Last Moments of Goethe. 15 



coarse abuse of all those who prefer independence to sycophancy and 

 honest and upright freedom of opinion, and the expression of it, to the 

 ever-ready prostration of principal upon the shrine of Mammon. 



In the castigation of such miserable sinners as Michael, Christopher 

 North may still be found serviceable and efficient. It seems to be his 

 peculiar vocation to do the hateful work of administering punishment to 

 poor creatures, whose helpless insignificance is their best protection 

 from others. While, however, it is necessary that literary offenders 

 should be punished, there can be no great objection to Christopher's con- 

 tinuance in the office of Jack Ketch of literature. But it is quite a dif- 

 ferent thing when he puts on airs of contempt towards those who are nei- 

 ther disposed to bear his arrogance, nor admit his superiority. 



" Go tell your slaves how choleric you are, 

 " And make your bondsmen tremble," 



but if there be a superfluity of bile to be carried off, or a fit of nervous 

 irritability to be disposed of, they must not be expended upon us. If a 

 swaggering bully should enter our room for thrasonical purposes, we 

 should probably not deem it worth our while to eject him from the window 

 forthwith, for the spikes beneath are of a new and peculiar formation, 

 fatal to our descendants ; we should most likely 



" Bid the brawny porter walk up stairs," 



and station him at the entrance of our room. If, upon due notice having 

 been given, and friendly advice resorted to, the bully in question should, 

 by a strange miscalculation of our patience, presume to carry the joke a 

 little too far, we should hand him over to the secular power, by leading 

 him quietly 



11 Where that two-handed engine at the door 



" Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more," 



just so, should coarse Christopher " leap out upon us." Unfortunately, 

 however, since the demise of the eccentric Jack Mitford, that breed has 

 become extinct in England, and we never heard of one better qualified to 

 fight Christopher at his own weapons. 



We have done with him : we have nothing to say in addition to what 

 we have before stated, of his partiality of his injustice of his unfairness 

 and of his want of political principle. We have only to advise him 

 that they will serve their turn no longer. We shall keep our eye upon 

 him constantly. We shall expose all his shifts his dishonesty his im- 

 pudence and his conceit. 



THE LAST MOMENTS OF GOETHE. 



GOETHE had not the slightest presentiment of his death. On the 

 fifteenth he chatted for some time with the Grand Duchess, who regu- 

 larly came to pay him a visit. After this conversation, which probably 

 fatigued his chest, he drove out, and unfortunately caught cold. Symp- 

 toms of catarrh manifested themselves ; but still his powerful constitution it 

 Was thought would enable him to shake off the disease. The physician 

 was full of hope, and in fact who would not have been deceived by that 

 powerful intellect, that serenity with which he spoke upon all things, and 

 particularly upon his theory of colours, which so powerfully occupied his 



