for it was worse and deeper than mere emotion. Yet it is difficult to speak of " Clavigo as a work of art. The matter-of-fact simplicity of the plot, the every-day nature of the characters, the prosaic sentiments, the deep homely pathos of the situa tions, are almost too real,-they are brought homo to our own bosoms, our own experience,-they are just what, in feeling most, we can least dare to express. The scene between Carlos and Clavigo, in which Carlos dissuades his friend from marrying the woman to whom he was engaged, is absolutely wonderful. If Clavigo yielded to any mere persua sion or commonplace arguments, he would be a des picable wretch,-we should feel no interest about him, and it would also belie the intellect with which he is endowed. It is to that intellect Carlos addresses himself. His arguments, under one point of view -that of common sense-are unanswerable. Hi reasoning, springing from conviction, is reason itself. What can be more practically wise than his calculations-more undeniably true than his assertions? His rhetoric, dictated as it is by real friendship, and full of fire and animation, is even more overwhelm. ing from its sincerity than its eloquence; and his sarcastic observations on poor Marie Beaumarchais. on her want of personal attractions, her ill health, her foreign manners; on the effect she will produce on society as his wife, and the clog she must prove to his freedom and ambitious career, are all so well aimed, so well meant, so well founded, that far from hating Carlos and despising Clavigo, we are im

pressed with a terror, a sympathy, a sort of fearful fascination. Every one who reads this play must acknowledge, and with an inward shuddering, that it is possible he might have yielded to this conventional common sense, this worldly logic, even for want of arguments to disprove it. The only things left out in the admirable reasonings and calculations of Carlos are nature and conscience, to which, in their combination, the world have agreed to give the name of Romance. But never yet were the feelings and instincts of our nature violated with impunity; never yet was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution. In the tragedy, the catastrophe is immediate and terrible; in real life it might come in some other shape, or it might come later, but it would come-of that there is no doubt.

February 25.

The accusation which has been frequently made against Goethe, that notwithstanding his passionate admiration for women, he has throughout his works wilfully and systematically depreciated womanhood, is not just, in my opinion. No doubt he is not so universal as Shakspeare, nor so ideal as Schiller; but though he might have taken a more elevated and a more enlarged view of the sex, his portraits of individual women are true as truth itself. His idea of women generally was like that entertained by Lord Byron, rather oriental and sultanish; he is a little of the bashaw persuasion. "Goethe,"

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said a friend of mine who knew him intimately, had no notion of heroic women," (Heldenfrauen ;) "in poetry, he thought them unnatural, in history, false. For such delineations as Schiller's "Joan of Arc," and Stauffacher's wife (in Wilhelm Tell) he had neither faith nor sympathy."

His only heroic and ideal creation is the "Iphigenia," and she is as perfect and as pure as a piece of Greek sculpture. I think it a proof that if he did not understand or like the active heroism of Amazonian ladies, he had a very sublime idea of the passive heroism of female nature. The basis of the character is truth. The drama is the very triumph of unsullied, unflinching truth. It has been said, that Goethe intended this character as a portrait of the Grand Duchess Louise, of Weimar. The intention of the poet remains doubtful; but it should seem that from the first moment the resemblance was generally admitted; and what a glorious compliment to the Duchess was this acknowledgment! It was through this true-heartedness, this immutable integrity in word and deed, and through no shining qualities of mind or blandishments of manner, that she prevailed over the angry passions, and commanded the respect of Napoleon, a man who openly contemned women, but whose instructions to his ambassadors and ministers always ended with " Soignez les femmes," a comment of deep import on our false position and fearful power.

MUSIC AND MUSICIANS.

March 1.

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IN the different branches of art, each artist thinks his own the highest, and is filled with the idea of all its value and all its capabilities which he understands best, and has most largely studied and developed. But," says Dr. Chalmers, "we must take the testimony of each man to the worth of that which he does know, and reject the testimony of each to the comparative worthlessness of that which he does not know."

For it is not, generally speaking, that he overrates his own particular walk of art from over enthusiasm, (no art, when considered separately, as a means of human delight and improvement, can be overrated,) but such a one-sided artist underrates from ignorance the walks of others which diverge from his own.

Of all artists, musicians are most exclusive in devotion to their own art, and in the want of sympathy, if not absolute contempt, for other arts. A painter has more sympathies with a musician, than a musician with a painter. Vernet used to bring his easel into Pergolesi's room to paint beside his harpsichord, and used to say that he owed some of his finest skies to the inspired harmonies of his friend. Pergolesi never felt, perhaps, any harmo nies but those of his own delicious art.

"Aspasia, he who loves not music is a beast of one species, and he who overloves it is a beast of another, whose brain is smaller than a nightin• gale's, and his heart than that of a lizard!" I refer you for the rest to a striking passage in Larr dor's "Pericles and Aspasia," containing a mo: severe philippic, not only against the professor, but the profession, of music, and which concludes very aptly, "Panenus said this: let us never bo lieve a word of it!" It is too true that some er cellent musicians have been ignorant, and sensual and dissipated, but there are sufficient exceptions to the sweeping censure of Panenus to show that "imprudence, intemperance, and gluttony," do not always, or necessarily, "open their channels into the sacred stream of music." Musicians are not selfish, careless, sensual, ignorant, because they are musicians, but because, from a defective education, they are nothing else. The German musicians are generally more moral and more intellectual men than English or Italian musicians, and hence their music has taken a higher flight, is more intellectual than the music of other countries. Music as an art has not degraded them, but they have elevated music.

It is impeaching the goodness of the beneficent Creator to deem that moral evil can be inseparably connected with any of the fine arts-least of al with music-the soul of the physical, as love is of the moral, universe.

The most accomplished and intellectual musician