he intellect or the heart, with an abandonment which struck his
friends as the leading trait of his character. "Goethe," wrote one of
them, "only follows his last notion, without troubling himself as to
consequences," and of himself, when he was past his thirtieth year, he
said that he was "as much a child as ever."

[Footnote 6: Writing to her grandchild, Goethe's mother says: "Dein
lieber Vater hat mir nie Kummer oder Verdruss verursacht."]

[Footnote 7: When the son of Frau von Stein was about to visit her,
Goethe wrote: "Da sie nicht so ernsthaft ist wie ich, so wirst du dich
besser bei ihr befinden."]

There was another member of the family of whom Goethe speaks with even
warmer feeling than of his mother. This was his sister Cornelia, a
year younger than himself, and destined to an unhappy marriage and an
early death. Of the many portraits he has drawn in his Autobiography,
none is touched with a tenderer hand and with subtler sympathy than
that of Cornelia. Goethe does not imply that she permanently
influenced his future development; for such influence she possessed
neither the force of mind nor of character.[8] But to her even more
than to the mother he came to owe such home happiness as he enjoyed in
the hours of freedom from the father's pedagogic discipline. She was
his companion alike in his daily school tasks and his self-sought
pleasures--the confidant and sharer of all his boyish troubles. To no
other person throughout his long life did Goethe ever stand in
relations which give such a favourable impression of his heart as his
relation with Cornelia. The memory of her was the dearest which he
retained of his early days; and the words in which he recalls her in
his old age prove that she was an abiding memory to the end.

[Footnote 8: Goethe's letters addressed to Cornelia from Leipzig, when
he was in his eighteenth year, are in the tone at once of an
affectionate brother and of a schoolmaster. Their subsequent relations
to each other will appear in the sequel.]

It was an advantage on which Goethe lays special stress that, outside
his somewhat cramping home circle, he had a more or less intimate
acquaintance with a number of persons, who by their different
characters and accomplishments made lasting impressions on his
youthful mind. The impressions must have been deep, since, writing in
advanced age, he describes their personal appearance and their
different idiosyncrasies with a minuteness which is a