In Goethe's mind, the first aspect that strikes us is its
calmness, then its beauty; a deeper inspection reveals to us its
vastness and unmeasured strength. This man rules, and is not ruled.
The stern and fiery energies of a most passionate soul lie silent in
the centre of his being; a trembling sensibility has been inured to
stand, without flinching or murmur, the sharpest trials. Nothing
outward, nothing inward, shall agitate or control him. The brightest
and most capricious fancy, the most piercing and inquisitive intellect,
the wildest and deepest imagination; the highest thrills of joy, the
bitterest pangs of sorrow: all these are his, he is not theirs. While
he moves every heart from its steadfastness, his own is firm and still:
the words that search into the inmost recesses of our nature, he
pronounces with a tone of coldness and equanimity; in the deepest
pathos he weeps not, or his tears are like water trickling from a rock
of adamant. He is king of himself and of his world; nor does he rule
it like a vulgar great man, like a Napoleon or Charles Twelfth, by the
mere brute exertion of his will, grounded on no principle, or on a
false one: his faculties and feelings are not fettered or prostrated
under the iron sway of Passion, but led and guided in kindly union
under the mild sway of Reason; as the fierce primeval elements of
Nature were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together, under
its soft vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation.
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