Page:Impressions of Theophrastus Such. Essays and leaves from a note-book.djvu/347

 learned as to the significance of this symbol, but the people of Weimar, unedified by classical allusions, have explained the sculpture by a story which is an excellent example of a modern myth. Once on a time, say they, a huge serpent infested the park, and evaded all attempts to exterminate him, until at last a cunning baker made some appetizing cakes which contained an effectual poison, and placed them in the serpent's reach, thus meriting a place with Hercules, Theseus, and other monster-slayers. Weimar, in gratitude, erected this column as a memorial of the baker's feat and its own deliverance. A little farther on is the Borkenhaus, where Carl August used to play the hermit for days together, and from which he used to telegraph to Goethe in his Gartenhaus. Sometimes we took our shady walk in the Stern, the oldest part of the park plantations, on the opposite side of the river, lingering on our way to watch the crystal brook which hurries on, like a foolish young maiden, to wed itself with the muddy Ilm. The Stern (Star), a large circular opening amongst the trees, with walks radiating from it, has been thought of as the place for the projected statues of Goethe and Schiller. In Ranch's model for these statues the poets are draped in togas, Goethe, who was considerably the shorter of the two, resting his hand on Schiller's shoulder; but it has been wisely determined to represent them in their "habit as they lived"; so Rauch' s design is rejected. Against classical idealizing in portrait sculpture, Weimar has already a sufficient warning in the colossal statue of Goethe, executed after Bettina's design, which the readers of the "Correspondence with a Child" may see engraved as a frontispiece to the second volume. This statue is locked up in an odd structure, standing in the park, and looking like a compromise between a church and a summer-house (Weimar does not shine in its buildings!) How little real knowledge of Goethe must the mind have that could wish to see him represented as a naked Apollo, with a Psyche at his knee! The execution is as feeble as the sentiment is false; the Apollo-Goethe is a caricature, and the Psyche is simply vulgar. The statue was executed under Bettina's encouragement, in the hope that it would be bought by the King of Prussia; but a breach having taken place between her and her