dear-help!' cried Marat, and then expired." foul source whence, for three years, had flowed so many delirious outpourings, so many denunciations, so much The cry brought Albertine and the blood. Marat, covered in his bath maid servant and Laurent into the with a cloth filthy with dirt and spot- room, where Charlotte was standing, ted with ink, had only his head, should- without effort at escape. Laurent struck ers, the upper part of his chest, and his her to the ground with a blow on the right arm out of the water. There was head from a chair, and Albertine tramnothing in the features of this man to pled upon her. The aroused popuaffect a woman's eye with tenderness, lace of the neighborhood demanded or give pause to a meditated blow. that the assassin should be cast out to His matted hair, wrapped in a dirty them for speedy revenge. A body of handkerchief, with receding forehead, soldiers then entered, the hands of protruding eyes, prominent cheek- Charlotte were confined by cords, and bones, vast and sneering mouth, hairy in this position, amidst the imprecachest, shrivelled limbs, and livid skin tions of the household of her victim, --such was Marat. Charlotte took and the crowd who were present, recare not to look him in the face, for plied to the usual preliminary interrofear her countenance might betray the gations of the officer of justice, calmly horror she felt at his sight. With confessing her deed. This proceeding downcast eyes, and her arms hanging being ended, she was conducted in the motionless by her side, she stood close hackney coach which had brought her to the bath, awaiting until Marat to the house, to the Abbaye, the nearshould inquire as to the state of Nor- est prison. An excited mob filled the mandy. She replied with brevity, street, and she was with difficulty progiving to her replies the sense and tone tected from their outrages. On a second likely to pacify the demagogue's examination at the prison, she was wishes. He then asked the names of questioned minutely as to her motives, the deputies who had taken refuge at proceedings, and accomplices. To this Caen. She gave them to him, and he she had a very simple reply to make. wrote them down, and when he had She had come from Caen with the deconcluded, said in the voice of a man cided resolution of assassinating Marat, sure of his vengeance, 'Well, before and had communicated her intention they are a week older, they shall have to no one. A folded paper was noticthe guillotine!' At these words, as if ed fastened in her dress. It proved to Charlotte's mind had awaited a last be an address which she had prepared offence before it could resolve on strik-"to Frenchmen friendly to the laws and ing the blow, she drew the knife from her bosom, and, with superhuman force, plunged it to the hilt in Marat's heart. She then drew the bloody weapon from the body of the victim, and let it fall at her feet, Help, my peace." In this, the death of Marat was spoken of as already accomplished, and her countrymen were called upon to leave their unhappy divisions and arise for the redemption of France. Charlotte was presently removed to the prison of the Conciergerie. She was allowed writing materials in her prison, and addressed a long letter, recounting the circumstances of her journey, and avowing her detestation of Marat, to Barbaroux. The epistle expresses her strong enthusiasm and a readiness to meet the fate she had invited in behalf of her country. Its happiness, she said, was hers. "A vivid imagination and a sensitive heart," she adds with a philosophic self-consciousness, "promised but a stormy life; and I pray those who regret me, to consider this, and rejoice at it." Writing to her father, she asked his pardon for the course she had taken, while she gloried in her deed. "I pray of you to rejoice at my fate the cause is noble. I embrace my sister, whom I love with all my heart. Do not forget this verse of Corneille, Le crime fait la honte et non pas l'echafaud."* The next morning, the 17th, was that appointed for her trial. The hall of the revolutionary tribunal was above the prison. On being conveyed thither in the opening scenes, as she had done before, she frankly avowed her act, and gloried in its motive and success. Being asked how long she had entertained her design, she said, " since the last day of May, when the deputies of the people were arrested. I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. I was a republican long before the Revolution." The counsel who * The crime and not the scaffold causes shame. 29 had been assigned her could urge only JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE HE known ancestry of Goethe on the paternal side ascends to one Hans Christian Goethe, a farrier in the middle of the seventeenth century, in the little German town of Artern, in Thuringia. His son Frederick was apprenticed to a tailor, and in the course of his travels from place to place, according to the custom of the country, reached Frankfort-on-theMaine, where he pursued his calling, was admitted to citizenship, and "being a ladies' man," married the daughter of the master tailor. A second marriage with the widow, keeper and wealthy proprietor of a hotel changed his vocation to that of the landlord. By this union he had two sons, the younger of whom, Johann Caspar, was well educated, travelled into Italy, and became an imperial councillor in Frankfort. At the age of thirty-eight he was married to Kathrina Elizabeth, a young lady of seventeen, the daughter of Johann Wolfgang Textor, of a distinguished family and the chief magistrate of the city. A year after this marriage, on the 28th of August, 1749, their son, the poet, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, was born at Frankfort. .+ Both parents were persons of noticeable character. The father is described by Goethe's latest and best biographer, Lewes, as "a cold, stern, formal, somewhat pedantic, but truth-loving, upright-minded man. He hungered for knowledge, and although in general of a laconic turn, freely imparted all he learned. In his domestic circle his word was law. Not only imperious, but in some respects capricious, he was nevertheless greatly respected, if little loved, by wife, children and friends." From him the poet inherited the wellbuilt frame, the erect carriage and measured movement of his later life, with the orderliness and stoicism which characterized him through life. The mother was of an excellent disposition and genius, "her simple, hearty, joyous and affectionate nature endearing her to all, the delight of children, the favorite of poets and princes." Being but eighteen when her son was born, she was the companion of his youth. "I and my Wolfgang," she said, "have always held fast to each other, because we were both young together." She was well read in German and Italian literature, of great vivacity of intellect, inventing imaginative stories for her children, in which she became as much interested as themselves; a cheerful and happy woman, avoiding as far as possible all that was unpleasant in life and bearing its inevitable sorrows with equanimity. It was from his mother, says his biographer, that Goethe "derived those leading principles which determined the movement and orbit of his artistic nature; the joyous, healthy temperament, humor, vivid fancy, susceptibility, and the marvellous insight which gathered up the scattered and vanishing elements of experience into new and living combinations." The home in which the poet was born exercised its influence upon his impressible nature. The picturesque old city of Frankfort, with its ancient associations, was of itself a school for an imaginative child; while within the house in which he was born the walls were hung with pictures of the antiquities of Italy which his father had brought with him from his travels. Under these and other influences of education there were numerous precocious developments of the boy's intellect. Taught mostly at home at this early period, everything which he learned seems to have had an individual flavor. He was not one of a class getting lessons by rote, but at once absorbed and put in practice what he acquired. The anecdotes of his attainments and of his reflective powers are something marvellous. At six his mind was stirred by thoughts of Providence, excited by the overwhelming disaster of the great earthquake at Lisbon, and in his next year we are told that after listening to a great deal of theological discussion in the family he resolved to set up an "For this purpose altar of his own. he selected some types, such as ores and other natural productions, and arranged them in symbolical order on the elevations of a music stand; on the apex was to be a flame typical of the soul's aspiration, and for this a pastille did duty. Sunrise was awaited with impatience. The glittering of the housetops gave signal; he applied a burning-glass to the pastille, and thus was the worship consummated by a priest of seven years old, alone in his bedroom." He very early acquired some knowledge of language, at. eight, writing exercises in German, French, Italian, Latin and Greek, and not long after attacking English and even Hebrew. These were sometimes in the form of dialogue, exhibiting a playful turn for humor. Among other circumstances of his early life, of which he has given an account in his autobiography, he learnt much from the breaking up of the usual routine of home by the occupation of Frankfort by the French in the Seven Years' War. The troops were billeted upon the inhabitants, an officer "of taste and munificence" falling to the lot of the Goethe house; while the usual life of the town was greatly enhanced by military movements and the opening of a café and theatre. Though the boy was too young to understand or appreciate the quickness of French comedy he admired the display and bustle, and if he did not learn much before the scenes doubtless gathered up more behind them, for we find him, by the aid of a braggart companion, acquainted with the actors, "a fre quenter of the green-room, and admitted into the dressing-room, where the actors and actresses dressed and undressed with philosophic disregard to appearances, which from repeated visits he learned to regard as quite natural." This was about the age of ten; before he was fifteen he was in love with a certain Gretchen, the sister of one of his vagrant associates at this time, who appears to have given him but moderate encouragement and from whose society he was withdrawn by the mishap of some of her companions getting involved in fraudulent practices, bringing them under the supervision of the law. Gretchen, the familiar designation of Margaret, long haunted his imagination and furnished the name for the heroine of Faust. He was at first much hurt by this disappointment of his youthful passion, especially when he found that it had awakened no very ardent emotion in the subject of it, but he had too much vivacity to suffer long from such a catastrophe, and he soon turned his mind to his favorite studies. With much multifarious knowledge in his head, and with some practice in writing, at the age of sixteen he entered as a student the University of Leipsic. It was his father's design that he should devote himself to the study of jurisprudence, and he accordingly on his first arrival set himself vigorously to work at the science under the guidance of the learned professor Böhme. But he was of too volatile a nature to confine himself long to one pursuit. Versatility was always the characteristic of his attainments. He might, particularly in his early years, have said with Horace: Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri Quo me cunque rapit tempestas deferor hospes. Diverted from the lectures on law by his intimacy with certain medical students who talked of nothing but medicine and botany, he occupied himself with these new studies, while, with his usual ardour he entered eagerly into society and soon accumulated a stock of experience which, in one form and another, he rendered into verse and thus became an author. He had come to Leipsic with some provincial oddities about him; with a peculiar accent and a stock of colloquial expressions interspersed with proverbs and biblical allusions, which sounded strange in the politer society into which he was thrown. His dress, moreover, grotesquely made by one of his father's servants, gave him an absurd appearance. But he soon cast off these incumbrances of mind and body, and under the guidance of the accomplished Frau Böhme, appeared to advantage in the social circles of the town. It was not his disposition, however, to be contented with the usual amusements and intercourse of what is called good company. He demanded intense mental activity and passionate emotion, which he found in a literary circle which gathered at the table d'hôte of one Schönkopf, a peculiar German combination of the gentleman, wine merchant, and tavern keeper. He discussed poetry with the guests, got up private theatricals with the family, and played lovers' parts with the daughter, coquetting with her affection, and, in |