was one of the neatest mots ever uttered. Judge Harlan was quite a young man then, but his intellectual superiority to his chief was perfectly apparent even to me, though only "a chunk of a boy." So, when I went home I interrogated my father as to why Harlan was not running for governor and Bramlette for attorney-general. I was in my salad days and was green enough to suppose that merit and merit alone was the foundation for political rank. My father explained how accident, geography, management, combination, manipulation and inexorable necessity sometimes-indeed, not infrequently-crowd the superior man to the rear or squeeze him clear out of the game and force the inferior one to the front, and how the latter may be the vote-getter. The scales fell from my eyes as suddenly as they fell from those of Saul of Tarsus as he journeyed from Jerusalem down to Damascus. Sometimes I amuse myself by going over the list of Presidents and figuring on how much the average might have been raised by substituting for the weak ones the greatest men of the parties to which they belonged-by changing men, not politics. For example, put Henry Clay in place of the elder Harrison, Thomas H. Benton in place of James K. Polk, Daniel Webster in place of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore, Stephen A. Douglas in place of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, James G. Blaine in place of Rutherford B. Hayes, and so on to the end of the chapter. My boyish theory was right, if impracticable, and I am loth to relinquish it. Any one seeing Mr. Justice Harlan, with his silk gown on, sitting in the greatest tribunal of the world, would scarcely believe, gazing upon his massive head and solemn countenance, that there ever was a day when he made not only the welkin but the woods ring, not only with logic and eloquence, but with wit, humor, banter, sarcasm and all that goes to make a tip-top stump speech. The Judge would have been a great humorist if he had not come of a race of great lawyers and been predestined for a high career as a jurist. That same year I learned my first lesson about spellbinders, and it was this spellbinders do not always spellbind. Two men, Hughes and McIntyre, were candidates for county or probate judge-a lucrative and therefore desirable office in Kentucky. Hughes was one of the most flamboyant rhetoricians I ever heard-a tall, broad-shouldered, splendid Kentuckian-and he completely captured my boyish heart. Dan Hughes was my first political idol. He laid upon the multitude a wizard's spell. The crowd always yelled itself hoarse when Dan was up. His opponent, McIntyre, was a decidedly slow coach as a speaker. He stammered, hemmed and hawed, and was generally silenced by the cat-calls of the of the enthusiastic Hughesites; but to my utter amazement and disgust, when the returns came in, McIntyre led the poll by a handsome majority. The tortoise had distanced the hare. I was crestfallen and in the dumps. I went to my father, a staunch advocate of Dan Hughes, to see if he could explain the catastrophe on any rational grounds. "Mr. Hughes," said he, "is a fine stump-speaker, and depended on that alone to win votes. Mr. McIntyre is a very poor stumper, but he is an organizer, and whilst Hughes delighted the people with his oratory, McIntyre was organizing his forces.' Mirabile dictu! After thirty-seven years, I do not remember a word uttered by my oratorical idol, Dan Hughes, in that campaign, so memorable to me, but I do recall this statement from the dumb and despised McIntyre: "Ladies, I solicit your support. It is said that the man is the head of the family. If so, woman is the neck; and if the neck goes right the head must go right"-which now appears to me to have a goodly quantum of sense in it. It so happened that I saw but one of the principal spellbinders of the last generation; but he was a prince among his fellows, a host within himself, the handsomest man I ever saw or ever expect to see, General John Cabel Breckinridge, of Kentucky. Long before I had the pleasure of gazing upon his martial form I asked my father what manner of man he was. He answered: "He is tall, handsome, square-built. He has a head two stories and a half high." In 1868 I was a student at Kentucky University, at Lexington, when he returned from his European exile. With enraptured ear I heard him return thanks to his neighbors and friends for the cordiality of their reception. One sentence which fell from - his lips I shall never forget. In describing himself he said: "Politically, I am an extinct volcano!" and surely a sentence more graphic or more realistic never fell from human lips. It required a great brain to coin such a Victor Hugo-ish sentence as that, and it required courage, audacity and a correct comprehension of the relation of things one to another to utter it. After beholding him in the flesh and hearing him for the space of five minutes I had no difficulty in determining why my father and other Kentuckians of that generation came so near worshiping John C. Breckinridge. He was a spellbinder, indeed. I have heard but one other sentence as fine as the one quoted from Breckinridge, and that was uttered by another famous spellbinder, George H. Pendleton, of Ohio-popularly called "Gentleman George." At the time General Phil Sheridan was pitching a Louisiana legislature out of its chamber, at New Orleans, with the bayonet, I was a student at the Cincinnati Law School. There was a great meeting at the Grand Opera House to protest against "Little Phil's" action. Pendleton was the chief figure and held the centre of the stage. He was then in the prime of his splendid powerspowers equal to any position. Handsome as Apollo Belvidere, graceful as a fawn, with a wealth of brown, curly hair, with a voice sweet as an Eolian harp, he began his speech with this wondrous sentence: "The applause of the people is the sweetest incense that ever greeted the nostrils of a public man." What else he said I know not, care not. The man who can utter one sentence which a boy will carry around in his head for thirty-seven years, and which will always be an inspiration to him, is a spellbinder of marvelous power. I humbly and fervently thank God for such men.Saturday Evening Post. I Werner's Magazine Conducted by Stanley Schell. Authors of the Nineteenth Century. A SERIES OF CRITICAL STUDIES OF THE WRITERS AND THEIR WORKS, Copyright, 1899, by Stanley Schell. No 8.-JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. GOETHE'S RANK AND PLACE: The 150th anniversary of Goethe's birth, August 28, 1899, established his rank and place in German literature. For over twenty years revisions and rejudgments of him as one of the masterminds of modern Europe, ranking with Shakespeare, Dante and Cervantes, had been made. Men like Professor Dowden, Sir John Seeley, and M. Edouard Rod declared that he must be reread in the light of present-day critical canons. The attitude of the German nation toward him on his sesquicentenary is a significant element in the evolution of the new empire. At no previous time in Germany's history, not even in the wild years of fermentation, when, with lordly generosity, Goethe flung out masterpieces like "Götz von Berlichingen" and "The Sorrows of Werther," has he been held in such high esteem by his own people; at no previous time has he been hailed, with such accord, as their greatest literary genius, their most national poet, their most fit representative. He is like a guiding star, a demi-god to the present generation of German writers and artists-an ever-present example of higher intellectual life. Goethe belongs not only to German but also to European literature, where his position is that of successor to Voltaire and Rousseau. As a writer both of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries he seems to have started as a German Rousseau, but he did not remain so long. His first cry of freedom was given forth in "Götz von Berlichingen," and by degrees it became evident to him that the only true ideal of freedom is liberationnot alone of the passions, not alone of the intellect, but of the whole man; CRITICAL AND ELABORATE ANALYSES AND CRITICISM OF THE FOLLOWING POETS AND POEMS HAVE APPEARED IN WERNER'S MAGAZINE: that this involves all our powers and faculties, and that this can be effected only by degrees, and by steadfast toil. The most striking trait of Goethe's genius is its unrivaled versatility. In every department of literature he has tried his power, and with wonderful success. The periods of his outward life are most intimately connected with the eras of his literary career, and they may be divided (1) from youth to 1775; (2) 1775-1794; (3) 1794-1805; (4) 1805-1832. During the first period the character of Goethe's works was national, full of that German spirit for which Lessing fought so manfully, and which Goethe expressed with matchless felicity. The chief works of this period, "Götz von Berlichingen" and "The Sorrows of Werther," formed the solid foundation of Goethe's fame. They were read from one end of Germany to the other. It is difficult to imagine that the same man could have produced both works, so different are they in matter and style. "Werther" represents the languid sentimentalism, the passionate despair, which possessed an age vexed by evils which nothing but a knife could cure, and tortured by the presence of a high ideal which revealed to it the depth of its misery and the hopelessness of a better lot. "Götz" was the first manly appeal to the chivalry of German spirit. "Werther" is the echo of Rousseau, the lamentation of a suffering world. "Götz" is the prototype of Stein, the corner-stone of a renovated empire. "Götz," in its short, sharp dialogue, recalls the pregnant terseness of mediæval German before it was spoiled by the imitations of Ciceronian Latinity. "Werther," as soft and melodious as Plato, was the first revelation to the world of that marvelous style which, in the hands of a master, compels a language, as rich as Greek, to be also as musical. During the second period appeared "Egmont," "Iphigenia in Taurus" and "Torquato Tasso," all dramas; also the greater part of the romance, "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship." Although the dramas had been planned long before Goethe went to Italy, they were not completed until after his return. His eyes had been opened to the perception of high art; and his rich and fertile spirit, which embraced the lofty, the childlike and the lovely, now turned to the noble and elevated. In place of his former principle of naturalness or reality, arose that of ideality-that pure ideality which transplants nature into the reign of ideal and pure beauty. The author's genius in these dramas was everywhere felt, but it disturbed and offended rather than gave delight. He was alone; Klopstock's friendship waned; Herder became jealous and sensitive; Schiller could not comprehend him; Wieland, ever a warm friend, was unable to give him sympathetic support; and the general public, whom "Werther" fifteen years before had carried by storm, no longer found interest in him. The third period of Goethe's activity has one great masterpiece, "Hermann and Dorothea." During the fourth period of Goethe's activity appeared "Faust," his greatest masterpiece. In reality it is a literary epitome of his life, since it occupied him, at times, nearly 60 years. As poet, thinker, critic, and original observer of nature, all combined in one admirable harmony, Goethe attained his highest rank. We do not find in literary history any intellect that can fitly be placed on the same platform; that presents, in such grand and graceful completeness, so much thought, combined with so much luxuriant imagination; so much accurate science with so much playful fancy; so much simplicity with so much art; so much freshness and originality of productive power with so much justness and comprehensiveness of critical judgment. Of his poems, his lyrics are the least vulnerable. They need no interpreter. If studied in chronological order, it will be observed that, as time went on, the lyric that is a spontaneous jet of feeling is replaced by the lyric in which there are constructive art and considerate evolution. In the poem of the "West-Östlicher Divan" Goethe returns to the lyric of spontaneity. As lyrist he stands in first rank. As scientist he cannot be counted as one of the greatest, but his contributions to knowledge have been of importance and positive influence, and those studies were beneficial in his own development. As philosopher Goethe ranks with Kant, Fichte and Hegel, mainly because of his broad knowledge. As critic he ranks with Schiller, Lessing and Schlegel. His beautiful and profound examination of Hamlet alone, in "Wilhelm Meister, established his reputation, and Mephistopheles remains to-day the greatest literary representative of the critical spirit divorced from the creative spirit, and becomes, therefore, entirely negative and destructive. As dramatist he will not compare with the great masters of that art, for he was attached to character and picture and indifferent to action and event. Nevertheless "Faust" is a great dramatic poem, full of dramatic scenes, though they are not sufficiently moved by the living current of dramatic action. "Faust" is essentially a German poem, and yet a poem all foreigners can read and enjoy. Goethe's intellect was one of the loftiest ever known to man. It is not a typically German intellect, for the German mind tends to concentrate itself on one definite problem and to explore that problem in all its ramifications. But Goethe surveyed the world as a whole; he saw life steadily, like the old Greek poet; nothing escaped his eyes. Human nature was to him the prince of studies; and for every rank and condition of life his wide sympathy found expression. The simple peasant of the Black Forest makes the dark solitude resound with songs that tell of his own humble joys. The soft ditty which the Suabian maiden hums at her wheel breathes the quiet, cheerful content that blesses the lot of those who toil and spin for rude fare and coarse raiment. Even the clear, wild plaint which the Rhine boatman flings out upon the evening air is Goethe's own prayer for those who day and night stem the sweeping current. All Germany says "our Goethe," for in the mirror which he held up to nature high and low alike catch their own reflection. But the form and style of his works are characteristically Greek; that is, they are chiefly remarkable for profundity of thought and truth of feeling, expressed in the most simple, graceful, and unpretending manner. In soul, however, they are essentially German; and the most deep-thinking of the Germans are always the first to claim him as the most German of all German poets in spirit, though very few German writers have so carefully avoided the most characteristic German defects of style. In the extraordinary value which he attaches to "the form," he authenticates himself everywhere as a great modern Greek and a great artist. The variety of style for which Goethe is distinguished may be urged in further illustration of his genius. No two of his novels resemble each other in manner of execution, or character of invention, and in his poetical works he sometimes writes with the careful elegance and collected sublimity of the ancients, and sometimes reproduces the light and fascinating beauties of the poets of chivalry. He is a poet thoroughly relished only by those who understand thoroughly the German language, and whose minds are not so typically foreign as to exclude a ready sympathy with German thoughts and feelings. The command Goethe attained over the resources of his native language constitutes one of his strongest claims to attention. In some respects German is the most difficult of all modern languages, and it is fully mastered by very few. But Goethe's comprehensive mind grasped it in its almost boundless variety. His wondrous reach of thought was co-extensive with its wide and deep significance. Plain narrative flows along in even, unbroken, harmonious sentences; description glows with hues as bright and with features as distinct as those of the prototype. Passion, dark and stormful or sad and subdued; the proud bearing of the hero and the boundless devotedness of the |