SECRETARY'S REPORT. 155 



It was with a strange interest, therefore, that I visited the 

 house, on the outside of which there is a tablet, " Here dwelt 

 Schiller from 1789 to 1799," A curious custom prevails here 

 of indicating in this way where the distinguished men resided 

 during their stay in Jena. I should think there were several 

 hundred such tablets on the fronts of the houses there. So 

 strong was my desire to see and learn what I could of the life 

 of this great man, that I visited Weimar almost on purpose to 

 see the spots connected with the memory of the greatest of Ger- 

 many's literary men — Schiller, Goethe, Wieland and Herder — 

 whom the Grand Duke delighted to gather at his capital, and 

 who earned for that small town the appellation of the Athens 

 of Germany. 



Schiller's house in Weimar is situated on a broad, quiet 

 street, but a short distance from that of Goethe and Wieland. 

 He occupied a suite of rooms on the second story, and they are 

 left to this day just as he left them at his death. His desk and 

 chair, his paintings, his bed, on which rests a cast of his 

 features, taken after death, and a thousand little souvenirs, 

 locks of hair, presents to Lotte, and mementos of various kinds, 

 are sho wu for a consideration. The study which he occupied 

 is adorned by pictures representing scenes in his various works. 



Goethe's house was larger and more pretending. The study 

 which he used is now occupied as a sort of museum of objects 

 owned or collected by that great writer. I spent an hour there, 

 but was not so fortunate as to gain admittance to the houses of 

 Wieland and Herder. I shall never forget how my meditations 

 were interrupted, as 1 stood on the opposite side of the street, 

 gazing at the house of the former, when the housekeeper, in 

 true German fashion, opened the front door and poured a 

 bucket of vile slops directly into the undrained street. There 

 was something so practical, or ratlier so unpoetical, in the idea 

 that I immediately left. 



Neither of these four great lights of German literature were 

 natives of the Grand Duchy of Weimar. Wieland was a 

 Swabian and was called to the capital of the little Duchy to 

 assume the direction of the education of the young duke. He 

 was the author of Oberon and Agathon, the translator of 

 Cicero's letters, a man of genial wit, an original thinker, with 

 a rich, elegant and playful fancy, which secured to him the love 



