literature, starting from a different point, reached the same goal as
the political work of the Prussian monarchy", [D] and of those men of
action who pushed this work forward in the hour of direst ruin.

[Footnote C: _Ibid.,_ i., p. 90.]

[Footnote D: _Ibid._]

The meeting of Napoleon and Goethe, two mighty conquerors, was an event
in the world's history. On one side the scourge of God, the great
annihilator of all survivals from the past, the gloomy despot, the last
abortion of the revolution--a

"Part of the power that still
Produces Good, while still devising Ill";

on the other, the serenely grave Olympian who uttered the words, "Let
man be noble, resourceful, and good"; who gave a new content to the
religious sentiment, since he conceived all existence as a perpetual
change to higher conditions, and pointed out new paths in science; who
gave the clearest expression to all aspirations of the human intellect,
and all movements of the German mind, and thus roused his people to
consciousness; who finally by his writings on every subject showed that
the whole realm of human knowledge was concentrated in the German brain;
a prophet of truth, an architect of imperishable monuments which testify
to the divinity in man.

The great conqueror of the century was met by the hero of intellect, to
whom was to fall the victory of the future. The mightiest potentate of
the Latin race faced the great Germanic who stood in the forefront of