The world’s great men may sometimes tell religion’s great truths. Take, for instance, Louis XIV, and Goethe. Each possessed great talent, which was used in each case to build up an artificial great man on the world’s pattern. Each inherited much—the first, a royalty of State; the second, royalty of temper and manner that raised his talents above the talents of other men. Each lived long, and lived successfully; and yet each confessed fully how wretched his glory was. The confessions of Louis XIV, were convulsive and worthless—they were the inarticulate shudderings and writhings with which he turned from death to superstition, until superstition led him blindfolded to death. Those of Goethe (equally splendid, though in another field, and equally artificial) are incidentally referred to by Eckermann, one of his idolaters, whose reminiscences we have now before us, in the German language:76 “When I look back,” said Goethe, speaking in his seventy-fifth year, “on my early and middle life, and see how few remain of those who were young when I was young, I am reminded of a summer residence in a watering-place. When we arrive, we form acquaintances with those who come before us, but who will soon be leaving. The loss is painful; but then comes the second generation, with which we live for a while on terms the most intimate. But then this passes away, and leaves us alone with the third, which arrives soon before our departure, and with which we have but little to do. “I have often been praised as an especial favorite of fortune; and I will not myself complain. But at the bottom there has been nothing but trouble and labor; and I can well say that in my whole five and seventy years I have not had four weeks of real pleasure. It was the eternal rolling of a stone, that had always to be lifted up again for a new start.” So spoke the great voluptuary poet-idol of Germany, and such is the world's estimate of glory and pleasure from the world's oracle.—Episcopal Recorder.