother silent kneels,
For through her soul a soft peace steals:
She sees that heaven's power has blent
Sweet mercy with the anguish sent.

No longer tears bedim her eyes;
Life's duties fair before her rise,
And he whose only angry word
Was in the awful vision heard.
One kiss she plants on those cold lips,
And on those dear eyes' dull eclipse;
Then leaves she with a solemn tread
The guarded chamber of the Dead!

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From the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review.

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOETHE.

3d vol.

Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens. (Conversations with Goethe in the latter years of his life.) By JOHANN ECKERMANN. Magdeburg. 1848.

WITH the general character of this work our readers are probably already acquainted, from that of the two preceding volumes, published some years ago. Mr. Eckermann is a biographer of the Boswell class, with the same unbounded and unquestioning admiration of his subject, and with fully as much natural simplicity, but with greater intellectual culture, and without the incomparable absurdity or the tendency to spite which our dear "Bozzy" occasionally exhibits. With his perfect surrender of himself to the influence of the more powerful mind round which he revolved, we are little disposed to quarrel; such devotion is in the present day but too rare; and in addition to the vast mental superiority of Goethe, his elaborate and comprehensive culture, and his free and noble. position in the world, contrasted with the narrow circumstances and limited education of Eckermann, made it almost impossible that the attraction should not be overpowering. To have retained perfect freedom and independence of mind in such a case would have required very unusual strength of character and mental endowment. The relation in which they respectively stood, is not, for the work before us, without its advantages. The perfect transparency of the medium through which the master is exhibited, the almost total absence of character in the mind of the pupil, is in many instances favorable to the correctness of the representation. There is no attempt on the part of Eckermann to make the sayings of Goethe accommodate views and theories of his own, as a livelier biographer might have tried to do; but, on the other hand, it is difficult to acquit of occasional misconception, this appearing a more probable supposition than that Goethe should really have said all that is set down for him.

In the former volume there are many such sayings, as, for instance, this

"I remarked that Byron was very successful in his women. Yes,' said Goethe, his women are good. Indeed, this is the only vase into which we moderns can pour our ideality; nothing can be done with the men. Homer has got it all away in Achilles and Ulysses, the bravest and most prudent of possible men.""

Whether this saying has any meaning at all, and is not of that order of profundity in which no bottom can be found, we must leave our readers to determine; but to us it appears as if Goethe were often playing with the simple listener, and treating him to some such instruction as Mephistophiles gives to the young student who comes to consult Faust in his study.

In another place Goethe is made to fall into one of the vulgarest errors of that class of his countrymen who take their views of English policy from the Parisian newspapers.

"While we Germans,' said Goethe, arc tormenting ourselves with philosophical problems, the English, with their fine practical understanding, laugh at us and win the world. Everybody knows how they have declaimed against the slav e trade; and, while they have made us believe they were actuated solely by motives of humanity, we at last discover that they have an object, such as they do nothing without, and this we should have known before. They themselves need the blacks in their extensive domain on the western coast of Africa, and they do not like the trade which carries them off.

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America, which are very profitable. From these They have large colonies of negroes in they can supply the demand from North America, and if slaves are brought from other places it injures their trade-so they preach against the inhuman African slave trade (!)””

Again the conversation had one day fallen on the relative value of the observations of nature, made by scientific and unscientific

persons; and Goethe had asserted that the perceptions of the unlearned were often the

truer.

"You would seem to infer,' said I, 'that the more one knows, the worse one observes.'

"If our acquired knowledge is much mingled with error, certainly I do,' answered Goethe. As soon as we have joined any narrow, scientific sect, all true and simple observation is over for us. The decided Vulcanist will always look through Vulcanian spectacles, and the Neptunist and the partisan of the new elevation theory through his. The vision of such theorists, turned always in one direction, loses its clearness, and objects no longer appear to them in their native purity. When these men give us an account of their observations, we receive, notwithstanding the highest regard for truth in the individual-by no means the truth as it is in nature; all objects have a strong subjective tinge. I am far, however, from meaning to maintain that a true unbiassed knowledge would be any hinderance to observation; much more does the old truth retain its force, that we in fact have only eyes and ears for what we know.

"The musician hears every instrument in the orchestra, and every tone in each, whilst the unlearned ear perceives only the mass of sound. So also an ignorant man will see nothing but the agreeable surface of a green or flowery meadow, where the observant botanist will be struck by the vast variety of grasses and other plants.

"But everything has its limits; and, as in my Gotz it is said that a son from sheer learning does not know his own father, so in science we meet with people who can neither see nor hear for erudition. They are so preoccupied with hypotheses that, like a man in a violent passion, they may run against their nearest friend in the street without knowing it. For the observation of nature, a certain simplicity and tranquillity of mind is desirable. The child sees the flower and the insect, and has all his senses awake to a simple and single interest. It does not occur to him that there may be, at the same time, in the formation of the cloud something remarkable, so that he should turn his eyes also in that direction.'

"In that case,' said I, 'children, and people resembling them, might be good assistants in sci

ence.'

"Would to heaven,' said Goethe, 'that we were all nothing more than good assistants! It is just by wishing to be more, and carrying about with us a great apparatus of philosophy and hypotheses, that we spoil all.'"

Now it is certainly no very uncommon case to find half instructed scientific people possessed by an exclusive theory, distorting their views of fact to accommodate it, and seeing all things through a colored medium: but perhaps the error is less occasioned, even in this case, by their learning than by their ignorance. They have made themselves

masters of one side of a question, and looked hastily, or not at all, at the other; and their mistakes are not in consequence of what they know, but of what they do not know.

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Mr. Eckermann asks, "Do you mean to say, that the more one knows, the worse one observes?" (Dass man um so schlechter beobachte jemehr man wisse?) To which Goethe replies, "Certainly I do, if our acquired knowledge is much mingled with error;" which is as much as if one were to ask, "Do you think we are likely to be poisoned by bread and butter?" and the reply were, Certainly I do, if the bread and butter has been spread with arsenic"-a conclusion which we may readily admit, without at all thereby calling in question the wholesomeness of bread and butter. It may be very true that, as soon as we have joined any narrow scientific sect, (beschränkte confession,) we have "lost the faculty of just observation;" but it is not the science, but its narrow limitation-its " beschränktheil'—that makes the danger.

It appears also to be quite an unfounded assumption that the observations of unlearned persons concerning facts cognizable by the senses are always, or usually, correct. Most people who have ever tried the experiment will be aware how difficult, how almost impossible it is to obtain from them observations unmixed with inferences; and that no small amount of scientific training is requisite to enable any one to give a really true and accurate account of the simplest phenomenon passing daily before his eyes.

There is doubtless some truth in what is said of the observations of children; but it is not because they know less, but because they attend more, that their observations have sometimes greater value. The learned observer whose attention is divided between the garden and his meteorological inquiries, may easily overlook the flower or the insect; but it does not follow that if he looked at it, he would not see more in it than the child saw.

But it is not surprising that a German should be perhaps over-sensitive to the evils of "much learning;" and to the clear, healthy, eminently practical mind of Goethe, nothing could be more distasteful than the sickly, factitious, unhealthy aspect of body and soul, not uncommon in those who, like so many of his countrymen, have been nourished too exclusively on books.

"You know,' he says on one occasion, 'that scarcely a day passes in which I do not receive a

visit from some passing stranger; but I cannot say these visits give me much pleasure, especially when they happen to be those of young German learned men, coming from a certain northeasterly direction. Pale, hollow-chested, short-sighted, young without youth-that is their general appearance; and when I enter into conversation with them, I soon perceive that the things in which such folks as we take interest, appear childish and trivial to them. They are quite entangled in the idea; and nothing but the highest problems of speculation has any interest for them. Of sound senses and a pleasure in the sensuous, there is not a trace-all youthful feeling and joy in youth is driven out of them irrevocably. Could we but take pattern by the English, and give our young men a little less philosophy and a little more power of action-a little less theory and a little more practice! Much improvement might proceed from below, from the people, by schools and domestic education; much also might come from above, from rulers and those about them. I cannot see, for instance, why we should require, from young men studying to qualify themselves for the public service, so much of the theoretical learning by which young people are ruined, mentally and corporeally, before their time. When they enter on practical business, they possess, indeed, an enormous stock of learned and philosophical information; but this can find no application within the narrow limits of their calling, and, as totally useless, must be forgotten. Of what they really want in the meanwhile, they have nothing; and they have none of the energy of mind and body which is so indispensable in the practical business of life. And then in the life of a public servant-in his treatment of mankind -is not love and benevolence needed? And how shall any one feel and practise benevolence towards others, if things do not go well with himself? Now, with these people they mostly go very ill.'"

This seems to rest on much the same foundation as the celebrated dictum, "Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat." Does experience bear out the theory, that we may expect most benevolence from those who have themselves suffered least? But Goethe probably referred only to a state of sound bodily health; for he adds

"One-third of our official and learned men, who live chained to their writing-tables, are physically infirm, and subject to the demon of hypochondria. In these cases, it is in the highest degree necessary that something should be done, in order that, at least, future generations may be protected from such destruction."

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Every one is polite and refined, but no one has the courage to be true and cordial, so that a man of a natural sincere character is at a great disadvantage. One cannot help wishing sometimes to have been born a South Sea Islander, in order to have an opportunity of observing human nature without any artificial coloring. If you think, when you happen to be in low spirits, of the miseries of the time, it seems as if the world must be really ripe for the day of judgment. The evil increases, too, from generation to generation; for not only have we to mourn for the sins of our fathers, but we deliver to our posterity the infirmities we have inherited, increased by the addition of our own.""

To this Mr. Eckermann replies that he has often had similar thoughts, but has been consoled by the sight of a regiment of dragoons!

"Our peasantry, it is true,' said Goethe,' are still in a state. sufficiently healthy to preserve us from total ruin. The country population may be regarded a depôt from which the sinking powers of humanity may be from time to time renewed. But go into our great towns, and you will feel very differently. Take some turns through them with a diable boiteux, or a physician in great practice, and he will whisper stories to you that will make you shudder at the misery, and marvel at the frailty of human nature, from which society is suffering. But let us get rid of these hypochondriacal thoughts. What have you been doing lately? How have you been living? Tell me, and give me something pleasant to think of.'

"I have been reading in Sterne,' I replied, how Yorick, sauntering through the streets of Paris, was struck by the remark, that every tenth person was a dwarf. I thought of that just now when you were talking of the infirmities of great towns. I recollect, too, in Napoleon's time, seeing a battalion of French infantry, consisting entirely of Parisians, who were all such wretched, feeble-looking little fellows, that I could hardly imagine what use they could be of in war.' ers,' said Goethe,' were heroes of rather a differThe Duke of Wellington's Scotch Highlandent stamp."

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"I saw some of them before the battle of

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Waterloo, in Brussels,' I replied. They were
indeed fine, strong, active looking men, fresh as if
just from the hand of the Creator. They carried
their heads so free and boldly, and stepped out
neither hereditary infirmity nor original sin.'
with their naked, muscular limbs, as if they knew

whether it be in the race, in the soil, in the free
"It is a curious thing,' said Goethe, 'but
constitution, or in the sound education-the Eng-
lish appear certainly to have the advantage over
most other nations. We see here in Weimar but
a small number of them, and probably by no

In general, Goethe complains that Euro-means the best specimens, but what clever, handlife is too artificial and complicated, too pean far from nature; that our social intercourse is without benevolence or kindness.

some young fellows they mostly are. Young seventeen years old-they never appear strange as they are, too-some of them not more than or embarrassed in this foreign German country;

on the contrary, their deportment is as easy and confident as if the world belonged to them. That's the thing that pleases our women, and makes them commit such terrible havoc in young ladies'

hearts. As a German family man, I can't help feeling a little dismayed whenever my daughterin-law announces to me the speedy approach of one of these young islanders. I see, in the spirit, the tears that will have to flow for his departure. "I can hardly admit, either,' said I, 'that these young Englishmen are really superior to others'

either in heart, in intellect, or in cultivation.'

"It is not in those things, dear friend,' said Goethe, 'nor is their advantage in their birth or wealth. It lies in this--that they have the courage to be what nature made them. There is nothing in them distorted, perverted, or" half-andhalf." They are complete men-also, I must allow, sometimes complete fools-but even a fool complete weighs for something in Nature's scales.""

things he would have clearness and certainty. "I honor the man," he says, "who clearly knows what he wants, who knows also the means to its attainment, and is able to seize

and to employ them. Whether his object is a great or a small one, deserves praise or blame, is a secondary consideration." And he has in many places left on record his admiration of what he called "a nature," and his contempt for Philisterei, or petty formalism. Nothing disturbed him more than the perpetual interference of the police with all freedom of action, even in the most trivial matters, by which Germany has so long been harassed-and from which it is now breaking loose with the outrageous boisterous eagerness of boys bursting from the confinement. of school.

"I only need to look out of the window in our dear Weimar, to know how matters stand with us. When, lately, the snow was lying on the ground, and my neighbor's children wanted to try their little sledges in the street, a policeman was sure to make his appearance and put the poor little things to flight. Now, when the sun of spring is drawing them from their houses, and they like to come and play before the doors with their fellows, they always seem under some constraint-as if they were half afraid, and watching for the ap

much as sing, or whoop, or crack his whip, without a policeman jumping up to forbid it. With us everything is directed to the earliest possible taming of youth, and driving out of them all wild nature and originality, so that at last nothing is left but the Philister."

In contrast with this timid, servile inoffensiveness of character, always and every where the cherished ideal of despotism, whether of a family or of a nation, the robust freedom of the young Englishman must have been doubtless welcome.

We give this passage, not merely for the gratification of our national vanity, for we are by no means sure the tribute, such as it is, is deserved; and if it were, we must own we ourselves regard a certain kind of becoming sheepishness as more appropriate and agreeable in the age of seventeen, than this self-satisfied and confident manner, which appears to have been so captivating to the young ladies of Weimar. But the character-proach of the police potentate. A boy can't so istics described are unquestionably those of a class, and to a great extent, we think, of a certain rank in society, whether exclusively of our own country or not. There is also something eminently characteristic of Goethe himself in these remarks. He rejoiced in every manifestation of nature, from the highest to the lowest, in "the heavens, and the earth, and the waters that are under the earth;" light and colors, and the manifold phenomena of the atmosphere, rocks, and mountains, and valleys; and what the earth hides in her bosom, and the races of plants and animals that people its surface; the world of art, and the still more complex and various one of the human heart-in all he was at home, and the smallest object had interest in his eyes if it were only genuine and true; but he was in the highest degree impatient of all that was false and factitious, or constrained, and not perfect of its kind. "Even a complete fool," he says, "is something;" and it is often hard to avoid the inference, that he really preferred folly, or even vice that was genuine and spontaneous, to virtue laboriously manufactured, from which, indeed, nothing can grow, while vice is often the result of a force misdirected, but capable of a different application. In all

It is well known that Goethe's profound appreciation of the blessings of tranquillity and order, and his apparent indifference to many of the political events of his time, have frequently brought on him the charge of being a friend of despotism, and not always without semblance of justice. It is right, therefore, to hear what he says in his own justification.

"People have been pleased not to see me as I am, and to turn away their eyes from what might have showed me in my true light. Schiller, on the contrary, who, between ourselves, was much

more of an aristocrat than I, but who considered more what he said, has had the remarkable good fortune to be counted as a friend of the people. I do not grudge it to him, however, and I console

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