lab
that covers the dust of Wieland; yonder, the humble cottage of Schiller,
with the room just as it was when the mute minstrel was borne from it to
his home in the earth; across the brook is Goethe's country villa; and
back in the grove, the table whereon he wrote. There is a quiet sadness
in the whole town, as if nothing were left but the mere recollection of
what it once was. How different the picture sixty years ago, when all
the literary world looked thither for the last oracle from one of these
high-priests of poesy! Book-publishers went there to make proposals for
the editorship of magazines, or for some other new literary enterprise.
Napoleon himself craved an audience with Goethe, and it is the strongest
grudge held by the Germans against the master of their literature that
the oppressor of the fatherland was not denied his request. Young men
went to Weimar from all parts of Europe to kiss the hand of these great
transformers of aesthetic taste. There was not a sovereign within the
pale of civilization who did not envy Karl August's treasures. The
story of the literary achievements, of the Platonic friendships, and of
the evening entertainments of Weimar, forms one of the most remarkable
chapters in the whole history of letters.

The name of Herder demands our prominent notice because of its intimate
connection with the theological movement we have been tracing. He was
eminently adapted to his times. Perfectly at home with his generation,
he looked upon his contemporaries as brethren, and aroused himself
manfully to serve them in every interest. We notice in all his works a
careful study to meet the emergency then pressing upon society. We will
not say that Herder wrote every work just as it should have been, and
that he was evangelical throughout. This he was not, but he was greatly
in advance of his predecessors. Amid the labyrinth of philosophical
speculations it is interesting and refreshing to meet with an author
who, though endowed with the mind of a philosopher, was content to pass
for a poet, or even for an essayist. His was a mind of rare versatility.
What he was not capable of putting his hand to scarcely deserved the
name of study. In philosophy, practical religion, literature, church
history, education and exegesis he labored with almost equal success. He
was the instrument of God, not to raise each of the crushed elements of
Christian power to a lofty vitality, but to contribute to the moderate
el