left to her widowed husband one son, Moritz, who married, in 1811, the granddaughter of the Prince de Ligne. Count Joseph O'Donell stood in high repute in Austria as a financier, and was, when he died, busy with a scheme for arranging the deranged national finances. The Emperor Francis ranked the Count's services and talents very highly, and when he died the Emperor wrote a letter of appreciative regard for the deceased to his widow, on whom the State conferred a large pension. Goethe called the Prince de Ligne der fröhlichste Mann des Jahrhunderts, "the cheerfullest man of the century," and one whose appearance confirmed his reputation. Goethe paints him as always gay, intelligent, and as a man of the world, who was everywhere welcome and at home. Goethe and the prince had met already in 1807, in Karlsbad, and were again together in 1810 in Teplitz. poet and the prince exchanged verses. The prince wrote :— Je vous salue, Apôtre et soutien du bon goût, The The Duc was, of course, Karl August. Goethe replied in the little poem, "In früher Zeit, noch froh und frei." And here we may interpolate a pretty little story. Goethe lost, at the races, to Christine de Ligne (called in family intimacy, "Titine"), a wager of two gulden. He paid his debt by means of a Wiener-Stadt Banco-Zettel, of the value of two gulden; but on the back of the bank-note the poet wrote : Ein klein Papier hast Du mir abgewonnen, Ich war auf grösseres gefasst ; Denn viel gewinnst Du wohl worauf Du nicht gesonnen, Warum du nicht gewettet hast. Tepliz, d. 2. Sept., 1810. Goethe. Christine preserved carefully the memorable little bank-note, which is to-day in the possession of the O'Donell family. The year 1812 belongs to that sad time in which dismembered and disunited Germany lay at the feet of the insolent French victor. It was, however, the dark hour before the dawn, as the Befreiungs-Krieg, the War of Independence, occurred in 1813, which was also the year of the battle of Leipzig. In 1812, Napoleon projected his Russian ampaign, and he summoned the principalities and powers of Germany to meet him at Dresden, there to receive his orders. Characteristic of the manner in which Napoleon treated German royalties is the anecdote related of him by Amalia von Sachsen. At a dinner, after a boar-hunt, at Moritzburg, Napoleon considered that the entertainment was lasting too long, and suddenly cried out, Que l'on serve le dessert, a proceeding which greatly vexed "Aunt Elizabeth," who saw herself compelled to forego her cutlets. In 1810 Napoleon had married Marie Louise, daughter of Francis I. of Austria, and the Empress was with the French Emperor at Dresden. On the 18th May, 1812, the Emperor Francis, with his young third wife, his cousin, the Empress Maria Ludovica Beatrix, also arrived at Dresden, which was full of all the great and little German potentates. The Austrian Empress, a daughter of the Archduke Ferdinand d'Este, was born 14th December, 1787. She was beautiful and charming, impulsive, bright, amiable, and had singular tact and refinement. When she was in Dresden in .1812, crowds used to collect under her window in order to see the beautiful Empress. When General Berthier went to Vienna to ask for the hand of Marie Louise for his master, Napoleon, the general was so enchanted with the Empress that it soon became, he said, high time to leave Vienna. Madame de Staël bears her testimony to the charm of the fair Empress; who, later, at the Congress of Vienna, won all hearts. Goethe says of her that she was extremely affable, cheerful and friendly. He found that her nose and chin were hereditary, resembling those of her race. Her eyes were full of life and spirit. She spoke, he says, on all sorts of subjects; and he praises her for being always original and never eccentric. In short, the great poet entertained a feeling of romantic homage for the womanly worth and charm of the Empress Maria Ludovica. It was the intention of the Empress, after leaving Dresden, to seek health in the Bohemian baths of Karlsbad and Teplitz. In the suite of the Austrian Empress, as Hofdame, or lady-in-waiting, travelled the Countess Josephine O'Donell. The two ladies came to Karlsbad, and there Goethe, for the first time, met his future correspondent. Goethe was then occupied with geology, and busy with the first part of his autobiography, "Dichtung und Wahrheit." In Karlsbad, on the 12th June, 1812, he met his old friend, Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg, who writes: "I had not seen him (Goethe) for eight-andtwenty years, and found him, naturally, very much changed. He who used to be so slim and pale, has grown stout and rosy, and looks very healthy." Goethe was extremely fond of the "Gelegenheits-Gedicht," or poem inspired by occasion; and the poetic prodigality of his affluent nature always tended to overflow into song. Hence we soon find him pouring forth song-drops in honour of the fair Empress who so strongly impressed his imagination. He addressed a poem to Marie Louise, one to the Emperor Francis, and several to his beloved Empress. The Oesterreichische Beobachter (a very old "observer") of July 16, 1812, records that the Bürgerschaft, the municipality of Karlsbad, "strewed flowers in the path" of Allerhöchstdieselben, i.e. the Emperor and Empress, in the shape of poems by Se Excellenz der Sachsen-Weimarsche geheime Rath und Staatsminister, Herr von Goethe. You see that an enlightened journal gives to a German poet his full official title. The stanzas to the Emperor were to be handed to His Majesty by die Damm-Klara, that is by Clara, daughter of Dr. Damm, but the embarrassed young lady mistook the Archduke Ferdinand for his brother, and Goethe had to rush forward to put the little mistake right. In Teplitz, Goethe read poetry to the Empress, and chose chiefly, perhaps generously, the writings of Schiller. The Empress was fond of theatricals, and she herself acted in private performances. To please her, Goethe wrote in Teplitz, in two days, a little one-act piece called die Wette (the Wager), and the parts were distributed, but the piece was shipwrecked on technical difficulties, and never was actually played. The scenery required exceeded the resources of a mere "Bath," such as Teplitz was, and a rather complex room, divided into two divisions, from roof to stage, could not be managed. Goethe remained some weeks, on this occasion, at Teplitz. The visit gave him great delight. He was absorbed in work that he loved, and yet had the society-which he also loved-of such fair and gracious ladies as Maria Ludovica and Josephine O'Donell. The party went asunder with great regret. We must now proceed to glance slightly at the treasure trove of the letters. The letter to Christine de Ligne is unimportant; but it enclosed two sketches by Goethe, of Bilin, and the open space before its gate. Goethe, by the way, generally sketched in sepia on blue paper. The first letter to the liebe, neue Freundinn, the Countess O'Donell, is very short, and occupies only one side of a quarto sheet of paper. It is dated August, 1812, and deals with his wish to see his little piece, die Wette, produced upon the stage. The second letter is rather longer. It is addressed to his verehrteste Freundinn, and belongs also to 1812. He expresses his regret at hearing of the illness of the Empress, and begs for full information. He asks to be remembered to Her Majesty as her dankbarsten Knecht, "her most grateful servant." He tells the Countess, "be assured that your friendship is a great and unexpected gain to my life." He encloses two drawings, which are still in existence, entitled Sainte Marie du Pont, C.B. Août 1821; and Sainte Marie de la Harpe, C.B. Août 1812. Both are signed Goethe. The next letter is dated Jena, November 24, 1812. He again alludes tenderly to his Empress ; and speaks of die Empfänglichkeit für sinnliche Eindrücke, der ich so viel Gutes verdanke; that "sensibility to sensuous impressions to which I owe so much." He adds, that dictating a letter seems more to resemble speaking, viva voce, with the person addressed. He explains that he never finds himself more perplexed than when he writes a letter with his own hand, because the hand cannot work so fast as the thoughts flow, so that he is led into countless blunders of orthography and grammar. His frequent orthographical carelessness is well known, and here he gives the explanation of it. In 1813 Goethe wrote his Shakspeare und kein Ende, and had sent to the Countess the first part of that Wahrheit und Dichtung which he terms his biographische Masquerade, or biography in a mask. Many of the allusions in his letter to the Countess have now fallen dark, and it is, for instance, no longer possible to identify the Pfirsichblütfarbene Soubrette, or " peach-red-coloured waiting-maid," to whom he refers. The year 1813 was also his Hegira, or flight from distracted Weimar, then occupied by the French. The communication between Bohemia and Thuringia was interrupted, and Goethe's letter shows how strongly he was depressed by political events. Better times came, and he returned joyfully to his loved Weimar. He was busy with the continuation of his autobiography; and he writes fully about Madame de Staël's (he calls her Frau von Stahl) book on Germany. The Countess was engaged with the study of English, and Goethe encourages her, speaking of the "enormous treasures," of the "wealth" of English literature. He praises Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," as a work which he passionately loves. He always laid stress upon the "melancholy power" which finds expression in our literature; and he cited elsewhere as peculiarly characteristic of this quality the well-known sad lines— Then old age and experience, hand in hand, That all his life he has been in the wrong. Karl August writes, with his rough energy of badinage, to the Countess, of Goethe, that "il ne vous est pas fidèle. Goethe et moi vous VOL. CCLVIII. NO. 1850. M quittent pour deux yieux bleus! ce 28 Juillet, 1813." The blue eyes were those of the Fürstin Liechtenstein. On February 8, 1814, Goethe writes, alluding to the delay in the production of the third volume of his biography: "Fortunately I am an old writer, who does not care much for publicity. A young author would be driven mad with impatience." He speaks elsewhere of his "dédain du succès.” The Prince de Ligne, who said that "Le Congrès [de Vienne] danse, mais il ne marche pas," died December 13, 1814, and gave to the Congress the spectacle of the funeral of an Austrian Field-Marshal. It is of interest for us that Sir Sidney Smith appeared in the procession, as an English admiral, on horseback. Goethe was now occupied in the Oriental studies which led to his West-östliche Divan; and a long break in the correspondence with the Countess occurred. The Empress died April 7, 1816, and the loss of her plunged Goethe into a condition of grief the after-feeling of which never (as he says) left him. Gräfin Titine asked Goethe if, as a boy, he had been conscious of his poetical powers, and had foreseen his fame. He replied in those well-known lines, beginning Als der Knabe nach der Schule, in which he explains that he then thought it would be a fine thing. merely to write well, but that he never dreamed of writing anything that could live and be known in all countries. The son of "Titine" is the present Count, and owner of the letters published by Dr. Werner. On March 15, 1820, Goethe writes to the Countess that he "lives in memories," and therefore prizes so highly her friendship and her thought of him. On May 1, 1820, he addressed to her from Karlsbad the lines "Au Gräfin O'Donell" which begin : Hier, wo noch Ihr Platz genannt wird. The two last letters (17 and 18), both short and unimportant, are dated respectively May 19 and June 30, 1823; and then the rest is silence. The correspondence ceased. The Countess died August 5, 1833. Her letters became the property of her son, Count Heinrich O'Donell, and were inherited by his nephew, Count Moritz O'Donell. Once, in 1818, Goethe met the Countess in Franzensbrunn. Their talk was chiefly of that Empress whom both had loved so well. During the eleven years covered by the correspondence, Goethe produced the West-östliche Divan, Wahrheit und Dichtung, while his |