ed, their friendship was to each a great blessing. Their
statues, representing them hand in hand, commemorate this friendship
to this day.

The closing books of "Wilhelm Meister" were written in Italy, and
after Goethe's return, and the book was published in 1795. Goethe had
long since outlived the extravagance of sentimentalism which
overflowed in "Werther." He had himself ridiculed it in a little
farce, much laughed at at the time. And if "Wilhelm Meister" were
taken merely as a story, it would be found quite free from such
extravagances. The story, however, is simply the framework for
criticism on art, on literature, and especially for what may be called
studies on education. The criticism on "Hamlet" has been called the
best of the thousands upon thousands of which "Hamlet" has been the
subject. No book of Goethe's has had, or has held, the interest of the
great world of "general readers," as "Wilhelm Meister," "Faust" not
excepted.

"Hermann and Dorothea" appeared in 1797, and was one of the most
serious of the efforts by which Goethe and Schiller both gave
themselves to create a German drama worthy of the German people. In
1790 a new theatre had been built at Weimar, and Goethe became in fact
the manager. He was not satisfied with writing plays to be performed
there; he actually supervised the performances, and gave to the detail
of such management much of his time for many years. So long as
Schiller lived the two were closely connected in all such enterprises,
and Goethe's practical connection with the theatre led him, perhaps,
to attempt the dramatic form of composition more often than he would
otherwise have done.

In 1799 Walter Scott, then only twenty-five years of age, published in
Edinburgh his translation of "Goetz von Berlichingen."

It must be remembered that all this time Goethe is pursuing his
studies of Physical Science. His little book called "Morphologie,"
published in 1788, immediately after his return from Italy, is a
simple, unaffected, practical, statement of the law of growth of
plants, which, though suggested before, had quite escaped the
attention of the botanists of repute. When it was published, it seems
to have been pushed aside as the fanciful dream of a poet. In truth,
it is a book which might be given to-day to a learner, as one of the
most elegant and simple illustrations of what is now meant by
evolution in nature. From the humble resources of a common garden
Goethe finds materi