f spiritual pilgrimage on the
Rhine for German authors. Young Goethe was received there, and according
to his disposition, against which he was quite helpless revered the
mother for the sake of her two beautiful daughters, who were just
approaching womanhood. When her husband lost favor with the prince,
Sophie supported her family by her writings as "the teacher of Germany's
daughters." Her novels, written in the spirit of Richardson, are
valuable records of the many-colored court life and of the activities of
the social personages of her time. A modern author, Ludmilla Assing, has
described the life of this extraordinary woman, who is to be remembered
not only for her own merit, but as the grandmother of Clemens and
Bettina Brentano; because of whom Sophie La Roche may be called the
grandmother of German "Romanticism."

It is impossible to give even the most cursory account of the remarkable
German women of this later period, for at every step we meet with such
an _embarras de richesse_ of extraordinary women, of whom voluminous
biographical accounts have been written, that we can only select typical
characters.

Besides Caroline Neuberin, the pioneer and founder of a respectable
German stage, only one important woman played a role in the life of the
grand Lessing. A great love awoke in his heart for Eva Konig, "the only
woman with whom he would venture to live." To realize his desire, he
accepted a poorly paid position as librarian at Wolfenbiittel. He was
forty years old when the betrothal took place, but six years later his
circumstances for the first time permitted him to marry. His happiness
lasted but a short time. On Christmas eve, in 1777, a son was born to
him, who died at birth; and two weeks later, to his inconsolable grief,
he lost his beloved wife. His literary references to this great sorrow
belong to the most pathetic passages in literature, just as his
correspondence with Eva Konig, edited by Alfred Schone, furnishes the
most charming portrait of a great man.

Lessing's correspondence with Eva Konig is but an additional proof that
among the most valuable documents adduced for the characterization of
German womanhood are love letters to and from German women. Such letters
are accessible to us from the thirteenth century. During the fourteenth
century they become more numerous: a nun corresponds, perchance, with
her father confessor; presents are exchanged, and sentiments, not always
of a purely religi