But there was one, a very ghastly
caricature of Mr. Rogers, which, as Madame de Goethe told me, he shut up
and put away from him angrily. "They would make me look like that," he
said; though, in truth, I can fancy nothing more serene, majestic, and
_healthy_-looking than the grand old Goethe.
Though his sun was setting, the sky round about was calm and bright, and
that little Weimar illumined by it. In every one of those kind salons
the talk was still of Art and Letters. The theatre, though possessing no
extraordinary actors, was still connected with a noble intelligence and
order. The actors read books and were men of letters and gentlemen,
holding a not unkindly relationship with the _Adel_. At Court the
conversation was exceedingly friendly, simple, and polished.... In the
respect paid by this court to the Patriarch of Letters, there was
something ennobling, I think, alike to the subject and the sovereign.
With a five-and-twenty years' experience since those happy days of which
I write, and an acquaintance with an immense variety of human kind, I
think I have never seen a society more simple, charitable, courteous,
gentlemanlike, than that of the dear little Saxon city where the good
Schiller and the great Goethe lived and lie buried.
LITTLE BILLEE
[Sidenote: _W.
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