represent and communicate them, according to your intelligence and your means: you must be not only MAN, but a man of your age; you must act as well as speak; you must be able to die without being compelled to acknowledge, "I have known such a fraction of the truth, I could have done such a thing for its triumph, and I have not done it."

Such is duty in its most general expression. As to its special application to our times, I have said enough on this point in that part of my article which establishes my difference from the views of Mr. Carlyle, to render its deduction easy. The question at the present day is the perfecting of the principle of association, a transformation of the medium in which mankind moves: duty therefore lies in a collective labor. Every one should measure his powers, and see what part of this labor falls to him. The greater the intellect and influence a man enjoys, the greater his responsibility; but assuredly contemplation cannot satisfy duty in any degree.

Mr. Carlyle's idea of duty is naturally different. Thinking only of individuality, calculating only the powers of the individual, he would rather restrict than enlarge its sphere. The rule which he adopts is that laid down by Goethe,-" Do the duty which lies nearest thee." And this rule, like all other moral rules, is good in so far as it is susceptible of a wide interpretation; bad so far as, taken literally, and fallen into the hands of men whose tendencies to self-sacrifice are feeble, it may lead to the justification of selfishness, and cause that which at bottom should only be regarded as the wages of duty to be mistaken for duty. itself. It is well known what use Goethe, the high priest of the doctrine, made of this maxim: enshrining himself in what he called "Art"; and amidst a world in misery, putting away the question of religion and politics as "a troubled element for Art,” though a vital one for man, and giving himself up to the contemplation of forms and the adoration of self.

There are at the present day but too many who imagine they have perfectly done their duty, because they are kind toward their friends, affectionate in their families, inoffensive toward the rest of the world. The maxim of Goethe and of Mr. Carlyle will always suit and serve such men, by transforming into duties the individual, domestic, or other affections,-in other words, the consolations of life. Mr. Carlyle probably does not carry out his maxim in practice; but his principle leads to this result, and cannot theoretically have any other.

JOHANN WILHELM MEINHOLD

(1797-1851)

N THE year 1843 appeared from an important Prussian publishing house a small volume, which was received with the liveliest interest by literary Germany. Its title was 'Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch: Being the most Interesting Trial for Witchcraft yet Known: Taken from a Defective Manuscript, made by the Father of the Accused, the Reverend Abraham Schweidler, of Coserow [Usedom Island]; Edited by Reverend W. Meinhold.' Within its pages was brought up from the superstitious past of the rural life of North Germany, in 1630, a grim yet absorbingly interesting picture and personal drama. Rev. Johann Wilhelm Meinhold, in editing the relic, stated that he had discovered its yellowed and torn pages by merest accident among some literary rubbish in the choir of the old Coserow church. The writer of it, the Reverend Abraham Schweidler, a godly and simple-minded man, had almost lost his only child Maria through a villainous plot on the part of a rejected suitor, aided by an evil and jealous woman of the neighborhood,— the latter confessing herself an actual servant of Satan. After a formal trial, and the beginnings of those direful tortures to induce confession that were then the ordinary accompaniment of German criminal processes, the unfortunate young girl, wholly innocent of the preposterous charge, had confessed it. She had found herself conquered by sheer physical agony, and by her inability to endure the torment of the executioners. Sentenced to the stake, Maria had prepared herself to meet her undeserved doom; and not before she was fairly on the way to the pyre was she rescued by a courageous young nobleman who loved her, and not only made himself her deliverer, but anon her husband and protector for life. The whole narrative was given with a simplicity of accent, and with a minuteness of detail, that precluded doubt as to its being a genuine contribution to the literature of the witchcraft delusion in Europe,- to which Massachusetts furnished an American supplement.

In offering to the public his interesting treasure, the Reverend Pastor Meinhold particularly stated that he had kept the connection between the fragments of Pastor Schweidler's old manuscript by interpolating passages of his own editorial composition, "imitating as accurately as I was able the language and manner of the old

biographer." The careful Meinhold noted that he expressly refrained from pointing out the particular passages supplied, because "modern criticism, which has now attained to a degree of acuteness never before equaled," could easily distinguish them.

The work met with the most complete success. 'Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch' was received with high commendation, as a mediæval document most happily brought to light. Not only did its dramatic treatment attract critical notice: a sharp argument soon arose among those reviewers especially keen in dealing with curious mediæval chronicles, as to the extent of Pastor Meinhold's "editorial" additions; and as to whether this passage or that were original, or only a nice imitation of the crabbed chronicle. The discussion soon became a literary tempest in a teapot. Meinhold observed for months a strict silence: then he abruptly announced that 'Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch' was a total fabrication; that he had written the whole story; that no part of it had ever been found in Coserow Church or elsewhere; and further, that he had not been inspired to perpetrate his brilliant fraud by merely the innocent vanity of a story-teller or antiquarian. He had desired to prove to the learned Biblical critics of the date (it was the time of the attacks of Strauss and Baur on the authenticity of certain books of the Scriptures) how untrustworthy was their reasoning, from purely internal evidence, as to the sources of the Canon. If a contemporary could deceive their judgment with a forged romance, how much more might they err in their Biblical arguments! Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch' was thus a country parson's protest against inerrancy in the "higher criticism" then agitating German orthodoxy. It is interesting to know that Meinhold's confession was at first rejected; although he soon proved the story to be indeed the result of his scholarship and quaint imagination. Its reputation grew; and the acknowledged imposture only added to its circulation.

Of Meinhold's life and career, except as the author of Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch,' there is little to be said. His father was a Protestant minister, eccentric almost to the degree of insanity. Wilhelm was born at Netzelkow, Usedom Island, February 27th, 1797. He studied at Greifswald University, was a private tutor at Uekermunde and a curate at Gutzkow. On his marriage he settled first at Usedom, later at Coserow. His literary success attracted the favor of King Frederic Wilhelm IV. of Prussia; but after taking a pastorate at Rehwinkel, in Stargard, Meinhold remained there almost to the close of his life, although he inclined to the Roman Catholic theology as he came to middle years. Another medieval romance of witchcraft, 'Sidonia von Bork, the Cloister-Witch,' is by some critics considered superior to Maria Schweidler, the Amber-Witch'; but it

has never met with the popularity of the less pretentious story that gave the Usedom clergyman his wide reputation. It is of interest to add that not only has the translation of the tale by Lady Duff-Gordon been recognized as one of the very best examples of English translation of a fiction,- the translation that does not suggest the conveyance of a tale at second-hand,- but that on the appearance of her version she was credited with the authorship of the story, and the likelihood of a German original denied. From first to last, the drama of Maria Schweidler's peril and romance seems to have been destined to deceive better even than it was planned to deceive.

The 'Amber-Witch' belongs in the same category of "fictions that seem fact" which includes Defoe's 'Robinson Crusoe,' or his 'History of the Plague in London'; where the appropriate detail is so abundant, and the atmosphere of an epoch and community is so fully conveyed, as to bar suspicion that the story is manufactured. As Mr. Joseph Jacobs happily remarks in his excellent study of Meinhold, and of the history that has kept his name alive among German romanticists:—

"Who shall tell where Art will find her children? On the desolate and gloomy shores of the Baltic, the child of a half-crazy father, unfriendly and unfriended as a bursch,-a Protestant pastor with Romanist tendencies,— who would have anticipated from Meinhold perhaps the most effective presentation of mediæval thought and feeling which the whole Romantic movement produced? And the occasion of the production of The Amber-Witch> was equally unexpected. Meinhold went forth to refute Strauss, and founded on his way a new kingdom in the realm of Romance. It is a repetition of the history of Saul.»

THE RESCUE ON THE ROAD TO THE STAKE

From The Amber-Witch'

[The following extract is from the concluding portion of the terrible experiences of Maria Schweidler. She has been tried and convicted of sorcery, and solemnly sentenced. Seated in a cart, in which her father and her godfather (the Pastor Benzensis of the chronicle) are allowed to accompany her to her doom, the young girl maintains the courage of despair. On her ride to the mountain, where the pyre has been raised, she is surrounded by successive mobs of infuriated peasants; but is not unnerved, and advances toward her death reciting prayers and hymns. Popular fury against her is deepened by the rising of a violent storm, naturally laid to the young girl's last spells; and by the violent death of her chief accuser, the wicked Sheriff Wittich, who is killed by falling into the wheel of a roadside mill. At last the elements and the populace are quieted enough to allow the death procession to be resumed. Surrounded by guards with pitchforks, and bound in the cart, Maria is drawn toward the Blocksberg; and nothing apparently can interfere with the legal tragedy of which she is the heroine. At this point the incident occurs which is told in the excerpt.]

How MY DAUGHTER WAS AT LENGTH SAVED BY THE HELP OF THE ALLMERCIFUL, YEA, OF THE ALL-MERCIFUL GOD

M

EANWHILE, by reason of my unbelief, wherewith Satan again tempted me, I had become so weak that I was forced to lean my back against the constable his knees, and expected not to live till even we should come to the mountain; for the last hope I had cherished was now gone, and I saw that my innocent lamb was in the same plight. Moreover the reverend Martinus began to upbraid her, saying that he too now saw that all her oaths were lies, and that she really could brew storms. Hereupon she answered with a smile, although indeed she was as white as a sheet, "Alas, reverend godfather, do you then really believe that the weather and the storms no longer obey our Lord God? Are storms then so rare at this season of the year that none save the foul fiend can cause them? Nay, I have never broken the baptismal vow you once made in my name, nor will I ever break it, as I hope that God will be merciful to me in my last hour, which is now at hand." But the reverend Martinus shook his head doubtingly, and said, "The Evil One must have promised thee much, seeing thou remainest so stubborn even unto thy life's end, and blasphemest the Lord thy God; but wait, and thou wilt soon learn with horror that the devil "is a liar, and the father of it" (St. John viii.). Whilst he yet spake this, and more of a like kind, we came to Uekeritze, where all the people both great and small rushed out of their doors, also Jacob Schwarten his wife, who as we afterwards heard had only been brought to bed the night before, and her goodman came running after her to fetch her back. In vain: she told him he was a fool, and had been one for many a weary day, and that if she had to crawl up the mountain on her bare knees, she would go to see the parson's witch burned; that she had reckoned upon it for so long, and if he did not let her go, she would give him a thump on the chaps, etc.

Thus did the coarse and foul-mouthed people riot around the cart wherein we sat; and as they knew not what had befallen, they ran so near us that the wheel went over the foot of a boy. Nevertheless they all crowded up again, more especially the lasses, and felt my daughter her clothes, and would even see her shoes and stockings, and asked her how she felt. Item, one fellow asked whether she would drink somewhat, with many more