simply in social contact with the best people in a com-
mercial city of some thirty thousand inhabitants, where
there was neither prince nor court. An 'sthetic appeal
was always present in the form of books, pictures, music,
and reminiscences of Italy--a subject on which pater-
familias was fond of dilating. If there was wealth,
according to the standards of the time, there was no
exclusiveness, and no pampering of the children. The
boy Wolfgang saw much of the plain people, and learned
to love their language and their ways.

In the free city of Frankfort national feeling was at a
low ebb. The burghers were proud of their position
as a constituent of the empire, and when an emperor was
to be crowned, they crowned him with elaborate cere-
monial. For the rest they cared little for the empire, and
felt themselves nearer to Paris than to Vienna. Perhaps
the most lasting impression made on the mind of the boy
Goethe by the political conditions of his native city was
a certain fond feeling for the picturesqueness of old local
custom, and for the pomps and mummeries of public
authority; in especial a habit of regarding the empire as
a venerable symbol not to be taken very seriously, save
with the poetic imagination. In the family disputes over
the Seven Years' War--the mother's people were Austrian
sympathisers--the boy sided with his father in favour
of the Prussian king. The occupation of Frankfort
by a French army in 1759 brought a host of new im-
pressions. For the sake of his French, Wolfgang was
allowed to attend the French theatre, which the city's
unwelcome guests provided for their own amusement.
From a French comrade of his own age, the son of one
of the actresses, he quickly picked up colloquial French.
He saw French comedies, occasionally a tragedy, and

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