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son, Christian, who came between the younger daughters. The eldest daughter is described in the Autobiography as a lively warm-hearted girl, but the "Star" was Frederika. She is thus immortalised by Goethe;—

"At this instant she really entered the door and then truly a most charming Star arose in this rural heaven. Both daughters still wore nothing but 'German,' as they used to call it, and this almost obsolete national costume became Frederika particularly well. The short white full skirt, with the furbelow not so long but that the neatest little feet were visible up to the ankle; a tight white bodice and a black taffeta apron—thus she stood on the boundary between country girl and city girl. Slender and light, she tripped along as if she had nothing to carry, and her neck seemed almost too delicate for the large fair braids of her elegant little head. From cheerful blue eyes she looked very intelligently around, and her pretty turned-up nose peered as freely into the air as if there could be no care in the world; her straw hat hung on her arm, and thus at the first glance I had the delight of seeing her and appreciating her at once in all her grace and loveliness."

In another passage he touches upon her moral qualities:—

"I repeated to myself the good qualities she had just unfolded so freely before me; her circumspect cheerfulness, her naïveté combined with self-consciousness, her hilarity, with foresight—qualities which seem incompatible, but which nevertheless were found together in her, and gave a pleasing character to her outward appearance. * * * There are some women who especially please us in a room, others who look better in the open air—Frederika belonged to the latter. Her whole nature, her form never appeared more charming than when she moved along the elevated foot-path, the grace of her deportment seemed to vie with the flowery earth, and the indestructible cheerfulness of her countenance with the blue sky. This refreshing atmosphere which surrounded her she carried home, and it might soon be perceived that she understood how to reconcile difficulties and to obliterate with ease the impression made by little unpleasant contingencies. The purest joy which we can feel with respect to the beloved is to find that she pleases others. Frederika's conduct in society was beneficent to all. In walks she floated about as the animating spirit, and knew how to supply the gaps that might arise here and there. The lightness of her movements we have already commended, and she was most graceful when she ran. As the deer seems exactly to fulfil its destination when it lightly flies over the sprouting corn, so did her peculiar nature seem most plainly to express itself when she ran with light steps over mead and furrow to fetch something which had been lost, to summon a distant couple, or to order something necessary. On these occasions she was never out of breath and always kept her equilibrium."

It is not the object of the writer to recount the idyllic story of the love of Frederika Brion and Wolfgang Goethe. The Autobiography^[1] of Goethe has been long before the English public in an English dress; moreover, Mr. Lewes has gone over the same ground in artistic style and with sympathising soul. The interest in the Maid of Sesenheim and her family awakened by those two works is, however, not satisfied by them. Having recently made a pilgrimage to Sesenheim and pursued some investigations into the subject, the writer proposes to fill up a portion of the void left in the mind of the reader of those works as to the ulterior destiny of the individuals who composed that highly interesting family group.

After taking his degree, Goethe left Strasburg on the twenty-fifth of August, 1771. He had taken an abrupt leave of the Brions. The recollection of this parting was so painful to him that he has passed hurriedly over it in his narrative. He recalls only the image of Frederika, with tearful eyes, holding out her hand to bid him farewell when he was already in the saddle. To that "indestructible cheerfulness" of hers there was already an end!

After Goethe's return to Frankfort he sent a letter of final adieu to Frederika and received from her a reply which, he says, rent his heart. Neither of these letters has been preserved. So ceased for ever their written communications. The shock of severance brought Frederika to death's door. After her recovery she was wooed by Jacob Lenz, another poet of promise, a fellow-student and friend of Goethe at Strasburg, a translator of Shakspeare and Plautus. It was at the end of May or early in June, 1772, that Lenz left Strasburg for Fort Louis, a French fortress on the Rhine, now in ruins. He carried with him, if not a letter of introduction, at least messages to the Brion family from Actuary Salzmann, a mutual friend in Strasburg. Fort Louis is in the vicinity of Sesenheim, and young Lenz lost no time in paying a visit to the parsonage. In his letters to Salzmann, dated in June 1772, he describes his meeting with Frederika, and

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