employed in the reigns of Charles II and James II, although he voted for the exclusion of the latter, in 1680. He was placed at the head of the treasury on the accession of Queen Anne, but was obliged to retire from office in 1710. He died in 1712.

GOETHE, John Wolfgang von, born Aug. 28, 1749, at Frankfort on the Maine. He displayed an early fondness for literature and the arts which increased with his years. His studies embraced the whole circle of the sciences. In 1771 he took the degree of doctor of laws, and wrote a legal dissertation. He eventually settled at Weimar, on the invitation of the grandduke, who conferred upon him several offices and honors. He died, at an advanced age, in 1832. Of his various works, the Sorrows of Werther, the drama of Faust, and the Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister, are well known, through the medium of translation, to the English reader.

The following particulars of the life of this celebrated man were written not long before his death. "It would be difficult to find a man who had arrived at the age of eighty-one with fewer infirmities than Goethe. The prodigious activity of his mind seems not to have worn out his body, although the latter, it is said, was put to the proof by his juvenile irregularities. His elevated form, the striking regularity of his features, his imposing and noble bearing, the athletic proportions of his body, seem to have suffered no injury from age; he holds himself as upright as a young man of eighteen; no apparent infirmity accompanies his years, and the wrinkles of his face hardly indicate a man of sixty.

"There is in his behavior and countenance something cold and reserved, which adds to the emotion which is felt in beholding him. He rarely determines, in the interviews which he grants to strangers, to display the resources of his genius; and visiters are sorry to observe that these hours of audience are only moments of repose for his spirit-perhaps of annoyance. It is said that this reserve always disappears in favor of strangers who arrive at Weimar, preceded by a literary reputation. Goethe has felt obliged to impose this reserve upon himself to avoid the unhappy consequences of frankness which once distinguished him, and it is said that English travellers have not a little contributed to it by the indiscretion they have shown in publishing in their journals incorrect fragments of their conversations with him.

"The life which Goethe leads at present

bears the impress of that vigor of mind and body, which he has succeeded in preserving. With a freshness and activity of mind, that eighty years of a laborious life have not impaired, he knows how to profit by every moment of the day. By six o'clock in the morning he is at work, and he permits no interruption until the hour of noon. During these long mornings he writes letters, composes, reviews his complete works, and arranges his correspondence with Schiller, of which the first volume has been published some months. At noon strangers are admitted. After dinner, he assembles at his house, about 4 or 5 o'clock, the limited number of the elect who have the happiness to live in habits of intimacy with him. The evenings of Goethe are consecrated to reading; he reads with a prodigious rapidity, which would be but a defect, were it not accompanied by an astonishing memory and an extraordinary faculty of analysis. He is but seldom seen at the theatre, and the theatre of Weimar feels this abandontnent but too sensibly. Goethe was formerly the manager, perhaps we may call him the creator of it: it was he, who, aided by Schiller, formed all the actors, who for more than a quarter of a century, shone in the first rank upon the German stage, and made the little theatre of Weimar the true school of the dramatic art in Germany." (See page 648.)

GOLCONDA; (now Hyderabad) a province of Hindostan, the soil of which is fertile, but which is chiefly celebrated for its diamond mines, which, now, however, hardly pay the expenses of mining. It was anciently called Tellingana.

GOLDSMITH, Oliver, an eminent poet and miscellaneous writer, born in Ireland in 1731. His father was a clergyman, and he studied at Dublin, Edinburgh and Leyden, and took a doctor's degree at Padua. Having made the tour of Europe on foot, supporting himself by flute playing, he reached London, after a long absence, with but a few pence in his pocket. Here he supported himself by his pen, and compiled many works, besides composing those which have rendered his name immortal. His poem of The Traveller gained him an enviable poetical reputation. His fame was established on a firm basis by the Deserted Village. Improvident, like many men of genius, he was about to marry his landlady to cancel a debt he owed her, when the sale of his novel the Vicar of Wakefield, which met the approbation of Dr. Johnson, afforded him a temporary relief. An