entz.
[Illustration: GOETHE'S PROMENADE.]
"It is the half-way city between Cologne and Mayence, and a favorite
resting place of tourists. The summer residence of the King of
Germany is here.
"From Coblentz we made a detour into the heart of Germany, going by
rail to Weimar, once called the Athens of the North. It was once the
literary centre of Germany. Here lived Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and
Herder. What the English Lake District, in the days of Wordsworth,
Southey, Coleridge, Christopher North, and De Quincey was once to
England, what Cambridge and Concord have been to America in the best
days of its authors and poets, Weimar was to Germany at the beginning
of the present century. We went there to visit the tombs and statues
of Goethe, and to gain a better knowledge of the works of these poets
from the associations of their composition.
"Weimar is a quaint provincial-looking town on the river Ilm. It has
some sixteen thousand inhabitants, and is the residence of the Grand
Duke of Saxe-Weimar. The grounds of the palace are wonderfully
beautiful. They extend along the river, and communicate with a summer
palace called Belvedere.
"We visited the tombs of the two great poets. They are found beneath a
small chapel in the Grand Ducal burial vault. The Grand Duke Charles
Augustus desired that the bodies of the two poets should be interred
one on each side of him: but this was forbidden by the usages of the
court.
"In the old Stadtkirche, built in 1400, are the tombs of the ancient
dukes, now forgotten. Among them is that of Duke Bernard, who died in
1639. He was the friend of Gustavus Adolphus, and one of the most
powerful of the leaders of the Reformation.
"Goethe, the most gifted of the German poets, and the most
accomplished man of his age, was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, in
1749. In 1775 he made the intimate acquaintance of Charles Augustus,
Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who induced him to take up his residence at
Weimar, the capital. Here he held many public offices, and at last
became minister of state. He died at the age of eighty-four.
"Goethe's most popular work is a novel called _The Sorrows of
Werther_, but his great and enduring work is _Faust_, a dramatic poem,
in which his great genius struggles with the problems of good and
evil.
"His life was full of beautiful friendships. In 1787 Schiller, the
second in rank of great German poets, was invited to reside at Weimar.
Goethe became mos
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