nd ladies, agreed together to arrange a solemnity at the grave
of the poor Jerusalem. They assembled in the evening, read "Werther,"
and sang the laments and songs on the dead. They wept profusely; at
last, at midnight, the procession went to the churchyard. Every one was
dressed in black, with a dark veil over the face, and a torch in the
hand. Any one who met the procession considered it as a procession of
devils. At the churchyard they formed a circle round the grave, and
sang, as is reported, the song, "Ausgelitten hast du, ausgerungen;" an
orator made a eulogy on the dead, and said that suicide was permitted
to love. Finally the grave was strewed with flowers.[31] The repetition
of this was prevented by prosaic magistrates.

But the tragical conclusion of Goethe's narrative shocked men of sound
understanding. It was no longer a question of jest with flowers and
doves: it was convulsive earnest. When the respectable son of an
official could arrive at such extravagance as suicide, there was an end
of jest. Thus this same work gave rise to a reaction in stronger
natures, and violent literary polemics, from which the Germans
gradually learnt to regard with irony this phase of sentiment, yet
without becoming entirely free from it.

For it was undoubtedly only a variation of the same fundamental
tendency, when souls that had become weary of sighs and tears threw
themselves into the sublime. Even the monstrous appeared admirable. To
speak in hyperbolies--to express with the utmost strength the commonest
things, to give the most insignificant action the air of being
something extraordinary--became for a long time the fashionable folly
of the literary circle. But even this exaggeration disappeared About
1790, the past was looked back upon with smiles, and the spirits of men
were contented with the homely, modest style in which Lafontaine and
Iffland produced emotion.

The growth of a child's mind at this period shall be here portrayed. It
is a narrative of his early youth--not printed--left by a strong-minded
man to his family. It contains nothing uncommon; it is only the
unpretending account of the development of a boy by teaching and home,
such as takes place in a thousand families. But it is just because what
is imparted is so commonplace, that it is peculiarly adapted to excite
the interest of the reader. It gives an instructive insight into the
life of a rising family.

In the first years of the reign of Frederic t